The South's Mystique

...4.50...

...The promise of large and ready profits determined the cultivation of staple crops...

...The South's Mystique The Lazy South, by David Bertel-son...

...138 pp...

...He, too, offered a dissenting voice...

...Weatherford has suffered personal problems and tragedies and setbacks, but Miss Dykeman has not succeeded in making real the conflicts of his life...

...In 1910 he published Negro Life in the South, which is chiefly descriptive and a more subtle criticism of the South than the views of the Forgotten Voices...

...Like some of them, Weatherford had not completely divested himself of Southern paternalism or a belief in the innate inferiority of the Negro...

...As Professor C. Vann Woodward has observed, the South by 1900 had reached a consensus on the question of race policy...

...its mind was closed and conformity was demanded of all...

...The University of Tennessee Press...

...Recent historical scholarship has revealed not only the diversities within the Old South that contravene its unity but also the prevalence of ideas, values, and institutions that were common to all Americans...

...With the beauty and richness of the land as attractions, the South was settled by men who conceived of economic freedom, the freedom to realize profits and advancement, as the foundation for building the good society...

...This made the South different, and led not only to the development of staple crop agriculture and Negro slavery but also conditioned Southern attitudes on government and personal freedom...

...As international student secretary of the YMCA for the colleges of the South from 1902 to 1919, he traveled from one campus to another attacking religious fundamentalism and preaching the social gospel...

...Men like Weatherford do not fit the pattern of the Southern stereotype...

...Why had the doctrine of allurement made the South distinctive...

...Two years later, Weatherford published Present Forces in Negro Progress in which he outlined the achievements of the Negro and called upon the white man to help...

...His thesis is provocative...

...One of the most persistent themes in literature of and about the South— from John Smith in the Seventeenth Century to William Faulkner in the Twentieth Century—is that of the lazy South, or, for those who are more friendly toward the region, Southern leisure...

...Bertelson maintains that it was not staple crop agriculture and the plantation system based on Negro slavery that made the Old South distinctive...

...Therefore, material blessings become a part of God's covenant relationship to man, which implies that the desire for wealth is not sinful but a response to the enticements of God...

...it certainly has a germ of truth and suggests the need for additional study...

...His purpose is to explain why a "region of great natural potential" has historically contained "so many underfed and unhealthy people...

...In 1919, he helped to found the Commission on Interracial Cooperation and for twenty-five years helped to direct its attacks on lynching, peonage, and chain gang brutalities, and its efforts to secure better living conditions, jobs, and educational opportunities for Negroes...

...The development and the institutions of the Northern colonies were determined by the strong sense of community among the Puritans and Quakers, and by their concept of work as a personal calling and a means of fulfillment, which implied a social obligation and concern...

...David Bertelson, assistant professor of history at the University of California, began his study of The Lazy South as a graduate thesis at Harvard...

...Consequently, slavery became almost inevitable...

...It was the acceptance of the doctrine of allurement...

...Southerners who wished to protect the South's position in the Union as well as those who worked toward secession and independence recognized that sectional unity was indispensable and endeavored to form this unity by demonstrating that the entire South shared a common past that was not only different from, but also superior to, that of the North...

...He grew to manhood and intellectual maturity during the period in which the essays in Wynes' volume were originally published...

...Consequently, the settlers of New England and Pennsylvania, whose influence shaped the development of their neighboring colonies, established towns and diversified economies based on the concept of work that private ends and material reward must be subordinated to performing socially useful labor...

...On the other hand, Southern critics have used the concept of the lazy South to explain, among other things, the origin and development of Negro slavery, an undiversified economy, widespread poverty, the doctrine of white supremacy, speech habits, and the general failure of the region to advance economically, socially, and intellectually with the nation...

...Weatherford was more than a dissenter...

...He maintains that the Southern colonists were adherents of the doctrine of allurement, a doctrine of theological origins based on the belief that to "rough commandments" God often joins "sweet allurements" or earthly blessings to test whether or not men will obey His law...

...Wynes has found seven who published records of dissent between 1885 and 1909...

...In the 1880's there began a racist reaction that quickly led to rigid legal segregation, proscription, and disfranchisement of the Negro throughout the South...

...Prophet of Plenty: the first ninety years of w. d. weatherford, by Wilma Dykeman...

...Reviewed by Clifton H. Johnson As sectional bitterness became more intense and the spirit of Southern nationalism became more evident in the years preceding the American Civil War, radicals of both the North and South felt compelled to describe the distinctiveness of the South...

...Nevertheless, the myths and legends of the Old South survive and influence the thinking of critics as well as defenders of "the Southern way of life...

...How many Southerners dissented from racism during these years will never be known...

...There were other heretical voices, including that of W. D. Weatherford, but their number was small...

...Wilma Dykeman, in Prophet of Plenty: The First Ninety Years of W. D. Weatherford, has chronicled the triumphs and achievements of her subject...

...His concern for the poverty and desolation of Ap-palachia was influential in producing the monumental study of the region published in 1962...

...Individualism and the glorification of free enterprise, which were basic in the doctrine of allurement, are American characteristics also...

...Bertelson has shown that from its earliest history there were Southerners who criticized what they regarded as distinctive shortcomings or errors of the South...

...He finds the answer in the motive which attracted the original settlers to the Southern colonies...

...Nevertheless, he appealed for racial justice and proclaimed: "It is not the Negro that is on trial before the world, but it is we, the white men of the South...

...In the process of her research, Miss Dykeman was apparently completely captivated by Weatherford's personality...

...The study does reveal, however, some of the complexities of Southern life...

...5.75...

...The reader of this biography will gain respect and admiration for Weatherford's achievements, but will gain little understanding of the man...

...This doctrine of allurement also conditioned the attitude of the settlers towards work and idleness...

...Louisiana State University Press...

...Essentially, however, he has offered an economic interpretation of Southern history which is an oversimplified explanation for Southern distinctiveness, and he does not indicate that while the Old South was different it was also American...

...Willis D. Weatherford was born in Weatherford, Texas, in 1875...

...One must conclude that Bertelson's meticulous scholarship and tortuous prose have not resulted in a convincing explanation for The Lazy South but that geography and American history since 1607 have been more important in the development of Southern distinctiveness than the ideas the original settlers brought from England...

...263 pp...

...He was a constructive activist and he was concerned about the economic and intellectual poverty of all the people of the South...

...The doctrine of allurement eliminated the capacity to utilize the labor of others, because free men faced with the attraction of easily obtained and productive land could not be coerced to work for the profit of others...

...Professor Charles E. Wynes of the University of Georgia, in Forgotten Voices: Dissenting Southerners in the Age of Conformity, offers documentary evidence that the South bred its own critics even at a time when "to dissent was to risk ostracism and sometimes even physical danger...

...Bertelson's book is based on extensive research and is meticulously documented...

...Meanwhile, scholars have felt the need for explaining why laziness has been associated with the South in legend and in practice...

...For the latter group of writers, Southern leisure has been both the cause and manifestation of gracious living and a superior civilization where people are unhurried by materialism and greed for money...

...Bertelson maintains that the colonies north of Maryland were settled for different motives and by people with a different attitude towards work...

...Meanwhile, the Northern radicals who wished to demonstrate the inferiority of a civilization built on slavery also emphasized the distinctive oneness of the South...

...Slavery and the resulting degradation of manual labor, staple crop agriculture, poverty, ill health, diet, climate, and hedonism—all have been offered as explanations...