ABSTRACT
The South for many years has occupied a special place in the American imagination. Those in other parts of the country have romanticized about the almost medieval chivalry of the plantation days and the heroic era of the Civil War. The South, in the post-Civil War years, became synonymous with backwardness and provincialism and, in particular, with racial bigotry and exclusiveness. It was labeled an intellectual wasteland and rejected as hostile to the American notion of progress, business, and industrial civilization. The typical American represents what Weaver describes as "the victorious man." He has amassed great wealth and material goods, has worshipped at the altar of progress and has not been disappointed. The South was invaded, its cities burned down, its citizens disenfranchised, its society "reconstructed." No other section of the country has endured such humiliation.
