A Rebel's Recollections. Eggleston George Cary
cares a climate so perfect that existence itself is a luxury within their borders, and we shall find no room for wonder that these people learned how to enjoy themselves. What they learned, in this regard, they remembered too. Habits and customs once found good were retained, I will not say carefully, – for that would imply effort, and the Virginians avoided effort always, – but tenaciously. The Virginians were born conservatives, constitutionally opposed to change. They loved the old because it was old, and disliked the new, if for no better reason, because it was new; for newness and rawness were well-nigh the same in their eyes.
This constitutional conservatism, without which their mode of life could never have been what it was, was nourished by both habit and circumstance. The Virginians were not much given to travelling beyond their own borders, and when they did go into the outer world it was only to find a manifestation of barbarism in every departure from their own prescriptive standards and models. Not that they were more bigoted than other people, for in truth I think they were not, but their bigotry took a different direction. They thought well of the old and the moss-grown, just as some people admire all that is new and garish and fashionable.
But chief among the causes of that conservatism which gave tone and color to the life we are considering was the fact that ancient estates were carefully kept in ancient families, generation after generation. If a Virginian lived in a particular mansion, it was strong presumptive proof that his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather had lived there before him. There was no law of primogeniture to be sure by which this was brought about, but there were well-established customs which amounted to the same thing. Family pride was a ruling passion, and not many Virginians of the better class hesitated to secure the maintenance of their family place in the ranks of the untitled peerage by the sacrifice of their own personal prosperity, if that were necessary, as it sometimes was. To the first-born son went the estate usually, by the will of the father and with the hearty concurrence of the younger sons, when there happened to be any such. The eldest brother succeeded the father as the head of the house, and took upon himself the father's duties and the father's burdens. Upon him fell the management of the estate; the maintenance of the mansion, which, under the laws of hospitality obtaining there, was no light task; the education of the younger sons and daughters; and last, though commonly not by any means least, the management of the hereditary debt. The younger children always had a home in the old mansion, secured to them by the will of their father sometimes, but secure enough in any case by a custom more binding than any law; and there were various other ways of providing for them. If the testator were rich, he divided among them his bonds, stocks, and other personal property not necessary to the prosperity of the estate, or charged the head of the house with the payment of certain legacies to each. The mother's property, if she had brought a dower with her, was usually portioned out among them, and the law, medicine, army, navy, and church offered them genteel employment if they chose to set up for themselves. But these arrangements were subsidiary to the main purpose of keeping the estate in the family, and maintaining the mansion-house as a seat of elegant hospitality. So great was the importance attached to this last point, and so strictly was its observance enjoined upon the new lord of the soil, that he was frequently the least to be envied of all.
I remember a case in which a neighbor of my own, a very wealthy gentleman, whose house was always open and always full of guests, dying, left each of his children a plantation. To the eldest son, however, he gave the home estate, worth three or four times as much as any of the other plantations, and with it he gave the young man also a large sum of money. But he charged him with the duty of keeping open house there, at all times, and directed that the household affairs should be conducted always precisely as they had been during his own lifetime. The charge well-nigh outweighed the inheritance. The new master of the place lived in Richmond, where he was engaged in manufacturing, and after the death of the father the old house stood tenantless, but open as before. Its troops of softly shod servants swept and dusted and polished as of old. Breakfast, dinner, and supper were laid out every day at the accustomed hours, under the old butler's supervision, and as the viands grew cold his silent subordinates waited, trays in hand, at the back of the empty chairs during the full time appointed for each meal. I have stopped there for dinner, tea, or to spend the night many a time, in company with one of the younger sons who lived elsewhere, or with some relative of the family, or alone, as the case might be, and I have sometimes met others there. But our coming or not was a matter of indifference. Guests knew themselves always welcome, but whether guests came or not the household affairs suffered no change. The destruction of the house by fire finally lifted this burden from its master's shoulders, as the will did not require him to rebuild. But while it stood, its master's large inheritance was of very small worth to him. And in many other cases the preference given to the eldest son in the distribution of property was in reality only a selection of his shoulders to bear the family's burdens.
In these and other ways, old estates of greater or less extent were kept together, and old families remained lords of the soil. It is not easy to overestimate the effect of this upon the people. A man to whom a great estate, with an historic house upon it and an old family name attached to it, has descended through several generations, could hardly be other than a conservative in feeling and influence. These people were the inheritors of the old and the established. Upon them had devolved the sacred duty of maintaining the reputation of a family name. They were no longer mere individuals, whose acts affected only themselves, but were chiefs and representatives of honorable houses, and as such bound to maintain a reputation of vastly more worth than their own. Their fathers before them were their exemplars, and in a close adherence to family customs and traditions lay their safety from unseemly lapses. The old furniture, the old wainscot on the walls, the old pictures, the old house itself, perpetually warned them against change as in itself unbecoming and dangerous to the dignity of their race.
And so changes were unknown in their social system. As their fathers lived, so lived they, and there was no feature of their life pleasanter than its fixity. One always knew what to expect and what to do; there were no perplexing uncertainties to breed awkwardness and vexation. There was no room for shams and no temptation to vulgar display, and so shams and display had no chance to become fashionable.
Aside from the fact that the old and the substantial were the respectable, the social status of every person was so fixed and so well known that display was unnecessary on the part of the good families, and useless on the part of others. The old ladies constituted a college of heralds and could give you at a moment's notice any pedigree you might choose to ask for. The "goodness" of a good family was a fixed fact and needed no demonstration, and no parvenu could work his way into the charmed circle by vulgar ostentation or by any other means whatever. As one of the old dames used to phrase it, ostentatious people were thought to be "rich before they were ready."
As the good families gave law to the society of the land, so their chiefs ruled the State in a more positive and direct sense. The plantation owners, as a matter of course, constituted only a minority of the voting population, at least after the constitution of 1850 swept away the rule making the ownership of real estate a necessary qualification for suffrage; but they governed the State nevertheless as completely as if they had been in the majority. Families naturally followed the lead of their chiefs, voting together as a matter of clan pride, when no principle was involved, and so the plantation owners controlled directly a large part of the population. But a more important point was that the ballot was wholly unknown in Virginia until after the war, and as the large landowners were deservedly men of influence in the community, they had little difficulty, under a system of viva-voce voting, in carrying things their own way on all matters on which they were at all agreed among themselves. It often happened that a Whig would continue year after year to represent a Democratic district, or vice versa, in the Legislature or in Congress, merely by force of his large family connection and influence.
All this was an evil, if we choose to think it so. It was undemocratic certainly, but it worked wonderfully well, and the system was good in this at least, that it laid the foundations of politics among the wisest and best men the State had; for as a rule the planters were the educated men of the community, the reading men, the scholars, the thinkers, and well-nigh every one of them was familiar with the whole history of parties and of statesmanship. Politics was deemed a necessary part of every gentleman's education, and the youth of eighteen who could not recapitulate the doctrines set forth in the resolutions