Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide

by Tony Horwitz

Olmsted’s initial faith in reasoned discourse had also waned. In the course of his travels, the South’s “leading men” had struck him as implacable: convinced of the superiority of their caste-bound society, intent on expanding it, and utterly contemptuous of the North. “They are a mischievous class—the dangerous class at the present of the United States,” Olmsted wrote, seven years before the Civil War.

He realized that he’d underestimated the extremist resolve of the South’s leading men, and that they in turn misjudged the motives and determination of Northerners like himself.

Allison subscribed to what became known as the South’s “mud-sill” theory, which posited that humans were meant to occupy different stations, worker bees at the bottom (or mudsill) supporting a few at the top who advanced civilization and held all the wealth, “wisdom & power,” Olmsted wrote. The

“Real courage,” he said, isn’t a man with a gun in his hand. “It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin and you see it through no matter what.” —

In Medley’s view, while nineteenth-century Creoles saw themselves as a people apart, they’d also become leaders in the fight against Jim Crow, on behalf of all blacks. Homer Plessy, for instance, was the son of French-speaking free persons of color and so light skinned he could board whites-only railcars without attracting notice. In

Santa Anna later lived in New York and tried to market a rubbery tree extract called chicle, which his inventor partner turned into chewing gum. Hence, Chiclets.