"Stranger, remember, if I die, that I am Robert Tallon of
Tishimingo County, and that I died for States' Rights. See,
now, they put that in the papers, won't you? Robert Tallon
died for States' Rights."
Having thus spoken, he turned over on his blanket, and was silent. Dr.
Russell assures his readers that this man only expressed the nearly
unanimous feeling of the Southern people at the outbreak of the war.
He had been ten weeks travelling in the Southern States, and he
declared that the people had but one battle-cry,--"States' Rights, and
death to those who make war upon them!" About the same time, we
remember, there was a paragraph going the rounds of the newspapers
which related a conversation said to have taken place between a
Northern man and a Southern boy. The boy happening to use the word
"country," the Northerner asked him, "What is your country?" To which
the boy instantly and haughtily replied, "SOUTH CAROLINA!"
Such anecdotes as these were to most of us here at the North a
revelation. The majority of the Northern people actually did not know
of the _existence_ of such a feeling as that expressed by the Carolina
boy, nor of the doctrine enunciated by the dying soldier. If every boy
in the Northern States old enough to understand the question had been
asked, What is your country? every one of them, without a moment's
hesitation, would have quietly answered in substance thus: "Why, the
United States, of course";--and the only feeling excited by the
question would have been one of surprise that it should have been
asked. And with regard to that "battle-cry" of States' Rights, seven
tenths of the voters of the North hardly knew what a Southern man
meant when he pronounced the words. Thus we presented to the world the
curious spectacle of a people so ignorant of one another, so little
homogeneous, that nearly all on one side of an imaginary line were
willing to risk their lives for an idea which the inhabitants on the
other side of the line not only did not entertain, but knew nothing
about. We observe something similar in the British empire. The
ordinary Englishman does not know what it is of which Ireland
complains, and if an Irishman is asked the name of his country, he
does not pronounce any of the names which imply the merging of his
native isle in the realm of Britain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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