CHAPTER XXV.
And still New England.--Sui Generis.--Her Ruggedness the Soil of Liberty.--The Contrast.--The New England Conservative.--The New England Man of Business.--The West has no Past.--_Fast_, and Hospitable.--Saxon Blood and Saxon Spirit.
Such is a picture of some of the old-school New England men, as theyflourished years ago. Such are some of the portraits and images that riseup, and stand out vividly before me.
New England is unlike anything the pioneer sees, hears, or feels in awilderness country. She is unlike his country in her creation. Her solemnmountains, lone lakes--her rushing streams, that dart like arrows from herprecipices--the roar of her cataracts, amid her rugged gorges--her long andtranquil reaches of valley--the cold, solemn, and quiet pictures of Naturethat she mingles and groups on her canvas, give soul and spirit to thepeople who are nursed upon her soil; and they, too, grow gigantic, like theobjects around them--patriotism, integrity, firmness, germinate and becomeathletic in such fastnesses: Liberty last expires upon the mountains.
Why was civil and religious liberty planted, amid December snows, upon herinhospitable coast? Why was it committed to her rugged elements of Nature,if not to harden the men, and strengthen and preserve principles? Had theMay Flower discharged its freight of ideas amid abundance, soft skies, anda teeming soil, it is not certain that the Declaration would have beensigned in 1776.
How different is the great West! One great plain of prairie and woodland,reaching from zone to zone, fairly bursting with the richness of its variedsoil and climate--reserved, as it were, by Providence, to receive the lesshardy and vigorous generations which time might throw off upon her--tame inscenery, but filled with the resources of wealth and power.
But New England is not only unlike the West in its creation, but herpeople, from a thousand causes, have fixed and established habits andcustoms as unlike. And all these have become as stereotyped by ages, as thefigures upon a panorama. The New England panorama, in all its essentialfeatures, rolls off to-day as it did years ago. Who has not been impressedwith this truth? Select an old New England town--analyze it as you onceknew it, and as it is now. How was it, how is it made up? It was finishedthen--the last blow was struck, the last foundation laid, the rubbish allcleared away; as if it only waited for the final explosion of allthings--even the magnificent elms that solemnly swept its streets, grew nolonger--they, too, had reached maturity, and gone to sleep. So it is now.
A western village, in its general aspect, presents the very reverse ofthis. Like Jonah's gourd, it is the "son of a night." It seems to have beenthrown up by an army on the march--and such is the fact--the mighty army ofpioneers, who are here to-day and there to-morrow, and who are only tracedby such huge footsteps.
The people of a New England village appear to have been procured, assortedand arranged, for their positions and occupations. Each person treads inhis own circle--each is stamped with a value--branded good, bad, orindifferent. There is the conservative gentleman--the dash that connectsgenerations--he who has taken a preemption right to respectability--whosepatent dates away back among historical reminiscences and dead bones--whosepresence is _prima facie_ evidence of all that is claimed and exercised. Aman of authority is he. He carries an odor of the past around with him--anair--a something that smells of blood--a consciousness that some time, orsomehow, somebody or something had given his ancestors a cross thatfollowed and sublimated his whole race.
Such men impress a consequence upon objects around them. Their familycarriages look wise and venerable--heirlooms embalmed by generations gone.They drive horses that think and know who and what they are--and who liveand die under the protection of their masters. Their church-pews blaze incrimson--are piled with cushions, arrayed with stools, and tables, andbooks, with two pillows and a foot-stove in the corner, for the old _lady_of seventy, who wheezes and takes snuff.
Perhaps, reader, you have met just such a New England character. He nevermoves below a line in society--a line as arbitrary with him as 36 deg. 30'. Hehad a broad face, double chin, heavy nose, wide-brimmed hat, and buff vest,filled with ruffles. You have heard him deliver his opinion upon a questionof public policy, or public morals--his voice slow and sepulchral--hismanner heavy, almost melancholy--made impressive through the aid of agold-headed cane, with which he occasionally beats out the emphaticportions of his homily. Perhaps you attempted to make a suggestionyourself--if you did, you recollect the frown, the reproof that came downupon you, from those cold, gray eyes of his, and perhaps the shock youinflicted upon the timid around you, from your impudence.
This class do not, by any means, constitute the backbone of New England.The enterprise that breaks through her mountains, upheaves her valleys, andsends the iron horse on its way--creates the roar of machinery thatreverberates among her hills--grasps with, and battles for, the publicquestions of the _day_--pours a tide of life and energy into everythingaround--which makes itself felt through the long arms of commerce in everypart of the world, and whose touch electrifies every mart--_thisenterprise_ is born, and quickened, and sustained somewhere else. These menare the mere spectators of all this bustle. They are rather drag-weightsupon it--the acknowledged conservative army of "masterly inactivity."
These conservatives are not without value, but they can only exist in afixed state of society. They are the work of ages, and cannot be created ina breath. No such characters can be found in the western world. The rootsof such a growth lie away back among the Puritans. One can smell PlymouthRock, Cotton Mather, Bunker Hill, and indeed the whole revolutionary war,in the very production. Pedigree associations, musty ideas, which liescattered everywhere, and yet nowhere in particular, are the foundation ofthis kind of aristocracy; all of which is submitted to by custom andhabit.
What if an attempt should be made to build up such a society in a newcountry? Where would we begin? There is no past to hallow and dignify thepresent; and without a past to draw upon, and anchor to, an aristocracywould be all afloat. The past of Puddleford, so far as my researches go,ends in the _Pottawatomie Indians_--a little later in Longbow, Turtle, andBates. This is the extent of our resources; and no one has been yet foundwho was willing to go into that kind of business on such a capital. Money,so often the foundation of pretension, is widely diffused, in very smallparcels. Historical local incidents there are none. The conquest of thecountry was by the axe and an indomitable spirit. There was no blood norbrimstone used. The pioneer's little family of sinewy children was the armythat entered it, and took possession of the soil.
But the people of New England, I said, were assorted. The man of business,the merchant, the mechanic, was a merchant, a mechanic, in the same place,the same building, perhaps forty years ago--and his whole life is one oforder and system. He lives by rule--is as fixed in his sphere as theconservative in his. His income for the future can be calculated from thepast. His duties are foreseen and provided for. Domestic expenses so much;support of the gospel so much; charity so much; pleasure so much; which,deducted from income, balance, so much. Here, again, is the fruit of afixed society. The creditor of a New England merchant knows where hiscustomer will be next year--at his old post, or dead.
How is it in a new country? Not one resident in ten is permanently located.Every man expects to remove somewhere else, at some time. Here is noassociation, no tie, to bind him to the soil. The pioneer is but apassenger who has stopped over night, as it were, and he holds himselfready to push forward at the blow of the trumpet. Villages, and even wholetownships, change inhabitants in short periods, and other men, with otherviews and habits, step in and take their places. Where does the merchantcreditor find his western customer of last year? Sold out, perhaps, to Mr.A., and Mr. A. sold to Mr. B., and Mr. B. to Mr. C. Mr. C. pays allarrearages, and Mr. A. and B. are boating on the Mississippi, or"ballooning" in some fancy speculation on the north shore of the Oregon.
While the great West suffers from a want of the virtues that attend a fixedsociety, as it undoubtedly does, it
does not find itself obliged to contendagainst its prejudices. There are no arbitrary lines drawn, based upon mereideas--no venerable fictions in the way. Custom, habit, society, immemorialusage, hang no dead-weights upon the young and ambitious. All start fromthe same line, the prize is aloft in full view, and he who first reaches itcreates his own precedence.
If there is no past to hallow and chasten the people of a new country, nopermanent present to hold them to one spot, so in one sense there is nofuture. There is no locality that is adorned and beautified for comingyears--no spot designated to become venerable to posterity--no tree nursedand protected in memory of him who planted it--no ground consecrated forthe burial of the dead. Houses are built, localities adorned, treesplanted, cemeteries erected, but they who fashioned all this do not abidewith them--they are ever on the march, and the stranger takes possessionof the memorials they leave behind; and if posterity should attempt tocollect the works of such an ancestor, it would find them scattered overthe circuit of states.
We have attempted, in a plain way, to draw a comparison, very briefly, tobe sure, between a fixed and an unfixed society. Both have their advantagesand their disadvantages.
If New England is slow and methodical, she is strong. She moves in closephalanx upon any public question or duty. The very bonds of habit whichpervade all, and all alike, concentrate and intensify her action. Herpeople act in a mass towards one point. They strike through organizationswhich are gigantic and reverend with age. The Church gathers the energiesand means of the benevolent. Public opinion is harmonious about publicends. And this very fixedness of society enables its members to pushforward with a unity and strength almost omnipotent.
In a new country, as we have seen, action is individual and ends areindividual; men are unorganized. He who goes forward with axe in hand tohew his pathway to competence and respectability, is governed by few relicsof the past. He breaks away, in time (too completely perhaps), from oldassociations, some of which were trammels, being the mere result of usage,and some of which he ought to cherish for their intrinsic excellence. Helooks forward to a country and people in the future (_somewhere_ in thefuture; locality is nothing), and he hurries on, with fury almost, to reachthe destination of his dreams.
The people of the West are called a _fast_ people. How can they beotherwise? Their very necessities _drive_ them. They cannot fall back uponany prop; they can move onward without limit. It required, half a centuryago, the labor of a generation to sweep off the forest, and plant citiesand villages--but all this is accomplished in half of that time now.Pioneers grow more expanded in their views. The father of the pioneer ofto-day grew into consequence as a heavy landed proprietor upon a farm offorty acres--his son can hardly satisfy his ambition with six hundred--andthat is always for sale--(there is no poetry, as we have seen, about awestern homestead)--and he stands ready to vacate upon six months' noticeand a consideration.
This miscellaneous state of society begets a peculiar hospitality. NewEngland has been famed for its hospitality; but the kind I mean is a verydifferent thing. Hospitality in an old country, under the bonds of society,is too formal, too cold, and sometimes a little oppressive. It is notalways hospitality; it is, sometimes, the performance of a social duty,according to the rules and regulations prescribed for itsobservance--painful to all parties concerned. It is artificial--as hearty,perhaps, as it can be under "bonds." The table, in the West, is _always_spread, and the roof _always_ offers shelter. There is an ease, anabandonment in its exercise, that is positively beautiful, and can beunderstood only when felt.
A fixed state of society begets feuds, and cherishes old grudges. A quarrelthat originated between grandfathers is often carried down and keptbrewing. Families are divided from other families for years, and sometimesfor generations, about matters of no consequence. It is perhaps a point ofetiquette, a stinging remark, an accidental or premeditated slight, aquestion of dollars and cents, a political or religious difference ofopinion, that opened the breach which will not be healed. Thus, bombshellsare often thrown from one to another, by fathers and children andgrandchildren, and families kept in an uproar about nothing. This societynot only cherishes old grudges, but it is nervous and sensitive to theleast touch of the present. A morbid pride of wealth, family, position, isever on the lookout for an attack upon its consequence--perhaps to make anonslaught upon others.
Here the West has the advantage. There is no one to keep alive old grudges.Not one man in a hundred can tell what his neighbor's father or grandfatherwas--where he flourished or decayed--what were his personal piques orsocial battles. And as for present causes of personal war, they are few--itrequires something more than a sublimated idea or notion--an antiquatedfigment of the brain or present artificiality--to warm up the combatants.The practical realities of the West are too great and pressing to give timeor disposition to dally with abstractions. Gross outrages are quickly metand redressed--they are not carried down on the docket of time forposterity to try, nor nursed in the bosom from the revengeful pleasure theyafford.
Reader, these are a few of the advantages and disadvantages of the twostates of eastern and western society--not western society after it becomesrooted and established, as it has in many of the states--but during itsfirst ten, perhaps twenty years, in its green state, while the gristle ishardening into bone.
These few suggestions are written in no morbid or carping spirit. They arewritten with a consciousness of the manly virtues, and solid worth, of NewEngland, as she is, and always has been. They simply mark points ofdifference worked upon men by a change of soil and society--points thatshould be known, whether approved or condemned. What son of New Englanddoes not look back upon her with pride? What associations throng around himwhen her name is mentioned! Her hills, her hearts, her homes, send a thrillthrough the soul, and make him, for a time at least, a better man. Whatarmies of scholars have walked forth into the battle of life from hercloisters? How many have been girded and helmeted in her halls? Where isthe spot where her footsteps are not imprinted, her cheering voice heard?Shall we ever forget her? What sermons her old homesteads are continuallypreaching to her children, scattered as they are throughout every degree oflatitude and longitude, in all positions and avocations! The cold brooks,where the trout darted--the grove where the nuts dropped--the bluesublimity of her mountain-tops, where sunlight first broke in the morn, andlast died at night--the great shadows that slept in her valleys--thereverberation of her thunder--her solemn "fasts and feasts"--her day ofThanksgiving, that united again the broken fragments of the familycircle--the merry voice of Christmas, that rung so cheerily through herhalls--her graves, that hold all that remains of those who were giants inreligion, liberty, and law, and who, "although dead, yet speak"--herarts--her monuments--her altars, where generations have knelt and passedaway--are all living eloquence to her children, and can never be forgotten,if not always remembered. She is the Mecca to which many a weary pilgrimturns for strength and counsel in the storm and bustle of life, and herbrain, and her capital, and her example are felt throughout half the globe.
Let us not, however, in our veneration for New England, forget theiron-souled and true-hearted men, who have gone forth from that ancienthive to make a way in the wilderness for incoming generations, whose marchis ever upon the ear. They had _their_ mission, too, and nobly have theyperformed it. What but Saxon blood, and Saxon spirit, could haveaccomplished so much? If it was, and still is, done roughly, it was alldone for time, and will stand--it is something that will bear looking backupon, and of which no son of posterity will be ashamed.