The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1881-05-12

were set as jewels of service and adorn-
ing, and the peddler and school-master,
the commercial agent and college pro-
fessOr of to-day, were drilled for posses
sing the whole Canaan. The religious
bigotry of the Yankee we do not take
into account, for it was matched at the
south. Virginia, in her zeal for the es-
tablished church, likewise burned witch
es, banished Quakers and Baptists, fined
ship-masters who brought non-conform-
lists into the colony, and, as late as 174l ,
passed laws against Presbyterians and
all dissenters. While concentration
Capitalization as it is now called, when
applied to natural politics was the gov
erning spirit of New England, disper-
sion was the general order from the
south's beginning. Bancroft says that
Virginia was not a DEPRESSION from
but continuation of English society,
against which, as is so well known, the
Puritan sternly revolted. The transfer
ing of an aristocratic class across
the seas was not difficult in the Old
Dominion, when t'broken men, adven-
turers and criminals" fiocked from the
start, of whom CAPTAIN John Smith
wrote that 'sthey had rather starye and
rot with idleness than be persuaded to
anything for their own relief without
constraint." One of the royal govern
ors thanked God in 1870 that there
were neither free schools nor printing
in the colony, and the historians record
that, with families often 80 miles from
church, "paganism, seetaries and athe-
ism' often had full swing. This was
very different in the sections where
churches and schools were the first
h 4 81 4
dance upon them was compulsory
There were loyal end great-hearted
men in Virginia, to be sure, or they
never could have produced Washing
ton, Jefferson, Patrick Henry in, the
country's hour of need, but the many
manageable streams supplied the place of
roads, and the vast estates discouraged
public sentiment and the conveniences
it provides. The aristoeratic families
took excellent care of themselves, and
often of the education of their own
children, but they were quite ready to
make their interiors keep their places.
Slavery found an inviting soil in this
construction of society. English con-
victs had early been brought over to
till the tobacco fields, and the negroes
took their places. "The forces of socie-
ty tended to create two great classes
Says one writer, t'a class of vast land
owners, naughty, hospitable, indolent,
passionate, given to field sports and pol
itics, and class of impoverished white
plebeians and black serfs." Virginia
had less of the Scotch, German and
Huguenot communities which distin-
guished colonies further south, but she
was long the leader in her section, and
fastened her institutions and convic-
tions throughout its extent. Small
farms, manufacturing and mining found
but little encouragement anywhere,
and the equality of manhood and the
dignity of independent effort shrivelled
in the husk. 1t cost the horrors of war
and $4,O0O,0O0, 900, as Senator Brown of
Georgia estimates, to re-establish free
dom upon its pedestal, and clear the
field for the industrial progress which
is now proceeding more rapidly than in
any previous period of the south's histo-
ry. The advance is already remarkable,
and cannot but surprise those who have
not examined the facts in the case.