The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Carolina will as little pass muster at the Herald's Visitation, though I
hold them to have been more reputable, inasmuch as many of them were
honest tradesmen and artisans, in some measure exiles for conscience'
sake, who would have smiled at the high-flying nonsense of their
descendants. Some of the more respectable were Jews. The absurdity of
supposing a population of eight millions all sprung from gentle loins in
the course of a century and a half is too manifest for confutation. The
aristocracy of the South, such as it is, has the shallowest of all
foundations, for it is only skin-deep,--the most odious of all, for,
while affecting to despise trade, it traces its origin to a successful
traffick in men, women, and children, and still draws its chief revenues
thence. And though, as Doctor Chamberlayne says in his _Present State
of England_, "to become a Merchant of Foreign Commerce, without
serving any Apprentisage, hath been allowed no disparagement to a
Gentleman born, especially to a younger Brother," yet I conceive that he
would hardly have made a like exception in favour of the particular
trade in question. Nor do I believe that such aristocracy as exists at
the South (for I hold, with Marius, _fortissimum quemque
generosissimum_) will be found an element of anything like persistent
strength in war,--thinking the saying of Lord Bacon (whom one quaintly
called _inductionis dominus et Verulamii_) as true as it is pithy,
that, "the more gentlemen, ever the lower books of subsidies." It is odd
enough as an historical precedent, that, while the fathers of New
England were laying deep in religion, education, and freedom the basis
of a polity which has substantially outlasted any then existing, the
first work of the founders of Virginia, as may be seen in Wingfield's
_Memorial_, was conspiracy and rebellion,--odder yet, as showing
the changes which are wrought by circumstance, that the first
insurrection in South Carolina was against the aristocratical scheme of
the Proprietary Government. I do not find that the cuticular aristocracy
of the South has added anything to the refinements of civilization
except the carrying of bowie-knives and the chewing of tobacco,--a
high-toned Southern gentleman being commonly not only _quadrumanous_,
but _quidruminant_.
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