New South, New South Democracy or New South Creed is a slogan in the history of the American South first used after the American Civil War. Reformers used it to call for a modernization of society and attitudes, to integrate more fully with the United States as a whole, reject the economy and traditions of the Old South, and the slavery-based plantation system of the antebellum period. The term was coined by its leading spokesman, Atlanta editor Henry W. Grady in 1874. Etymology and philosophy The original use of the term "New South" was an attempt to prescribe an attractive future based on a growing economy. The industrial revolution of the Northern U.S. was the model. The antebellum South was heavily agrarian. Following the American Civil War, the South was impoverished and heavily rural; it was mainly reliant on cotton and a few other crops with low market prices. Economically, it was in great need of industrialization. With slavery abolished, African Americans were playing a different role in the New South. Henry W. Grady made this term popular in his articles and speeches as editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Richard Hathaway Edmonds of the Baltimore Manufacturers' Record was another staunch advocate of New South industrialization. The Manufacturers' Record was one of the most widely read and powerful publications among turn of the 20th-century industrialists. Historian Paul Gaston coined the specific term "New South Creed" to describe the promises of visionaries like Grady, who said industrialization would bring prosperity to the region. The classic history was written by C. Vann Woodward: The Origins of the New South: 1877–1913, published in 1951 by Louisiana State University Press. Sheldon Hackney, a Woodward student, hails the book but explains: The New South campaign was championed by Southern elites often outside of the old planter class. Their hopes were to make a fresh "new" start, forming partnerships with Northern capitalists in order to modernize and speed up economic development of the South. From Henry Grady to black leader Booker T. Washington, New South advocates wanted southern economic regeneration, sectional reconciliation, racial harmony, and believed in the gospel of work. The rise of the New South, however, involved the continued supremacy of whites over blacks, who had little or no political power once Reconstruction was over, Federal troops were withdrawn from the South as a result of the Compromise of 1877, and Jim Crow laws were