The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863

WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI

[The Continental, drawing its very life from its desire of upholding, strengthening, and sustaining our sacred Union, welcomes the article from 'west of the Mississippi,' the object of which is to encourage, through a common literature, the fraternal relations between East and West, and cherish the great bond of national unity by proclaiming kindred ties.

We of the East stretch forth loving hands to our brothers of the West, and, feeling true and loyal hearts beating through the dim spaces dividing us, bid them God speed, as bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, whose prosperity is our life, whose ruin would be our own desolation.

 
'As from the East the lovely exile goes,
Fair on the West a young Aurora glows;
And all the flowers Ionian shores could yield
Blush forth, reblooming in the Hesperian field.'
 

Eds. Continental.]

From our quiet homes, on the western bank of the Mississippi, very nearly in Boston latitude, we send daily thoughts of business, friendly interest, and political sympathy unto you who dwell upon our Atlantic shore. Some of us look back unto you as the prodigal son is said to have regarded his father's house. All of us have intimate ties binding us unto you. From you, as the fountain head of literature and intelligence, through your magazines and journals, we are constantly supplied with the living current of thought and mental activity. Is it anything but fair that we should occasionally seek to respond and acknowledge the debt and the fellowship? For what shall more tend to strengthen the bonds of our broad Union than these common sympathies of a widespread and national fraternity of literary tastes and gratifications? Assimilation of mind, community of thought produced by free interchange of opinion, in the way of social intercourse, these will open our hearts to each other and strengthen the links of our national brotherhood. That we may love each other, let us know each other; that we may know each other, let us not fail to look each other fairly in the face.

West of the deep and gently flowing northern Mississippi, I know, is a long way off from the surging waters of your eastern coasts. When you have come this distance, you are, in so far as distance only is concerned, pretty well on your way toward the Rocky Mountains, and the new land of El Dorado, the young and golden Nevada. But yet we are in fact much nearer to your golden markets than to the hidden ore of our new Territories. Time and space, whose natural demands have been so rudely disregarded by the iron progress of science and skill between you and us, still to a great degree maintain their ancient rule over the lands west of us. That vast, thrifty vine of speedy transportation, which has wound itself about the trunk of our national tree, strikes here and there one of its tendrils out upon the branches beyond us, over the region of a few counties. In one instance, in the State immediately south of us, a single energetic scion has crept even to the banks of the rapid Missouri, and others are pushing steadily on in determined emulation. But in most cases, we must be content to ride to the westward, only on the back of the laggard and unambitious coach, that tortoise of travel, crawling on through prairie and swamp. And it is still within the recollection of almost the youngest inhabitant, how the daily trains, drawn by horse, mule, or ox, dragged themselves through our streets, proclaiming from their cotton coverings their distant destination, illustrating on their march the Western 'Excelsior'—

 
'The wheels in mud were sticking fast,
As through a boundless prairie passed
A youth, who drove a two-mule team,
While on his wagon top was seen.
 

Pike's Peak.'

Thus eastward we are within forty-eight hours of your press, while westward we are nearly as many days distant by private conveyance from the land of fabled wealth. But time and space must eventually give in. They are not equal to the task; and already the shadow of the great Pacific road makes them tremble for their natural tenure of the free West. It might have done for Æsop to talk about the tortoise and the hare, when they had not steam in those days to course their streams and stalk across their plains with giant tread, eclipsing the old seven-league boots of their fancy; but the tortoise is a used-up individual, is short of breath, and it is the passenger that sleeps, while the hare leaps onward to his covert.

Being thus brought near to you by the swift convoys of science, it will be evident that we are not so far away as we seem. We do not perpetrate an Irish bull when we say that the distance to a place is often greater than the distance in returning. It is, on the contrary, a well authenticated natural fact—a phenomenon, if you please. And by way of illustration we may aver that it is a great deal farther from your metropolis to west of the Mississippi, than from west of the Mississippi to the metropolis.

You sit in your cosy parlors and offices and think of some friend or relative, perhaps a son or daughter, in the 'far West.' It seems as if a sea spread out between you, or at least the better part of a continent. You think of India and China, perchance, or of England or France, and you feel as if they were all nearly equidistant with the home of your beloved ones. It is so far away out to the Father of Waters, and you can never make up your mind, without great and frequent resolution, to undertake such a journey as this.

But, my friends, it is not half so far as that, from us to the Atlantic coast. It is not so far from us to you, as it is to some tardy customer, whose bills are yet to collect, a hundred miles down the country by a two-days' stage adventure. Not nearly so far. Why, when we want to go to New York or Boston, we don't pack our trunks and take a cargo of luggage on board for a two-months' voyage. We just tumble hurriedly a few things into a valise or carpet sack before we go to bed, and the next morning off we start, and after two days of sight-seeing and newspaper reading along the way, and two nights' comfortable sleeping-car rest, we wake up at the dawn of the third day to bid you good morning and inquire after the markets; and that is the end of it.

It isn't so very far, after all. We put off in the morning, bid good evening to Chicago, good morning to Toledo, a ten-o'clock good night to Buffalo, and we sit down to a late breakfast with you the following day.

But then if you have never been out here, it's a long, long distance, and we advise you not to try it all of a sudden, nor to come without a trunk. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Then, in the next place, being out here, what sort of a people are we? This is a very important query. In the eyes of many we are Western semi-barbarians, without an overplus of manners, means, comforts, knowledge, or many, if any, of the means of Eastern and refined enjoyment. We have come hither to make our fortunes, or to care for those who have, and we are the fit objects of spiritual and temporal commiseration and missionary operations. That is the idea somewhat candidly expressed, isn't it? Oh, no! you don't think so poorly of us as that; but then we are a great ways off, in fact, in a new country, among strangers for the most part, and of course we cannot expect to find everything at hand which we enjoyed in our former comfortable homes.

Well, we are, many of us, from the 'far' East, and most of us from eastward. But we have tried to bring whatever of refinement, manners, knowledge, proprieties, and comforts we before possessed, such as they were, with us, and we haven't lost many of them. We do not believe that contact with the Indians has very much barbarized us. We still read and write and live in houses which we have built, and conduct mercantile and other transactions on former equitable principles; and our communications and intercourse with each other may still be said to be civilized, at least in great measure. We eat and drink what we formerly did, not excepting occasional shad and frequent oysters; and you do not seem to be averse to trying our deer and grouse once in a while—while we even share with you our wheat, cattle, and pork. We don't wear moccasons as yet, nor buckskin with Indian trimmings, instead of doeskin with the latest cut. We try, for the sake of appearances, to wear cotton and woollen and silk; and beads and trinkets are in no extraordinary demand. Beavers and furs are seen upon our streets; and the sound of the piano heard in the land, is not a very unusual disturbance. Our boys, as of old, smoke cigars in secret, fearful of ancient birch, and gum drops still adhere to the pockets of our girls in school. We don't see a very remarkable difference between the children about us and those we knew at a somewhat early age. Brick and stone rise with us into comfortable and even aspiring buildings, and the price of board is not less than we have paid before, nor so very much more. We neither travel nor live on half fare. And men still drive the horse before the cart, and carry the wheat in both ends of the bag as they go to mill.

In fact, we don't see that civilization has lost much flesh in its arduous journey to the far West; nor that, being human before, we have become less human now, or discarded our manners when we shut the doors of our birthplace behind us. We know indeed that Colenso went to convert the heathen, and that the heathen succeeded in converting him, thus putting the boot on the other leg; but the Indians have not yet won us to their dusky faith, although we must confess that assimilation to their copper-colored principles seems to have made some Copperheads among us.

As to works of art, they are not very plentiful hereabouts, excepting in the way of monuments perhaps. We have a generous number of those, erected to the large-heartedness and wisdom of persons who engaged in great improvement schemes, in the line of speculation, when there was but a fictitious basis of wealth in this land, before the bubble burst. These monuments, however, are not generally esteemed ornamental, and the wealth so lavishly expended upon them came not from the bosom of our communities, neither was it imported from north of us, nor west of us, but from whence I will not say. Perhaps some one who reads can help to account for part of it. These monuments, however, such as they are, have, by the liberal contributions made for their erection, exceeded in cost that of Bunker Hill, or the half-finished shot tower in Washington. Our only statues do not represent either the Father of his Country, nor the late old public defunctionary who sat in his chair—but they are principally devoted to 'the poor Indian,' in native costume. These statues, frequently wooden, exhibit the wonted hospitality of this race, and maintain the attitude of proffering a cigar to the friendly passer by.

Of paintings there is not a superfluity; still we have a small collection, comprising several which have for some years been on public exhibition, illustrating 'The Good Samaritan;' 'Prodigious;' 'Washington's Blacksmith shoeing Washington's Horse,' and others of less note, while –'s panorama of the war has lately departed from us.

Still we have our public and private schools, seminaries, and churches, as others have in fully civilized countries; our newspapers, white and bronze; our leading men, and officeholders; natives of all climes and kindreds, Jew and Gentile, German and French, Bohemian and Scotch, English and Irish; our generals and our corporals; our learned and our unlearned; debtors and creditors—comprising mostly all of us; but believe me, friend, not a solitary living Indian.

I think we are a generous, hospitable, liberal people, up to the full limit of our means and capabilities. Being all away from home, as it were, and all strangers together, we have learned the blessedness of sympathy, and how a little lift is often a great boost, and a friend in need a friend indeed. It was formerly said that when a stranger appeared, the inhabitants emulously set to work to take him in, not however in the flattering and hospitable sense of the words. But as almost without exception any man in a new place or position is a verdant man, so we honestly maintain that they took themselves in, and found it rather difficult to take themselves out again. I believe that we are as quiet, honest, genteel, and mind-your-own-business a set of folks as you may find in most other and more favored communities. With the constant and increasing accessions to our society from more enlightened regions, it would be a wonder did we not attain in time to a level with many other and older-settled countries, who are apt to look abroad with serene complacency gathering motes in open eyes, We have had our castles in the air, and some of them are now underground; but we have read of South Sea bubbles, rise and fall in stocks, 'On to Richmonds,' McClellans, and Congress; and we don't think the beams are all in our own eyes and the motes too.

In fact we are not heathen nor barbarian, Goth nor Vandal, Hottentot nor Fire Eater—but bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh—one with you in all the customs, proprieties, civilization, and hopes of the great American people; bound to save the republic of our fathers, if we go to the death in defence of our mutual rights, principles, and homes.

Do you ask then, 'What is the need of saying all this, since we know it all?' I reply, there is need of saying it, and of repeating it again. There may not be need of it for you, my friend; there is need of it for many others. Talk not of making us of one flesh twain. It cannot be. It is not a question of mere interest that shall bind us as a people inseparably in one. God will not solder a chain. It is a higher bond, a holier bond. We are essentially and intrinsically one; one by nature; one by mutual sympathies, by blood relations, by dearest ties; one in all that constitutes the unity of a family relation; one in heart, one in aim, one in mind, purpose, education, and will. None can make us two. Lines may be drawn by ambitious schemers, divisions discussed, but these do not constitute separation or alienation. The heart of the people beats in profound and resolute unison. What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.

Rise, then, as thou art already rising, great heart of the troubled nation, throb from one confine to the other, bid faction's agitation hush, crush down opposition, scorn the unholy threat, dash the traitorous scheme, and declare the resolute and solemn purpose of all the members to live and govern together, as parts of the same living unity, till the whole body politic becomes a prostrate, lifeless corpse. And from the western border of the States, even from among the youngest and least of the children of the Union of Seventy-six, the union of oaths and the union of hearts, the union of instincts and the union of hopes, do we, in the name of her daughters and sons, bid you, upon the eastern confines, and the States between, you the mothers, and you the elder daughters, all hail, and God speed you in the work of forging anew, even in the fierce fires, the links that bind us into one; 'so making peace.'

For we are of you and with you, and will be ever, while our setting sun is your rising sun—ever, until we become two distinct and divergent races—till you cease to be Joseph and we cease to be Benjamin—till you become Edom and we become Moab—till long centuries shall have erased all kindred ties and bonds of consanguinity, and all men, forgetful of history, shall sink together into vassalage and ancient barbarism. But until then we are one in heart, one in life, and must abide one in fact, or sink together to common shameful desolation.

THE CAVALIER THEORY REFUTED

A remarkable feature of all discussions of questions connected with the present civil war, is the lack of any attempt to question the foundation of important assertions. Our orators and writers have been ready to explain or soften adverse statements, but they have rarely questioned the existence of any asserted facts. One of the most persistent assumptions of the secessionists has been that the inhabitants of their States are the descendants of the gentry of England, and that the Unionists of the loyal States have neither any identity of origin nor a historical pedigree. On this assumed fact they build two arguments: first, that being homogeneous, they are united to a degree to which the Northerners can never attain; secondly, that the English people, and especially the English gentry, are closely allied to them in blood, and should naturally sympathize with them in their voluntary opposition to the constituted Government.

I propose to show that not only are these assertions unfounded, but that the reverse is the truth; and this I feel authorized in doing for several reasons.

In the first place, if there be no advantage in placing ourselves right in our own eyes, our cause can be advanced in the eyes of foreign observers, by the publication of the truth. Were the facts as represented, an Englishman would be justified, to a certain degree, in sympathizing with a large number of the descendants of Englishmen, engaged in a revolt against a superior number of foreigners. His intense nationality, which has so long given his nation an undue influence, leads him to take this view, and his belief in English invincibility causes him to prejudge the case, and to deem the subjugation of his Southern relatives an impossibility.

Secondly, class prejudices are aroused everywhere in Europe by the idea that a nation of gentlemen is contending for every right against a vulgar crowd; the idea of what in reality constitutes an American democracy being still exceedingly nebulous to the European mind.

Thirdly, we have borne too long the imputation thus cast on us, for our own good in the management of our own affairs. Already expression has been given to threats of ultimate division of the North into separate nationalities, on the ground that we have no common interests and no common origin. It seems well, therefore, to investigate the data at hand, and to see if the South be so united or the North so divided as alleged.

A few tables, prepared from the official Census returns, will serve to place the question in a clear light, and they will be easily confirmed or rejected.

I assume in the following table that the inhabitants of the United States were citizens by birth, and by deducting at the end of each decade the number of immigrants, we have what may fairly be claimed as the percentage of natural increase. I have added the slight excess over the percentage to the column of native born, believing this advantage at least belongs to them:

WHITE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES

Table No. I.—Increase and Immigration.

This table shows us that in the States in 1860, out of 26,706,425 white inhabitants, 19,976,762 were the descendants of the original citizens of 1790. I omit the Territories, as the number of inhabitants cannot affect the result, and it is difficult to decide upon their nationality.

In Table II, I propose to divide the inhabitants of 1790 into four classes, the first comprising New England; the second, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; the third, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; and the fourth, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

Allowing to each class the same percentage of increase as in the former table, we shall see how our nineteen millions of native-born citizens originated:

INCREASE OF NATIVE WHITE POPULATION

Table No. II.

Here then we see that New England has contributed nearly one third of the number, and nearly one quarter of the entire population.

But I will endeavor further to analyze the constitution of the different States which were added to the Union previous to 1860. The following table will show the numbers at each decade:

NORTHERN FOREIGN IMMIGRATION AND SOUTHERN EMIGRATION

Table No. III.

We have now certain data from which to argue, and I will first investigate the alleged homogeneity of the South. Conceding that every citizen of the two classes of Virginia, etc., and Delaware, etc., in 1790, was indisputably the descendant of an English cavalier, and that the increase of population found an outlet into the new Slave States, how would the case stand?

In 1860 these States contained 8,712,840; by Table II we calculated they should contain 8,006,467; so that even in this case there are some 700,000 foreigners. But a little more research shows that the case is much more unfavorable.

Up to 1840, the Southern States not only could have furnished all the settlers in the Slave States, but must have sent out colonists. In 1840, they had 4,604,873 inhabitants; add to this the natural increase, 25.1 per cent. (1,155,823), and we have 5,760,696 native born, and 423,781 foreigners required make their total of 6,184,477 inhabitants.

But in the next decade, add to the 5,760,696 native born, their percentage of increase 23.9 (1,376,806), and we have 7,137,502, requiring 1,575,338 foreigners, more than one sixth, for their total of 8,712,840 white inhabitants.

By no conceivable chance can more than five sixths of the population of the South be descended from the English cavaliers.

But if we concede to every Virginian, not only his inherent gentility, but his unswerving purpose never to emigrate out of slave territory, and an intuitive presentiment which pointed out which were to be the slave portions of adjacent Territories, by these same percentages of increase the 442,215 Virginian cavaliers of 1790 could be the progenitors of only 2,785,927 patricians to rally around the model cavalier of 1860—Jefferson Davis.

Lastly, in an estimate published in 1848 by Mr. Jesse Pickering, devoted entirely to the consideration of immigration as a national question, it is argued, with every appearance of truth, that in 1840 the foreign population of the Slave States was 1,177,965. But these must have displaced an equal number of the native born, and we should have only 3,426,908 of that class in 1840, 4,287,061 in 1850, and 5,311,668 in 1860, or in that case only five eighths of the population could be of native descent, provided that not one emigrated. When we consider that the great immigration of all was between 1840 and 1860, we are forced to conclude that certainly not more than one half of the inhabitants of the present confederate States can present the faintest claim to a descent from the citizens of 1790.

When we seriously endeavor to investigate the claims of Virginians to a descent from the English gentry, we are stopped by their practical denial of the first principles of genealogy.

The public records of their State, as shown by the highest authority, the bishop of the diocese, are most imperfect. The records of the parishes have been lost, the churchyards destroyed, and few authorities, save tradition, can be given for these ambitious claims. Bishop Meade's work, especially devoted to the history of the 'Old Churches and Old Families of Virginia,' gives less than thirty families, clearly traced, to the English gentry. These are those of Ambler, Barradall, Baylor, Bushrod, Burwell, Carter, Digges, Fairfax, Fitzhugh, Fowke, Harrison, Jacqueline, Lee, Lewis, Ludwell, Mason, Robinson, Spottswood, Sandys, and Washington. I believe I have omitted none, and have rather strained a point in admitting some.

I do not, of course, mean to deny that others may exist, but until the proofs are submitted to examination, there is no justice in presuming them to exist. Let us see how far the historians of Virginia support the 'cavalier' theory. Robert Beverley (I quote from the edition published at Richmond in 1855) says:

'Those that went over to that country first, were chiefly single men who had not the incumbrance of wives and children in England; and if they had, they did not expose them to the fatigue and hazard of so long a voyage, until they saw how it should fare with themselves. From hence it came to pass, that when they were settled there in a comfortable way of subsisting a family, they grew sensible of the misfortune of wanting wives, and such as had left wives in England sent for them, but the single men were put to their shifts. They excepted against the Indian women on account of their being pagans, as well as their complexions, and for fear they should conspire with those of their own nation to destroy their husbands. Under this difficulty they had no hopes but that the plenty in which they lived might invite modest women, of small fortunes, to go over thither from England. However, they would not receive any but such as could carry sufficient certificate of their modesty and good behavior. Those, if they were but moderately qualified in all other respects, might depend upon marrying very well in those days, without any fortune. Nay, the first planters were so far from expecting money with a woman, that 'twas a common thing for them to buy a deserving wife that carried good testimonials of her character, at the price of one hundred pounds, and make themselves believe they had a bargain.

'§67. But this way of peopling the colony was only at first. For after the advantages of the climate and the fruitfulness of the soil were well known, and all the dangers incident to infant settlements were over, people of better condition retired thither with their families, either to increase the estates they had before, or to avoid being persecuted for their principles of religion or government.

'Thus in the time of the rebellion in England several good cavalier families went thither with their effects to escape the tyranny of the usurper, or acknowledgment of his title. And so again, upon the Restoration, many people of the opposite party took refuge there, to shelter themselves from the king's resentment. But Virginia had not many of these last, because that country was famous for holding out the longest for the royal family of any of the English dominions.¹³ For which reason the Roundheads went, for the most part, to New England, as did most of those that in the reign of King Charles II were molested on account of their religion, though some of these fell likewise to the share of Virginia.

As for malefactors condemned to transportation, though the greedy planter will always buy them, yet it is to be feared they will be very injurious to the country, which has already suffered many murders and robberies, the effect of that new law of England.'

Beverley notes also about these servants that 'a white woman is rarely or never put to work in the ground, if she be good for anything else.'

Bishop Meade (vol. i, p. 89) speaks also of these female servants:

'While the company and the Governor were endeavoring to improve the condition of the colony, by selecting a hundred young females of good character, to be wives to the laborers on the farms of Virginia, King James had determined to make of the colony a Botany Bay for the wretched convicts in England, and ordered one hundred to be sent over. The company remonstrated, but in vain. A large portion, if not all of them, were actually sent. The influence of this must have been pernicious. Whether it was continued by his successors, and how long, and to what extent, I know not.'

And again (pp. 365-'6), he says:

'The greatest difficulty they (the vestrymen) appear to have had was with the hired servants, of whom, at an early period, great numbers came over to this country, binding themselves to the richer families. The number of illegitimate children born of them and thrown upon the parish, led to much action on the part of the vestries and the legislature. The lower order of persons in Virginia, in a great measure, sprang from these apprenticed servants and from poor exiled culprits.'

Stith says (ed. 1747, p. 103), under date of 1609:

'But a great part of this new company consisted of unruly sparks, packed off by their friends to escape worse destinies at home. And the rest were chiefly made up of poor gentlemen, broken tradesmen, rakes, and libertines, footmen, and such others as were much fitter to spoil or ruin a commonwealth, than to help to raise or maintain one.'

Again (p. 306), in describing one of the domestic quarrels of the colony, he copies a statement:

'And whereas it was affirmed that very few of his majesty's servants were lost in those days, and those persons of the meanest rank, they replied that for one that then died, five had perished in Sir Thomas Smith's time, many being of ancient houses, and born to estates of a thousand pounds a year, some more, some less, who likewise perished by famine.'

These extracts are all that I can urge in support of the claim of Virginians to be descended from the English gentry. There may be many other authorities; it is for the asserters of this theory to produce them, and I certainly would republish them if I could obtain them.

Let us, however, leave Virginia for a time, to consider the origin of the inhabitants of Delaware, Maryland, the Carolinas, Georgia, and those other confederate States which also claim the honor of an English paternity. Here our means of information become more plain and accessible. From about 1730 up to the time of the Revolution, these colonies were the object of the constant attention of England. The wars with France and Spain and the projects of the proprietors of these grants of land combined to make the public of England anxious for information concerning them. I will merely cite from the London Magazine of that date, though a more extended search, I doubt not, would add to the strength of my position. I find in the first place that the new population was not only not cavalier, but not even English. I find that 'the design of this settlement (Georgia) was to provide an asylum or place of refuge for the honest industrious poor, and the unfortunate, with some view to the relief of the persecuted Protestants in Germany. Among these unfortunate persons it could not be guarded against that numbers, unfortunate only by their own vices or follies, intruded themselves among the real 'objects of charity.' In 1737, these Saltzburghers had built a town, Ebenezer, in Georgia. Mr. Oglethorpe also 'planted upon the fourth frontier, at a place called by him Darien, a colony of Scottish Highlanders.' 'The southernmost settlement in South Carolina is now the town of Purrysburg, which was built by Captain Purry, a gentleman of Swisserland, at the head of a number of his own countrymen, who went over with him soon after that country became a royal government.' In 1765 a new fort was built 'on the Savannah river, about fifteen miles above Hillsborough township, which will be of great use to the three new settlements of Irish, French, and German Protestants.' In 1762, 'the Governor of South Carolina has granted forty thousand acres of land to be laid out into two townships for a number of people from Ireland, who are expected here.'