Charm of the Carolines: Are All Southern Gentlemen Southern?

"There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Masters and Slaves... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A civilization gone with the wind... "

~Opening Card, Gone with the Wind, 1939

Now that we've established the core or essence of what makes a Southern Gentleman and a Southern Belle, you may be asking yourself this question, "What is the difference between a Gentleman and a Southern Gentleman?"

And the answer may surprise you.

In literature finding reference to a southern gentleman or a southern belle is not difficult. However, you would be very hard pressed to find a reference to a Northern Gentleman or a Northern Belle, or even a gentleman or belle from any other geographic region of the world. In the south, we acknowledge the fact there are southern gentlemen and southern belles, however we rarely refer to ourselves this way. To a southerner, we are simply ladies and gentlemen.

So if the rest of the world refers to many of the inhabitants of the south as Southern Gentlemen and Southern Belles, then maybe I should ask someone outside of the south, "What makes a Southern Gentleman?"

According to Thomas Lynn in his paper Belles of the South

"Scientists have long suspected something in the water below the Mason-Dixon Line produces a southern belle (and southern gentleman). The American Medical Association once conducted exhaustive tests to identify the particular element responsible, but thus far the secret ingredient has eluded AMA scrutiny... However, that if it is ever identified it would not serve the human race to disburse such a powerful particle willy-nilly."

Well, I don't know that the south hosts a special element that produces southern belles and southern gentlemen, but I do know, or so I've been told, there is a reason for the admiration of 'southerness.'

At the time our country was founded and the colonies were established, the population was concentrated mostly along the coast of Virginia and northward into New England. The overwhelming majority of colonists were farmers. New England's rocky soil and short growing season along with the practice of dividing already small farms among sibling heirs led families to a barely subsistent living. The crops they grew—barley, wheat, and oats—were the same as those grown in England, so they had little export value. More and more New Englanders began leaving their small farms, learning trades and becoming merchants and manufacturers.

Conversely, later arrivals to the US and some of the New Englanders who left their New England farms moved south and southeast where the land was unsettled, available, plentiful, and fertile. The climate was warmer and the growing season longer.

Now this is the part I've been told since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, but don't know if it's true or lore, but here goes....

European aristocracy typically passed along their fortunes and estates to the first born son, leaving nothing for subsequent sons in the family, who many times turned to the clergy or military for their careers. However, a third option became fashionable, to migrate to America to build new fortunes and with the determination of second son to surpass the wealth of the first. Furthermore, English royal governers had the power to bestow large land grants to their kinsmen so that the South was populated and prospered by the descendants of nobility.

Consequently, the slave trade increased, however the need for slave labor was no longer vital to the industrial north, but it was to the agrarian south, especially on the estates of the southern gentry who emulated the English country squire.

Couple this with the choice of crops such as cotton, tobacco, indigo, and rice, not readily available elsewhere, in demand and commanding a high value, and the southern farmers became very prosperous and were afforded the opportunities most northern farmers and merchants were not... to pursue priviledged pursuits that developed cultural refinement, for example horseback riding, racing and showing, music, art, poetry, dancing, entertaining, architecture, etiquette, hosting friends, neighbors and even strangers into their homes, and above all honoring Ladies Fair and rescuing damsels in distress much like their chivalrous knight ancestors.

And the notion of the Southern Gentleman was thusly born, and thrived until the mid-1800s.

Much like the opening card in "Gone with the Wind" describes, this civilization that bred the Southern Gentleman abruptly ended 150 years ago, but the change in circumstances didn't removed the gentility etched in the culture and hearts of our southern gentlemen and southern belle great-grandparents from the Old South.

It lived on.

And 150 years later one has to ponder whether the sweet gentility of the Old South was ever really widespread or simply a myth based on the fortune of the very blessed few. Because even though the notion of a southern gentlemen is very much alive today, every southern gentleman I know does not reside on a plantation or endorse slave labor or possess an aristocratic heritage. In fact, not all southern gentlemen live in the south, though most do have a southern connection.

So what makes a Southern Gentleman today, you ask?

Priorities.

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3 Comments

This is really an interesting post. I love history lessons! The Southern Gentleman and Southern Belle do seem to have something in their "genes". I'm a Texan, but definately Southern My mother and her family were from the deep South.

I looked at your paintings and love them, especially the use of a palette knife. The texture and brushstrokes are wonderful.

Posted by: Honey | Sunday, January 09, 2011 at 05:57 PM