Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863

SOUTHERN HATE OF NEW ENGLAND

In these days of strange and startling events, of rapid and fundamental changes, of curious and unexpected developments; these days, tremulous with the vibrations of the political atmosphere, and quaking with the fierce earthquake of national war; these days, that are filling up a web of history with more fearful rapidity, more complete, important, and decisive results than any previous epoch in the world's annals, – a history which, if ever truly and worthily penned, will demand a deeper search into moral causes and effects, a closer scrutiny of the philosophy of mind, and a more careful balancing of political judgments, than any drama ever before played on the great world's stage, – in such days as these, I say, it is curious and profitable to subject each new moral phase that presents itself to a rigid analysis, and trace every effect, moral, political, governmental, or popular, to the cause or causes that may, after a fair showing, appear to have produced it. A fair and dispassionate application of true and just principles is as essential to a right political judgment as to a correct moral decision, and he who allows himself to be led by passion, selfishness, prejudice, or a blind adoration of party, instead of the calm convictions of educated reason and conscience, thereby dishonors himself, and abdicates the right he possesses of acting for the best interests of himself and all. Especially is this true under a democratic form of government – where every citizen is a legislator, virtually, – where opinion leads to political action, and is consequently responsible for the course that action may take, and where each one helps to swell the numbers of those great parties that in their plannings and counterplannings make or mar the general good fortune. If this is true of individual citizens, how much more is it true of those mighty engines of the press and of party, that sweep such grand circles of influence, and install, in grandeur or in gloom, such important national conditions. That these are fruitful of evil as well as of good, every great national struggle, every crisis in the affairs of nations and of humanity, bears witness. Every national contest has seen the rise and the fall of an anti-war party, and felt the influence of a press wielded in the interest of that party. These have not, necessarily, always been in the wrong. The contrary has been often true, though their fall, and the opprobrium cast upon them have been none the less sure. It is only when these have arisen during the progress of a war involving great moral and humanitarian principles in its successful prosecution, that the whole force of such an opposing influence is felt, the whole evil apparent. No cause however just, no war however holy, no trust however high and honorable, but has met the violence of this evil opposition, and the danger of betrayal from this source. Not while men possess the greed of power, place, and gold; not while reason is held in abeyance to passion, is freedom safe without a guardian, or the liberties of mankind able to abide without 'eternal vigilance.' Even our national war, the grandest and holiest of time, both in its purposes and results, is only the last most mournful illustration of this fact. When these contemporaneous judgments, true or untrue, as they shall prove, now in the heat of the time evolved in the thoughts of those who do think, and becoming crystallized in the countless newspapers and periodicals which deluge our land, and in the party records of the hour, come to be thoroughly sifted, and the sure and impartial verdict made up to pass into 'the golden urn of history,' without appeal thenceforth, great will be the glory or the shame of the prominent actors in the drama now enacting before the eyes of the world.

What is the spectacle that our astonished eyes behold? The Genius of Liberty, standing on the threshold of her besieged temple, pale, fettered, betrayed in the house of her very friends, but resolute and dauntless as ever, her eye calm and steadfast, her hand firmly grasping the Magna Charta of our birthright, and the birthright of all the race. While a raging and vindictive foe bays her in front, and the leal and true are pressing in countless hosts around her at her call, a false and craven crew are basely creeping in at undefended passages, and, with lies and slanders and deceitful tongues, endeavoring to undermine the foundations of her strength. Base sappers and miners! Thank God ye are few! And the number of the people ye are trying to hoodwink and seduce from their allegiance is hourly growing less, as your cunningly devised schemes explode. Do ye not know that the people of the Free States are loyal to the core? That great principles are invincible as fate, say rather, Providence? and that those who will not move in their onward course must be overwhelmed beneath the wheels of their triumphal chariot? Do ye not fear the award of posterity? Let the partisan press of to-day, and those who inspirit and sustain it here at the North, who are vainly and impotently trying to turn back the tide of human progress by aiding and abetting the vilest rebellion against a good government that has been seen since Satan, that arch rebel, chose 'rather to reign in hell than serve in heaven,' shudder at the report the unerring tongue of history will give them, even if they care nought for the good of humanity as bound up in the well being of this land. I have called these men few, for it cannot be that the great and time-honored organization of which I hope these men are but the calumniators, boasting the grand old names of Jefferson and Jackson as founders, and enrolling in its ranks so many thousands of the substantial yeomanry and solid men of the country, will really prove false to its name and trust, and be willing to descend into history in the robe of horror and infamy which, like the fabled shirt of Nessus, would cling to it forever as the country's betrayer, if it shall not shake itself free from these vile contaminators. No party could survive the weight of the foul imputation of putting barriers in the way of this war, which, we firmly believe, though terrible and bloody while it lasts, is to end by giving a fresh and vigorous impulse to the cause of human redemption and advancement – an impulse that nothing thereafter shall be able to check materially.

Although one only comprehensive principle lies at the bottom of the anomalous condition of things which preceded, and at last culminated in, the tremendous civil contest through which the country is now passing – a fierce baptism of fire and blood necessary to purge and reinstate her in pristine purity and grandeur, whose end is certainly not yet – still it is constantly assuming new disguises, and has been aptly likened to a virulent and incurable cancer in the body politic, which, driven in in one place, instantly breaks out with redoubled fierceness in another. Its latest and favorite form is that of hatred to New England. I have called it Southern hatred of New England. By this I do not mean to denote any geographical limit or boundary. This war is not a war of sections, but a war of ideas; and the terms Southern and Northern are to be limited to this ideal meaning. The two sections, as such, are not arrayed against each other, but the two antagonistic principles represented by these sections are, in sad truth, at deadly warfare. We see Union men at the South, and secessionists at the North; but there is this difference in the position of those who oppose the Government North, and those who favor it South. The former are would-be leaders, who assume to act for the outraged people; the latter are merely the people, or a portion of them, lacking organization and leadership, and consequently obliged to submit to the tyranny that has laid its iron hand upon them. I do not believe, and never have believed, in the asserted unanimity of the Southern people. Recalling my eight years' residence among, and acquaintance with, the people of the South, of two of the cotton States principally, I cannot think that they have, almost to a man, lost their respect and love for the national banner and authority, and, rather than submit to it again, would prefer to be 'English Colonists,' 'French vassals,' or 'Russian serfs!' No; their leaders first grossly cajole and deceive them, and then basely slander them. That there is an apparent oneness, I admit; but I think the time is not far off when, if the Federal Government but does its duty, and uses its authority and strength wisely, crippling the rebel faction in every possible way, thousands of liberated arms will spring forth to seize the sword in its defence, and as many liberated voices swell the All hail! that will burst out for its welcome. For, so long tutored to the repression of any independent ideas, any sentiments that do not tally with the doctrines to full belief in which these leaders have aimed to educate the men of the last generation, viz., the divine origin and purpose of slavery, and the other mischievous and absurd dogma of State sovereignty, which, but for slavery and its imperative demands, would never have seen the light, but have perished stillborn – they have no idea of the freedom of opinion and expression permitted among us, and their minds and consciences have become nerveless and supine to an astonishing degree; or, if thinking and feeling, as very many do, they suffer in silence, not daring to resist the oppressive faction that has ruled them so long. Moral force and courage is not the fruit of subserviency to the principles and ideas that have gradually filled the Southern mind. No wonder that the Union sentiment that showed itself so plainly at the outbreak of the rebellion became, ere long, like one of those streams that, starting impetuously from its mountain source, flows on awhile clearly and rapidly, and then begins to wander and slacken its pace, till finally it is lost in the dreariness and desolation of some marshy wilderness, and so never reaches its destination, the open sea. There is no people in the world so abused and defrauded as the bulk of the Southern whites. If you pity the oppressed of another race, then pity still more those of your own blood who are suffering a worse slavery, and who yet do not know it, but hug fondly the chains of their servitude. Then, too, consider the thousands of Northern men and women scattered all over the South, and say if you think they are linked, heart and hand, with the destroyers of the Government.

But with all this as an offset, still there is an undeniably strong and unscrupulous faction there, composed of the leading minds of the South, acute, imperious, sophistical, used to political and social rule, and backed by a small but cunning minority here at the North, so vile and contemptible that, in comparison with its adherents, they, these slave oligarchs, are 'Hyperion to a satyr.' These, with the thousands both North and South, misled and befooled by them, form the formidable opposition with which the Government is even now closing in a life-or-death encounter. These represent one of the two grand ideas at last met in a decisive struggle on this North American Continent, after the numberless petty skirmishes, reconnoissances, and lesser conflicts which have stained the battle fields of the world with the best blood of humanity during so many thousand years. No child's play now – no diplomatic dissembling – no sword thrusts intended to be parried, no machiavelian hits nor disguises. The fight is close, desperate, deadly; it is yard arm to yard arm; it is heart seeking for naked heart, flashing eye to eye, visor down, and hot breath mingling with hot breath, as the foes close in the last grapple. The other idea is embodied in the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and is represented by the Federal authority. The South, then, is taken to mean the one, and the North, its opposite. On one side barbarism, slavery, injustice, ignorance, despotism, the woes and maledictions of oppressed races, the carnival of fiends; on the other, civilization, freedom, justice, education, republicanism, the gladness and gratitude of redeemed humanity, the jubilee of joy among angels. On the side of disunion, endless bickerings, intestine wars, standing armies, crushing debts, languishing commerce, all improvement at a stand still, tyranny settling darkly down over the liberties of the people and of individuals, and national influence gone forever. On the side of Union, honorable peace, legitimate expansion, social order and improvement, increasing commerce, the education and elevation of the masses, the path of success open to all, the freedom and rights of all, even the least and poorest secured, and the nation occupying a front rank among nations, her flag loved no less than feared, her government the model one of the world, and the great experiment of self-government safe beyond the peradventure of failure. Who doubts the issue of such a struggle – who would cheat himself of being one with God and good men in the glory of a triumph so possible and certain?

But why is it that the hate of all rebels, North and South, is so malignantly directed toward New England especially? What has she done more than New York or Illinois? Again I reply, it is not geographical New England that is so feared and hated, but the ideas she represents. I have called these, already, the Northern idea. But if the nature of our political philosophy be closely scanned, if we exactly analyze the genius of our institutions in their proper and unbiased action, we shall be forced to acknowledge that it was the Puritan idea which predominated; that it is, in fact, the saving clause in the gospel of our national salvation. And New England was the first home of the Puritans – the focus from which have radiated the myriad beams of the light of which they were the repositories to the remotest corners of the land. Let no one be alarmed at the mention of the word Puritan. There are some people who have no other notion of a Puritan than that of a close-cropped, saturnine personage, having a nasal twang, who is forevermore indulging an insane propensity to sing psalms, quote Scripture, or burn witches. These are the people who can never see into the profound deep of a great truth, but are quite ready to laugh at its travesty or caricature. And what high or holy truth has not been caricatured? For one, I envy not the head or the heart of him who can think the name of Puritan a badge of shame or reproach, and who has no sympathy nor admiration for the stern resolution, the wondrous fortitude, the deep enthusiasm for freedom, the unwavering faith, and the high religious devotion of those men and women who first lit a torch in the wilderness, soon to become the beacon light of the world.

Nor would I be understood to mean a wholesale and indiscriminate adoration of the Puritans as a sect. The appellation, which was bestowed upon them in opprobrium, and which they certainly wore in no meek manner, but evidently gloried in as a word of highest praise and honor, I use as a convenient one to characterize the idea I would represent. These men were but the chosen instruments in the hands of Him who no doubt has ever ordered the course of affairs in the world, to open up a new epoch in its history. The time was ripe – the men had been moulded – and through them the free principles which had been culminating through the ages, which had stirred the souls, animated the imaginations, and quickened the desires of the best and noblest of the race from its birth till now, were at last to find a resistless voice, a limitless scope, an unrepressed expansion, on a new and magnificent theatre. For freedom is of no time, nor clime, nor color, nor sect, nor nationality. She is the primal gift of God to his intelligent creatures, and is the kingly dower of every human soul. She was not born with the Puritans, nor did she die with them. In no age or land, among no sect or people, has she been without her priesthood, her altar, her ritual, her heart worship. Nor is she to blame for the wrongs and atrocities committed in her name. The ideas and principles the Puritans were ordained to carry out and embody in a great political structure were of the noblest, rarest, most enduring and beneficent; the faults that marred the beauty and consistency of their own character, were the exaggerations of their virtues, and arose from the frailty and instability of the human heart, even when most governed and inspired by the highest motives. The principles remain steadfast, immovable, immortal; the defects we can but grieve over and forgive for the sake of the grandeur they only marred but could not destroy.

Through the weakness of our nature, through the deceitfulness of the heart, the zeal which, in its proper exercise, is admirable, as inciting us to a grand enthusiasm in a cause believed to be true and holy, ofttimes degenerates into a blind and bitter bigotry, as unreasoning as reprehensible; the faith which pierces the unseen and eternal, and fixes its calm eye on One who sits changeless amid infinite series of changes, all-wise amid infinite follies and wickednesses of His creatures, all-merciful and all-loving amid the hate and opposition of weak, finite hearts, becomes a gloomy asceticism, or a fierce inquisitorial despotism, perverting Him – this glorious and loving God – into a cold, selfish, unreasonable Being, as far removed from our sympathies and love as He is from caring for us, and only existing to receive the hateful homage of fearful and enslaved souls; and what was a high, disinterested, fearless devotion to truth and duty becomes a narrow, selfish, insane thirst for the ascendency of sect or party, or the propagation of some pet dogmas, which, so far from touching practically the happiness, duty, or destiny of the soul, are mere stumbling stones, strewing the dark mountains of vain, egotistic, arrogant human speculation. As there is no power so relentless as a theological or spiritual despotism, so there is no tendency of the mind more easy, subtle, or strong, than a tendency toward it. To say these men erred, is to say that they were men. But if they partook of the common liability to error of this nature, let us not forget that but for them, fallible and inconsistent as they were, the seeds of liberty, wafted from a thousand shores, and gathered through thousands of ages, might not have been transplanted to this continent, nor this mighty banyan of American freedom have struck its million roots into the soil far and wide, and stretched its million interlacing arms abroad, a sure and safe refuge for the nations.

It is not as a sect that I admire the Puritans. Away with all party lines, all sectional prejudices, all barriers of creed or sect at such a time as this, when all nations and creeds and colors are forming in serried ranks, a close and impervious breakwater, to resist the threatening tide of rebellion and ruin whose sullen roar is in our ears, and when 'heaps of brothers slain' look into the sad face of heaven from fields where they fell, battling heroically to preserve the common heritage. No! a better day is dawning – a day of fairer promise, of more tranquil beauty, of more enduring blessedness, than ever before gladdened the hearts of men. To see that day come, all the good and true and loyal are waiting and working, no matter of what faith, or tongue, or nationality. I do not regard the sins of the Puritans as resulting from the principles by which they professed to be governed, but rather as something extraneous and antagonistic to them. Their ideas and principles resulted in the broadest constitutional liberty, while the free thought, free speech, free inquiry, the wide individual freedom, which, as a church, under the influence of a stern theological despotism they sought to stifle, under those very institutions they founded are to-day the pride, the life, the glory of free and progressive New England.

It is only in this broad sense, then, that I use the term Puritan, to denote the agency whereby Providence saw fit to inaugurate the ideas which were to form the foundation of our national polity.

The Puritan idea, then, predominated in the principles embodied in the Declaration of Rights and in the Constitution. But says one, Washington was no Puritan, nor Jefferson, nor the majority of the first framers of our Government. Granted that they were not born on Puritan soil, par excellence, but were they not of the spirit and understanding of the Puritans? (In fact, I suspect that Washington was a Puritan of the Puritans.) A Virginia Puritan, a cavalier Puritan even, was not then the strange phenomenon, the lusus naturæ, it would be nowadays. Besides, let it be remembered that the Constitution was not the production of any man or set of men. It was the outgrowth of the political ideas and necessities of the age and country. These men, trained in the spirit of the time, gave direction to their development, assisted to inaugurate the reign of those ideas, and to give them a specific embodiment, no more. Great and good men they were – the fit productions of the renowned epoch of the birth of a great people. It is a noble thing, a thing for fame and just pride, if men live at such a time who can share the inspiration, and cause it to live in great deeds, to say nothing of creating it.

What, then, are the distinguishing characteristics of this Puritan idea or influence?

Since the country had a history at all, New England has been reputed the centre, the abiding home of a pure morality. This needs no elaborate argument to sustain it. The records of her criminal and civil courts attest it; so do the general good order of her small communities and larger cities, as well as the high character of the numerous men and women who, emigrating to the various portions of the country, carry with them, wherever they choose a home, the pure principles they have learned around the home firesides in their native New England – the industry, the thrift, the obedience to law, the superior intelligence, which make them the best citizens in any community. The New England communities, generally, possess a higher standard of morals, a more intelligent adhesion to what is regarded as duty, a more simple social intercourse, and purer social manners and customs, with fewer dissipations and derelictions, than perhaps any other people in the world can boast. Nor is there claimed for the New England Puritan a perfect character. On the contrary, there are some traits which, in their excess, we could wish were omitted in his composition. These, however, will be found to be but exaggerations of his virtues for the most part, and for the sake of those virtues can easily be tolerated, though they have been sufficiently inveighed against from time to time. From this high state of morals there results a very high degree of social order, which, in its result, again, gives large social and individual liberty. Nowhere will there be found a freer people, and yet one more observant of law. Indeed, the former is only the effect of the latter. A cultivated reason sees at once that the more perfectly law is observed, the more absolute does freedom become; that the highest personal and social freedom is only attainable through a perfect obedience to the laws by which persons and societies are bound.

Again, it is no doubt true, and may be stated as a characteristic correlated to the one above mentioned, that nowhere else is a purer gospel preached than in New England. The piety of the New England heart is deep and strong, if not demonstrative and fervent. It is not like the sweep of the winds, nor the rush of the torrents; its faith may be burning, but it is the steady burning of the hidden fire, a vestal flame, not the glare of the conflagration. It rather reminds me, in its depth and strength and purity, of the ocean, calm, uniform, and monotonous outwardly, but concealing under its surface many a swift current and strong countercurrent, many a fair expanse, many a lovely secret of life, beauty, and glory. The religious faith of New England fully and devoutly receives those sublime doctrines of Christianity which were given as good news, indeed, to the race; not to a favored few, but to the individual man and woman of the race. It credits in a real and literal sense the declaration of Paul that 'God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth;' and the opening sentence of the Declaration of Rights is something more to them than a 'glittering generality.' A deep, intelligent religious faith may be said to underlie all the institutions of New England, political and social. For what is that genius of Christianity that has ever found its truest exponent in the teachings of the New England theology, and in the lives and practice of her people? Is it not the liberty of every person, without respect to color or condition, but simply in consideration of his humanity, to learn and to obey every law of his being, physical, moral, intellectual, social, and religious? To be untrammelled in following out the best light conscience and revelation may afford him as to the constitution and laws of his being, his duty to himself, his fellow man, and his Creator, and his destiny, which he himself is to determine? The Christian religion may be comprehensively defined as the golden circlet which includes all the complex duties, interests, and affections of the most complex being, man, and lifts him up, and binds him back, with all his capacities, hopes, and sympathies, to the throne of the Infinite, from which, in his low, fettered, and sinful estate, he is an alien; and all this through the love and mercy of the Infinite One Himself. This I conceive to be the true intent and glorious result of Christianity, when allowed to have free and unimpeded action on the soul of man. It will be seen to be wellnigh limitless – a power adequate to the work to be accomplished, and in this sense is truly 'the power of God and the wisdom of God.' This power is dominant, either consciously or unconsciously, over every relation of life in New England, being interwoven in the very life of her institutions. I believe this secret, quiet, yet active, all-pervading influence is very little understood, and yet it will explain much in the Puritan character that no other key will unlock. I have mentioned a pure morality, which is the effect, before a pure Christianity, which is the cause, simply because the effect is more obvious at first glance.