The Mind of the South

W.J. Cash explains that the “body” of the antebellum “Old South” of agriculture transformed into the post-Reconstruction “New South” of industrialism (l). However, the “mind” of the South remained constant throughout this transformation. Cash claims that the Union’s victory in the Civil War was illusory because afterwards white southerners strengthened their beliefs in white superiority and mastery of the black population (103-106). Thus, the northern “Yankee, seeing his victory brought to nothing,” attempted to reclaim triumph over the white southerner (105). Cash’s thesis is that although white southerners changed their occupations and infrastructure after the Civil War to feature rapid industrial “Progress,” white southerners became more stubborn in their belief of white superiority and racism towards blacks. Cash uses his knowledge and personal experiences of living in the south to articulate his interpretation of the southern mind throughout American history up to the book’s original publication in 1941. Most white southerners despised northerners’ progressive politics, labor unionism, and public education. Worse still, during the Reconstruction Era, white southerners competed with black southerners for wage labor and were on an equal social level. Thus, from this socioeconomic desperation of racial equality, white southerners adopted the “Yankeedoms” of industrialism after Reconstruction, especially with the expanding cotton mills (156-162). However, the cotton mill owners only hired white laborers. Therefore, not only did the South’s post-Reconstruction industrialism result in significant wealth for the mill owners, it also increased the standard of living for many white southerners who no longer had to compete with blacks for jobs. Consequently, industrial “Progress” had elevated the common white southerners’ social and economic status above that of blacks. White southerners had “entirely removed from all direct competition” the possibility of social equality between the landless white southerners and blacks, as was the case during the antebellum period in the “Old South” (214). Cash mentions that many southern blacks moved north to fulfill the labor shortage in the industrial factories that hired blacks for employment. Due to his southern perspective, however, Cash focuses on those blacks who remained in the South. In regards to the mass migration of southern blacks to northern cities, Cash only emphasizes the social and economic effects on the South. He does not fully consider the southern blacks who left the South as southerners. Furthermore, he analyzes the “pull” motivations for southern blacks who sought wage labor in northern cities but avoids the issue of the “push” factors for southern blacks who left the South to avoid racist discrimination and violence from white southerners. The primary social effect was that racial segregation in the south, coupled with the migration of blacks to northern cities, resulted to “feed the white man’s fears” of blacks, most violently expressed through lynching. As a result, white southerners increased their racist prejudice and discrimination towards blacks who remained in the south (305-319). Perhaps this avoidance is due to Cash’s focus on the South or perhaps this is due to him being a white southerner, but Cash is unclear on the motivations of the southern blacks who migrated north. Rather, Cash emphasizes the social and economic effects on the white southerner. Although the race-based plantation system of the “Old South” elevated common white southerners above black slaves, the slaves were the recipients of a paternalistic system in which slaveholders provided the necessities for their slaves, including food, clothing, and shelter. Although plantation owners exploited white southerners for their labor, white southerners were by “extension a member of the dominant class” because they were white and the slaves were black (38-39). After Reconstruction, cotton mill owners utilized a similar paternalistic system but substituted white southerners as the recipients of paternalism in lieu of blacks. For example, the wealthy cotton mill owners allocated “store credit” to southern white mill workers. The mill workers could only spend this credit at the mill store at a price that was higher than retail, which provided the mill owners with additional profits. Therefore, the mill owners provided landless southern whites with the necessities not only to escape “from competition with the blacks” but also to have full time employment under the paternalism of the wealthy southern mill owners (175-178). However, the mill owners had to convince the southern whites to live within this exploitative and paternalistic system. Southern Democratic politicians appealed to the white southerners’ unique susceptibility to demagoguery with fiery rhetoric that distracted the southern whites from their poverty and dependency upon the mill owners (251). Political bosses bribed southern white voters to vote as the mill owners wished while demagogues aimed resentment towards the “Yankee” and hatred for blacks (246-247). However, Cash implies that only white southerners were attracted to demagogues. Northerners and blacks also appealed to prejudice rhetoric and popular appeals, evidenced by Robert La Follette, William Jennings Bryan, and Marcus Garvey. In this case, human beings, not just southerners, are hedonistic and prefer politicians who promise favorable policies. Cash’s prose focuses on the social, economic, and political events that shed light on the southerners’ mind throughout American history, stretching from colonialism to the end of the Great Depression. He expresses a tremendous skill for writing literature and a comprehensive knowledge of the history of the South. His work acts as both an explanation of the “Lost Cause” ideology and as a challenge to it. Moreover, he challenges white southerners to address their problems and to attempt to fix them. However, Cash avoids using footnotes to cite his sources for statistics and quotes and rarely cites the information in the text. Despite its shortcomings, Cash’s interpretation of the white southerners’ mind is a remarkable piece of literature that allows readers to understand the southern way of life.

Anyone who was not born in the South but lives there now should read this book. It explains EVERYTHING.

If you want to understand the mentality of southerners, this is where you start. The book is not perfect. It is oddly written, makes sometimes flawed arguments, and is somewhat out-dated. Nevertheless, it makes several key arguments that are central to understanding southern culture.The book is divided into three sections: antebellum, Reconstruction-to-1900, and the 1900-1940 era. The first section is the most fascinating, debunking the idea of southern aristocracy. The second is the most compelling argument about the origins of southern anger and frustration surrounding the end of slavery. The third section is the weakest and has the least historical hindsight, but tries to show how that anger of common whites became so pervasive.Cash introduces a couple concepts, first suggesting that poor whites were just as keen on slavery as wealthy whites because slavery lifted them up from the bottom rung of society. Second, he suggests that there is a continuity in the social elites of the south, from the "aristocracy" to the businessmen of the Gilded Age.The book is very much written in a conversational tone. It's highly readable in that sense, but sometimes its arguments have to be plucked out of that. Still, this is highly recommended as a *start* to understanding the mind of the south.

For Boomer aged Southerners, there was no formal Southern history. At school you got Yankee cant; at home you got Lost Cause and Jim Crow. That doesn't fit the Chamber of Commerce image of cities too busy to hate, but that was the reality for all but the most miniscule minority of white Southerners. Through public school and college in The South, I never had a word from Southern thinkers with the minor exception of Faulkner - not much of a thinker, but a good describer.Cash was my introduction to Southern intellectual history, and by the time I found him I was far from the South in both space and time. I can feel Cash in my very bones; a dose of Tom Watson populism, a dose of Mencken's cynicism, and a whole bunch of the self-loathing that a defeated and impoverished people wore like tattered old clothes every day. Some neo-Southerners call Cash a South-hater, but they miss the point; Cash wanted desperately to love The South, but could find little to love except myth. You get much the same with Woodward, though in finer clothes. "Strange Career" is nothing but myth, yet it propelled Woodward to the heights of the Academy. The key to both these books is that they are Yankee approved mythology. The publishing houses are not on Peachtree Street, they are on 5th Avenue. For anyone wishing to begin exploration of Southern thought, Cash, the Nashville Agrarians, and Strange Career are the places to start. If you go no further, you won't know anything about The South, but to go further, you must start here.

2021 will see the eightieth anniversary of the publication of this marvellous book. I first read The Mind of the South at university back in the early 'Seventies. Its prose style was a welcome relief from the dull pedantry of professional historians. Written by journalist Wilbur Joseph Cash the book is still essential reading for those wishing to delve into the social and cultural history of the Southern States of America.Cash debunks the myth of an "aristocratic" Old South and a "progressive" New South and concentrates on delicately dissecting the manufactured romanticism of the region. In a lucid style he explores its anti-intellectualism, its racism and its violence which he argues arose from its peculiar climate, its stifling clannishness and its suffocating Calvinism.

The author has an old-fashioned sort of writing style, a little on the folksy side, but the contents are somewhat repetitive, and tend not to hold the attention all the way through. Recommended only for those who have a particularly deep interest in the Southern states of America.

Long winded in a lot of places

I think this is one of the most well written and documented books on the American South's origins that I have ever read. Written in 1941 from a Southern point of view but recognising the way the Southern mindset developed through a painful history - from the making of the US and all the pioneers who had to survive as well as the aristocrats that held many plantations. Then, of course, the Civil War, which came to cause huge resentment and overall pain for the blacks who had to live as slaves and the poor whites who could only "feel superior" by keeping the slaves in their place long after they supposedly were emancipated. Well, the rest is history as they say. It is very, very interesting since the time in which Mr Cash wrote this was reflecting on his very position of that time. Highly recommended for how the South became so violent and so negative yet with the bygone manners of Gone With the Wind and the myths thereof.

Cash's story-telling is very interesting and enjoyable to read. This book is a historical depiction of the South, but I took it more as a historical depiction of the South as painted through the eyes of Cash. That said, he paints, if nothing else, a very interesting picture of the area and period. If you have a deep interest in American or Southern history this work would make a nice addition to your collection.