It would be difficult, indeed, to find anywhere a
more remarkable contrast in contemporary folkways than that
presented by the two great community groups of the South--the
inland or piedmont settlements, called the Back Country, and the
lowland towns and plantations along the seaboard.
The older society of the seaboard towns, as events were soon to
prove, was not less independent in its ideals than the frontier
society of the Back Country; but it was aristocratic in tone and
feeling. Its leaders were the landed gentry--men of elegance, and
not far behind their European contemporaries in the culture of
the day. They were rich, without effort, both from their
plantations, where black slaves and indentured servants labored,
and from their coastwise and overseas trade. Their battles with
forest and red man were long past. They had leisure for
diversions such as the chase, the breeding and racing of
thoroughbred horses, the dance, high play with dice and card,
cockfighting, the gallantry of love, and the skill of the rapier.
Law and politics drew their soberer minds.
Very different were the conditions which confronted the pioneers
in the first American "West." There every jewel of promise was
ringed round with hostility. The cheap land the pioneer had
purchased at a nominal price, or the free land he had taken by
"tomahawk claim"--that is by cutting his name into the bark of a
deadened tree, usually beside a spring--supported a forest of
tall trunks and interlacing leafage.
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