The Southern Tradition at Bay by Richard M. Weaver

Author:Richard M. Weaver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gateway Editions
Published: 2021-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

Only diplomatic intervention by the Secretary himself prevented this absurd exchange from growing into a duel.

The aristocratic Mary Boykin Chesnut saw enough of such self-pluming and petty dignity to become disgusted. She noted in her Diary from Dixie: “I have come to detest a man who says, ‘My own personal dignity and self-respect require.’ I long to say, ‘No need to respect yourself until you can make others do it.’ ”31

The same author was too sharp an observer to overlook the beginning of a process which was to become of great consequence in Southern history, and which even then was making its harmful influence felt. This was the gradual loss of initiative and energy on the part of the old ruling class. “This race has brains enough,” she wrote under the date of June 5, 1862,

but they are not active-minded like those old Revolutionary characters, the Middletons, Lowndeses, Rutledges, Marions, Sumters. They have come direct from active-minded forefathers, or they would not have been here, but, with two or three generations of gentleman planters, how changed has the blood become. Of late, all the active-minded men who have sprung to the front in our government were immediate descendants of Scotch, or Scotch-Irish—Calhoun, McDuffie, Cheves, and Pettigru, who Huguenotted his name, but could not tie up his Irish. Our planters are nice fellows, but slow to move; impulsive, but hard to keep moving. They are wonderful for a spurt, but with all their strength, they like to rest.32

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