Wolfert's Roost, and MiscellaniesIrving, Washington
General
Wolfert's Roost, and Miscellanies
Irving, Washington
American essays; Short stories, American
This may appear matter of small concernment; but any one that has
travelled in foreign countries must be conscious of the embarrassment
and circumlocution sometimes occasioned by the want of a perfectly
distinct and explicit national appellation. In France, when I have
announced myself as an American, I have been supposed to belong to one
of the French colonies; in Spain, to be from Mexico, or Peru, or some
other Spanish-American country. Repeatedly have I found myself involved
in a long geographical and political definition of my national identity.
Now, Sir, meaning no disrespect to any of our co-heirs of this great
quarter of the world, I am for none of this coparceny in a name that is
to mingle us up with the riff-raff colonies and off-sets of every nation
of Europe. The title of American may serve to tell the quarter of the
world to which I belong, the same as a Frenchman or an Englishman may
call himself a European; but I want my own peculiar national name to
rally under. I want an appellation that shall tell at once, and in a
way not to be mistaken, that I belong to this very portion of America,
geographical and political, to which it is my pride and happiness to
belong; that I am of the Anglo-Saxon race which founded this Anglo-Saxon
empire in the wilderness; and that I have no part or parcel with any
other race or empire, Spanish, French, or Portuguese, in either of the
Americas. Such an appellation, Sir, would have magic in it. It would
bind every part of the confederacy together as with a keystone; it would
be a passport to the citizen of our republic throughout the world.
We have it in our power to furnish ourselves with such a national
appellation, from one of the grand and eternal features of our country;
from that noble chain of mountains which formed its back-bone, and ran
through the "old confederacy," when it first declared our national
independence. I allude to the Appalachian or Alleghany mountains. We
might do this without any very inconvenient change in our present
titles. We might still use the phrase, "The United States," substituting
Appalachia, or Alleghania, (I should prefer the latter,) in place of
America. The title of Appalachian, or Alleghanian, would still announce
us as Americans, but would specify us as citizens of the Great Republic.
Even our old national cypher of U. S. A. might remain unaltered,
designating the United States of Alleghania.
These are crude ideas, Mr. Editor, hastily thrown out to elicit the
ideas of others, and to call attention to a subject of more national
importance than may at first be supposed.
Very respectfully yours,
Geoffrey Crayon.
* * * * *
DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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