Chapter IV: Part 4

A Northerner who had moved South noticed that his new neighbors
had what struck him as being a rather unsatisfactory method
of doing a certain thing. So he wrote an article suggesting
another method and sent it to a local publication. The
editor returned the article, pronouncing what it proposed to
be “impracticable and visionary.” The writer then sent the
article to a Northern publication, at the same time asking if
what it proposed was impracticable or visionary. It was again
returned, but the returner stated that, so far from proposing
anything impracticable or visionary, the trouble lay in the
opposite direction. He said that what was proposed had been
in successful operation so long that it would be useless and
tiresome reading.

This story seems to me to illustrate the case of innumerable
subjects important to the South. In the matter of education,
for example, what would sound revolutionary in some Southern
States would, I believe, be called pioneer work by the majority
of American-born Northerners. Again, in the realm of economics,
most of us in the South have yet to learn some of the first
principles. As to our code of social relations there are some
sections, fertile and penetrated by railroads, which are in
vital respects half a century behind the advance guard of
Anglo-Saxon civilization. As to our courts of justice, although
law has been the favorite profession of our ambitious young
men, and although we are supposed to have some of America’s
ablest practitioners, it seems that almost none of them ever
try persistently to contribute anything towards making either
our courts or our politics better, and by so doing accomplish
that for which courts and politics are supposed to exist. In
conclusion, let it be remembered that not only the Northern
magazines are not so directly interested in these matters as
are we, but also that when one wishes to make a suggestion
to his own section he naturally prefers to do so through a
publication in that section.

Some of our newspapers have done creditable work through their
editorial columns, but an editor cannot be a specialist in
everything. We need, I think, a publication of the nature
of a magazine whose editors know what to solicit and can
determine whether or not a contribution meets a need. Such a
magazine should be free from imitation. With questions of vital
sectional importance bubbling and seething all around it, there
is no reason why it should give us stories and treatises in
competition with Eastern magazines which can pay larger prices
for such. Finally, its purpose should be for general rather
than partisan interest.

Generally speaking, Southerners seem to me not to be finished
writers. While some of our newspaper editors have a plain,
unadorned style which is better than the style of most
“authors,” nevertheless almost all of us Southerners seem
troubled with a limited and inaccurate use of the English
vocabulary. But there are plenty of Southerners who know their
business and can go to the root of a matter. I believe that
most readers who are looking for a Southern magazine would
rather hear from these than from the more finished narrators
and expounders of nothingness. Finally, a magazine which would
put a premium on substance told with clearness and brevity, at
the same time emphasizing the fact that a contribution must
meet a real need, would have a tendency to develop writers
whose work possessed style as well as substance.

Recently I made the acquaintance of Trotwood’s Magazine, and,
believing that I noticed in it a strong and sincere inclination
to be original, the question arose in my mind, Why should not
this magazine, already in actual operation, become a forum
for discussing Southern problems? So, if this be Trotwood’s
purpose, to it I say, may you succeed; and to Tennessee and the
South, give Trotwood a chance. It may prove to be what you have
long needed.

J. G. SIMS, JR.

Nashville, Tenn.

Editor’s Note.—Trotwood’s thanks Mr. Sims (who, so far, like many of our readers and contributors, is a stranger to us) for his kind expressions. We learn that he is a graduate of Princeton, and a teacher and writer of reputation. We agree with him that the South has problems peculiar to itself, and that the proper place for their discussion is among ourselves and in a Southern journal. It is the aim and ambition of Trotwood’s to be the medium for this as well as for the development of the South’s great resources. We welcome such communications as the above, even if some of his plain assertions do grate somewhat on our nerves; for only by a calm and fair discussion of the problems which confront us can the truth be ascertained. Some of Mr. Sims’ assertions above are plainly open for discussion, and some are plainly ambiguous. For instance, what does he mean by “As to the code of social relations, there are some sections fertile and penetrated by railroads which are in vital respects half a century behind the advance guard of Anglo-Saxon civilization?” Social relations and civilization are two different things, and as to the former, it is our opinion that the South, in her fight for the purity of her race, the integrity of her morals and the hospitality of her people, surpasses all other sections of this country. In proof of this I will call our esteemed contributor’s attention to the following facts.

1. The white population of the South, never having been augmented by foreign immigration to any appreciable extent, is more purely American than any other section. It is to-day as it was one hundred years before the Revolution. I am not asserting that it is better for this fact, but as a matter of “social relations” I am claiming that it is purely American.

2. The religion of the South is in keeping with the Anglo-Saxon race; it is the simple religion of the Protestant peoples of England, Scotland and Wales, the Huguenots of France, and the sturdy, honest Catholics of Ireland. There is less skepticism and less materialism in the South than in any other section. I consider the above statement appropriate, under the head of “social relations.”

3. There are fewer barrooms in the South than in Greater New York alone—about 35,000. The South is essentially temperate. This, too, seems to Trotwood too, under the head of “social relations.”

4. Lastly (and this will doubtless astonish some of our readers) since the half-breed, the grade—the mulatto—is the curse of any nation, whether white, black, red or yellow, every mulatto is a living misfit, whose making is the spoiling of two men—a white man and a black man. Either of these, in his ability to accomplish the ends for which he was made, is far greater than the cross-bred, this being true in Maine,[1] where there are no barriers between the social relations of the whites and blacks, about two per cent. of the population are negroes, but about 59 per cent. of her negroes are mulattoes, while in South Caroline, where 59 per cent. of her people are negroes, only 9.7 per cent. are mulattoes. And it runs about that way in the entire country, north, where negroes are permitted to intermarry with the whites. And if the sturdy white population of the grand old State of Maine—the State of such intellectual giants as Blaine, Hale and hosts of others—if this State becomes wholly mulatto, it might as well be wiped from the map of civilization and be added to Hayti, the Philippines and Cuba.

This, to Trotwood’s, seems to be an unanswerable argument as to the superiority of the South’s social relations.

But this is as we understand social relations. We welcome all communications of thought and progress, but we expect each correspondent to defend his position and if, on the other hand, our correspondent means to use social relations and civilization as synonymous, this is another proposition, and one which, doubtless, he is able to defend.

There are other of his premises so painfully true that we repeat them for emphasis:

1. “In the realm of economics, most of us in the South have yet to learn some of the first principles.” For example, it is said that the thrifty Yankee can live on what the Southerner wastes. And

2. “As to our courts of justice,” etc.—e.g., where to-day is the old Southern lawyer, who held his profession above money, and his opinion beyond barter?

[1] See page 16, Census Bulletin No. 8.

EDMUND WINSTON PETTUS.

It is seldom that any magazine may present to living readers the letter of a man who has seen four generations arise and pass away. And such a man!

Edmund Winston Pettus is one of the great living men of the world. He is an old Roman who represents the high-water mark of the Republic’s true greatness—one who might sit at the council table of the Gracchii, of Pitt, of Washington. I speak not from hearsay—all my life I have known him. And never will the Republic look upon his like again, for as he quotes, “Time changes and men change with it.” But there was a scope, a broadness, a breadth and dignity in the Time which reached out to all the ages in making the men of his day and generation which seems sadly lacking to Trotwood’s in making of some of our Southern statesmen of to-day. But blame not the South for this. She has passed through the shoals and the rapids of politics since the war. It is natural that much froth and foam should follow it. But the two old Romans which Alabama has sent to the Senate go far to atone for the froth of some of our sister Southern States. All honor to Alabama for clinging to such ideals!

The picture we present of this grand old man (by courtesy of The Saturday Evening Post) brings to my mind a flood of remembrance—tender, and of the kind which has gone into the soul of me. One morning in the year 1868, when I was too small a boy to go anywhere alone, my father took me by the hand and led me to the courthouse to hear General Pettus speak. He turned me over to the sheriff while he himself went on the bench, and the sheriff placed me in a big chair, and, small as I was, I sat spellbound under the thunder of this man’s oratory. It was the first great speech I had ever heard.

And when I see this picture I see the old Judge, before whom he practiced—the old Judge, my father—who died the oldest judge in the State, wearing for twenty-six years the ermine and never sullying it.

They were men of the same type—men of the Old South—men whom the poet called for, saying:

“‘God give us men. A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the love of office cannot kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking—
For while the rabble with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land, and waiting justice sleeps.”

The Saturday Evening Post, in its issue of March 17th, says this of Senator Pettus: “It isn’t much of a trick to be eighty-five years young, but to be a vigorous and virile senator at eighty-five is an accomplishment. Few men have done that. Edmund Winston Pettus, of Alabama is one. One is reminded of a buffalo when Pettus comes into the Senate chamber. He has shoulders a yard across and a barrel of a chest upholding a short, thick neck and a massive head. When he walks he holds his head forward and shakes it slowly from side to side. It is fascinating to watch the sturdy old man and speculate how strong he was when he was young. He left Selma with a party of neighbors at the beginning of the gold excitement and rode horseback to California. He carried a Bible and a copy of Shakespeare in his saddle-bags and read them while on horseback and by the light of the camp fires at night. The Senator asserts that no better library has been taken there since. Pettus was a lieutenant in the Mexican War and a brigadier-general in the Confederate Army in the Civil War. There is a big, sprawling painting of the battle of Chepultepec over one of the stairways in the Senate wing of the Capitol. A few days ago a man was studying the picture. Senator Pettus came along.

“Sir,” said the man, “I observe that you are an old man. Will you kindly tell me if the people of those days wore clothes like those in the picture there?”

“No, sir,” thundered Pettus, “they did not! I was in that battle, and I saw no such clothes as those. So far as that raiment is concerned that representation is a mere pictorial lie!”

It is remarkable that from one section of Alabama—the Black Belt—and from one town in it—Selma—should have come two such men as Pettus and Morgan, both now octogenarians, and the same intellectual giants they were a half century ago.

In a near issue of Trotwood’s, perhaps in the next number, will be told the story of that section—a section rich not only in sturdy, progressive people, but in a soil and climate of such great natural advantages that the mere telling of it will be a revelation to those who have not heard of it before.

Mr. John Trotwood Moore, Columbia, Tenn.—My Dear Sir: I
received your letter and the magazines you sent me. I read
carefully your article on what Parton calls “The murder of
Dickinson,” and I enjoyed it very much. I have always thought
that people who live in this age give too much importance to
questions of right and wrong, to what I call “modern ideas,”
or, rather, who attach too little importance to the theories of
the former generations. I have lived through four generations
complete, and there have been in my day marvelous changes
in public opinion, and even the established theories in the
churches as to whether a certain thing is right or wrong. When
I was a boy in North Alabama instrumental music in a church
was considered as a sacrilege, and was not allowed under
any circumstances. Duelling was not more condemned than the
resenting of an insult in any other way, and the old saying is
perfectly true, “Times change and we change with them.” In your
article about the duel you failed to notice that Mrs. Jackson,
with her first husband, resided in Kentucky, but Kentucky was
then a part of Virginia.

In my young days I was familiar with the Hermitage grounds.
For four years I was a student at what was then called Clinton
College, which was in Smith County, between Carthage and
Alexandria, and about forty miles east of the Hermitage on the
old emigrant road from Knoxville to Nashville. I visited the
Hermitage on several occasions. My grandfather lived for many
years about a mile from the Hermitage, and General Jackson
attended the marriage of my father and mother, and my father
and several of my uncles went with General Jackson through the
Creek War.

In 1840 I went from Clinton College to attend the Nashville
convention, in what has been called “the log cabin and hard
cider” campaign, and we stopped at the Hermitage to see General
Jackson. Whilst we were sitting with a number of persons on the
piazza the East Tennessee delegates to the Whig convention, in
vast numbers, passed on the pike in front of the house. One
party of them had a small cannon, and when they reached the
front gate, then about two hundred yards from the house, they
brought the cannon inside the gate and fired on the house, with
blank cartridges, of course. This created great indignation
throughout Tennessee. I did attend the convention. The
principal purpose of the students in attending the convention
was to hear Henry Clay; and we did hear him. It was as poor a
speech as I ever heard from any man reputed to be a speaker.
The speech was not more than ten minutes long, and the best
part of it was a fling at Felix Grundy. Mr. Clay said that
when he reached Nashville he inquired for his old friend, the
Hon. Felix Grundy, and that he learned “that he was at his old
trade in East Tennessee defending criminals.” Mr. Grundy was
then making political speeches in East Tennessee for Mr. Van
Buren and the Democrats. You remember that Mr. Clay was beaten
for the nomination a few weeks before by General Harrison, and
his whole speech and demeanor on that occasion indicated great
sourness and dissatisfaction, and did him much injury with his
party.

I was much gratified to see from your letter that you remember
how your father, the late Judge John Moore, and I were for so
many years fast and devoted friends. Most respectfully, your
friend,

E. W. PETTUS.

Washington, March 30, 1906.

* * * * *

_And Plutarch says: “We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against nature.”_

TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY

Devoted to Farm, Horse and Home.

TROTWOOD PUBLISHING CO., Nashville, Tenn.
Office 150 Fourth Ave., North.

JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE,
Editor-in-Chief.

E. E. SWEETLAND Business Manager.

GEO. E. McKENNON President.
JOHN W. FRY Vice-President.
EUGENE ANDERSON Treas.
WOOTEN MOORE Sec’y.

TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION: One Year, $1.00; Single Copy, 10 cents.
Advertising Rates on application.

NASHVILLE, TENN., JUNE, 1906.

With Trotwood

THE TRUTH IS PRECIOUS.

Trotwood holds that the truth is a very precious thing. “It is more to be desired than gold; yea, than much pure gold.” It is more to be desired than office or fame or popular approval. For these things are transient, while truth is eternal. And one truth fits every other truth in the world, whereas, a lie fits nothing but some other lie, made especially for it.

* * * * *

Trotwood loves also to build up. He does not wish to tear down. And if he is anything, the records of his writings—and there is no record so complete as the records put in writing—will show that he has, both in and out of season, plead for a reunited country.

* * * * *

In the May installment of our “Historic Highways” we gave what we knew to be the plain facts of history when we said that the War of 1812 was very unpopular in New England; that she secretly aided the enemy; that she held the first secession convention ever held on our soil. And this was said, as stated, not in malice nor to arouse bitterness, but for the truth of history, which is precious.

* * * * *

Buffalo, N. Y., May 3, 1906.

Mr. Trotwood Moore,

Dear Sir: We all read your monthly and are very much pleased
with it. Wish you success. In the May number you speak of
New England sitting sullenly, secretly aiding the enemy and
watching for a chance to secede. As a descendant of New England
parents, I must protest. Whatever may have been the sins of New
England, secession was not one. Not all of New England favored
the War of 1812, but that isn’t secession. Men were killed
in Baltimore, Md., because they opposed the war, but no one
accused Baltimore of secession. Write for the whole country and
not for a section.

Yours truly,

E. D. PRESTON.

Fortunately, we know Dr. Preston, the writer of the above, and remembered most pleasantly that he stopped off once to see us in his journeyings South. He is a gentleman and a man of much intelligence, and we must make good our assertions or acknowledge we have erred.

* * * * *

When Thomas Jefferson was elected to the Presidency in 1800, New England regarded it just as the South did Lincoln’s election sixty years later—as a fit cause for secession. John Quincy Adams published a statement over his own signature in which he said that in the winter of 1803, a plot was formed in New England to separate from the Union: “The plan,” he says, “was so far matured, that a proposal had been made to an individual to permit himself, at the proper time, to be placed at the head of military movements which, it would be foreseen, would be necessary to carry the project into successful execution.” Again, he says: “The separation of the Union was openly stimulated in the public prints, and a convention of delegates of the New England States, to meet at New Haven, was proposed.” This is the same gentleman who was the sixth President of the United States, but who, before that event, was forced to retire to private life by his New England constituency for voting with the Jefferson Administration in laying an embargo on all shipping in American ports in retaliation for the insults of England. “The great damage fell upon the maritime States of New England, and there the vials of Federalist wrath were poured forth with terrible fury upon Mr. Jefferson and the embargo. But the full measure of their ferocity was reserved for the Adams,” etc. (Appleton’s Enc. of Am. Biography, Vol. I., p. 25.)

* * * * *

Governor Wolcott, of Connecticut, said: “I sincerely declare that I wish the Northern States would separate from the Southern the moment Jefferson is elected.”

And Governor Plummer, of New Hampshire, declared in 1805 that it was the purpose of certain distinguished New Englanders “to dissolve the Union.”

James Millhouse, U. S. Senator from Connecticut, said: “The Eastern States must and will dissolve the Union and form a separate government of their own, and the sooner they do it the better.”

Jonah Quincy, on the floor of Congress: “I am compelled to declare, as my deliberate opinion, that if this bill (to admit Louisiana) passes, the bonds of the Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which compose it are hereby freed from the moral obligations, and that, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some to prepare definitely for the separation, amicably, if we can; forcibly, if we must.” When he was called to order for this by Poindexter, of Mississippi, who proposed a vote of censure by the House, the House sustained Quincy and let him proceed.

* * * * *

Julian Hawthorne, in his “History of the United States,” says: “In the War of 1812, our antagonists were many. First, we had to fight the New England Federalists.” Again, he says: “Connecticut went so far as to raise a separate army for the defense of her own domain—whether against England or America might be left to decide.” (U. S. History, p. 709.) And again, he tells that by a system of blue light signals the New England Federalists kept the English fleet informed of the plan of our troops, thereby greatly aiding the enemy and embarrassing our movements. “Thus,” he says, “the Blue Light Federalists secured for themselves a place of infamy in our annals.”

The Supreme Court of Massachusetts declared that no power was given to the President or to Congress to declare war or to levy troops; that only to the States did they belong; and thereupon the Governor of that State refused the request of the President for its quota to defend their coast. When the New England members who voted for the War of 1812 returned home, they were reviled, denounced and one of them actually kicked and cuffed by a mob in historic Plymouth. The Federalists of New England prevented the Government’s every effort to raise money or troops. Finally, on December 15, 1814, when Jackson was moving heaven and earth to save New Orleans, a New England Convention, “summoned by State authority, assembled at Hartford, Connecticut, whose object was to secure armed resistance and overthrow of the Union.... This convention was attended by twenty-six delegates, all respectable, cultivated gentlemen.” (Hawthorne’s U. S. History, p. 731.) “It was composed of twelve delegates from Massachusetts, seven from Connecticut, four from Rhode Island (appointed by the legislatures of these States), and two from New Hampshire, and one from Vermont (appointed by counties), all Federalists.... Its proceedings were carried on in secret, and the convention was suspected at the time of treason.” (Cent. Dict., Vol. IX., p. 484.) In their declaration this convention said: “But in cases of deliberate, dangerous and palpable infraction of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of a State and liberties of a people, it is not only the right but the duty of such a State to interpose its authority for their protection in the manner best calculated to secure that end. When emergencies occur which are either beyond the reach of the judicial tribunals or too pressing to admit of the delay incident to their forms, States which have no common umpire must be their own judges and execute their own decisions.” (Niles Register, Vol. VII., p. 306.)

This was the view taken by the Southern States when they seceded in 1861, and which the great Civil War decided in the negative forever, not as a question of right nor of wrong, but as a policy of a majority of the people of this country, in arms assembled and on the field of battle.

“Whatever may have been the sins of New England, secession was not one,” says our correspondent. In proving that our friend is mistaken in his facts, I take the liberty also of defending New England as to his assertion that this was a sin. It certainly was not a sin. The New England States had this right, as did every State up to its final settlement by arms in 1861-5. It were no more a sin then than for New England to vote for McKinley and the gold standard in 1896, or for the South to vote for Bryan and silver. There can be no sin in a mere question of national policy by any people or peoples. “Not all of New England favored the War of 1812, but that is not secession,” he adds, as the gist of his argument.

That is true—neither did all the South favor secession in 1860-61. Perhaps it may be interesting to relate here that Tennessee, on the only vote taken by her as to whether it should be secession or not, voted by nearly 60,000 majority against secession. Afterwards, Governor Harris and the Legislature declared her out of the Union. Perhaps it may be still more of interest when I say that although the South sent fully 600,000 troops into the war to battle for States’ rights, she sent nearly 400,000 to fight on the other side. But everybody knows that a majority of the Southern people were for seceding and the foundation of our esteemed correspondent’s argument is gone when I assert, as I can prove, that from the election of Jefferson to the Battle of New Orleans, the majority of the people of New England, as voiced in the Federalist vote, were opposed to the policy of Jefferson, to War of 1812, and but for the Treaty of Ghent and the Battle of New Orleans would have voted to secede. In conclusion, let me say, those questions are all settled—“those far-off, old, unhappy days.” But the truth, at all times, should be precious, for among its many crowning glories, it teaches us that man is not very different from his neighbor after all. In 1898, at the outbreak of the Spanish War, and when the United States troops had rendezvoused on Chickamauga battlefield, before marching into Cuba, Tennessee unveiled her statue erected to both her soldiers of the Blue and the Gray who died there. The writer was asked to read the dedicatory poem. On the stage were General Wheeler, General Stewart and many distinguished soldiers of both armies. And thus was the poem read:

REUNITED.

By steel-sheathed ship and iron gun
And forts that frown on a crouching sea,
Like a reef-split wave in the mad ebb’s run,
Like the foam, rock stopped, from the driven lea,
They have halted their butchering lines of red,
For a star-flung banner has published a ban:
Let the Past be past, let the dead be dead—
Now and forever, American.

It has girdled the depths of our heart’s red blood,
It has welded our chain in a white-heat fire,
And the Gray has come with the old-time flood,
And the Blue stands firm in the old-time fire.
And starving eyes, whence Hope had fled
Look up where the light of the message ran:
Let the Past be past, let the dead be dead—
Now and forever, American.

O, valorous Gray, in the grave of your fate!
Oh, valorous Blue, in the long deady ears!
Ye were sown in sorrow and harrowed in Hate,
But your harvest to-day is a nation’s tears,
For the message you left through the land has sped
From the lips of God to the heart of man:
Let the Past be past, let the dead be dead—
Now and forever, American.

JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.