Let’s begin with the two kinds of soil in America. And then let’s start over after acknowledging that a soil scientist would tell us we have dozens of classes of soil, from mollisols to aridisols to leached alfisols, and hundreds of subclasses. But we are not pedologists, we are just well-meaning Americans, and therefore we’ll have two soils. They are the red soil of Emmylou’s song and black soil. Because this will be a political discussion as well as geological, it would be clever if the soils were red and blue, but in fact, the second kind of soil is black both in name and appearance: rich, fecund, carbonaceous loam. Now, snapshot back to America in the mid- to late-1700’s and see two very distinct societies arisen from those soils, upon very different geographies:

In the North, the settlers found land dissected by hills and swift streams. Even the best bottom land was heavily forested, and it took enterprising souls to clear the trees and establish small subsistence farms. But small farms fit neatly in the narrow valleys, and in the rich black soils the small plots were enough to support a generation or two under one cedar-shingled roof. A few trunk rivers notwithstanding, the swift streams of the north were no good for navigation. But the rush and tumble of the mountain streams provided power for grist and lumber mills, eventually steel mills, and manufactories of all sorts.

The farmers and factory men of those black-dirt valleys were not rich because the farms and factories were not large, but neither were they poor because the soil was rich enough and the markets dynamic enough. And so these “middle class” people learned to pool resources, via mutual taxation, for mutually beneficial infrastructure such as roads, canals, and bridges to shuttle raw materials and to carry products out to market. 

The South’s climate, topography, and soil were quite different and favored larger farms growing marketable, monoculture crops. The broad savannas, often found treeless or nearly so, gave rise to vast plantations, and those who could amass great estates—and enslave enough labor to work the land—became wealthy. But the red, saprolitic soil was poor, and subsistence foods do poorly in it. Those who owned only a little land, the small farmers, although as hard-working as their northern cousins, remained very poor.  A layered society grew up.

Everywhere in the south, broad navigable streams reached deep into the country.  Wealthy plantation owners did not need to pool resources for canals, rails, or even roads, but could build private docks on the rivers to ship their products. As a consequence, public infrastructure went unfunded, discouraged by those who came to dominate the economy, because it mostly benefited the small farmers who worked the land inland from the rivers. Commerce there, without investment in transportation, stagnated.

Small grist mills grew up along the streams of the southern Appalachians, but other manufacturing was kept in the hands of the rich few. Those shops and factories were often worked by chattel labor and tended to serve the concentrated money of the plantation class that owned them. In that environment, upstart industry found it impossible to gain footholds, and artisans—the tanners, smiths, and millers—found themselves competing literally for slave wages. 

Politics in the north reflected the middle-class values of the farmers and factory men. They favored tariffs to protect the local manufacturing and to raise revenue for public projects. Because the farmers were modest and required little in the way of imported stuffs, they didn’t fear the tariffs. Taxes are liked by no one, but in the north were seen as a necessary evil to continue the public works that benefited all. Currency was required for the many small transactions, and a central (later national) bank was promoted. And public education became a cornerstone of the northern economy. It provided opportunities for second and third sons whom the small farms could not quite support, and it provided an army of clerks and engineers for growing enterprises. 

The politics of the south were dominated by the landed class. Tariffs were despised by the powerful men who saw only increased prices for their imported luxuries and necessary manufactures. Taxes and government programs tended to re-distribute the concentrated wealth to upstarts or to the undeserving and were vetoed. Government intrusion of any kind was disdained by men who ruled their own kingdoms. In the south education was good, but available to those who could afford it and had time to attend. That rarely included the sons of the desperate smallholders. Education tended to focus on acceptable careers for the sons of the wealthy: theology, politics, and military studies. Plantations needed fewer clerks and engineers, after all.  

That was the lay of the land a quarter millennium ago. But never mind that a civil war was since fought between those two discordant socioeconomic systems, the environment has changed little in that time. People of red dirt states today, long after the plantation system was brought down, generally accept a wider gulf between rich and poor. They generally distrust taxation and government of all kinds, and still put little emphasis on public endeavor, including (I’m sorry, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes) public education. We call that mindset “conservative,” but it is the growth of the soil—as southern as the red clay of the Piedmont. Similarly, the black-soil, small-farm states remain bastions of the middle class, now sadly beleaguered, and of middle-class egalitarianism, admittedly strained. In the traditional north, people generally vote for government investment (though grudgingly) and still put a little more faith in public education. We call that “liberal,” but it is as northern as November flurries and the black loam of New England.

We are the soil from where we grow.