Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/28

 cavaliers and chatelaines and old family slaves, possessors of all the feudal virtues, or else as the home of a curious race, presumably Caucasian, known as "crackers," and of equally curious mountaineers known as "moonshiners." An exception is made, of course, in favor of New Orleans, the home of the creole and the carnival; of Charleston, the home of secession; of Richmond, the home of the Confederate government; and of St. Augustine, the home of hotels; but on the whole it is probable that the average American of other sections, unless he be a drummer or a valetudinarian tourist, rarely thinks of the South from the point of view of its towns, historic or unhistoric.

For this state of affairs no one is to blame. The great growth of municipalities in the North, East and West—the colossal development of New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, of Boston and Baltimore and a dozen other great cities—has naturally cast in the shade the urban status of a section that contains no city of three hundred thousand inhabitants. It is true that much is heard of the New South with its commercial future; but probably the pushing Atlanta is almost the only Southern city that has in the last few decades impressed