SECTIONAL PREJUDICE.
It is the practice at Washington to pay the Members of Congress, not
only a per diem allowance, but their travelling expenses; at so much per
twenty miles. Two Members of Congress from Missouri made charges widely
different in amount. Complaints were made that the Members were not
confined to a mail route, and that the country had to pay for any
digressions the honourable gentlemen might be in the humour to make.
Upon this, a Member observed that, so far from wishing to confine the
congressional travellers to a mail route, he would, if possible,
prescribe the condition that they should travel, both in coming and
going, through every State of the Union. Any money thus expended, would
be, he considered, a cheap price to pay for the conquest of prejudices
and dispersion of unfriendly feelings, which would be the consequence of
the rambles he proposed.
The Members of Congress from the north like to revert to the day when
there were only two universities, Harvard and Yale, to which all the
youth of the Union repaired for education. The southern members love to
boast of the increase of colleges, so that every State will soon be
educating its own youth. The northern men miss the sweet sounds of
acknowledgment which used to meet their ears, as often as past days were
referred to--the grateful mention of the New England retreats where the
years of preparation for active life were spent. The southern men are
mortified at the supposition that everything intellectual must come out
of New England. When they boast that Virginia has produced almost all
their Presidents, they are met by the boast that New England has
furnished almost all the school-masters, professors, and clergy of the
country. While the north is still fostering a reverence for the Union,
the south loses no opportunity of enlarging lovingly on the virtue of
passionate attachment to one's native state.
There is much nature and much reason in all this. It is true that there
is advantage in the youth of the whole country being brought together
within college walls, at the age when warm friendships are formed. They
can hardly quarrel very desperately in Congress, after having striven,
and loved, and learned together, in their bright early days. The cadets
at West Point spoke warmly to me of this. They told me that when a youth
is coming from afar, the youths who have arrived from an opposite point
of the compass prepare to look cold upon him and quiz him, and receive
him frigidly enough; but the second Sunday seldom comes round before
they wonder at him and themselves, and acknowledge that he might almost
have been born in their own State. On the other hand, it is true that it
would be an absurdity and a hardship to the dwellers in the south and
west to have no means of educating their youth at home; but to be
obliged to send them a thousand miles in pursuit of necessary learning.
It is also true that medical colleges should abound; that peculiar
diseases, incident to climate and locality, may be studied on the spot.
In this, as in many other cases, some good must be sacrificed for the
attainment of a greater good.
The question is, need sectional prejudices increase under the new
arrangements? Are there no means of counteracting this great evil,
except the ancient methods? Is West Point the last spot whereon common
interests may rally, and whence state jealousies may be excluded?
I should be sorry if the answer were unfavourable; for this Sectional
Prejudice, carried beyond the point of due political vigilance, is
folly,--childish folly. Events prove it to be so. Deadly political
enemies meet at Washington, and snarl and declaim at one another with
mighty fierceness. They find themselves, some sunny day, lying on the
grass under the shade of a tree, at the country-house of an
acquaintance; they rise up cordial friends. They have actually discussed
the question of questions, the American System and Nullification; and
yet they rise up cordial friends. Again; a Boston gentleman and his lady
travel for health through the south and west. They hear abuse of their
State and city in abundance by the roadside; but their hearts are
touched by the hospitality and friendliness they meet under every roof.
Again; the planter carries his family to a Rhode Island bathing place,
for the hot season: and there he finds some to whom he can open his
heart about his domestic troubles, caused by slavery; he gains their
sympathy, and carries away their esteem. The sectional hatred, if not an
abstraction, is founded mainly on abstractions, and gives way at once
when the parties are confronted. Does it not deserve to be called
childish folly?
Yet "hatred" is not too strong a term for this sectional prejudice. Many
a time in America have I been conscious of that pang and shudder which
are felt only in the presence of hatred. I question whether the enmity
between the British and the Americans, at the most exasperating crisis
of the war, could ever have been more intense than some that I have seen
flashing in the eyes, and heard from the lips, of Americans against
fellow-citizens in distant sections of their country. I have scarcely
known whether to laugh or to mourn when I have been told that the New
England people are all pedlars or canting priests; that the people of
the south are all heathens; and those of the west all barbarians. Nay, I
was even told in New York that the Rhode Island people were all
heathens, and the New Jersey folks no better. Some Baltimore ladies told
me that the Philadelphia ladies say that no Baltimore lady knows how to
put on a bonnet: but that the Philadelphians have something worse the
matter with them than that; for that they do not know how to be
hospitable to strangers. Without stopping to settle which is the gravest
of these heavy charges, I am anxious to bear my testimony against the
correctness of either. I saw some pretty bonnets, most becomingly worn,
at Baltimore; and I can speak confidently to the hospitality of
Philadelphia.
Trifling as some instances appear of the manifestation of this puerile
spirit, it sometimes, it always, issues in results which are no
trifle;--always, because the spirit of jealousy is a deadly curse to him
who is possessed by it, whether it be founded on fact, or no. It cannot
co-exist with a generous patriotism, one essential requisite of which is
an enlarged faith in fellow-citizens. All republicans are patriotic,
more or less frequently and loftily. If every American will look into
himself at the moment he is glowing with patriotism, he will find his
sectional prejudices melted away and gone, for the season. The Americans
feel this in their travels abroad, when their country is attacked. They
yearn towards the remotest dwellers in their country as if they were the
nearest and dearest. Would they could always feel thus at home, and in
the absence of provocation!
The most mortifying instance that I witnessed of this sectional
prejudice was at Cincinnati. It was the most mortifying, on two
accounts; because it did not give way before intercourse; and because
its consequences are likely to be very serious to the city, and, if it
spreads, to the whole west. One may laugh at the untravelled citizen of
the south who declares that he knows the New Englanders very well. "How
should you know the New Englanders?" "O, they drive about in our parts
sometimes:"--"they" meaning the Yankee pedlars with wooden clocks for
sale. One may laugh at the simple youth on board a steam-boat on Lake
Erie, who warned me not to believe anything the Huron people might tell
me against the Sandusky people, because he could tell me beforehand that
it was all false, and that the Sandusky people are far better than the
Huron people. One may laugh at the contemptuous amazement of the Boston
lady at my declaration that I liked Cincinnati; that wild western place,
where she believed people did not sit down to dinner like Christians.
All mistakes of this kind, it is clear, might be rectified by a little
travelling. But it is a serious matter to see the travelled gentlemen,
the professional men of such a place as Cincinnati, setting up their
sectional prejudices in one another's way.
Cincinnati is a glorious place. Few things can be conceived finer than
the situation of this magnificent city, and the beauty by which she is
surrounded. She is enthroned upon a high platform,--one of the rich
bottoms occurring on the Ohio, which expand the traveller's notions of
what fertility is. Behind her are hills, opening and closing, receding
and advancing; here glowing with the richest green pasturage, and there
crested and ribbed by beeches which seem transplanted from some giant
land. Wherever we went among these hills, we found them rounding away
from us in some new form of beauty; in steep grassy slopes, with a
running stream at the bottom; in shadowy precipices, bristling with
trees; in quiet recesses, pierced by sunset lights, shining in among the
beechen stems, which spring, unencumbered by undergrowth, from the rich
elastic turf. These hill-sides reminded me of the Castle of Indolence,
of the quiet paths of Eden, of the shades that Una trod, of Windsor
Forest,--of all that my memory carried about undulating wood-lands: but
nothing would do; no description that I am acquainted with is rich
enough to answer to what I saw on the Ohio,--its slopes, and clumps, and
groves. At the foot of these hills runs the river, broad and full, busy
with the commerce of the wide West. A dozen steam-boats lie abreast at
the wharf, and many more are constantly passing; some stealing along,
unheard so far off, under the opposite bank; others puffing and
ploughing along the middle of the stream. Fine, level turnpike-roads
branch off from the city among the hills, which open so as to allow a
free circulation of air over the entire platform. Cincinnati is the most
healthy large city in the United States. The streets are wide; and the
terraces afford fine situations for houses. The furnishing of the
dwellings is as magnificent as the owners may choose to make it; for
commerce with the whole world is carried on from their port. Their
vineyards, their conservatories, their fruit and flower gardens delight
the eye in the gorgeous month of June. They have a native artist of
great genius who has adorned the walls of their houses with, perhaps,
the best pictures I saw in the country. I saw their streets filled with
their thousands of free-school children. "These," said a lady to me,
"are our populace." I thought it a populace worthy of such a city. There
is no need to speak of its long ranges of furnaces, of its shipping, of
its incredible commerce in pork, of its wealth and prospects. Suffice it
that one of its most respected inhabitants tells that when he landed in
Ohio, less than fifty years ago, it contained fewer than a hundred
whites; and buffalo lodged in a cane brake where the city now stands;
while the State at present contains upwards of a million of inhabitants,
the city between thirty and forty thousand; and Cincinnati has four
daily, and five or six weekly, newspapers, besides a variety of other
periodicals.
The most remarkable circumstance, and the most favourable, with regard
to the peopling of Cincinnati is, that its population contains
contributions of almost every element that goes to constitute society;
and each in its utmost vigour. There are here few of the arbitrary
associations which exist among the members of other societies. Young men
come with their wives, in all directions, from afar; with no parents,
cousins, sects, or parties about them. Here is an assemblage from almost
every nation under heaven,--a contribution from the resources of almost
every country; and all unburdened, and ready for natural association and
vigorous action. Like takes to like, and friendships are formed from
congeniality, and not from accident or worldly design. Yet is there a
tempering of prejudices, a mutual enlightenment, from previous
differences of education and habits,--difference even of country and
language. Great force is thus given to any principle carried out into
action by the common convictions of differing persons; and life is deep
and rapid in its course. Such is the theory of society in Cincinnati;
and such is, in some degree, its practice. But here it is that sectional
prejudice interferes, to set up arbitrary associations where, of all
places, they should be shunned.
The adventurers who barbarize society in new places, have gone westward;
and, of the full population that remains, above one-fifth are Germans.
Their function seems to be, everywhere in the United States, to
develope the material resources of the infant places in which they
settle; and the intellectual ones at a more advanced stage. They are the
farmers and market-gardeners here. There are many English, especially
among the artizans. I saw two handsome white houses, on the side of a
hill above the river, with rich ground lots, and extensive garden walls.
These are the property of two English artizans, brothers, who emigrated
a very few years ago. An Englishman, servant to a physician in
Cincinnati in 1818, turned pork-butcher; was worth 10,000 dollars when I
was there, and is rapidly growing rich. There are many New Englanders
among the clergy, lawyers, and merchants; and this is the portion of
society that will not freely mix with the westerners. It is no wonder if
the earliest settlers of the place, westerners, are proud of it, and are
careful to cherish its primitive emblems and customs. The New Englanders
should not take this as an affront to themselves. It is also natural
enough that the New Englanders should think and speak alike, and be fond
of acting together; and the westerners should not complain of their
being clannish. I was at a delightful party at the house of one of the
oldest inhabitants, where a sprig of the distinctive buck-eye was hung
up in the hall, and a buck-eye bowl of lemonade stood on the table. This
was peevishly commented upon by some of eastern derivation: but I
thought it would have been wiser to adopt the emblem than to find fault
with it. Cincinnati has not gone to the eastern people: the eastern
people have gone to her. If they have adopted her for their city, they
may as well adopt her emblems too, and make themselves westerners at
heart, as well as in presence. These discontents may appear trifling;
but they are not so while they impede the furtherance of great objects.
I was told on the spot that they would be very transient; but I fear it
is not so. And yet they would be very transient if the spirited and
choice inhabitants of that magnificent city could see their position as
it is viewed by people at a distance. When I was one day expressing my
admiration, and saying that it was a place for people of ambition,
worldly or philanthropic, to live in, one of its noblest citizens said,
"Yes, we have a new creation going on here; won't you come and dabble in
the mud?" If they will but remember that it is a new creation that is
going on, and not a fortuitous concourse of atoms; that the human will
is, or may be, the presiding intelligence; that centuries hence, their
posterity will either bless their memories with homage like that which
is paid to the Pilgrim Fathers, or suffer the retribution which follows
the indulgence of human passions, all petty jealousies will surely
subside, in the prospect which lies before every good man. In a place
like Cincinnati, where every man may gratify his virtuous will, and do,
with his own hands, the deeds of a generation, feelings should be as
grand as the occasion. If the merchants of Genoa were princes, the
citizens of Cincinnati, as of every first city of a new region, are
princes and prophets at once. They can foresee the future, if they
please; and shape it, if they will: and petty personal regards are
unworthy of such a destiny. It is melancholy to see how the crusading
chiefs quarrelled for precedence on the soil of the Holy Land: it would
be more so to see the leaders of this new enterprise desecrating their
higher mission by a like contention.