of the modern Yankee; although it remained for those subsequent influences which educate nations as well as individuals to complete that character, to add new vices to it, and to give it its full development. But the intolerance of the Puritan, the painful thrift of the Northern colonists, their external forms of piety, their jaundiced legislation, their convenient morals, their lack of the sentimentalism which makes up the half of modern civilization, and their unremitting hunt after selfish aggrandizement are traits of character which are yet visible in their descendants.* On the other hand, the colonists of Virginia and the Carolinas were from the first distinguished for their polite manners, their fine sentiments, their attachment to a sort of feudal life, their landed gentry, their love of field-sports and dangerous adventure, and the prodigal and improvident aristocracy that dispensed its stores in constant rounds of hospitality and gaiety.

Slavery established in the South a peculiar and noble type of civiliza tion. It was not without attendant vices; but the virtues which followed in its train were numerous and peculiar, and asserted the general good effect of the institution on the ideas and manners of the South. If habits of command sometimes degenerated into cruelty and insolence; yet, in the greater number of instances, they inculcated notions of chivalry, polished the manners and produced many noble and generous virtues. If the relief of a large class of whites from the demands of physical labour gave occasion in some instances for idle and dissolute lives, yet at the same time it afforded opportunity for extraordinary culture, elevated the standards of

* It appears that in the revolutionary war Gen. Washington acquired a singular insight into the New England character. From his camp at Cambridge, in 1775, he wrote, in a private letter to Richard Henry Lee, an account of the New England part of his army, that reminds one of incidents of 1861-'5. We append an extract from this letter, which remained for many years in the Lee family, and was only brought to light during the recent war:

*

*

I submit it, therefore, to your consideration, whether there is, or is not, a propriety in that resolution of the Congress which leaves the ultimate appointment of all officers below the rank of general to the governments where the regiments originated, now the army is become Continental? To me, it appears improper in two points of view-first, it is giving that power and weight to an individual Colony which ought of right to belong to the whole. Then it damps the spirit and ardour of volunteers from all but the four New England Governments, as none but their people have the least chance of getting into office. Would it not be better, therefore, to have the warrants, which the Commander-in-Chief is authorized to give pro tempore, approved or disapproved by the Continental Congress, or a committee of their body, which I should suppose in any long recess must always sit? In this case, every gentleman will stand an equal chance of being promoted, according to his merit: in the other, all offices will be confined to the inhabitants of the four New England Governments, which, in my opinion, is impolitic to a degree. I have made a pretty good slam among such kind of officers as the Massachusetts Government abounds in since I came to this camp, having broken one colonel and two captains for cowardly behaviour in the action on Bunker's Hill, two captains for drawing more provisions and pay than they had men in their company, and one for being absent from his post when the enemy appeared there and burnt a house just by it. Beside these, I have at this time one colonel, one major, one captain, and two subalterns under arrest for trial. In short, I spare none, and yet fear it will not all do, as these people seem to be too inatten tive to everything but their interest."

THE NORTH JEALOUS OF SOUTHERN SUPERIORITY.

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scholarship in the South, enlarged and emancipated social intercourse, and established schools of individual refinement. The South had an element in its society-a landed gentry-which the North envied, and for which its substitute was a coarse ostentatious aristocracy that smelt of the trade, and that, however it cleansed itself and aped the elegance of the South, and packed its houses with fine furniture, could never entirely subdue a sneaking sense of its inferiority. There is a singularly bitter hate which is inseparable from a sense of inferiority; and every close observer of Northern society has discovered how there lurked in every form of hostility to the South the conviction that the Northern man, however disguised with ostentation, was coarse and inferiour in comparison with the aristocracy and chivalry of the South.

That of the

The civilization of the North was coarse and materialistic. South was scant of shows, but highly refined and sentimental. The South was a vast agricultural country; waste lands, forest and swamps often gave to the eye a dreary picture; there were no thick and intricate nets of internal improvements to astonish and bewilder the traveller, no country picturesque with towns and villages to please his vision. Northern men ridiculed this apparent scantiness of the South, and took it as an evidence of inferiority. But this was the coarse judgment of the surface of things. The agricultural pursuits of the South fixed its features; and however it might decline in the scale of gross prosperity, its people were trained in the highest civilization, were models of manners for the whole country, rivalled the sentimentalism of the oldest countries of Europe, established the only schools of honour in America, and presented a striking contrast in their well-balanced character to the conceit and giddiness of the Northern people.

Foreigners have made a curious and unpleasant observation of a certain exaggeration of the American mind, an absurd conceit that was never done asserting the unapproachable excellence of its country in all things. The Washington affair was the paragon of governments; the demagogical institutions of America were the best under the sun; the slip-shod literature of the country, the smattered education of the people were the foci of the world's enlightenment; and, in short, Americans were the lords. of creation. De Tocqueville observed: "the Americans are not very remote from believing themselves to belong to a distinct race of mankind."

But it is to be remarked that this boastful disposition of mind, this exaggerated conceit was peculiarly Yankee. It belonged to the garish civilization of the North. It was Daniel Webster who wrote, in a diplomatic paper, that America was "the only great republican power." It was Yankee orators who established the Fourth-of-July school of rhetoric, exalted the American eagle, and spoke of the Union as the last, best gift

to man. This afflatus had but little place among the people of the South. Their civilization was a quiet one; and their characteristic as a people has always been that sober estimate of the value of men and things, which, as in England, appears to be the best evidence of a substantial civilization and a real enlightenment. Sensations, excitements on slight causes, fits of fickle admiration, manias in society and fashion, a regard for magnitude, display and exaggeration, all these indications of a superficial and restless civilization abounded in the North and were peculiar to its people. The sobriety of the South was in striking contrast to these exhibitions, and was interpreted by the vanity of the North as insensibility and ignorance, when it was, in fact, the mark of the superiour civilization.

This contrast between the Northern and Southern minds is vividly illustrated in the different ideas and styles of their worship of that great American idol-the Union. In the North there never was any lack of rhetorical fervour for the Union; its praises were sounded in every note of tumid literature, and it was familiarly entitled "the glorious." But the North worshipped the Union in a very low, commercial sense; it was a source of boundless profit; it was productive of tariffs and bounties; and it had been used for years as the means of sectional aggrandizement.

The South regarded the Union in a very different light. It estimated it at its real value, and although quiet and precise in its appreciation, and not given to transports, there is this remarkable assertion to be made: that the moral veneration of the Union was peculiarly a sentiment of the South and entirely foreign to the Northern mind. It could not be otherwise, looking to the different political schools of the two sections. In the North, the doctrine of State Rights was generally rejected for the prevalent notion that America was a single democracy. To the people of the North the Union was therefore a mere geographical name, a political designation which had no peculiar claims upon their affection. In the South the Union was differently regarded. State Rights was the most marked peculiarity of the politics of the Southern people; and it was this doctrine that gave the Union its moral dignity, and was the only really possible source of sentimental attachment to it. (The South bowed before neither an idol of gain, nor the shadow of a name. She worshipped that picture of the Union drawn by John C. Calhoun: a peculiar association in which sovereign States were held by high considerations of good faith; by the exchanges of equity and comity; by the noble attractions of social order; by the enthused sympathies of a common destiny of power, honour and renown. But, alas! this picture existed only in the imagination; the idea of Mr. Calhoun was never realized; and the South, torn from its moral and sentimental attachment to the Union, found that it had no other claims upon its affection.

THE UNION OPPRESSIVE TO THE SOUTH.

53

To understand how the Union became a benefit to the North and resulted in the oppression of the South, it is only necessary to compare the two sections in the elements of prosperity, and to explore the sources of those elements as far as they can be traced within the domain of the Union.

CHAPTER III.

MATERIAL DECLINE OF THE SOUTH IN THE UNION.-SHIFTING OF THE NUMBERS AND ENTERPRISE OF THE COUNTRY FROM THE SOUTHERN TO THE NORTHERN STATES.-VIRGINIA'S RANK AMONG THE STATES AT 'THE TIME OF THE REVOLUTION.-COMMERCIAL DISTRESS OF THE STATES AFTER THE REVOLUTION.-HOW NEW ENGLAND SUFFERED. THE SOUTH THEN RECKONED THE SEAT OF FUTURE EMPIRE.-THE PEOPLE AND STRENGTH OF AMERICA BEARING SOUTHWARDLY.-EMIGRATION TO THE SOUTH.-KENTUCKY AND THE VALES OF FRANKLAND.-VIRGINIA'S PROSPERITY.—HER EARLY LAND SYSTEM. THE CHESAPEAKE. ALEXANDRIA.—GEORGE WASHINGTON'S GREAT COMMERCIAL PROJECT.-TWO PICTURES OF VIRGINIA: 1789 AND 1829.—AN EXAMPLE OF THE DECLINE OF THE SOUTH IN MATERIAL PROSPERITY. THIS DECLINE NOT TO BE ATTRIBUTED TO SLAVERY.-ITS TRUE CAUSES.-EFFECT OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE ON THE TIDES OF EMIGRATION.UNEQUAL FEDERAL LEGISLATION AS A CAUSE OF THE SECTIONAL LAPSE OF THE SOUTH IN THE UNION. THE KEY TO THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA.-A GREAT DEFECT OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION.-POPULATION AS AN ELEMENT OF PROSPERITY AND POWER. HOW THIS WAS THROWN INTO THE NORTHERN SCALE.-TWO SECTIONAL MEASURES.-COMPARISONS OF SOUTHERN REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS AT THE DATE OF THE CONSTITUTION AND IN THE YEAR 1860.-SECTIONAL DOMINATION OF THE NORTH.-A PROTECTIVE TARIFF.-"THE BILL OF ABOMINATIONS."-SENATOR BENTON ON THE TARIFF OF 1828.-HIS RETROSPECT OF THE PROSPERITY OF THE SOUTH.-HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN TARIFFS.-TARIFF OF 1833, A DECEITFUL COMPROMISE.—OTHER MEASURES OF NORTHERN AGGRANDIZEMENT. INGENUITY OF NORTHERN AVARICE.-WHY THE SOUTH COULD NOT USE HER DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE IN THE NORTH TO PROTECT HER INTERESTS. THIS ALLIANCE ONE ONLY FOR PARTY PURPOSES.-ITS VALUE.-ANALYSIS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN THE NORTH.-THE SOUTH UNDER THE RULE OF A NU MERICAL MAJORITY. ARRAY OF THAT MAJORITY ON A SECTIONAL LINE NECESSARILY FATAL TO THE UNION.-WHEN AND WHY THE SOUTH SHOULD ATTEMPT DISUNION.

Ir is not unusual in countries of large extent for the tides of population and enterprise to change their directions and establish new seats of power and prosperity. But the change which in little more than a generation after the American Revolution shifted the numbers and enterprise of the country from the Southern to the Northern States was so distinctly from one side of a line to the other, that we must account such the result of certain special and well-defined causes. To discover these