Southern sidelights ; a picture of social and economic life in the South a generation before the war

Front matter

LIBRARY OF

ECONOMICS AND POLITICS.

EDITED BY

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Introduction 1

I. Traits of the People 7

Introduction

To outline a picture of social and economic life in the South during the generation before the war is the purpose of this work.

It is not a history in the broad sense, but deals with material that is often neglected in the philosophy based upon human records. Details of politics are always of interest, because of the personality of leaders and their undue importance in the public eye. Behind politics, though, influencing and being influenced, are the real conditions of a people, — their habits of thought, their modes of action, and their industrial, agricultural, educational, and commercial status. These may be truly estimated only by marshalling the figures in the light of contemporaneous conditions, moral, intellectual, and physical. Such a task has been attempted in this volume.

Though pertaining primarily to the South at a definite time, the narrative would not be complete without reference to earlier days, and to the country in general. In colonial years were laid the foundations of the later civilization, and no part of a republic may be adequately studied without regard for the whole.

The sources of information have been, with few exceptions, writings published before 1861, those of subsequent date having been consulted only for facts, or because they embody documents not otherwise easily

INTRODUCTION.

accessible. The reports of the census, with their analyses by James D. B. DeBow, George Tucker, and Thomas P. Kettell, the American, Whig, and Tribune Almanacs, and the Bankers’ Magazine, have supplied the statistical information upon which the tables of the appendices have been constructed. No census has ever been perfect. The changes in schedules, or in the range of investigation from decade to decade, and the failure in some instances to secure full returns, tend to confuse one seeking material for a comparative review. But pains have been taken to insure accuracy, and to explain apparent discrepancies in figures.

Illustrative facts and statements have been derived mainly from the Southern Literary Messenger of Bichniond, founded in 1834, and regularly issued for thirty years, and from De Bow’s Commercial Review, published at New Orleans from 1846 until the beginning of the war. The latter, with the volumes compiled from it, such as ^‘The Industrial Besources of the South,” is not only the chief statistical authority of the ante-helium South, but is also a repository of most valuable material bearing upon the real situation in that section. During much of its career national politics was rather subordinated in it to questions of commerce, agriculture, and manufactures. It included the thoughts of planters and merchants as well as those of men in public office. Its contributors lived in Delaware and in Texas, in Missouri and in' Florida. Other magazines, newspapers, govern ment reports, and current publications of many kinds were liberally quoted, and the original contributions embraced a vast catalogue of subjects. The Messenger was concerned principally with literary movements, but eco-

INTRODUCTION.

nomics and history occupied no inferior place within its covers. Adams’s Southside View of Slavery,” Hundley’s Social Eolations in our Southern States,” and the pioneer work of W. P. Trent, Basil Sellers, B. C. Steiner, L. S. Merriam, Willis G. Clark, Colyer Meriwether, Charles L. Smith, Charles E. Jones, L. P. Powell, G. G. Bush, and P. W. Blackmar, edited by Dr. H. B. Adams, for the national Bureau of Education, and the early reports of the Commissioner of Patents before the organization of the Interior Department, have also been valuable aids.

One difficulty has been the confusion in some material resulting from its rhetorical tinge, and the accompanying indefinite terminology. Ehetoric may be valuable for the exposition of great ideas, and for the display of the gift of language ; but it too often offers a temptation to clothe isolated facts in the garb of far-reaching generalities, and hence is likely to mislead. This tendency, often unconscious, was frequently manifested in the use of the words South and Southern. Some writers and speakers were prone to omit the northern border States from their consciousness when they alluded to the South; some, of limited observation, and consequently of an a priori mind, regarded their own State or locality, their Virginia or South Carolina, as their South ; some, in commenting upon Southern civilization, referred merely to the limited class that was responsible for that civilization in its highest development, and others endeavored to create an impression that there were but two classes, — the whites and the negroes. Hence it is necessary in reading much of the literature of that day to consider not only the

INTRODUCTION.

statements contained in it, but also the point of view of the author, and the circumstances of its publication.

In this volume the word South is applied to the territory occupied by the fifteen States, including the District of Columbia, in which slavery was maintained as a distinct institution ; and, for brevity, the word North to the rest of the country. By Southerners, are meant the white people of the South, without regard to classes.

If it had been possible to do so, the subjects of slavery and the influences leading to the crisis of 1860 would have been disregarded. '"But they are so interwoven with other circumstances that some reference to them was necessary. They have, however, been treated as secondary topics rather than as leading ones.

Between the South of to-day and that of the era which closed in 1860 is a veil that this generation will hardly be able to remove. Four years of suffering and privation, of anguish and bereavement, for those who met the brunt of the war have naturally placed them in a position to resent any statement that, seems to conflict with the theories resulting in the movements of 1861-1865. Among some there is a disposition to have their historian assume the role of an advocate ; some are unaware of the facts that may be gleaned from the writings of Southern men more or less prominent before the catastrophe ; and others, not without justification, are not disposed to permit the veil to be lifted by any one whose antecedents are not thought to be a guaranty of a treatment of the subject in accord with tradition.

Though a somewhat different spirit prevailed fifty years ago, a similar sensitiveness was occasionally dis-

INTRODUCTION.

played. Thus in meeting a criticism of Hugh S. Legare, the statement was made that his little faults ought to be kept out of sight when one was regarding the eminence of his character. But’ the little things — the little faults, perhaps — are just what the student of history requires to help him in forming his judgment of the whole field. They are frequently the more important, because through their neglect they are capable of developing sufficiently to control the greater ones.' And nothing will lead to an understanding of Southern civilization more directly than a study of those influences and factors that were not picturesque or ornamental.

In the belief that only in a faithful, truthful record of all its manifestations will the past of the South be appreciated by the coming race this contribution to its history is made.

It is Southern in being based upon the writings of Southerners, or of those persons whose utterances were favorably received in the South, and the frequent quotations have been introduced as the best means of allowing the story to be told by itself. But the author has endeavored to keep before him the principle that the natural sentiments and predilections arising from Southern birth, education, and associations should not permit him to omit one item that may serve to enlighten his subject.

SOUTHERN SIDELIGHTS.

Chapter I. Traits Op The People

To appreciate tlie situation of the South before the war, one must know something of its population. A few individuals who enjoyed opportunities to become acquainted with the features of the unique civilization around them have since made a record of their impressions. Their work is valuable to the historian. But to obtain an adequate conception of the subject the voices of representatives of more than one class must be heard.

The lives of the poor whites ” of the barrens, and of the hardy mountaineers of Virginia and Kentucky, must be read, as well as those of the aristocrats of Charleston and the lower James ; of the field-hand of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana, as well as of the household slave of Virginia.

It is now practically impossible for this to be done thoroughly, but the acts and words of Southern men of the earlier time may throw light upon the shifting of peoples and the modifications of life that are revealed in statistics.

That life was a conservative one, though sharing in the progress made in the wTiole country. It was marked

SOUTHEliN SIDELIGHTS.

by many well-conceived efforts to gain for the South its due proportion of those things that count for best in American society, while rejecting other elements of evil. Barriers were in the way, — the growth of two hundred years, — and man and nature seemed to be leagued to maintain them ; but the existence of such difficulties made more notable the successes that were achieved.

In no particular were the fortunes of the South better illustrated than in its territorial history. When the first Congress met, the area of the United States was about 844,414 square miles, of which the South embraced 405,365 miles. Between 1789 and 1860, 2,181,186 square miles were acquired by purchase or by annexation, at a primary cost of ^55,000,000. That includes $10,000,000 paid to Texas for 96,707 miles, and does not include the $6,200,000 paid to Georgia in connection with its cession of lands, or the expenses of the war inevitable upon the annexation of Texas. The purchase of Louisiana in 1803 for $15,000,000, of Florida in 1819 for $5,000,000, the acquisition of Texas in 1845, the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848, involving an expenditure of $15,000,000, the bargain with Texas in 1850, and the Gadsden purchase of 1854, were either •juade when a Southern man was at the head of the administration, or were prompted by Southern influences.^

1 An estimate made to 1849 of the expenditures caused by these acquisitions was as follows: To France for Louisiana, $15,000,000, interest, $8,529,353; to Spain for Florida, $5,000,000, interest, $1,489,763; to Georgia, $1,250,000, interest, $1,832,000; for Yazoo claims, $4,282,757 ; to Mexico, $15,000,000 ; cost of the Mexican war, $217,175,577; total, $269,559,450. When to

TBAITS OF THE PEOPLE.

Yet in the political deals arranged 'at Washington, the South secured but 496,445 square miles of the additions. Florida and Texas went to that section, but little more than one-sixth of the 1,182,752 square miles of the Louisiana purchase was obtained by it. Though in time Arizona and Kew Mexico might have been added to the Southern States, the rest of the 664,800 miles acquired in consequence of the Mexican War was closed by nature or by legislation against the South as a distinctive section.

What the South was to be territorially had been determined in 1836. Arkansas, just admitted to the Union, was the last Southern State to be erected in the region bought from France. Texas had been recognized as an independent republic, and, with Florida, was to enter the Union nine years later as an addition to slavery. Their admission made no material change in the character of Southern civilization, but helped to swell the number of its population. Between 1790 and 1840 the total population of the section increased from 1,966,372 to 7,334,431 ; and between 1840 and 1860 to 12,315,374, of whom 8,099,760 were whites, 261,918 free negroes, and 3,953,696 were slaves. The percentage of increase from 1830 to 1840 was 25.74 ; from 1840 to

these are added the cost of the removal of the Indians to lands beyond the Mississippi, the payment to Texas, and the Gadsden purchase, the aggregate would represent about $300,000,000. In this connection it may be interesting to note that of $72,269,749, the total receipts from 1833 to 1840 from land sales, $6,880,880, came from Missouri, $7,251,460 from Alabama, $10,068,973 from Mississippi, $3,240,369 from Louisiana, $3,110,377 from Arkansas, and $516,408 from Florida, a total from the South of $31,068,467.

SOUTHERN SIDELIGHTS.

1850, during wliicli time Texas was added, 31.77 ; and from 1850 to 1860 it wa*s 27.42. In the same periods the increase in the rest of the country was 38.31, 38.84, and 41.40 per cent respectively.^

The movement of the centre of population in the country was, in a certain sense, a gauge of the changes in the South. Always tending westward, close to the 39th parallel of longitude, it moved forty-one miles, Avith a slight southern angle, between 1790 and 1800, as pioneers occupied the NortliAvest Territory and that acquired from Carolina and Georgia. The acquisition of Louisiana gave an additional Avestward and southAA^ard trend between 18(T0 and 1820 ; and the purchase of Florida brought the centre in 1830 to its farthest southern point. During the next decade it moved north Av^ard ; but by 1850, through the Texan influence, it Avas 38° 59' south, and 81° 19' Avest. Between 1850 and 1860 the northern poAver again predominated, and the centre travelled eighty-one miles Avestward.

The one hundred and tAventy-seven miles of Avest. AA^ard movement up to 1820 was made chiefly by native Americans ; but the change of tAvo hundred and thirty miles in the next forty years was due largely to the foreign element that was attracted to this country, and to the opening of California to the East.

After 1845 there Avas no appreciable increase, except by birth, of one element of the Southern population, — the slaves ; and the same thing is true of the whites to some extent. The tide of immigration to this country that SAA^elled in number between 1820 and 1834 from 8,385 a year to 65,305, fell to 38,914 in 1838, and See Appendix A, Table 1.

TRAITS OF TUE PEOPLE.

reached 427,833 in 1854. From that time it gradually subsided to 153,640 in 1860. With the exception of Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Maryland, the Southern States attracted but few of the new arrivals. Of the immigrants of 1820, New York received 3,834; Philadelphia, 2,050 ; Baltimore, 1,262 ; New Orleans, 911 ; Boston, 861 ; Charleston, 385 ; and Norfolk, 164. The differences between Northern and Southern cities were greater in 1860, when 131,565 landed in New York, 13,080 in New Orleans, 12,825 in Boston, 5,817 in San Francisco, 6,932 in Baltimore, 3,898 in Philadelphia? 1,265 in Galveston, and 508 in Charleston. Of the 185,186 persons landed at Castle Garden in 1856, only 6,758 were en route to the South, 1,535 of them having Maryland, and 2,366 having Missouri, as their destination.

Between 1820 and 1830 more than 150,000 alien passengers arrived in the United States, about 98 per cent of whom, it was estimated, were intending settlers. The census of 1830 showed 10,326 aliens in the South, and 97,506 in the North. In 1850 the South had a little more than 14 per cent of the whole foreign-born population, and in 1860 about 13 per cent. In the last year the foreign-born constituted 6 per cent of the white population of the South, and nearly 20 per cent of that in the North.^

Many influences led the greater number of immigrants to settle in the North. That section was in a latitude to which most of the foreigners had been accustomed ; travel from Europe naturally followed the principal direct routes to America; and the immigrant 1 See Appendix A, Table 2.

SOUTHERN SIDELIGHTS.

had more abundant opportunities for employment in the diversity of occupations in the towns and cities of the North, where labor had not become a caste, and in the lands of the West more advantages for farm-life, than he understood could be had in the South. The result was that the population of the South, after the transportation of 17,000 Cherokees to regions w^est of the Mississippi, and the cessation of troubles with the Seminoles, was left to work out its own destiny, without any marked effects of increase of population from abroad.^

That this was not entirely a blessing was realized when the redundant population of the East, and many of the better and more thrifty of the immigrants, had helped to build up new States in the West, while the places of Virginians, Georgians, and Carolinians, who sought the cheaper and more fertile lands of Alabama, Mississippi, and later of Arkansas and Texas, w^ere not speedily filled, and when in some States the slaves increased more rapidly than the whites.

The small growth of white population in some of the older States showed the effects of this migration. In the whole South from 1830 to 1860 the percentage of increase was 121, and in the North it was 174. But in South Carolina it was only 13, less than the average increase by birth; in North Carolina 33; and in’ Virginia 51. Maryland’s percentage was 77, the same as that of Kentucky, which with Tennessee had received a large population by immigration between 1790 and 1800. Ar-

1 In 1850, of the States of the South, Louisiana had the largest percentage, 26.34, of foreigners in its population; and North Carolina had the smallest, .46.

TRAITS OF THE PEOPLE.

kansas showed the largest gain in the South, 1,162 per cent; but its population was 25,671 in 1830, and 324,191 in 1860. Among the younger States, excepting Missouri, those having the smaller populations, such as Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, showed the greatest percentage of increase, and Texas nearly trebled its population in ten years.

But a single Southern State, Missouri, attained regularly a higher relative rank in total population in the country, and that advanced from twenty-third in 1810 to eighth in 1860. Delaware declined from sixteenth to thirty-second; Maryland, from sixth to nineteenth; Virginia, from first to fifth ; North Carolina, from third to twelfth; and South Carolina, from seventh to eighteenth. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas had a higher rank, and Florida a lower one, in 1860 than when they were admitted to the Union; but all of these except Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi were lower in 1860 than in 1840.'

Population was much more diffused in the South than in the North. In 1860 the area of the United States was 3,025,600 square miles. Of these, 1,205,959 were in the Territories, which had a population of 220,195, including Indians, or less than one person for five square miles. In the remaining area, 1,819,641 square miles, there were 31,223,126 inhabitants, or 17.15 to the mile. The Northern States had an average of 20.59 persons to the mile, and the South 13.65. Since 1790 Virginia had added 13.83 persons to its pojjulation for each square mile ; South Carolina, 14.87 ; Massachusetts, 1 See Appendix A, Table 3.

SOUTHERN SIDELIGHTS.

109.28; and New York, 76.97. In the last decade the increase of density of population in the North had exceeded that in the South, Massachusetts gaining 30.33 persons to the square mile ; New York, 17.03 ; Pennsylvania, 12.93; Illinois, 15.54; Indiana, 10.72; and Ohio, 8.99. The smallest increase in the country was .11 in Vermont, and New Hampshire’s .88 was but a trifle more than Florida’s, the lowest in the South. The greatest increase in that section, Delaware’s, excluding, of course, the population of the District of Columbia, that was confined principally to two cities, was 20.23 to the square mile less than the greatest in the North.

Only six Southern States had a density of population above the average in the Northern States, and Delaware and Maryland alone exceeded the New England average; but they were below that of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Arkansas, Florida, and Texas, where pioneer conditions still prevailed more generally, perhaps, than elsewhere in the South, contributed much to the low Southern average, while the States of the same age in the Northwest had a more compact population.

The rise of large cities had a great deal to do with enhancing the general average of density in the North. The population of Baltimore, the largest Southern city, was in 1860 but 9,829 more than that of New York in 1830. The number of the first had increased in thirty years from 80,625 to 212,418 ; of the second, from 202,- 589 to 805,651. St. Louis had grown from a town of 5,852 persons to one of 160,773, and Chicago from one of 4,170 in 1837 to one of 109,260. Eichmond, Savan-

TRAITS OF THE PEOPLE.

nah, Mobile, Nashville, and Louisville were of more tardy growth, while the population of Charleston was almost stationary between 1850 and 1860. New Orleans resembled New York in the proportion of foreigners in its population, and St. Louis was like Chicago in that particular. Baltimore and Louisville had many citizens of foreign birth. A feature of urban conditions in the North was the number of towns and villages clustered around the cities; and Eastern men in their migrations transplanted the machinery for close settlement and neighborhood intercourse.

Such was not the case in the South, though its population was affected by the migration of the planters, and later of the professional and mercantile classes. The tendency to move from place to place was relatively as strong in the South as in the North, but it added to the preponderance of Northern population. Some of the resemblances between the sections in this respect were illustrated in the movements of the free native populations of the two commonwealths, Virginia and Massachusetts.^ Of the 1,260,982 Virginian-born living in 1850 in the United States, 872,923, or 68 per cent, were in Virginia. Of the 894,818 natives of Massachusetts, 695,236, or 77 per cent, lived at home. Virginia’s population included 53,231 born outside the State, 1,193 being from Massachusetts ; and the latter had 134,830 persons in its population born elsewhere, 796 being from Virginia. At that time men of Massachusetts were living nearer than formerly to their birthplaces, 31 per cent of the absentees living in New York and Pennsylvania. But while 24 per cent of the 388,059 exiled 1 See Appendix A, Table 4..

SOUTHERN SIDELIGHTS.

Virginians were in Ohio and Pennsylvania, 40,777 of them were neighbors of 1,103 Massachusetts men in Missouri. In another ten years the exchange between Virginia and Massachusetts was about equal ; but the number of colonists from the former had had a less increase than that from the latter. New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland had more Virginians, and New York and Maryland fewer natives of Massachusetts, than in 1850 ; and there was a decrease in both classes in Ohio, and an increase in both in Missouri.

The South had, in 1850, five times as many of its citizens in the Western free States as in the East, and the East three times as many in the West as in the South. Of native settlers in the West, 37 per cent were from the South, and there were nearly five times as many Eastern men in the South as Southern men in the East; but ^0 per cent more natives of the South were living in 1860 in the free States than there were natives of the North in the South. The balance of migration was against Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, the two Carolinas, Kentucky, and Tennessee, natives of those States having settled in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The general trend of travel had been westward, and the free States had received 374,325 more citizens from the South than they had sent in that direction. Ten years before they had 405,969 persons similarly to their credit, the decrease in the decade being due to the greater number of Northerners moving into the border States.^

The negro element in this free population was in- See Appendix A, Table 5.

TRAITS OF THE PEOPLE.

considerable, especially in connection with migration. That was usually northern after 1830 ; but its proportions were not large enough to affect the general total.

On the other hand, slaves travelled southward, as they were sold or as they accompanied their owners to new fields. A decrease in their number of 30. 7G per cent in Delaware between 1790 and 1800, an increase of but 2.52 per cent in Maryland, and of 17.84 per cent in Virginia, notwithstanding the subsiding of an anti-slavery feeling in those three States, and the accompanying increase of 32.53 per cent in North Carolina, of 36.46 i)er cent in South Carolina, of 102.99 per cent in Georgia, of 241.02 per cent in Kentucky, and of 297.54 per cent in Tennessee in the same decade, were typical of the movements of slavery during the next sixty years. Slavery steadily declined in Delaware, there being in 1860 but 1,798 slaves in the State that had owned 8,887 in 1790. In Maryland the number was reduced from 102,994 in 1830 to 89,737 in 1840 ; there was an increase of 631 by 1850, but a fall to 87,189 by 1860. Virginia’s total in 1840 was 20,660 less than it was in 1830, and North Carolina gained only 216 in the same period. In all the seaboard States except Georgia, the increase between 1830 and 1860 was below the birth-rate. Alabama’s average was slightly above it, and Kentucky’s below it, as was also Tennessee’s between 1850 and 1860. Mississippi had by 1840 reached the South Carolina condition of having more slaves than whites in its population; and in all the States east of the Mississippi, that had at one time had an abnormal increase.

SOUTUEBN SIDELIGHTS.

and in Louisiana, the tendency was toward the average birth-rate.

Silent as slavery was in the legislation formulated expressly for it, irresponsible for its extension into the younger States and its maintenance in the older ones, it was none the less a powerful factor in determining the character of the white civilization before the Revolution, and in its conservation for so many years thereafter. Upon it was based the social and political influence wielded by one class of whites not only over the South, but also, to a limited extent, over the whole country. It was quite a favorite, though misleading, generalization, to assume that that class was the South. ‘^Indeed,’’ wrote Judge Upshur in 1839, there is but one class in our slaveholding States. Merchants, mechanics, manufacturers, and all the various modes of industry, are found in all of them ; but their numbers are comparatively small, and their influence as classes is scarcely felt. Besides these are all slaveholders also.’’ It would be more definite to say that the South was dominated by a class composed of slaveholding or slavehiring families Avho were first in the social scale.

Owners of slaves numbered 384,753 in 1860, representing, according to a liberal estimate, 2,308,518 per-

1 In the North no slaves were held in 1800 in Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont. By 1830 there were but 3,568 in that section, the larger holdings being 2,254 in New Jersey and 403 in Pennsylvania, the 2 in Maine, 1 in Massachusetts, and 6 in Ohio being probably the property of temporary residents. But 64 remained in 1860, of whom 29 were in Utah, 2 in Kansas, and 18 in New Jersey, the last being under the designation of apprentices for life.

2 Southern Literary Messenger, vol. v., p. 685.

TRAITS OF THE PEOPLE.

sons.^ Slaves were hired to slaveowners as well as to non-owners ; but it would be impossible to determine the exact number of the latter. ^ There were landowners who were not slaveholders, and slaveholders who owned no land; but, as in Virginia, the eastern portion had, until 1851, the greater power in the Assembly, and the western the majority of white population; so in the whole South the landholding and slaveholding class were in control of affairs. Taking English society as a type, they ranked in the main as a great middle class, the foundation and walls of conservatism and ^fety in any land. They included an aristocracy or gentry reflecting the distinctions of colonial government, and expanding under influences that prevented an amalgamation of widely separated elements, slavery superseding ^-the necessity of an order of nobility and all other appendages of a hereditary system of government,’^ as Governor McDuffie of South Carolina exssed it in 1835.

/ Aristocracy did not always mean wealth or leadership, nor did wealth place one at the top in society. The aristocracy had its foibles, inseparable from any class ; but abiding chiefly in the country, it was free from many of the vices peculiar to the leisure class of

^ See Appendix F, Table 1.

2 The number of owners and hirers in 1850 was 347,525. In the total were not included those persons who were conjointly interested in the ownership of slaves, and it was thought that they would equal in numbers the hirers. In one Southern town selected as an experiment, of 250 slaveholders, 66 of whom were natives of free States and 49 foreigners, 32 were accountants, barbers, bakers, blacksmiths, builders, butchers, carpenters, draymen, grocers, printers, plasterers, saddlers, tailors, or tinners.

SOUTIIEBN SIDELIGHTS.

a city. The gentry of the South, outside their own homes, were seen at their best when Carolina planters resorted to Charleston in the sickly season ; when Lexington, Ky., was the refuge of dwellers in the lower Mississippi valley from disease and torrid heat; when the small theatre of a city was crowded by the advent of a literary, musical, or dramatic star ; and when at the White Sulphur Springs, Va., Madison Springs, Ga., the Warm Springs, N.C., Harrodsburg, Ky., Biloxi, and Pass Christian, on the Gulf, and other resorts, they presented charms of manner and gifts of mind that won the admiration of acquaintances from other parts of the country. They were the exponents, sometimes to an exaggerated degree, of the virtues and the faults of the gradations of the ruling class.