Southern History Month 2019: The South as a Garden

I’ve always thought this was a great metaphor.

The Purtitan ancestors of Yankees saw New England as a frigid, howling wilderness where they were erecting a godly “City on a Hill” in Massachusetts:

“The environment, to be sure, has long been seen as one of the factors that made the South different from other parts of the United States. Agricultural historians especially had an early appreciation of the role of climate, soil, and other factors that created a long growing season and particular types of agricultural organization. Images of lush tropical conditions in the South often framed discussions attempting to lure colonial settlers to a new Garden of Eden or, later, into new phases of the frontier.”

Upon further thought, I also think Confederate History Month 2019 is far too narrow in scope and would rather just ramble across every aspect of the South. In fact, I find the Confederate period less interesting than other chapters of Southern history.

“In The Colonial Search for a Southern Eden (1953), historian Louis B. Wright noted, “The notion that the earthly paradise, similar to if not the veritable sight of the Scriptural Eden, might be found in some Southern region of the New World and was widely held in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.” Some explorers claimed that God had placed Eden on the 35th parallel of north latitude, along a line from New Bern, N.C. to Memphis, Tenn. In more recent times, the idea of a southern Eden has faded, but the post-World War II New South helped restore a little piece of the myth and raised the esteem of the South as a land of opportunity.”

This is how our ancestors saw their world.

The South was like this vast sub-tropical Eden waiting for enterprising planters and their servants to move in and harvest the agricultural abundance. It was a place to relocate to from Britain in order to better your own life socially and economically.

I’ve explained before how climate and geography played a huge role in shaping the natural boundaries of the South and the character of its people:

Note: The excerpts above comes from from p. xvii and p.1 of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Environment.