Hunting and Fishing in the New South: Black Labor and White Leisure After the Civil War by Scott E. Giltner & Professor Scott E Giltner

Author:Scott E. Giltner & Professor Scott E Giltner [Giltner, Scott E. & Giltner, Professor Scott E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, Labor, General, history, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877), State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV), Americas (North; Central; South; West Indies), African American & Black, Social Science, Men's Studies, Discrimination, Gender Studies, Sports & Recreation, Hunting
ISBN: 9780801890239
Google: 5mwRoiTrrPEC
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2008-10-29T00:13:05.717522+00:00

NOSTALGIA, RACE, AND SPORTING TOURISM

“Sportsmen, historians, antiquarians and nature lovers will find great delight in visiting Beaufortland,” wrote N. L. Willet, Charleston & Western Carolina Railway agent. “This section has a history that is all romantic wonderland … It has been a shining mark for wars: Spanish, Revolutionary, Indian and the Civil War with its horrible Reconstruction era. It has been the mother of crops for world use, such as silk, indigo, rice, Sea Island cotton and rock phosphate was mined in large quantities.”53 The war was over and Northerners now craved remnants of the Old South. “There must be amusements, mental and physical, and inducement to out-door life and exercise,” F. W. Eldredge declared in a guidebook for Camden, South Carolina, “and certainly nothing more perfect can be wished for in a place of this kind than a quaint, quiet, old village to which nature and history have vouchsafed much that is beautiful and romantic, clinging fondly to its old dwellings, customs, and memories of the past.”54 Sporting tourism relied heavily on such “memories,” although it must be noted that the past as tourists wished to see it had little to do with the realities of antebellum or post-Emancipation Southern life. This was especially true for one important part of a fictionalized South— the plantation experience.

The importance of the plantation to stereotypical images of the South cannot be overstated. Southerners had for generations touted the plantation as the seed-bed of aristocratic virtue and manly skill, where men learned command of slaves, became intelligent farmers, and engaged in sporting activities that cultivated martial skill. Joseph LeConte, Georgia native and noted scientist who served as chemist for the Confederacy’s Nitre and Mining Bureau, credited his plantation upbringing, particularly frequent hunting and fishing excursions, for his mental and physical prowess. “This kind of life is an admirable culture for a boy. It not only contributes to physical health but also to mental health, by continual contact with nature and by cultivation of the powers of observation. In addition, it cultivates in an admirable way quick perception, prompt decision, and persistent energy and patience in pursuit.”55 Many Northerners accepted this romanticized vision. For visiting sportsmen, experiencing the grandeur of plantation life enabled them to enjoy an opulent vacation with a patina of celebrated social hierarchy that they associated with the antebellum plantocracy. The newly arrived elites did not make their fortune in plantations, but they believed such regal estates could best display such wealth. In the words of George C. Rogers Jr., “property in land was no longer the basis for power, but instead property in railroad companies, public utilities, banks, lumber companies, and rice mills. Eventually the holders of new money would wrap themselves in the old plantation myth through marriage alliances, patriotic societies, and an emulation of a style of family living that hearkened back to antebellum times.”56

Visible continuity between idealized antebellum plantations and the postwar South became an important selling point for land and sporting rights. Buyers wanted reminders of

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