![]() ![]() From their fear, anger, and resentment they lashed out, not only in organized terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan but through political corruption, economic exploitation, and violent intimidation. When Reconstruction regimes attempted to grant freedpeople full citizenship rights, anxious White southerners struck back. And four million enslaved Americans-representing the wealth and power of the antebellum White South-threw off their chains and walked proudly forward into freedom. Moreover, the North’s overwhelming advantage in manufacturing and infrastructure played no small role in the Confederacy’s defeat.Įmancipation unsettled the southern social order. The Confederacy’s failed insurrection wreaked havoc on the southern economy and crippled southern prestige. While cities and towns did grow and thrive, the South’s lineage of racialized violence and social hierarchy would endure.Ī “New South” was desperately needed. ![]() They wanted industry and they wanted infrastructure while maintaining a distinctly southern identity that was proud of its heritage. This vision did come to pass, in a fashion. ![]() ![]() Grady and other New South boosters hoped to shape the region’s economy in the North’s image. He promoted the region’s economic possibilities through an alliance of northern capital and southern labor from which both sides might benefit. “That South is dead.” Grady captured the sentiment of many White southern business and political leaders who imagined a New South that could move beyond its past by embracing industrialization and diversified agriculture. “There was a South of slavery and secession,” Atlanta Constitution editor Henry Grady proclaimed in an 1886 speech in New York. The ambitions of Atlanta, seen in the construction of such grand buildings as the Kimball House Hotel, reflected the larger regional aspirations of the so-called New South. ![]()
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