oters was
almost military.

During the first years after the downfall of the Reconstruction
governments the task of consolidating the white South was measurably
achieved. As some one flippantly put the case, there came to be in many
sections "two kinds of people--Democrats and negroes." It was the
general feeling on the part of the whites that to fail to vote was
shameful, to scratch a ticket was a crime, and to attempt to organize
the negroes was treason to one's race. The "Confederate brigadier"
sounded the rallying cry at every election, and a military record came
to be almost a requisite for political preferment. Men's eyes were
turned to the past, and on every stump were recounted again and again
the horrors of Reconstruction and the valiant deeds of the Confederate
soldiers. What a candidate had done in the past in another field seemed
more important even than his actual qualifications for the office to
which he aspired. A study of the _Congressional Record_ or of lists of
state officers proves the truth of this statement. In 1882, fourteen of
the twenty-two United States Senators from the seceding States had
military records and three had been civil officers of the Confederacy.
Several States had solid delegations of ex-Confederate soldiers in both
houses. When one reads the proceedings of Congress, he finds the names
of Vance and Ransom, Hampton and Butler, Gordon and Wheeler, Harris and
Bate, Cockrell and Vest, Walthall and Colquitt, Morgan and Gibson, and
dozens of other Confederate officers.

The process of unifying the white South was not universally successful,
however. Here and there were Republican islands in a Democratic or
Conservative sea. The largest and most important exception was the
Appalachian South, divided among eight different States. It is a large
region, to this day thinly populated and lacking in means of
communication with the outside world. Though it has some bustling
cities, thriving towns, and prosperous communities, the Appalachian
South today is predominantly rural. In the 216 counties in this region
or its foothills, there were in 1910 only 43 towns with more than 2500
inhabitants.

This Appalachian region had been settled by emigrants from the lowlands.
Some of them were of the thriftless sort who were forced from the better
lands in the East by the inexorable working of economic law. By far the
greater part, however, were of the same stock as the restless pioneers
who poured ov