48 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



nobleman of the same day, whose dependents and retainers were 

 at liberty, if they chose, to transfer their services to another 

 employer. The slave belonged to the master absolutely; the tie 

 could only be severed by the latter 's will. The complete sub- 

 serviency of the relation gave a certain barbaric aspect to the 

 condition of the great Southern landed proprietor, but the social 

 life which centered in him was on that account not the less truly 

 distinguished. 



In possession of a great estate in a comparatively thinly 

 settled country, stocked up with hundreds of slaves, who were 

 in the habit of looking to him for everything in life, the 

 Southern landowner, under the old system, was, naturally 

 enough, remarkable for a proud and aristocratic spirit. This 

 was the general tone which men of his class gave to the highest 

 social life of the South. There were, of course, no legally de- 

 termined and fixed ranks in that life, but the line of separation 

 was as clearly defined, and as firmly drawn as if the hereditary 

 principle of caste had a distinct recognition, as in France under 

 the ancient monarchy. The opportunities for accumulating 

 large estates by the exercise of great talent for heaping up money 

 were very few. The city shop and the country store of the South 

 were narrow fields of operation for this purpose. The highest 

 rank in society was not receiving unceasing additions in great 

 numbers from the lower, in consequence of success in gathering 

 together fortunes, as has always been the case at the North, 

 where trade has ever been an unfailing means of building up new 

 families. There were, it is true, many accessions in the Southern 

 States, but it required a full generation at least to envelop the 

 intruder in the odor of social sanctity, unless he had secured an 

 exceptional connection by marriage. Pride of ancestry was 

 one of the most powerful of all social influences in the South, and 

 the ability to prove a long and distinguished descent one of the 

 most valued of possessions. 



Unlike the society of England, that of the South possessed 

 no common center resembling London to direct general taste 

 and govern fashion. 



The social life of every large plantation community was re- 

 stricted to the bounds of the community ; it was the social life of 

 neighborhoods, which might have a radius of as much as twenty 



