=350. Changes in New England.=—In New England, also, the spirit of understanding which had long existed with the South on account partly of trade connections, partly of the English homogeneity common to both sections, was rapidly passing away. The old New England of farmers and sailors was now becoming more and more a country of manufacturers and artisans. The old Puritan leaven still fermented,—not as formerly, within the churches, the power of which had conspicuously declined, but in new forms of philanthropy, philosophy, and literature. New England had always been a power in the intellectual life of the nation, but from 1830 to 1860 this power was vastly increased. From her midst came abolitionists like Garrison[151] and others shortly to be mentioned. In Webster she had the greatest of orators and of exponents of the national idea. In Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) she had a teacher of high morality and a philosopher who, if vague, like his fellow-members of the school known as Transcendental, possessed, nevertheless, an inspiring personality. In the elder William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) and Theodore Parker[152] she had clergymen whose influence was felt far beyond their section. In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) she had the sweetest and most popular of native poets; and in John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), a sturdy poet-champion of human liberty. James Russell Lowell (1819–1891), too, was a young son of Massachusetts who, as poet and critic, was to do good work for the nation. All these great men were, more or less, forces to be counted against the continued dominance of the South in politics. With the exception of Webster they were not politicians, but they were thinkers who taught others to think. Against them the South, even with the poet and story writer, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), could set no such galaxy of genius, save in the sphere of politics; and with the exception of Calhoun, the Southern statesmen of the new generation were inferior to those of the old. Nor were the Middle states, rich and populous though they were, capable of competing with New England as a factor in the nation’s life. Able politicians and editors were coming to the front, and there were some authors of great power, such as James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) and Washington Irving (1783–1859), but none capable of supplying such civic inspiration as writers like Emerson and Whittier. William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) might be counted in this connection, for he did his main work in New York, but he was New England born. In short, it may be fairly said that New England represented for the generation before the Civil War the progressive, moral sense of the nation in the great question of freedom versus slavery; for that portion of the West which served the cause of liberty was settled chiefly by New England people. Curiously enough, the greatest imaginative genius that New England produced, Nathaniel