John C. Carter
New England & the South
Mon Jul 23 15:23:33 2001


Hayes...

The South-bashing, that had become common in the North during Antebellum times, was fueled in the highest academic levels. Ralph Waldo Emerson once lectured the scholars of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard University, challenging them to "redeem the culture of mind in America from its bondage to Europe." He especially detested Southern culture and remarked during his lecture to the same students: "The young Southerner comes here (Harvard) a spoiled child with graceful manners, excellent self command, very good to be spoiled more, but good for nothing else, a mere parader. He has conversed so much with rifles, horses, and dogs that he is himself a rifle, a horse, & dog and in civil educated company where anything is going forward he is dumb and unhappy, like an Indian in a church..." He believed that the absolute cultural difference between the South and New England was that the former had a culture of NO mind, compared with the culture of mind of the latter. Emerson seems to have forgotten that the Phi Beta Kappa parent chapter was founded at the College of William & Mary in Virginia...

You might find it interesting to read Lewis P. Simpson's (Louisiana State University professor, and past editor of the Southern Review) "Mind and the American Civil War- A Meditation on Lost Causes." It looks at the "Cultural Imperialism" of New England and compares it to the society of the Old South and the mind of Thomas Jefferson. Simpson argues that Emerson and Jefferson were actually not that far apart in their intellectualism, and that New England relied on the South for its concept of its own nationhood. If you have read William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" Simpson's Epilogue to the book is entitled "Why Quentin Compson Went to Harvard." Interesting reading.

John