New South Creed

New South, New South Democracy or New South Creed is a slogan in the history of the American South, after 1877. Reformers use it to call for a modernization of society and attitudes, to integrate more fully with the United States, and reject the economy and traditions of the Old South and the slavery-based plantation system of the antebellum period. The term was coined by its leading spokesman and Atlanta editor Henry W. Grady.

The original use of the term "New South" was an attempt to prescribe an attractive future based on a growing economy. The industrial revolution of the North was the model. The antebellum South was heavily agrarian. After the American Civil War, the South was impoverished and still rural; it was heavily reliant on cotton and a few other crops with low market prices. It seemed to be in great need of urbanization and industrialization. Slavery was abolished, and African Americans played a different role in the New South. Henry W. Grady made this term popular in his articles and speeches as editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Richard Hathaway Edmonds of the Baltimore Manufacturers' Record was another staunch advocate of New South industrialization. The Manufacturers' Record was one of the most widely read and powerful publications among turn of the 20th century industrialists. Historian Paul Gaston coined the specific term "New South Creed" to describe the promises of visionaries like Grady who said industrialization would bring prosperity to the region.

The classic history was written by C. Vann Woodward: The Origins of the New South: 1877–1913, published in 1951 by Louisiana State University Press. Sheldon Hackney, a Woodward student, hails the book but explains:

Of one thing we may be certain at the outset. The durability of Origins of the New South is not a result of its ennobling and uplifting message. It is the story of the decay and decline of the aristocracy, the suffering and betrayal of the poor whites, and the rise and transformation of a middle class. It is not a happy story. The Redeemers are revealed to be as venal as the carpetbaggers. The declining aristocracy are ineffectual and money hungry, and in the last analysis they subordinated the values of their political and social heritage in order to maintain control over the black population. The poor whites suffered from strange malignancies of racism and conspiracy-mindedness, and the rising middle class was timid and self-interested even in its reform movement. The most sympathetic characters in the whole sordid affair are simply those who are too powerless to be blamed for their actions.

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