The Souths Burden: The Curse of Sectionalism in the United States

This book is a comparison of the intellectual, moral, and sentimental forces, which dominated in the two sections of the country when first settled, and follows these forces as they co-operated or opposed each other all along down the generations. The thesis of the author is that The South and …

This book is a comparison of the intellectual, moral, and sentimental forces, which dominated in the two sections of the country when first settled, and follows these forces as they co-operated or opposed each other all along down the generations. The thesis of the author is that The South and indeed the North became subjugated as a consequence of the actions of the 16th President and those New England bankers and industrialists who financed him. As a people, North and South, we have witnessed over the decades, the cumulative effect of money upon demagogues in the political arena and it has produced a bitter fruit indeed.

To the student of history nothing can be more confusing that the usually advanced explanation of sectional antagonism in the United States. This antagonism existed when African slavery was universal it existed during the years when all the States has laws forbidding the importation of slaves it existed during all the early years when there was an almost unanimous desire for the discovery of a safe method of liberating the slaves and it existed while abolitionism was so detested even in Boston that William Lloyd Garrison, the leader in the crusade, was dragged through the streets of that city (1835) by a mob of "gentlemen of property and respectability".

By delving into that thorny question the author has evidenced facts that many of us "amateur historians" have suspected all along. In so doing he has placed in one small volume the information so necessary for understanding.

About the Author: Benjamin Franklin Grady was born in Duplin County, North Carolina, on October 10, 1831. His great-great grandfather came to America from Ireland in 1739. He received the degree of A. B. in June 1857. Then he went to Kenansville and taught two years with his old Master, at the end of which period he was chosen Professor of Mathematics and the Natural Sciences in Austin College, which was then located at Huntsville, Texas. There he began work in the summer of 1859 and taught until the war caused the institution to suspend operations. Soon afterwards he had typhoid fever, which unfitted him for military service until May 1862. Then he enlisted in a Cavalry Company, which became K of the 25th Regiment; but in a few months Gen. Hindman dismounted the unit, and they served on foot until the close of the war. On Jan. 11, 1863, they were captured at Arkansas Post—about 3,000 of them and 45,000 of the enemy, with 13 gunboats—were carried to Camp Butler, near Springfield, Illinois. Having been exchanged about the middle of April 1863, they were sent to Bragg’s army, which was then at Tullahoma, Tenn., and in this army they served until the war ended. On the morning of the battle of Bentonville he went to Peace Institute Hospital in Raleigh, where typhoid fever kept him until May 2, 1865. After the war be taught school, farmed, served as a Justice of the Peace, and was County Superintendent of Schools in Sampson and Duplin Counties till 1891. From that year till 1895 he served as a Representative in Congress; and after that he returned to farming, teaching, and writing. He died in Clinton, Sampson County, N.C., March 6, 1914.