ABSTRACT
The new South with its grandiose dreams of slave imperialism, fate selected Jefferson Davis to be the political leader and spokesman. In the new South that was rapidly passing through its frontier development, the patriarchal system of Virginia gave way to a system of negro exploitation, more naked as it passed further westward. The reaction of the slave system upon the southern people, both plantation, masters and poor whites, was wholly evil. For the most part self-made, products of a frontier environment, these western extremists had got from Jefferson little more than an assertive individualism that easily espoused the states-rights philosophy and prompted them to defend their immediate interests. The passing of the long Virginia hegemony was a sign that southern opinion was undergoing a revolutionary overturn, and that leadership henceforth would rest with men of a different philosophy. As new plantations were opened the natural increase of negroes was inadequate to meet the pressing demands for slaves.
