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power and provided many opportunities for the South’s leading men and women to exercise that power. Yet, as a place of conflict as well as harmony, the intense but amiable springs environment constantly sparked contests for a right to power. The competition for status, attention to display, and judgment of performance seemingly belied the intimate and sociable atmosphere of the springs, but the dedication to affability and refinement transformed what could have been a vicious experience into part of the allure of a season at the springs. Through display, contest, and scrutiny, southern ladies and gentlemen defined themselves and consolidated their claims to status. While these processes occurred within the unique environment of the Virginia Springs, they reflected and influenced southern society in general. As the elite gathered from throughout the South every summer in this truly regional community, they reformed and renewed their regional identity to a degree unknown in their plantation and town communities.  ‘‘A Never Ceasing Scene of Stir, Animation, Display, & Enjoyment’’ The Virginia Springs environment highlighted and intensified the characteristics prized by the southern gentry. The exclusivity of the resorts and the orderliness of life there strongly appealed to the visitors. Guests relished the amusement and leisure that pervaded the spot. The exclusivity and dedication to order, refinement, and gentility also created an easy and amiable, almost familial, atmosphere. Beginning soon after 1790, the Virginia Springs emerged as a place of regional unity for the large numbers of southerners who came from plantations and towns all across the South during the summer. Before the springs became places of resort in the late eighteenth century , they had primarily attracted people from the surrounding countryside . Once the proprietors decided to cater to an elite clientele, construct hotels, and charge high prices, the Virginia Springs resorts became enclaves for the privileged and prominent. As Judith Rives remembered, ‘‘A visit to the Virginia Springs was rather an aristocratic distinction, since it was an indulgence only to be attained by persons who could command their own carriages, horses and servants.’’ Throughout the South, gentry men and 104 Ladies and Gentlemen o n d i s p l ay women knew about the springs and traveled great distances to spend a summer in this fashionable and popular place. The duration and expense of the trip necessarily made the resorts exclusive. Poorer small farmers did not have many, if any, slaves to work their fields or a small fortune to pay the enormous expenses of even a short visit (fig. 12). But wealthy planters and others with the time and money to travel to one or more spas over the summer could afford the trip across the Blue Ridge. A two-week stay in 1816 at White Sulphur, for example, cost Richmond’s John Wickham $167 for board and lodging for himself, his wife, oldest daughter, two children, four servants, and six horses, though this included a hefty bar tab. By the late 1850s, an entire season, mid-July to mid-October, at Fauquier White Sulphur totaled close to seven hundred dollars for Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and his family.1 To put these resort charges in perspective, a day laborer in Virginia in 1850 received only 65 cents per day and a skilled carpenter just $1.22. In South Carolina, the same kinds of workers received 66 cents and $1.40, respectively. Female domestics earned 96 cents a week, including board, in Virginia and $1.42 in South Carolina. In 1850 a farmhand worked for a monthly wage of $8.43, including board, in Virginia and $7.72 in South Carolina.2 Such wages prohibited a trip of any duration to the springs for laborers and small farmers from outside the immediate area. It was only by accompanying her wealthy employers that a free domestic could visit the springs. The well-known exclusivity of the Virginia Springs pleased most of its visitors. These men and women wanted to appear select and sought to frequent select places, as genteel persons should. Exclusivity guaranteed them a level of society that met their expectations. The southern gentry could feel comfortable at such places, for, as John H. B. Latrobe noted of White Sulphur , ‘‘there is something eminently aristocratic about the place, and you feel that you are with your fellows here, more than at any other place of its kind in Virginia.’’ Foreign visitors likewise readily discerned the refined, even aristocratic, feel of White Sulphur. There, the English novelist Frederick Marryat proclaimed, ‘‘You...

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