State, is greater than from Richmond to Bangor, Maine. From Richmond to
Galveston is farther than from Richmond to Omaha or Duluth. Atlanta is
usually considered to be far down in the South, and yet the distance
from Atlanta to Boston or Minneapolis is less than to El Paso. Again,
New Orleans is nearer to Cincinnati than to Raleigh.

There were, moreover, many racial strains in the South. The Scotch-Irish
of the Piedmont in the Carolinas had, and have yet, little in common
with the French of Louisiana. The lowlander of South Carolina and the
hill men of Arkansas differed in more than economic condition. Even in
the same State, different sections were not in entire accord. In
Virginia and the Carolinas, for example, economic conditions and
traditions--and traditions are yet a power in the South--differed
greatly in different sections.

As the years passed, apathy began to disappear in some parts of the
South. Wiser men recognized that the old had gone never to return. Men
began to face the inevitable. Instead of brooding upon their
grievances, they adjusted themselves, more or less successfully, to the
new economic and social order, and by acting in harmony with it found
that progress was not so impossible as they had supposed. White planters
found that the net returns from their farms on which they themselves had
labored were greater than when a larger force of negroes had been
employed; shrewd men began to put their scanty savings together to take
advantage of convenient water power. Securing the bare necessities of
life was no longer a difficult problem for every one. Men began to find
pleasure in activity rather than in mere passivity or obstruction.

Somehow, somewhere, sometime, a new hopefulness was born and this new
spirit--evidence of new life--became embodied in "the New South." The