Transcript

After the Civil War, the south was a devastated region. So many of its businesses, farms, and factories had been destroyed by the war. At the same time, there was no capital or cash in the postwar Confederacy. The Confederate currency was worthless. And so, it would take the south a long time to recover its economic growth, as well as its social and political stability.

During the 1870s and 1880s, however, a number of civic and corporate leaders in the south began to talk about what they called “The New South.” They promoted this vision and what they meant by it was that the whole south before the Civil War was dominated by the cotton economy, that the south was too preoccupied with its agricultural center at the expense of developing its own industry, factories, and mills. As a result, the south did not have a diversified economy.

And so, the proponents of The New South wanted the postwar south to develop a diversified economy, as was the case in the northeast. They promoted the development of southern industry, southern factories, and southern textile mills while at the same time promoted the development of a southern agriculture that was not focused solely on cotton but diversified with all sorts of crops. They also assumed that The New South that they were promoting would include stable race relations between whites and blacks. This ideal, this myth of The New South became commonplace in the major cities of the south. Cities such as Atlanta, Richmond, and New Orleans were all advocates of The New South.

Unfortunately, the dynamics of the situation in the postwar south were such that The New South never really emerged during the last quarter of the 19th century. Yes, there was a little bit of industrial development and the growth of mills. There was also some diversification of southern agriculture but never to the extent that was envisioned by the promoters of The New South.

The foremost promoter of The New South ideal was the editor of the Atlanta newspaper, a man named Henry Grady. He gave very impassioned speeches, not just in the south but also in the northeast, talking about his dream of a south that would be more diversified in its economy and more harmonious in its race relations. That dream did not appear during Henry Grady’s lifetime. Ironically, 100 years later in the 1970s and 1980s, The New South did emerge with the dramatic economic growth in the so-called Sunbelt states of the American southwest, the surge of prosperity and emigration to the region, and the diversification of the southern economy. The New South finally came to pass in the 1980s, as opposed to the 1880s.

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