A New South More Like New England
 
From: bernhard1848@att.net
 
The Boston Daily Advertiser editor below extols the virtues of New England and the taming of their environment, but forgets the mention the Pequot tribe. After those natives found themselves decimated by the forces of early New England settlement and progress, the survivors were sold to West Indies plantations as slaves. To make up for this mistreatment, the tribe is allowed to operate a gambling casino, Foxwoods. Nonetheless, the virtuous New Englanders would move South to bring civilization to the hayseed descendants of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe.
 
Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
Wilmington, North Carolina
www.cfhi.net  

A New South More Like New England:
 
“In the months after Appomattox, Boston newspapers were full of schemes to send northern men into the South. Even before the war had ended, many northerners were thinking about migrating South to speculate in land, raise cotton, or seek other economic opportunities there. Although a mixture of motives influenced Yankees moving South during and after the war, most were eager to reap economic rewards.

[Many were going] to plant the seeds of New England culture…and [the Boston Daily Advertiser] quoted a long letter from a minister…”who urged not just New Englanders but “the whole moral, educational, social, religious apparatus of New England” to migrate South, creating centers from which New England influence could radiate while giving their occupants mutual support. To redeem the section, it would take the combined efforts of the same New Englanders who had “subdued granite, conquered ice, tamed the seasons, and made a region frowned upon by nature, most favored in the sight of God and man.” “In a word,” the correspondent summarized, the moneyed charity of New England…should concentrate on sending the New England village South.” The Boston Advertiser kept up a drumbeat of editorials urging the New England Emigrant Aid Company to undertake organized settlements in Florida, “like that which settled Plymouth.” Such an effort, the editor averred, could make Florida the first Southern State “to meet our advanced ideas of regeneration and civilization.”
 
(Cotton and Capital, Boston Antislavery Reform, 1854-1868, Richard H. Abbott, UMass Press, 1991, 184-185)