page_title: New South
section_title: Etymology and philosophy
hierarchical_section_title: New South / Etymology and philosophy
caption_attribution_description: English: Took this tripod-less. Images merged in Photoshop.
context_page_description: New South, New South Democracy or New South Creed is a slogan in the history of the American South after the American Civil War. Reformers use it to call for a modernization of society and attitudes, to integrate more fully with the United States, and reject the economy and traditions of the Old South and the slavery-based plantation system of the antebellum period. The term was coined by its leading spokesman and Atlanta editor Henry W. Grady.
context_section_description: The original use of the term "New South" was an attempt to prescribe an attractive future based on a growing economy. The industrial revolution of the North was the model.  The antebellum South was heavily agrarian. After the American Civil War, the South was impoverished and still rural; it was heavily reliant on cotton and a few other crops with low market prices.  It seemed to be in great need of urbanization and industrialization.  Slavery was abolished, and African Americans played a different role in the New South. Henry W. Grady made this term popular in his articles and speeches as editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Richard Hathaway Edmonds of the Baltimore Manufacturers' Record was another staunch advocate of New South industrialization. The Manufacturers' Record was one of the most widely read and powerful publications among turn of the 20th century industrialists.  Historian Paul Gaston coined the specific term "New South Creed" to describe the promises of visionaries like Grady who said industrialization would bring prosperity to the region.
  The classic history was written by C. Vann Woodward: The Origins of the New South: 1877–1913, published in 1951 by Louisiana State University Press. Sheldon Hackney, a Woodward student, hails the book but explains:
   Of one thing we may be certain at the outset. The durability of Origins of the New South is not a result of its ennobling and uplifting message. It is the story of the decay and decline of the aristocracy, the suffering and betrayal of the poor whites, and the rise and transformation of a middle class. It is not a happy story. The Redeemers are revealed to be as venal as the carpetbaggers.  The declining aristocracy are ineffectual and money hungry, and in the last analysis they subordinated the values of their political and social heritage in order to maintain control over the black population. The poor whites suffered from strange malignancies of racism and conspiracy-mindedness, and the rising middle class was timid and self-interested even in its reform movement. The most sympathetic characters in the whole sordid affair are simply those who are too powerless to be blamed for their actions.
  The New South campaign was championed by Southern elites often outside of the old planter class, in hopes of making a fresh ("new") start forming partnerships with Northern capitalists in order to modernize and speed the economic development of the South. From Henry Grady to black leader Booker T. Washington, New South advocates wanted southern economic regeneration, sectional reconciliation, racial harmony and believed in the gospel of work.
  The rise of the New South involved the continued supremacy of whites over blacks, who had little or no political power. For example, Grady stated in an 1888 speech about the New South: "the supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever, and the domination of the negro race resisted at all points and at all hazards, because the white race is the superior race ... [This declaration] shall run forever with the blood that feeds Anglo-Saxon hearts".
caption: San Antonio, Texas skyline
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