Rea Hills and Cotton: Names, upcountry and lowcountry differences, churches, secession

摘要

My kinfolks did not live in magnolia groves in houses with tall white columns to hold up the front porches. We did not care for magnolias. They were swampy, and as for the white columns, we considered them pretentious. We did not call our farms plantations in the Upcountry and we did not call ourselves old Southern planters. We were old Southern farmers. We were plain people, intending to be plain. We believed in plain clothes, plain cooking, plain houses, plain churches to attend preaching in on Sunday. We were Southerners, native-born and of the heart of the South, but we preferred the ways of Salem, Mass., to those of Charleston. Charleston was a symbol to us. It represented luxury and easy, soft living and all the evils of Egypt. Charleston believed in a code that shocked us. It was Cavalier from the start. We were Puritan.