However, owing to this endless struggle which the Serbs of Hungary
were waging, they developed their activity and energy. The land was
rich, particularly Ba[vc]ka, and that province held the town of Novi
Sad, which was not only prosperous but the home of learning. When
Serbia was not in a position to devote herself to intellectual or to
literary life, she was assisted always by the Serbs of Novi Sad. And
thus in other parts of southern Hungary the Serb, by his continual
efforts against other people, such as the industrious German, made to
flower those aptitudes within himself which under Turkish domination
had perforce been lying dormant.... It is no unusual thing in the
Banat to find a Serbian farmer who is five or six times a millionaire
in francs. And if, like a hearty one whom I found having lunch without
a collar, they have no children, then they are even more anxious to
build schools and churches and to support anything Serbian. This
gentleman, who lived in his native place, had presented it with a very
fine school, and then had gone there himself, to learn how to read and
write.... The Serbs of southern Hungary took a most active part in the
events of 1848. When they saw that a conflict with the Magyars was
inevitable, owing to the new Hungarian Constitution which created an
enormous and free Hungary, but only free for the Magyars--a State
founded on a mixture of democratic and feudal principles, reserving
always the chief places for the magnates, lay and ecclesiastic, while
rejecting the idea of universal suffrage--then the Serbs of southern
Hungary assembled at Karlovci at the beginning of May and conferred
upon Archbishop Rajacsich the title of Patriarch, at the same time
electing Colonel Stephen [vC]uplikac the voivoda or chief of the
Serbian Voivodina, which was to comprise Syrmia, Baranja, Ba[vc]ka and
a part of the Banat.