Such a general proposition, however, is of little value unless it is accompanied by particular illustrations.
The two leading types of Southern population are plainly the Virginian and the South Carolinian of the tidewater. For this fact there are both historical and physiographical reasons. Virginia was the first and South Carolina the second Southern colony to be settled by well-to-do Englishmen who desired to found permanent homes. The introduction of slavery and its application to staple crops speedily gave an aristocratic tone to society in both provinces; but between them, in North Carolina, and to the south of them, in Georgia, there were fewer wealthy settlers and no staple crops to speak of, so that from the first, society in these provinces was more or less democratic in spite of slavery. Before, however, the gentry of the coast could expand and occupy the country lying between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies, and beyond the latter range of mountains, a very different sort of people had moved in and taken possession. Hardy Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, thrifty German Lutherans, sober and industrious Quakers, had occupied the "up country," and in North Carolina had spread toward the coast. Among these people, owing to their habits and the nature of their soil, slavery could take no strong hold; hence they remained democratic and distinct from their tidewater neighbors, as indeed they are to this day. So it came to pass that when, after the Revolution, tidewater Virginians, in consequence of debt and the impoverishment of the land, determined to emigrate, they passed over the two mountain ranges and settled in Kentucky, or went as far to the southwest as Alabama, later on, while the hardy mountain people, hungry for land and eager for adventure, moved along the valleys and over convenient passes and founded settlements, the more important of which were destined to coalesce into the distinctively democratic commonwealth of Tennessee. Meanwhile, the
