PostPaleocon

James Young, in his Marse Robert: Knight of the Confederacy on the bond of feeling between the Southern Yeoman and Southern Cavalier: "The first cavaliers had been aristocrats of the blue vintage, and the South of '61 remained mediæval, dividing broadly between rich men and poor men, the knights and the villeins. Between them was the merchant class, the doctors, the dominies, measurably Scottish in origin. This social institution had the merits and the weaknesses of medieval times. There was a gulf between the man who owned a thousand acre plantation and half a thousand slaves, compared to the farmer who might own one or two slaves, a half dozen, or none whatever. Yet this gulf was not so great in fact as it looked in appearance. In this day when American classes are more strongly defined than they ever were in colonial history, it becomes difficult to make the Southern social institution a matter of easy comprehension. The South never knew the bitterness that marks industrial democracy. The farmer born to his ten acres, or to his 200, did not feel it an affront that his neighbor, a cavalier, should own a thousand. He respected his richer neighbor. There was no such impetuous striving for money and place. On the day that a plantation owner rode over his acres he would stop at the farmer's door to join him in a cold draught from the well, or a nip of last fall's brandy. He knew the farmer's wife and his children. They were very good friends. In need the rich man might befriend the poor one. Both were proud, the farmer in a stricter sense than the plantation owner, who could afford a genial liberality. Thus the farmer responded by "looking up" to this great man, with respect and some affection."