The Only Thing That Lasts

The Only Thing That Lasts
"Land is the only thing in this world worth anything...for 'tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for"
-Gerald O'Hara to Scarlett in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind

It's an image as old as time, burned into movies, television, newspaper and magazines. The Southern white, eyes laser fixed, shotgun at the ready warning an unwanted and sometimes wicked outsider to "get off my property". While not always painting a realistic or positive picture of our beloved region, there is some truth in the myth. We are a society where the so-called "Castle Doctrine" is king, the "old home place" is still almost spiritual ground and both are jealously guarded.

Welcome to our Dixie. A visitor to a Southern home will find it so welcoming he begins to wonder why he doesn't live there instead of his own home! But an intruder with evil in his heart will instantly know the grave error he has made.

But why are Southerners like this? Don't Midwestern farmers feel the same way about the fields and prairies their fathers tilled? Certainly, many do.
But unlike them, we Southerners have land in our blood; and we have since we first became Southerners.

The first North American colony at Jamestown, Virginia (I know our teacher told us it was Plymouth Rock, but that's another story for another time) was made up of English settlers known as "Second Sons". These men were usually born to gentry in England who owned land and engaged in large-scale farming. In this society who's center was heavily Celtic southwestern England, the land almost always passed to the eldest son. This meant the "Second Sons" lived in a society where land WAS the economy, but had little chance of ever inheriting or buying it. This made the trip to Virginia Colony, with all its dangers and sufferings, worth it to the Sons for a chance to have something in the New World. After disease, winters and famine took a hard toll on the new Colony, a relief ship named the Sea Venture was dispatched from England to bring supplies to the starving Colonists. The Sea Venture, as fate would have it, crashed off Bermuda, delaying it for over a year. Yet for those Second Sons and their families who did survive, the dream was realized-owning land in a new world so fertile and bountiful that early residents described it as "Earth's only Paradise".

The next generation of Southerners to make it to Virginia valued property for another reason-most not only didn't have it, but those who did had
it taken away by an out of control government. It was 1640, the beginning of the English Civil War when Virginia started seeing its second wave of immigrants. Again coming from heavily Celtic Southwestern England, these "Cavaliers"-landed gentry and their tenant farmers had been supporters of the soon-to-be beheaded King Charles I. When the Puritans, whose seat of power was London and East Anglia(Southeast England) took control of Southwestern England, they all found themselves landless, broke and in danger. Between the 1640s and the end of Cromwell and the Puritans' rule in 1660 Virginia Governor Sir William Berkeley recruited thousands of aristocrats and their servants to the new colony. Most came as indentured servants, but not in the sense we know. Most had been tenants of the landowners in England and indentured themselves to the Lords as payment for transportation to Virginia. They generally served their term of indenture and either stayed afterward as tenants or moved further west where opportunities for land were better.

By 1670 migration to Virginia slowed as the Puritan fanatics in England were overthrown(prompting many Puritan fanatics to migrate from East Anglia to join their kin in New England). It would be 200 years before English Puritans and Cavaliers would face each other in war again , this time as Yankees and Rebels.

The final addition to the South came with the arrival of the Scots-Irish and border Scots in the 1700s. In the early 1700s, a major famine struck Ireland, driving many poor and hungry Northern Irish(Scots-Irish) to the new world in search of a better life. At the same time, the constant wars and famine in the border country of Scotland and England drove many to seek peace and prosperity in the Americas. These immigrants usually settled in the backcountry, either in the Piedmont where they befriended and intermarried with Cavaliers, or the Appalachians where they could retain their distinct culture in relative isolation.

This Virginia/Southern focus on the land and property bled into the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence was based in part of George Mason's "Virginia Declaration of Rights" which declared the colonists' right to "life, liberty and property". The Virginian James Madison later wrote this connection into the Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights, declaring that "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." Property then, was placed on the same level as life and liberty. Little wonder that the Virginian, Jefferson, used Mason's language to state that men were entitled by their Creator to life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. To a Virginian of Jefferson's time, few things brought more happiness than property.

Nor did property affect only the political Revolution. The invasion and destruction of property by the British in Georgia and South Carolina drove many Cavaliers who had earlier supported the King to unite with the colonial forces for Independence. The "Overmountain Men" who caused the major British defeat at the Battle of Kings Mountain, South Carolina were men who had already settled in the Appalachians when Britain had declared there would be no American settlement there. A British victory would have meant giving up the homes and property they had lived and worked on for years.

The following story shows that the Southern soldier of 1861 was no different. Virginia Confederate Soldier Frank Potts seemed indifferent to the causes of the War for Southern Independence, but when asked why he shot a Yankee, simply replied "I was fighting for my home, and he had no business being there." Jim Webb, Born Fighting: A History of the Scotch-Irish in America.

So, when Southerners rail against eminent domain, Homeowners Associations or the influx of hostile transplants to our region, just remember: the land where we live, work, hunt, and worship; where our fathers lived and are buried, where our children grew up and many still live, is precious. Our memories and identity as a people is in our Dixieland. It is this which truly lasts, and truly makes it worth fighting for.






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