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CHAPTER XXII

THE AUTOCRACY OF THE SLAVEHOLDERS

Backwardness of Southern press—First abolition movement at South—Effect of arrogance of slave-holders—Government without newspapers—Reasons for attitude of "poor whites"—South commercially outstripped—Northern papers steadily improved—Contrast between sections shown by press—"Honor"—Exemplified by Jennings Wise—Robert Barnwell Rhett—Charleston Mercury—Suggested resumption of slave importation—George D. Prentice.

We have followed thus far the development of journalism and its influence on democracy in the United States, but it has been to a large extent a story of the North and West. What was the progress at the South, where, with the literary inclinations of a wealthy leisure class, there was certain to be interest in a political press? How far did the ideas of the slaveholders affect the journalism of that section, and what were the processes that led to so sharp a division? These questions are important, especially when we consider that from the leading southern state, Virginia, came the democratic ideas that were to rule the country. The ideas of Thomas Jefferson, as we have seen, eventually dominated the Republic, and it was as a result of these democratic ideas that there sprang up a great democratic cheap press. The anomaly is that the section of the country in which it might be assumed that Jefferson had the greatest influence was the one that lagged farthest behind, in the development of both journalism and democracy.

The cause of this backwardness was the development

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