The situation, however, was by no means unchanging.  On the contrary there was a decided drift in affairs.  For one thing, the proportion of negroes in the South had slowly declined.  By 1900 they were in a majority in only two states, South Carolina and Mississippi.  In Arkansas, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina the proportion of the white population was steadily growing.  The colored migration northward increased while the westward movement of white farmers which characterized pioneer days declined.  At the same time a part of the foreign immigration into the United States was diverted southward.  As the years passed these tendencies gained momentum.  The already huge colored quarters in some Northern cities were widely expanded, as whole counties in the South were stripped of their colored laborers.  The race question, in its political and economic aspects, became less and less sectional, more and more national.  The South was drawn into the main stream of national life.  The separatist forces which produced the cataclysm of 1861 sank irresistibly into the background.

=References=

H.W.  Grady, The New South (1890).

H.A.  Herbert, Why the Solid South.

W.G.  Brown, The Lower South.

E.G.  Murphy, Problems of the Present South.

B.T.  Washington, The Negro Problem; The Story of the Negro; The
Future of the Negro.

A.B.  Hart, The Southern South and R.S.  Baker, Following the Color
Line (two works by Northern writers).

T.N.  Page, The Negro, the Southerner’s Problem.

=Questions=

1.  Give the three main subdivisions of the chapter.

2.  Compare the condition of the South in 1865 with that of the North.  Compare with the condition of the United States at the close of the Revolutionary War.  At the close of the World War in 1918.

3.  Contrast the enfranchisement of the slaves with the enfranchisement of white men fifty years earlier.

4.  What was the condition of the planters as compared with that of the Northern manufacturers?

5.  How does money capital contribute to prosperity?  Describe the plight of Southern finance.

6.  Give the chief steps in the restoration of white supremacy.

7.  Do you know of any other societies to compare with the Ku Klux Klan?

8.  Give Lincoln’s plan for amnesty.  What principles do you think should govern the granting of amnesty?

9.  How were the “Force bills” overcome?

10.  Compare the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments with regard to the suffrage provisions.

11.  Explain how they may be circumvented.

12.  Account for the Solid South.  What was the situation before 1860?

13.  In what ways did Southern agriculture tend to become like that of the North?  What were the social results?