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| John Donald Wade (1892 -1963) |
Wade's contribution is actually in the form of a story rather than an essay. But it's an obviously heavy-handled parable promoting the Southern Agarian doctrine with the account of Cousin Lucius, heir to a plantation, born around 1850, living through Lost Cause history in Georgia.
Cousin Lucius' first memories are stories about the happy days of his happy family with their happy slaves before the big war. After the war, Lucius went through years of what he calls "Hard Times." But he gets a college education and becomes committed to the mission of promoting classical education for the young. His inspiration for this devotion to education and High Culture owed largely to the apparently almost mystical influence of his postwar sighting Alexander Stephens, who had been Vice President of the Confederacy:
Once he went as a delegate from his fraternity to a meeting held at the state university, where an interest in this world as apart from heaven was somewhat more openly sanctioned than at his own college. The chief sight he saw there was Alexander Stephens, crippled and emaciated and shockingly treble. As he spoke, a young negro fanned him steadily and gave him from time to time a resuscitating toddy. That man's eyes burned with a kind of fire that Lucius knew was fed by a passionate integrity and a passionate love for all mankind. He was obviously the center of a legend, the type to which would gravitate men's memories of other heroes who had been in their way great, but never so great as he was. [my emphasis]That would be the Alexander Stephens who gave the infamous Cornerstone Speech of March 21, 1861, describing the new Confederacy this way:
The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."The most famous speech of the man, in Cousin Lucius view, whose "eyes burned with a kind of fire that Lucius knew was fed by a passionate integrity and a passionate love for all mankind." Or, maybe, the white portion of all mankind.
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery[,] subordination to the superior race[,] is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal. [my emphasis]
He founds a school, and as he grows older finds himself being increasingly uncomfortable with all the new-fangled things happening. He himself is tempted by "the fiend" of Progress and becomes a banker, and even gets enthusiastic about growing peaches after people find they can make money on them thanks to these here refrigerated railroad cars that this dangerous technology thing invented.
Except for the Hard Times that always haunted him, he seems to live out a good life, dying after collapsing in the arms of an admiring African-American man. His final act was to shout at some quail flying by, apparently a symbol of this disturbing increase in the pace of life thanks to Yankee Industrialism, a change which troubled him greatly, though he didn't mind making a buck off it. And the kids didn't want to study his favorite classics any more!
The story could actually be read as a vignette illustrating that everything changes, and people sometimes find it hard to adjust, and etc.
But aside from the polemics against evil Industrialism throughout the story, the Lost Cause ideal of racial harmony and paternal benevolence on the part of the whites frames the story. The scenes of his earliest memories and of his death involve affectionate black people:
He remembered all his life the feel of the hot sand on his young feet on that midsummer day. He was very young then, but he knew that he was very tired of riding primly beside his mother in the carriage. So his father let him walk for a little, holding him by his small hand. On went the carriage, on went the wagons behind the carriage, with the slaves, loud with greetings for young master. In the back of the last wagon his father set him down till he could himself find a seat there. Then his father, still holding his hand, lowered him to the road, and let him run along as best he could, right where the mules had gone. The slaves shouted in their pride of him, and in their glee, and the sport was unquestionably fine, but the sand was hot, too hot, and he was happy to go back to his prim station next the person who ruled the world. ...And Wade relates the death of Lucius this way:
The next thing actually in his memory was also about slaves. In South Carolina, Aunt Amanda, an aunt of his mother's, had lately died. What that might mean was a mystery, but one clear result of the transaction was that Aunt Amanda had no further use for her slaves, and, in accordance with her will, they had been sent to him in Georgia. Their arrival his memory seized upon for keeps. They were being rationed - so much meal, so much meat, so much syrup, so much rice. But not enough rice. "Li'l master," said one of his new chattels to him, "you min' askin' master to let us swap back all our meal for mo' rice?" He remembered that he thought it would be delightful to make that request, and he remembered that it was granted. [my emphasis]
He [Lucious' son] heard his father shout at them [a flock of quail] as they went by, the fine lusty shout that he remembered as designed especially for sunsets and clean dogwood blossoms. And then there was perfect silence. And then he heard the frantic voice of Anthony: "Oh, Mas' Edward! Help, help, Mas' Edward! Mas' Lucius! Mas' Lucius! O Lord! help, Mas' Edward!" Stark fright slugged him. He was sick and he could scarcely walk, but he ran, and after unmeasured time, it seemed to him, he rounded the corner of the packing-house and saw Anthony, a sort of maniac between grief and terror, half weeping, half shouting, stooping, holding in his arms Cousin Lucius's limp body. "Oh, Mas' Edward! Mas' Edward! Fo' God, I believe Mas' Lucius done dead!"Even in this fictional treatment, an idealized version of white supremacy is assumed as part of the white people's agrarian paradise. Lucius may have been surrounded by adoring black people all his life. But we see Lucius thinking at one point about Georgia passing a Prohibition law to ban the consumption of alcohol. For Lucius, Prohibition "seemed to him as foolhardy and as vicious as the efforts of alien New England to control the ballot-box in the South," a reference to the Lost Cause image of evil Yankees guaranteeing black citizens their right to vote during Reconstruction.
Tags: confederate heritage month 2011, john donald wade, southern agrarians, us south
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