The Mind of the South: A Critical Analysis
The mind of the South offers investigations of the Southern class system and assessments of the Southern legacies of racism, romance, and religion. The book offers millions of readers with information on how the Southern region of America for decades to come. The book is long and wordy, with some notable repetitions. Additionally, it is notable that the book does not come to a logical conclusion, making the reader worry is the author is still in the middle of the story. However, the book gives an account of the events that happened during his time in 1940 to the events of the Second World War and through the civil rights movement. Cash is a great writer that gives readers the engagement through his work, keeping them glued onto his work.
Frontiers in the Mind of the South
There are three frontiers in the mind of the South d Cash tends to divide the book. The periods are before the Civil War, the reconstruction period, and industrialization. There are various opportunities for economic improvement for these frontiers presented by Cash. There is a portrayal of some distinct features of the South that remain throughout the three frontiers and seem to be reinforced. In the first part of the book, Cash explores the situation of the South before the Civil War. There were southern plantation myths that English Cavaliers were the plantation owners of the old south. Cash demystifies these myths that the planters owned the plantations of the old South. The English Cavaliers were often linked to the royalty, and therefore, they were highly ranked. There were some English Cavaliers, but they were only a handful in Virginia. Most of the planters in these areas were not linked to the royalty, but they were just ordinary citizens that opted to take risks by investing in the plantations and succeeded. These ordinary men got lucky from their investments and rose through the ranks. Another mythology about the South was that it was a successful and good region. However, Cash portrays the region as a region marred by disdain and backwardness. There is no significant contribution made by the South in regards to literature and philosophical contributions. Instead, the South was into slavery and was very reluctant to give it up. This was a failure of the South economically as it did not offer many contributions to the industrial and commercial success during the time.
The Civil War and Reconstruction
During the Civil War, Cash interprets it in a way that could annoy both the Southerners and the Northerners. He illustrates the Civil War and the Reconstruction as an attempt of the Northerners to achieve what they failed to achieve politically by force. His idea of the Civil War is that the Northerners took advantage of the war to force the prevailing American image to make the current nation. The North was just a tariff gang that wanted to prevail in thieving. There was the urge to put aside the differences they held and create a common country, which disadvantaged the south. Further, Cash claims that the North had illusory success in Appomattox, although the will and mind of the south remained intact and fortified. Cash feels that the South became more unified after the war through their individual states that overshadowed the national unity. According to Cash, the period of Reconstruction in the 1876 election as Florida voted the Republicans to occupy the White House. He referred to the Republicans as the "tariff gang" that traded high tariffs for the removal of the soldiers of the North.
The South After Reconstruction
The Reconstruction did not change much in the South, as the old order returned. Slavery had ended, but the African Americans did not experience the freedom they expected. The tariffs affected the cotton prices in the northern millers. Lack of capital in the South made the years after the Civil War difficult. Lack of money led to the solidification of the Southern leadership with the former planters despite their participation in the Confederate Army. Things started to change towards the close of the nineteenth century as textile mills started to be built in the South. This brought about new opportunities, although they were limited as the mills became plantations in the twentieth century. The mill owners brought about the behavior similar to that of the planters and Confederate Captains in the previous years before the Civil War. They developed a paternal outlook of their workers and strived to ensure they maintained low wages. This was a strategy of lure more businesses away from the northern mills. A new generation of leaders led to the weaning of the paternalistic outlooks and bore the textile strikes in the 1920s although Unionism failed.
Paradoxes of the South
Cash’s interpretation of the South is a bit paradoxical as he reports the progressive movements in the South yet it was resistant to change. The same was experienced in religion as the Methodists of the South embraced stern Calvinism while other southerners practiced free-will theology. Individual conservative myths were to be followed by everyone. The study also expresses a caste system that developed in the south in which the social level depended on the possession of the type of job. In the highest rank was the planter, which later changed to the Confederate officer, then mill boss.
Conclusion and Recommendation
Cash’s interpretation of the South is historical and does not give a reflection of the region currently. The book is critical of the south, but Cash tends to give it a romantic look. He interprets the South during the “cotton era” although many problems are expressed in the book. However, it is a great book that gives us a clear picture of the historical happenings that shaped the country as it is currently. It offers a rich history on agrarian and industrial revolution as well as the abolishment of slavery. Although the book does not dig deeper into the issues of slavery, the history it provides is fundamental in understanding the economic and political history of the South. Apart from politics and economic issues, Cash explores religion although he seems to have a problem with it in general. Cash also sees fundamentalism rising from the primitivism of the South. I would recommend the book to researchers that wish to know more about the Southern history and its transformation to its current state. However, I could not recommend the book to someone that wishes to understand the South as it is currently. The political, personal and events during the time seem to run parallel to the current events in the South. Additionally, the book provides a review of the southern subculture due to the events preceding the Second World War, making it hard for Southerners to arrive at a national consensus of various national issues.
