The New South | Page 8

they were always dignified and often austere. As time went on, their honesty, old-fashioned courtesy, and amiable social qualities gained for many the respect and affectionate esteem of their Northern colleagues. Many strong friendships sprang up, and through these personal relationships occasional bits of patronage and items of legislation were granted. Often, it is said, politicians who were accustomed to assail one another in public sought each other's society and were the best of friends in private. These Southern men were almost invariably a frugal lot who lived from necessity within their salaries and used no questionable means of increasing their incomes.
The election of Cleveland in 1884 gave to the South its first real participation in national affairs for a quarter of a century. Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware, L.Q.C. Lamar of Mississippi, and A.H. Garland of Arkansas were chosen for the Cabinet, from which the scholarly Lamar was transferred to the Supreme Court. John G. Carlisle of Kentucky was Speaker, and Roger Q. Mills of Texas became Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the House to succeed William R. Morrison. A fair share, if not more, of the more important diplomatic, consular, and administrative appointments went to Southerners. The South began to feel that it was again a part of the Union. However, though Cleveland had shown his friendliness to their section, the Southern politicians, usually intensely partisan, could not appreciate the President's attitude toward the civil service and other questions, and his bluntness offended many of them. They followed him on the tariff but opposed him on most other questions, for his theory of Democracy and theirs diverged, and his kindly attitude was later repaid with ingratitude.
During the period in which the "rebel brigadiers" had controlled their States a new generation had arisen which began to make itself felt between 1885 and 1890. The Grange had tried to teach the farmers to think of themselves as a class, and the skilled workmen in a few occupations, in the border States particularly, had been organized. The Greenback craze had created a distrust of the capitalists of the East. The fear of negro domination was no longer so overmastering, and the natural ambition of the younger men began to show itself in factional contests. Younger men were coveting the places held by the old war-horses and were beginning to talk of cliques and rings. The Farmers' Alliance was spreading like wildfire, and its members were expounding doctrines which seemed rank treason to the elderly gentlemen whose influence had once been so potent. It is now clear that their fall from power was inevitable, though they refused to believe it possible.

CHAPTER III
THE REVOLT OF THE COMMON MAN
Practically all the farmers in the South, like those of the West, were chronically in debt, and after 1870 the general tendency of the prices of agricultural products was downward. In spite of largely increased acreage--partly, to be sure, because of it--the total returns from the larger crops were hardly so great as had been received from a much smaller cultivated area. The Southern farmer began to feel helpless and hopeless. Though usually suspicious of every movement coming from the North, he turned readily to the organization of the Patrons of Husbandry, better known as the Grange. In fact, the hopeless apathy of the Southern farmer observed by Oliver Hudson Kelley, an agent of the Bureau of Agriculture, is said to have determined him to found the order. In spite of the turmoil of Reconstruction, the organization appeared in South Carolina and Mississippi in 1871. Tennessee. Missouri, and Kentucky had already been invaded. During 1872 and 1873, the order spread rapidly in all the States which may be called Southern. The highest number reached was in the latter part of 1875 when more than 6400 local granges were reported in the States which had seceded; and in Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, and Missouri there were nearly 4000 more. The total membership in the seceding States was more than 210,000 and including the border States, over 355,000. Since negroes were not admitted, the proportion of the total white agricultural population in the Grange was perhaps as high in the South as in any other part of the Union. In the years that followed, the order underwent the same disintegration in the South as elsewhere.
As a class the Southern Grangers did not take an active part in politics. The overshadowing question of the position of their States in the Union and the desire to preserve white supremacy prevented any great independent movement. In a few instances, men ran for Congress as Independents or as Greenbackers, and in some cases they were elected; but the Southern farmers were not yet ready to break away from the organization which had delivered them from negro rule. There