The citizen. [volume] (Berea, Ky.) 1899-1958, 1905-06-01
The Government of the South
by the Plain People.
I'm ADDRESS deligeyed TO the Faculty and Students Of
BereG College, KY on Nay !, 1905.
By A. d. MAYO, AM, LID.

nave liking lOi inc pam people b) tho pam
people Abraham Lincoln meant his own
eeopIe sort of people. The first we hear of his
forefathers and foremothers was at the
respectable county seat of Bristol County, Mass,
from which my great grandmother hailed, and
which she always spoke OF Il don't know why)
as Taunton good Lord" The first resting place
bf the family its journey 'out west was
Pennsylvania, where descendant figures in the
local records as "Mordeca Lincoln, Gentleman"
Then the family branched off, portion of them
becoming Quakers, the majority going on to Vir
ginia, and one that we hear OF fighting under
Washington in the War of the Revolution. The
branch that Struck" Kentucky had for its nom
lna head perhaps the only degenerate" member
Of the tribe one of those men sized up" to me
by bright and handsome colored chambermad
in Texas as zone of them comcal creatures that
we women marry and have to support" Happily
little Abraham was the son of one and the cher
ished little boy of another of that sort of women
that go through life weighted with "comcal"
or worse man and still bring up their children
TO become "the salt of the earth"
Like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln
never troubled himself about his ancestors. But
what he meant by the plain
liking for far as related to
the South was the five or six millions OF white
folk that in 1860 in these fifteen States had never
In any way been concerned with the ownership
OF negro slaves. From the beginning these South
erners who were not Shareholders had formed by
far the larger proportion OF the white population
They fought the battles of the South-hrst in
clearing the land of the noble savage; then sup
plying the bulk of its loyal populations in the
Revolution driving the crack regiments Of We'll
lington and Waterloo into the sea at New
Orleans, under plain" Andrew Jackson; after
wards Wrestling the empire of Texas from Mexico
and expanding the Republic towards the South
west to the Pacific Ocean; and, finally, under
General Robert F. Lee, through four terrible
years, following their leaders from Charestown
TO Appomattox with devotion and courage so
magnificent that nothing but the deplorable cause
for which they fought could have caused their
defeat
But indeed what we call, by figure of Eng
lish speech, the Southern Aristocracy" was not
wholly aristocratic The 10000
Sristoeraey.. owners OF slaves, the majority of
whom were probably owned by
$4,000 men, with their families and the profess
people, who for the first seventy five years of
the Republic possessed the earth, owned the four
millions of coored laborers. monopolzed the
society the wealth and the culture, and fashioned
the religion of these eleven States to their own
liking and through this concentration Of interest
practically governed the nation till lS6o-even
this powerful and splendid aristocracy was itself
the product of the plain people OF the original
European immigration and descent Of the previous
two hundred and fifty years. For the amiable
hallucination with which the leading class of the
South for these three centuries has begued itself,
that il was the hereditary first cousin of the
British aristocracy, is now, thanks to the his
torians, ION its last legs" The less said about
the bad boys OF distinguished families that first
came to Virginia and, but for Captain John Smith,,
would have disappeared in "dissolving view"
of shiftlessness and characterization the better
for all concerned
At the breaking out Of the Revolution the
people of Virginia were in no superior sense the
descendants OF the Cavaliers; al
Cavaliers. though portion OF their best men came
of fathers who fought under the Stuarts.
For more than a century the British convict ships
unloaded their freight upon the Atlantic southern
colonies. These so called convicts were not all
criminals as count criminals, to-day, but
neither were they aristocrats To considerable
extent they were people imprisoned for debt, nom
conformity to church law, or some very minor
misdemeanors. During and after the Revolution
that sent Charles ! to the block and made Oliver
Cromwell Protector, the immigration to the
South was a fair mixture of the followers OF both
fhe great English contending parties For their
original interest in education and the backbone
of their religion, the Southern Atlantic colonies
were indebted largely to the Scotch-Irsh and the
Germans. the latter declared NV Wash;notoo