In striking contrast with the conservative Southerner has been the progressive Southerner, a type ranging all the way from the unwise and unreasonable reformer to the well-balanced and sympathetic worker, who has endeavored to make the transition from the old order to the new a normal and healthy one. If the qualities which have made Lanier's progress possible are recalled, -- his lack of prejudice, his inexhaustible energy, the alertness and modernness of his mind, his ability to find joy in constructive work, his adoption of the national point of view, -- then the reader may see the elements that have made possible a New South. The same spirit applied to industry, to education, to religion, is now seen everywhere. The term "New South", used by Lanier and others, is meant in no way as a reproach to the Old South, -- it is simply the recognition of a changed social life due to one of the greatest catastrophes in history. In the early eighties it was employed by four Georgians, who had a right to use it, -- Benjamin H. Hill, Atticus G. Haygood, Henry Grady, and Sidney Lanier.

Georgia was the Southern State that led in this progressive work. Here the readjustment came sooner, by reason of the fact that a more democratic people lived there, and also that the burdens of reconstruction were less severe. Virginia gave to the nation at the time of the foundation of the republic a group of statesmen rarely excelled in the history of the world. South Carolina statesmen led in the movement towards secession, and her people were the first to make an aggressive movement in that direction. The leadership of the New South must be found in a group of far-seeing, liberal-minded, aggressive Georgians. The action of the State legislature in repealing the ordinance of secession and accepting the emancipation of slaves within one minute, was characteristic of her later work. In 1866, Alexander H. Stephens and Benjamin H. Hill -- one before the legislature of Georgia and the other before Tammany Hall -- sounded the note of patience, of nationalism, and of hope. "There was a South of slavery and secession," said the latter; "that South is dead. There is a South of Union and freedom; that South, thank God! is living, breathing, growing every hour." These words became the text of the now celebrated address of another Georgian who twenty years later, before the New England Club of New York, gave notable expression to his own ideals and those who had wrought with him in the genuine reconstruction of the South. Henry Grady, as editor of the Atlanta "Constitution", was, after 1876, an exponent of the idea that the future of the South lay not primarily in politics, but in an industrial order which should be the basis of a more enduring civilization. At his advice, as Joel Chandler Harris says, everybody began to take a day off from politics occasionally and devote themselves to the upbuilding of the resources of the State. Another Georgian, the late John B. Gordon, united with Grady and others in saying "a bold and manly word in behalf of the American Union in the ear of the South, and a bold and manly word in behalf of the South in the ear of the North." While recounting the last days of the Confederacy, he awoke in Northern hearts an admiration for Lee and in Southern hearts an admiration for Grant, and in all an aspiration towards nationalism.

Another Georgian, Atticus G. Haygood, -- president of Emory College and afterwards bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, -- voiced the sentiment of the liberal South with regard to the negro, in a book whose title, "Our Brother in Black", sufficiently indicates the spirit in which it was written. In a Thanksgiving sermon on the New South, delivered in 1881, he criticised severely the croakers and the demagogues who were endeavoring to mislead the people, and reviewed with sympathy the great progress that had been made since the war. He pleads guilty to the charge of having new light and is glad of it. He points out with keen insight the illiteracy of the masses of the Southern people and the lack of educational facilities. A movement for the development of a public school system in the South was led by J. L. M. Curry, a Confederate soldier of Georgia stock. He became an evangelist in the crusade for public education, announcing before State legislatures the principle upon which a true democratic order might be established. "I am not afraid of the educated masses," he said, in an address before the Georgia legislature; "I would rather trust the masses than king, priest, aristocracy, or established church. No nation can realize its full possibility unless it builds upon the education of the whole people."

By 1885 the forces that have here been briefly sketched were well under way throughout the South. Factories were prospering, farm products were becoming more diversified, more farmers owned their own places, a public school system was firmly established in all the leading cities and towns, colleges and universities -- some of the strongest dating from the period just after the war -- were enabled to increase their endowments and to modernize their work, the national spirit was growing, and a more liberal view of religion was being maintained. A day of hope, of freedom, of progress, had dawned.

It was natural that along with all these changes, and indeed anticipating some of them, there should arise a group of Southern writers. Indeed, immediately after the war there was a marked tendency in the direction of literary work -- "an avalanche of literature in a devastated country." Magazines were started and books were published in abundance. The literary activity was due, no doubt, in the first place, to the poverty of men and women: some who would have looked down upon literature as a profession before the war were now eager to do anything to keep starvation from the door. Furthermore, there was a great desire among some people to have the Southern side of the war well represented before the civilized world. Hence arose innumerable biographies, histories, and historical novels, and hence the demand for Southern text-books.

It is clearly impossible to give any adequate sketch of this literary awakening, -- if so it may be called, when contrasted with a later one. Of the magazines which were started, the most important were "Debow's Review", "devoted to the restoration of the Southern States and the development of the wealth and resources of the country," whose motto was, "Light up the torches of industry"; the "Southern Review", edited by Dr. A. T. Bledsoe and William Hand Browne and dedicated "to the despised, the disfranchised, and the down-trodden people of the South"; "The Land We Love", started in Charlotte, N.C., by Gen. D. H. Hill, and devoted to literature, military history, and agriculture; "Scott's Monthly", published in Atlanta, "Southern Field and Fireside", in Raleigh, and "The Crescent Monthly", in New Orleans; the "New Eclectic Magazine" and its successor, the "Southern Magazine", published by the Turnbull Brothers of Baltimore; and, as if Charleston had not had enough magazines to die before the war, the "Nineteenth Century", in that city. Most of these had but a short career, and none of them survived longer than 1878. There was in them a continual crying out for Southern literature which might worthily represent the Southern people. The response came, too -- so far as quantity was concerned. One of the editors remarked that he had enough poetry on hand to last seven years and five months.