THE BACKGROUND The South of today is not the South of 1860 or even of 1865.

There is a New South, though not perhaps in the sense usually understood, for no expression has been more often misused in superficial discussion.

Men have written as if the phrase indicated a new land and a new civilization, utterly unlike anything that had existed before and involving a sharp break with the history and the traditions of the past.
Nothing could be more untrue.

Peoples do not in one generation or in two rid themselves entirely of characteristics which have been developing for centuries.
There is a New South, but it is a logical development from the Old South.

The civilization of the South today has not been imposed from without but has been an evolution from within, though influenced by the policy of the National Government.