How in the world can any man read the history of these times and subscribe to the theory of anti-progress? -Lancelot Blackford, Lancelot Blackford Diary
After graduating from the University of Virginia in 1854, in his very first speech upon returning to his native King William County, William Roane Aylett proclaimed: "The mighty winds which sweep by us on their way to distant lands tell us, at every blast and every whisper their moving principle is progress. And shall not we be governed by progress also [and] the law of nature and of God? Yes ladies and gentlemen," Aylett averred, "it must be so." Aylett and his contemporaries held an unshakeable faith in progress's ability to improve man's material and moral condition. But his sweeping endorsement of progress overlooked some hard questions: How could Virginia pursue progressive economic, political, and educational reforms without sacrificing Christianity and slavery? What would prevent the Commonwealth and the rest of the South from following the North into spiritual experimentation, radical egalitarianism, and an obsession with materialist values? Virginia's move toward a diversified market economy and political liberalism might even diminish slaveholder status and influence within the South.
Only a few of Aylett's contemporaries probed these questions, and not a single member of my sample group expressed concern about slavery's future in a world driven by free-labor capitalism. Renowned intellectuals such as John C. Calhoun, Thomas Roderick Dew, Robert L. Dabney, James Henley Thornwell, and Albert Taylor Bledsoe, on the other hand, warned of an impending crisis in free-labor societies that would ultimately threaten liberty and republicanism in the South. When it came to the linchpin of their argument-that the South represented an alternative social system in which the laboring classes were subordinated, society was stratified, and a organic vision of mutual dependence and obligation bound all people-they exerted little noticeable influence on the last generation. Very few young Virginians made reference to this line of argument, and even fewer idealized the plantation economy as an organic, pastoral community. Slavery was so ingrained in their way of life that they rarely examined the institution as an abstract social system. Quite simply, their minds were just opening to the complexity of the problems to which Southern intellectuals had applied so much time and talent to unravel. When Professor William Smith of Randolph-Macon College asked Fredericksburg's Moncure Conway to name "the principle of slavery," the latter bluntly replied that "it has no principle." Smith was deeply disappointed with Conway's response and only wished "I had you in my senior class" where "I lecture on this subject every week." For Conway and many others in the last generation, slavery had always appeared "to be as permanent a fact as the Rappahannock River." Even though Conway and his contemporaries took slavery for granted, they never underestimated its value in their own lives and in those of other white Southerners. The status and authority of their families, not to mention the power of the region's ruling class, depended on its continuation, and they were understandably devoted to the institution. Why then did young Virginians move closer, in substance as well as style, to the bourgeois world even though they feared the immorality and "radicalism" that accompanied its advance? The material conditions in which these men lived changed in the 1850s, as the Old Dominion made unprecedented strides toward a market economy. Of all the sweeping changes, the movement of labor from the control of Virginia households to commercial agriculture, mining, railroads, light industry, and small businesses proved the most decisive. This structural shift sent tremors through the household economy and weakened its ability to restrict labor and its attendant social relations to the private sphere. Subsequent social changes reconfigured gender, class, slave, and age relations in the state, making the Old Dominion a decidedly less hierarchical place to live in-although it still remained, at the most fundamental level, a modern slave society committed to human inequality. In the end, these economic and social changes signified to the last generation the dawning of a new era, and the young Virginians were eager to push the Old Dominion to the head of the pack in the global race for progress.
Young Virginians did not applaud all of the changes that ensued, particularly the spread of mass democracy and the expansion of suffrage enacted by the constitutional reforms of 1850-51. Despite their qualms about mass democracy, however, they generally welcomed any sign of the liberal, bourgeois spirit in their native land, and rejected any attempt to make Virginia into a reactionary, corporatist society. The influence of Whig political culture must have shaped the thinking of many young Virginians, even those who came from Democratic families such as Henry Clay Pate and John L. Buchanan, both of whom endorsed economic reforms that would have pleased the staunchest Whig supporter. Unfortunately, it is impossible to say how many young Virginia Democrats shared Pate's and Buchanan's views, largely because of the difficulty in establishing party affiliation for the vast majority of their peers in the last generation. It is striking, however, that so many members of the last generation articulated the principles typically associated with the Whig Party. Scholars generally agree that the Whigs were more cosmopolitan, more interested in economic development, and more inclined to support manufacturing. Although the Whigs collapsed on the national scene in the 1850s, the party survived in the Old Dominion. Ex-Whigs drifted to the Know-Nothings before turning themselves into the Opposition Party. Despite their diluted political presence in the state, it appears that the Whigs' ideological legacy offered young men, regardless of partisan affiliation, a credible economic platform that complemented their program of progress for Virginia.
Young Virginians shared with free-labor societies a belief that progress represented an increase in material prosperity, individualism, and bourgeois liberalism. They championed economic development as the first step toward the promised land of progress. Like most Southern thinkers, young Virginians welcomed these improvements as long as they advanced in tandem with Christianity. "As soon as the doctrines of Christianity were brought to bear on society, moderating the passions of men," Richard M. Venable of Prince Edward County argued in the Virginia University Magazine, "this march was commenced, and it has gone on until liberty and order have become compatible, and will continue until perfect liberty and perfect order become compatible." Most of Richard Venable's peers would have agreed with his belief that anyone who tried to stand in the way of progress challenged the will of God. "This progress," Venable wrote, "although it may seem slow, is nevertheless inevitable, and whoever shall attempt to oppose it will reap his own destruction." Venable, who survived the Civil War as a Confederate staff officer, believed it was impossible to separate moral and material progress. On this point there was widespread agreement between young Virginians and their fathers.
These young men believed that they were coming of age when new and powerful forces had been unleashed in the world, creating a special moment in history when the possibilities of human endeavor appeared endless. Their concerns about the age of progress did not center on the potential radical effects that free-market capitalism and individualism could have on a slave society. Rather, the last generation appeared most troubled by those Virginians who were the enemies of progress. They derisively called their opponents "old fogies." Although this generational battle will be explored in the next chapter, it is worth noting that many young people embraced progress as a reaction to the ideas of old fogyism. This backward philosophy, the last generation charged, had kept Virginia out of touch with the demands of the modern world. In his 1851 University of Virginia thesis, J. Latane of Essex County determined that the old fogies were incapable of distinguishing between "immobility and stability," making it impossible for them to appreciate the universal truth that "immobility is antagonistic to progress." To prove this assertion, he offered a historical survey of the "Indo-Chinese world" in which he found that life had been stationary for centuries with no progress, no innovation, and no advance under the "great despotism of Asia." Latane concluded his analogy with a rather narrow interpretation of Chinese history and culture, but one he thought applicable to Virginia. "Their history like that of animals and vegetables is but the history of one generation-it needs but be written once." Latane worried that future Virginians would become mired in the deep ruts cut by previous generations if the Commonwealth did not open itself to change.
The last generation's offensive against the old fogies and their excessive cheerleading for progress did not lead them to see man as morally perfect, and consequently they never flirted with any notion that smacked of egalitarianism. As Christians, they believed that man was born into sin, making him more than qualified to commit inconceivable crimes against humanity. The University of Virginia's James M. Boyd, the son of a Lynchburg tobacconist, rejected the charge that Catholic doctrine naturally bred corruption while other religions were thought to be immune from such evils. Any system or institution that bore "marks of humanity," he argued, was liable "to such a fate." Boyd shared with most Southerners a dark view of human nature that anchored a worldview committed to human inequality as an essential principle of any slave society. "If ... meant by all men being born free and equal, ... [that] they are born with the same qualities and in the same condition, it bears an absurdity on its face," wrote a student in the Hampden Sydney Magazine. He concluded that "all men are not capable of attaining to or enjoying the same things, and no one can be said to have a right to what he is altogether incapable of attaining and unfitted for enjoying." Of a similar mind, Culpeper's Henry Coons suggested that "there are very few things which cannot be over done, or carried too far.... For we can go so far as to grant men rights and liberties which instead of doing them good will tend to lower them on the scale of enlightenment and civilization." A tension existed within the minds of many young Virginians, as was true of most Southerners, in trying to explain the bright prospects for world progress when they considered man inherently sinful and believed, to varying degrees, in human inequality.
This belief in human inequality did not undercut the last generation's faith in the power of the individual as an agent of change. The idealism of youth, coupled with their elitist view of themselves as the "chosen" men in Virginia, encouraged them to embrace a powerful strand of individualism. This notion flowed into and strengthened their belief that civilization's advance ultimately resided in man rather than God. On November 23, 1857, Robert Taylor Scott confided to his fiance that "it is a delightful thing to think we are in part the architects of our fortunes, that we are endowed with free will not the creatures of chance or subject merely to circumstances." A few young Virginians, it should be noted, warned that a growing faith in science was deluding people to believe that man could unravel all of life's mysteries. Most, however, felt comfortable taking a seemingly contradictory position. They defended the supremacy of God's authority while asserting that an individual, not a higher power, determined the course of life. Those members of the last generation who rejected predestination took an important step toward the self, albeit they were inching their way toward that dominating individualistic spirit of New England and other free-labor societies. Their faith in man's moral judgment never reached Emersonian heights. Young Virginians wanted it both ways. They believed that their native land could retain its allegiance to God and hierarchy while creating an open society that celebrated individualism and intellectual innovation. Placing so much power in the individual had led to spiritual experimentation and other "radical" philosophies in the North. Awareness of these developments troubled the South's intellectual class, but members of the last generation avoided the logical outcome of their vision of progress and slavery.
Why then did these young men entertain an extraordinarily optimistic view of progress when the region's leading minds
warned that disaster awaited any society that failed to rein in the excesses of individualism, materialism, and mass
democracy? The Commonwealth appeared tired and worn out, physically as well as intellectually. The age of progress
instilled in these young men a deep faith in the regenerative powers of youth. "Youthful ambition" and "youthful
energies" would revive the state, proclaimed a Virginia Military Institute cadet in 1857. Widespread agreement existed
within the last generation that youth possessed the unique power to revive the state's intellectual and moral energy.
Culpeper's Henry Wilkins Coons typified those members of the last generation who believed that the spirit of youth
would reinvigorate old-stock Virginians. Leaving his father's plantation in Culpeper, Coons entered Richmond College in
the fall of 1857. He remained there until the spring of 1860, during which time he penned a number of essays about the
meaning of youth and its role in the future. Coons recognized that the habits he formed in school would follow him
through life. He did not romanticize youth, bluntly acknowledging that "young persons generally prefer doing wrong
rather than right." Although Coons feared that the self-destructive genes of youth might be lurking in his own body,
such knowledge did not make him fatalistic. The optimism and energy of his peers proved that the supposedly immutable
laws of youth were false and that a person's place in life was not fixed. Coons, although no advocate of free-soilism,
advocated a broad philosophy of social mobility for white men. Everyone except women and blacks should have a chance of
rising up. Even if a young man lacked the advantages of a "higher birth" and wealth, Coons knew that he could overcome
any obstacle with the proper habits. "Hence we see the importance of being diligent and dutiful while we are young," he
concluded, "and by these means winning for ourselves a name which shall last us through life and still be remembered by
men when we have departed."
Continues...
Excerpted from The Last Generation by Peter S. Carmichael Copyright © 2005 by The University of North Carolina Press. Excerpted by permission.
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