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PART 4: THE UNITED S
STATES
TATES IN AN INDUSTRIAL
INDUSTRIAL AGE
CHAPTER 18: THE NEW SOUTH AND THE
TRANS-MISSISSIPPI WEST
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
When students have finished studying this chapter, they should be able to:
1. Compare and contrast the similarities and differences in the regional cultures and economies of the
South and West. Explain how both economies became incorporated into a national industrial
economy.
2. Explain why cotton continued to dominate the southern economy.
3. Describe how and why southerners established a “Jim Crow” system of legal racial segregation.
4. Describe the source of white-Indian conflicts in the West and explain why white settlement proved
so devastating to Indian cultures.
5. Analyze how the building of the railroads both encouraged the development of western resources
and provoked resentment.
THE CHAPTER IN PERSPECTIVE
As U.S. history makes clear, sectionalism had long been a source of conflict in American society.
Despite the Northern victory in the Civil War and the nationalizing forces it unleashed, the regional
geographies, economies, and cultures of the South and the West continued to set them apart as distinct
sections. After the war, though both regions depended heavily on agriculture and the exploitation of
natural resources, the processes of industrialization and urbanization in the Northeast and Midwest
had a powerful impact on these two “agrarian domains.” As the two regions became increasingly
incorporated into a continental market economy, ethnic and racial conflict led to the development of
social caste systems to justify segregation of African-Americans, Indians, Hispanics, and Asians.
OVERVIEW
This chapter links two regions into one story. It opens with the tale of the Exodusters, black
southerners who were driven from the South by poverty and violence and drawn to the West by the
opportunities of cheap land. Though their history and geography differ in most ways, both regions had
underdeveloped public sectors, depended on outside human and capital resources, and hence saw
themselves as colonial economies. Both provided the nation’s industrial centers with vital raw
materials and markets for manufactured goods. Both resorted to segregation and violence to maintain
racial caste systems.
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The Southern Burden
After the Civil War, some southerners saw industrialization as one way to restore prosperity. But the
southern economy remained wedded to cotton. The shortage of credit and cash gave rise to tenantry
and sharecropping. That system left most poor black and white farmers hopelessly in debt. Even the
rapid, if belated, growth of industries could not overcome the poverty of the region, which lacked both
expertise and an effective educational system. More fundamentally, the low wages in southern
agriculture made it difficult to attract skilled labor and enough outside capital to develop a more
diversified economy.
Life in the New South
For whites in the postwar South, life was often lived in tension between the pleasurable attractions of
sport and leisure and the more restrictive ideals of Christian piety. Most social activities reflected the
rural character of the South and fell into male and female domains. Especially during “court week,”
town offered a variety of entertainments and opportunities to do business. More than the town,
however, the church was at the center of southern life. The annual camp meeting illustrated the fact
that besides spiritual uplift churches provided welcome chances to socialize.
Racial division overshadowed that of gender. White southerners constructed a new social system to
replace slavery. Once the North adopted a laissez-faire approach to race relations, the South created a
“Jim Crow” system of racial segregation. Newly erected legal codes forbade blacks and whites from
mingling. Blacks could not compete for most jobs. The Supreme Court gave segregation constitutional
authority in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
Western Frontiers
Conflicts also affected settlement of lands beyond the Mississippi. Indians, Hispanics, and newly
arrived white settlers held markedly different attitudes toward the natural environment. Europeans saw
nature as something to exploit systematically. Indians’ religious beliefs encouraged a view of the land
as a complex web of animals, plants, and other natural elements, all with souls.
White development of the Great Plains and mountainous West was held back by two barriers: the
difficulty of transportation, and the scarcity of water. The Homestead Act of 1862 and the completion
of the transcontinental railroad made settlement and development more attractive.
The War for the West
To remove the Indians, whites adopted a policy of concentrating them on reservations. When that
failed, violence resulted. One climactic battle occurred when Sioux and Cheyenne forces trapped
Colonel George Custer’s cavalry along the Little Big Horn River in 1876.
But such victories could not stem the flood of white settlers, the spread of disease, or the slaughter of
the buffalo that all undermined Indian cultures. Under the well-intended Dawes Act, reformers tried to
draw Indians out of communal tribal cultures and turn them into independent farmers. But that idea
struck as hard a blow to Indian life as did war. Similarly, Hispanos in the Southwest saw their way of
life challenged as—sometimes with violence, more often by legal and political means—Anglos
deprived Hispanos of their land and political influence. A new wave of immigration from Mexico also
changed the character of the Hispanic Southwest.
The New South and the Trans-Mississippi West
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Boom and Bust in the West
Western industries fell into a pattern of boom and bust, economic concentration, and wage-labor
specialization. Silver and gold strikes brought waves of fortune hunters. Then followed the railroads,
which linked the region to urban markets in the East and Europe and gave the railroad companies
enormous influence over the region’s economic and political life. As with the industrialization and
development of the East, the West witnessed its own form of urbanization.
Cattle ranchers soon drove huge herds of steer to the new railheads; large corporations came to
dominate the cattle industry. Violence sometimes erupted between sheep and cattle interests, but
nature proved even more violent as blizzard and drought took the boom out of the cattle business.
The Final Frontier
The lure of cheap land under the Homestead Act brought a flood of farmers into the high plains. But
the best lands were far from free and farmers required expensive equipment to meet the conditions of
the western environment. Farm families faced sod houses, prairie fires, blizzards, and rural isolation.
Among those who stayed, the church, as in the South, offered some solace and social life. Also as in
the South, alienation from the mainstream of industrial America would breed resentment and,
ultimately, political revolt.
ISSUES FOR DISCUSSION
The chapter introduction lends itself to a comparison of the experience of the Exodusters with those of
the European immigrants described in Chapter 19. Both “push” and “pull” factors affected both
migrations; racism and ethnocentrism are recurring themes. But a key difference, which will focus
student attention on the central point of this chapter, is that most European immigrants settled in
industrial cities, while those who went West settled in “agrarian domains” and engaged in extractive
pursuits. In addition to highlighting the contrast between industrializing Northeast and extractive
South and West, you should encourage students to recognize differences between the southern and
western experiences themselves. The comparison of the two regions should help students become
aware of some of the economic and social pressures that fostered regional, racial, and class conflict.
The idea of a “colonial” economy in the South has been substantially challenged by Gavin Wright in
Old South, New South. It may be useful first to make sure students understand the concept of a
colonial economy and then help them see why Wright’s study now dismisses it. Similarly, this text has
also incorporated the views of more recent research suggesting that segregation may not have arrived
as late as suggested in C. Vann Woodward’s classic The Strange Career of Jim Crow. A symposium
in the December 1988 issue of The Journal of American History discusses this issue in more detail.
One question worth considering would be what difference it might make in understanding race
relations whether segregation was widespread soon after the Civil War or not until the 1890s.
Students should enjoy discussing the contrasts between Indian cultures and their own. The ecological
implications of contrasting white and Indian values are especially relevant, although we have tried to
resist the facile and misleading conceit of painting Indians as proto-ecologists. A more nuanced view
is developed in William Cronon’s Changes in the Land. Though it applies specifically to colonial New
England, the ideas have general validity. In discussing the struggle between Indian and white cultures,
students should be able to consider the relative importance of military, economic, social, and
environmental factors in determining the outcome of the struggle between whites and Indians in the
West.
One hundred years ago, the West symbolized opportunity and freedom, as Gilpin suggested. In some
ways Gilpin’s conception of the West is still thriving today. Donald Worster, in his provocative essay
collection Under Western Skies, describes two dreams that animate our sense of the West: “One of a
life of nature, the other with machines; one of a life in the past, the other in the future.” He goes on to
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add, “If the West has any spiritual claim to uniqueness, I believe it lies in the intensity of devotion to
those opposing dreams.” A discussion could invite students to explore how and why two ideals that
brought so many people to the region—one of economic opportunity through development of natural
resources, the other of personal freedom in harmony with wilderness—so often clash.
LECTURE STRATEGIES
This chapter will most likely fall into separate lectures on the South and West. But at the core of both
is the problem of a regional consciousness in an agrarian domain within a framework of an
industrializing, urbanizing nation. Few people would deny that such a consciousness exists, but they
might be hard-pressed to precisely define it.
A lecture on the postwar South, for example, could point out that the “South” existed despite, not
because of, its geography. The region in reality is made up of 7 major and some 25 to 30 minor
geographic subdivisions. It is hard to imagine the common tie between the semitropical rain forests of
the Florida Everglades and the arid end of the Great Plains that stretches into Texas and Oklahoma.
And what links those regions with the Atlantic coastal plains from Delaware to Georgia? With the red
rolling hills of the Piedmont Plateau? With the beautiful yet infertile valleys of the Blue Ridge? With
the fertile valleys of the Shenandoah and Tennessee, the mineral-rich Alleghenies, the rich alluvial
lands of the Mississippi and its tributaries?
If geography fails to define the region, then perhaps regional fiction offers a clue. “You can’t
understand [the South],” writer William Faulkner observed through one of his characters. “You have
to be born there.” A lecture on the South might look forward to Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom for
insight into southern consciousness and identity. Similarly, the character Jack Burden from Robert
Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men meditates on southern identity, as does the historian C. Vann
Woodward in The Burden of Southern History. The lecture might then turn to the historian’s approach
to understanding regional consciousness, through a multi-causal analysis of the factors shaping the
postwar South, as the chapter lays them out. Most recently, Edward Ayers, The Promise of the New
South, has given us a much richer portrait of the South’s social history.
The West is similarly diverse in geography, similarly elusive in definition. Patricia Limerick’s A
Legacy of Conquest discusses the various myths and images of the West as well as summarizes the
major topics as seen through the eyes of the “new western history.” Rich details of that new view of
the West (an approach not without its critics) are available in Richard White’s It’s Your Misfortune
and None of My Own: A New History of the American West. For those students who did not use the
first half of the text, it might be worth stressing in lectures a point made in Chapter 14: A onedimensional understanding of the frontier, moving from East to West, is profoundly misleading;
frontiers are multicultural and multidirectional.
As the chapter suggests, the role of water in the West is key: A quick, useful discussion opens Marc
Reisner’s Cadillac Desert; see also Donald Worster’s Rivers of Empire. Another approach to a lecture,
given the connections of this chapter to the industrialization and urbanization discussed in Chapters 19
and 20, would be to begin by contrasting the images of individual initiative, including the cowboy, the
prospector, or the prairie farmer, with the realities of corporate control of key resources. White,
Limerick, and Worster all develop that idea. So too do they point out that the ideal of Frederick
Jackson Turner’s frontier democracy, one characterized by individualism, self-reliance, and
decentralized authority, might apply in Wisconsin where he grew up, but it bears scant relationship to
a region dominated by technology, corporate capitalism, and government regulation. Finally, in a land
where stereotypes of cowboys and miners abound, there is good anecdotal material about women’s
experiences in Limerick, White, Dee Brown, The Gentle Tamers, and Joanna Stratton’s Pioneer
Women.
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MAP IDENTIFICATIONS
Students have been given the following map exercise: On the map, label or shade in the following
places. In a sentence, note their significance to the chapter. (For reference, consult the maps in Nation
of Nations on pages 497 and 506.)
1. Santee Uprising
2. Sand Creek Massacre
3. Battle of Little Bighorn
4. Wounded Knee Massacre
5. Omaha
6. San Francisco
7. Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads
EVALUATING EVIDENCE (MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS)
1. Looking at the map of the western environment (page 495), identify the features that explain why
the region from the 98th meridian to the Pacific coast remained largely unsettled until after the Civil
War. What is a llano (as in “Llano Estacado”)?
2. What does the pattern of railroad construction in the West (page 506) suggest about the relationship
of the West to the national economy?
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3. Historians often discuss tenantry and sharecropping as part of the southern economy. Look at the
map on page 485. What have you learned from the text that would allow you to explain the patterns
of tenantry shown? Write a statement that you think more accurately describes tenantry and
sharecropping in the United States as a whole during the late nineteenth century.
4. What does the picture of baptism (page 491) suggest about the racial make-up of church
congregations in the South?
FILMOGRAPHY: FILM OPTIONS FOR THE CLASSROOM
The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
John Ford classic redefining the Western film genre. Indian-hating ex-confederate soldier obsessively
searches for revenge and redemption.
The Nebraskan (Fred F. Sears, 1953)
Rather trite Western of white man’s justice preventing Indian uprising. An Army man’s Native
American aide (Jay Silverheels) is accused of murder.
Pony Express (Jerry Hopper, 1953)
Simplistic Americana via Charlton Heston. Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok clear the way for
a mail route west to California in the 1860s.
The Ox-Bow Incident (William Wellman, 1943)
“Lynching Bee” set in Bridger’s Well, Nevada. Stage-set filmmaking puts the traditions of panoramic
Western violence itself on visual trial.
Geronimo (Walter Hill, 1993)
Revisionist look at U.S. Government policy toward the First Americans—though narrated by a West
Point graduate with a conscience—in sympathy with the point of view of Dances With Wolves (1990).
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
Most revisionist John Ford western that in setting, theme, and characterization metaphorically
explores the loss of liberty in the late-nineteenth-century American West. “When the legend becomes
fact…print the legend.”
Ten Who Dared (William Beaudine, 1960)
Cliché-ridden “true story” of John Wesley Powell’s 1869 exploration of the Colorado River basin.
The Wild Bunch (Sam Pechinpah, 1969)
Band of outlaws in 1913 Texas try to live and sustain the myths of the American West.
The West (Ken Burns and Stephen Ives, PBS, 1996)
Eight-part documentary series examining the region as a cultural emporium for optimism, ambition,
conflict, and cultural exchange.
Geronimo (Roger Young, 1993)
First in a series of Native American film projects from TNT. Both nostalgic and candid historical
rendering of the Chiricahua Apache leader.
My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)
Truly classic Western, by the director who most significantly shaped the Western genre. Hollywood’s
Owen Wister. Captures the mythic themes and spirit of the West. History as collective cultural reverie
and memory.
The Plow That Broke the Plains (Pare Lorentz, 1936)
U.S. government production of the history of the Great Plains from the 1880s through the 1930s.
Designed to inform and reform. An important vision of American social and cultural history.
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Sergeant Rutledge (John Ford, 1960)
Arresting story of racism in a Western context. Black U.S. cavalry officer is court-martialed for rape
and murder. Actor Woody Strode, himself a lens on Hollywood’s racial history, is commanding in the
central role.
Dances with Wolves (Kevin Costner, 1990)
White hero adopts Lakota ways. Repeats stereotypes of the noble/hostile savage.
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (Robert Altman, 1976)
Historical exposé of Buffalo Bill—famed Indian scout, buffalo hunter, and showman—as myth
merchant of the West and flamboyant fraud.
Cheyenne Autumn (John Ford, 1964)
John Ford’s last western starring Monument Valley. Revisionist in spirit, as told somewhat from an
Indian point of view. The Cheyenne face a tragic exodus from Oklahoma to Wyoming.
This is America, Charlie Brown: The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad (Charles
Schulz, 1989)
Elementary historical overview of the transcontinental railroad and its importance to American
development.
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