Before the Civil War, there was a very well-defined and self-conscious ruling class in the South – major landowners, some of whom could trace their roots to British Cavalier aristocrats. Scarlett O’Hara’s class. I’ve read in many historical accounts that even after the war, these landlords, now known as the “Bourbon Aristocracy” (for reasons I’ve never seen explained), continued to rule the roost (at least, as proxies for the Northern industrialists who effectively dominated the South at least until the 1950s). (From Scarlett O’Hara to Boss Hogg – what a comedown!) What ever happened to this “Bourbon Aristocracy”? Does it still exist as a distinct class? Still own a lot of farmland, or is that now all in the hands of agribiz corporations? Has it been assimilated by intermarriage with rich people and professionals from other parts of the country?
I live in the South, but Florida isn’t typical. At the time of the Civil War, only Northern Florida, from Pensacola to Jacksonville, was heavily populated and under plantations; the rest of the state was a practically empty frontier territory. I doubt there ever was any “Bourbon Aristocracy” down where I live.
A lot of the old Southern aristrocracy wound up like the old Yankee aristocracy – broke. While there are still plenty of Southern families who can trace their lineage to the old antebellum estates, most of them are ruling class in name only.
The term came into widespread use after the Civil War and after the demise of Republican Reconstruction. It was a reference to the ultraconservative French royal family, which had been deposed during the French Revolution, restored after the Napoleonic Wars, and resumed ruling in such an autocratic style that they were deposed again in 1830.
After the end of Reconstruction, the remnants of the white planter class (poorer, to be sure, than they had been before the war) regained political control over the Southern states in a manner reminiscent of the French restoration. By deriding them as Bourbons, opponents suggested that they were as reactionary as the French royal family and likely to share their ultimate fate. The planters accepted the label with pride, however, as they were not averse to being viewed as aristocrats and considered their power secure.
In the long run, of course, it wasn’t. Merchants tended to displace planters as the Southern economic elite, even before the huge changes which shook the South beginning in the 1940’s. Credit was dear, and many landowners wound up in debt to bankers or factors. Politically, at different times in different states, the old Bourbons were gradually displaced by rabble-rousing Populists of the Ben Tillman or Huey Long variety.
There are a great, great many people in the South who have a Name, and a great big house, and quite the bourbon-drinking debutante social calendar, who have absolutely no money. They get loans from the bank to debut their daughters, or somebody finally marries some newer money, or whatever. In my experience, the families who have kept monetary and political power (on a local scale) are the ones who have family law firms or such. I don’t know a single gentleman farmer, although there are still more than a few small famers around. They’re not the rich sort, or even the formerly rich sort, however.
After the Civil War, during reconstruction, all people were forced to take an oath stating that they had no part in instigating or supporting the revolution. Every person taking the oath was investigated. Those who lied were incarcerated. Those who refused to take the oath could not hold a government position. This effectively killed any kind of aristocracy from materializing. People can still trace their lineage back to pre-civil war plantation owners, but that is more of a novelty than any kind of claim to leadership.
My only real knowledge of the South is New Orleans and Louisiana, having recently been a guest of a former Mardi Gras ‘king’ for the Mardi Gras festivities. There is no doubt that the Deep South aristocracy still very much exists although they may be less landed than they once were. The entire ‘Rex’ institution is testament to its continuity.
Avery Island is an example of where the McIlhenney family still rules the roost. I also met a number of people of French aristocratic lineage (incl. the current Duc D’Artois) with very large estates (hundreds of thousands) in Louisiana and Georgia. Some of these estates had certainly been in these families since before the civil war.
As an aside, I had heard that some of the southern states were planning to enact a law to make it illegal for men to falsely claim that they held a foreign title. Apparently, during the end of the 19th century, the whole of the South was swarming with people who claimed to be of aristocratic lineage in order to secure the hand of a rich, southern bride.
Well, I am suspect of any laws to be made. The end of the 19th century was over 100 years ago, and most people know to look for credentials before believing anyone’s claim to a royal title. As for ruling the roost, which roost are you talking about. Ruling over a parade, even one such as Rex, is very different from the governor’s or mayor’s elected title.
How would you have “looked for someone’s credentials” in, say 1880? It may be easier to verify for royal titles, but the law wasn’t for royal titles. Just any aristocratic title.
And by ‘ruling the roost’ I mean that they own Avery island. I don’t think that the discussion was ever about being the governor or the mayor of a given place.
I think that there is some confusion over the use of the word ‘aristocracy’ here. In the strictest sense of the word, there was never a proper ‘aristocracy’ in the South anyway. It was always a democracy.
The phrase ‘Bourbon Aristocracy’ is, I believe, used to identify families that were of great importance in the South during a certain period in history due primarily to land ownership. My point is that the vestiges of this ‘aristocracy’ still exist. I’ve met them.
Although it doesn’t directly refer to Europeans posing as nobility, it does talk about how there were/are laws against posing as a doctor / professor. Doesn’t seem to me to be a great deal of difference between that and pretending to be an aristocrat to con a rich Southern family into giving up a daughter’s hand in marriage.
The American south was always a democracy? Would that be in the colonial period, the plantation-owner-controlled post-independence slavery period, or the Jim Crow/lynch law post-Reconstruction period which extended into the 1960s?
My understanding is that that prohibition ended when Reconstruction ended (about 1876-77, with the re-establishment of local control in all the former Confederate states – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction), and after that the old aristos took back the state and local governments.
Well, kindasorta . . . One fact often ignored about Reconstruction is that it extended the voting franchise to a lot of white people of the middle and lower classes who had been effectively shut out of political power in the Old South.