The South in Retreat

 The Abbeville Institute

Editor’s Note: This lecture was delivered at our 2019 Summer School on the New South. Carey Roberts explores the relationship between the Old Whig faction in the South–e.g. Alexander H. Stephens–and the New Democrats who controlled the region after the War. Roberts concludes that the Jeffersonian vision of America, dominant in the antebellum South, was bulldozed by the Old Whigs turned Democrats who achieved success both in the “New South” and the United States as a whole. “Jeffersonianism ceased being a political force throughout the South.” Part of this was a racial agenda designed to hide their true political and economic intentions.