s in defense of their homes; when the armed conflict was over they
remained side by side working against "Republican misrule and negro
domination." By 1890, after Northern supremacy was definitely broken,
they boasted that there were at least twelve Southern states in which no
Republican candidate for President could win a single electoral vote.

=Dissent in the Solid South.=--Though every one grew accustomed to speak
of the South as "solid," it did not escape close observers that in a
number of Southern states there appeared from time to time a fairly
large body of dissenters. In 1892 the Populists made heavy inroads upon
the Democratic ranks. On other occasions, the contests between factions
within the Democratic party over the nomination of candidates revealed
sharp differences of opinion. In some places, moreover, there grew up a
Republican minority of respectable size. For example, in Georgia, Mr.
Taft in 1908 polled 41,000 votes against 72,000 for Mr. Bryan; in North
Carolina, 114,000 against 136,000; in Tennessee, 118,000 against
135,000; in Kentucky, 235,000 against 244,000. In 1920, Senator Harding,
the Republican candidate, broke the record by carrying Tennessee as well
as Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Maryland.

THE ECONOMIC ADVANCE OF THE SOUTH

=The Break-up of the Great Estates.=--In the dissolution of chattel
slavery it was inevitable that the great estate should give way before
the small farm. The plantation was in fact founded on slavery. It was
continued and expanded by slavery. Before the war the prosperous
planter, either by inclination or necessity, invested his surplus in
more land to add to his original domain. As his slaves increased in
number, he was forced to increase his acreage or sell them, and he
usually preferred the former, especially in the Far South. Still another
element favored the large estate. Slave labor quickly exhausted the soil
and of its own force compelled the cutting of the forests and the
extension of the area under cultivation. Finally, the planter took a
natural pride in his great estate; it was a sign of his prowess and his
social prestige.

In 1865 the foundations of the planting system were gone. It was
difficult to get efficient labor to till the vast plantations. The
planters themselves were burdened with debts and handicapped by lack of
capital. Negroes commonly preferred tilling plots of their own, rented
or bought under mortgage, to the more irksome wage labor under