At Louisville we called on Prentice with a letter from C. M. Clay—an elderly, bright, keen, sorrowed looking man. He said he had written to Greeley and to Raymond to know if they could recommend any talented young man to him to assist in editorship of the Journal. He much wanted to find one. Probably would pay well. Raymond had not replied to him at all.

We also called on Dr. Short, a wealthy old hunker at a beautiful place 5 miles out of town—introduced to him by Dr. Grey.

From Louisville, rather than start two nights’ coaching, we came to Nashville by the river down Ohio & Cumberland. Were laid up every night by fogs and were aground two days, so were a week getting to Nashville. Very tedious & disappointing.

At Nashville [we met] a classmate of John’s, Allison. A good specimen of the first class gentleman of the South. We spent nearly all our time in Nashville, two days, in conversation with him, and he gave us a dinner at the hotel. He is wealthy, a bachelor, connected with the largest slaveholding in Tennessee: chivalric and believes in pistols and bowie knives. His argument being similar to Cooper’s.

We confess to each other that he silenced us and showed us that our own position was by no means consistent and satisfactory. He has lately been running for Congress and though running very honorably ahead of his ticket, was beaten by Zollicoffer, a Whig and veteran politician who last year shot a man across the street at his office door. He gave us an amusing account of the canvass.

He and Z. went in company to all parts of the district, each speaking twice at a place in opposition to each other (such places as “T. Golb’s Grocery,” “the second gate on the Tobroke ’pike”) &c., the crowd varying from 50 to 2000 in number—men, women, children & niggers, all excited and betting. His own body servant came to him after the election and asked him to lend him $10, as he had lost his watch on the election & he could get it back for that.

He carried a pair of pistols loaded in his pocket for a few days as Zollicoffer had the reputation of a fighting man. But he found them such a bore to carry that he put them in his saddlebags and he got through without any “difficulty.”

In the cars in Kentucky a modest young man was walking through with the hand[le] of a Colt out of his pocket-skirt behind. It made some laugh & [233]a gentleman with us called out, “You’ll lose your Colt, Sir.” The man turned and after a moment joined the laugh and pushed the handle into the pocket.

John said, “There might be danger in laughing at him.” “Oh no,” replied our companion, evidently supposing him serious, “he would not mind a laugh.” “It’s the best place to carry your pistol, after all,” said he. “It’s less in your way than anywhere else. And as good a place for your knife as anywhere else is down your back, so you can draw over your shoulder.”

“Are pistols and knives generally carried here?”

“Yes, very generally.”

Allison said commonly, but he thought not generally.

Allison declared himself a Democrat very strongly, but we confused him by proving to him that he was not; that he believed in two distinct and widely separated classes of society. He afterwards defined his Democracy to consist in holding to a strict construction of the Constitution (nevertheless he favored the building of Pacific R. R. by the government) and following the views of Jefferson rather than the Federalists. He admitted that practically there was no difference between the parties at the present time.

He and other gentlemen in Nashville hated Seward as “a devil incarnate.” He thought he ought to be hung as a traitor. He was guilty of treason in the Senate—the gravest of all crimes. He thought it a deep misfortune to the country that he could be reelected to the Senate. D. S. Dickinson he thought a true Statesman and the only prominent man at the North who had been true at all times to the country—consistent, reliable, patriotic and unselfish, free from demagogism. He remarked at another time regarding the next President that he had been in correspondence with leading Southern Democrats upon the subject and that there was a general disposition to look to Dickinson as the Democratic candidate for next President. At any rate there was no other northern man the Southern Democrats would support.

Allison and other gentlemen I have seen in Nashville & Kentucky have changed the views I had with regard to the feelings of the South about extension of territory. Allison said they must have more slave territory. It was a necessity upon the South which every one saw. He thought California would be a Slave State. He also looked to the Amazon as a promising field for Slave labor. There was no disposition to hasten the matter.

There was a general dislike on the part of the South to a general war in Europe such as was now imminent because it would injure the value of cotton & of course of negroes & everything else. But on some accounts they would like it. In case of a general war which would involve France & England & perhaps Spain, advantage would be taken of it to get possession of Cuba and perhaps of Mexico, as England & France could not then interfere. He hated England & liked France & thought the South did generally. It seems to me probable that the Government at Washington is acting on similar views. He evidently supposed so. He wouldn’t go to fighting without some honorable excuse.

[234]

His whole idea of honor is of this sort. Mere deference to time honored rules and conventionalisms it seems to me, though he thinks them spontaneous honorable impulses. Oddly enough, with all his hodge podge of honor & morality, he was reading secretly (as he confessed to us) Strauss’ life of Christ and some of Parker’s books.

Most moral people at the South were Church members. Not that they believed much in particular, but thought that was on the whole the best way. Every man could not expect to [have] his individual opinions accommodated in systems, & systems were necessary. He was not a church member himself. He thought there was a happy gentlemanly medium in which a man would be sufficiently religious (that is, sufficiently to satisfy his poetical nature, I suppose) and yet not deny himself sensual and social pleasures—“spree moderately,” I think he expressed it.

He did not believe there was a gentleman in the whole Northwest (the western free states), especially including Cincinnati. And he evidently thought there were very few, and they but poorly developed, anywhere at the North. There was not a man in Yale College who had anything of the appearance or manners of a gentleman, from the North, except a few sons of professional and commercial people who had been brought up in the large towns. There were no gentlemen at the North out of the large towns. He had once met some of the old Dutch aristocracy of New York (your Schuylers, &c.) and he did think them thoroughly well bred people.

There is a great deal of truth in his view. I tried to show him that there were compensations in the general elevation of all classes at the North, but he did not seem to care for it. He is, in fact, a thorough Aristocrat. And altogether, the conversation making me acknowledge the rowdyism, ruffianism, want of high honorable sentiment & chivalry of the common farming & laboring people of the North, as I was obliged to, made me very melancholy. With such low, material, and selfish aims in statesmanship [as the best men of the South have] and with such a low, prejudiced, party enslaved and material people [at the North], what does the success of our Democratic nationality amount to—and what is to become of us. Of course, I have told you but little of the whole conversation that so impressed me.

I must be either an Aristocrat or more of a Democrat than I have been—a Socialist Democrat. We need institutions that shall more directly assist the poor and degraded to elevate themselves. Our educational principle must be enlarged and made to include more than these miserable common schools. The poor & wicked need more than to be let alone.

It seemed to me that what had made these Southern gentlemen Democrats was the perception that mere Democracy as they understand it (no checks or laws upon the country more than can be helped) was the best system for their class. It gave capital every advantage in the pursuit of wealth—and money gave wisdom & power. They could do what they liked. It was only necessary for them, the gentlemen, to settle what they wanted. Or if they disagreed, the best [235] commander of the people carried his way. The people doing nothing but choose between them. He had no conception of higher than material interests entering into politics. All that these sort of free traders want is protection to capital. Agrarianism would suit them better if they could protect that and use what they consider their rights.

But I do very much [feel] inclined to believe that Government should have in view the encouragement of a democratic condition of society as well as of government—that the two need to go together as they do at the North in much greater degree than at the South or I suppose anywhere else. But I don’t think our state of society is sufficiently Democratic at the North or likely to be by mere laisser aller. The poor need an education to refinement and taste and the mental & moral capital of gentlemen.

I have been blundering over this and have not, I think, expressed at all what I wanted to. In a steamboat cabin—dark, shaking, and gamesters and others talking about the table—I can’t collect my ideas. But to put some shape to it. Hurrah for Peter Cooper and Hurrah for the Reds.

The great difference I feel between such fellows as these gentlemanly, well informed, true and brave Southern gentlemen, whom I admire in spite of my Democratic determination, whom I respect in spite of my general loathing of humbugging dignity; the great difference between them & those I like and wish to live among & wish to be is the deficiency in one & the sense in the other of what I must call Religion (the intrinsic religious sense) as a distinct thing from Belief, Obedience, Reverence, and Love to Personal Deity. The quality which God must have himself. They do not seem to have a fundamental sense of right. Their moving power and the only motives which they can comprehend are materialistic or Heavenalistic—regard for good (to themselves or others or to God) in this world or in another.

I have something which distinguishes me from them, whether the above explains it or not. So have you. So has Field, Elliott, all our earnest fellows. Allison couldn’t approach to it and therefore he is a Conservative and a Democrat of the American School.

I am a Democrat of the European School—of the school of my brave porter of Bingen. And these so-called Democrats are not. They are of another sort; material, temporary, temporizing, conservative. I wish I had Victor Hugo’s speech now to read you.

The Southern sort are perhaps larger—more generous and braver minds than ours—and they act up to their capabilities better. But ours are more expansive and have need to be more humble as being less true to their principles and feelings.

Allison & his friends evidently had no power of comprehending a hatred of Slavery in itself—no I can’t think that. Put themselves in the place of the slave and they would cut their own throats, if there was no other way out, without hesitation. But they didn’t & I believe couldn’t imagine that the North would be governed by any purpose beyond a regard for self interest (including [236] the gratification of pride, envy, spiritual pride, &c.) with regard to slavery. They could not see how the North could be so foolish as to determinedly prevent the extension of Slavery. Its own interest would suffer so much—commerce be injured, market for manufactures not enlarged, &c. Individuals might profit, but the whole would so certainly be injured by this injury for commerce, and beyond this they could not be got. So completely had they swallowed the whole hog of Free Trade. Admitting commerce & trade on the whole to be benefitted, it was a corollary that the measure would be for the highest good. What on the whole injured capital, consols, niggers, State credit, was wicked. What benefitted it, was Godlike. This was the end of their track.

Well, the moral of this damnedly drawn out letter is, I believe, go ahead with the Children’s Aid and get up parks, gardens, music, dancing schools, reunions which will be so attractive as to force into contact the good & bad, the gentlemanly and the rowdy.

And the state ought to assist these sort of things as it does Schools and Agricultural Societies—on the same plan, with the same precaution that the State of New York now does. I believe that it can do so safely. I don’t believe the friction compensates for the increased power of the machinery.

And we ought to have that Commentator as an organ of a higher Democracy and a higher religion than the popular. And it ought to be great—sure of success—well founded. Bound to succeed by its merit, by its talent. A cross between the Westminster Review & the Tribune, is my idea. Weekly, I think, to give it variety & scope enough for this great country & this cursedly little people. Keep it before you.

The wealthy and educated, and especially the fashionable people of all civilized countries, are now so nearly alike in their ordinary manners and customs, that the observations of a passing traveler upon them must commonly be of much too superficial a character to warrant him in deducing from them, with confidence, any important conclusions. I have spent an evening at the plantation residence of a gentleman in Louisiana, in which there was very little in the conversation or customs and manners of the family to distinguish them from others whom I have visited in Massachusetts, England and Germany. I shall, therefore, undertake with diffidence to describe certain apparently general and fundamental peculiarities of character in the people, which it is a part of my duty to notice, from their importance with reference to the condition and prospects of the Slave States and their institution.

Slavery exerts an immense quiet influence upon the character of the master, and the condition of the slave is greatly affected by the modifications of character thus effected. I do not believe there are any other people in the world with whom the negro would be as contented, and, if contentment is happiness, so happy, as with those who are now his masters. The hopeless perpetuation of such an intolerable nuisance as this labor-system, it is, however, also apparent, depends mainly upon the careless, temporizing, shiftless disposition, to which the negro is indebted for this mitigation of the natural wretchedness of Slavery.

The calculating, indefatigable New-Englander, the go-ahead Western man, the exact and stern Englishman, the active Frenchman, the studious, observing, economical German would all and each lose patience with the frequent disobedience and constant indolence, forgetfulness and carelessness, and the blundering, awkward, brute-like manner of work of the plantation-slave. The Southerner, if he sees anything of it, generally disregards it and neglects to punish it. Although he is naturally excitable and passionate, he is less subject to impatience and passionate anger with the slave, than is, I believe, generally supposed, because he is habituated to regard him so completely as his inferior, dependent and subject. For the same reason, his anger, when aroused, is usually easily and quickly appeased, and he forgives him readily and entirely, as we do a child or a dog who has annoyed us. And, in general, the relation of master and slave on small farms, and the relations of the family and its household servants everywhere, may be considered a happy one, developing, at the expense of decision, energy, self-reliance and self-control, some of the most beautiful traits of human nature. But it is a great error—although one nearly universal with Southerners themselves—to judge Slavery by the light alone of the master’s fireside.

The direct influence of Slavery is, I think, to make the Southerner indifferent to small things; in some relations, we should say rightly, superior to small things; prodigal, improvident, and ostentatiously generous. His ordinarily uncontrolled authority (and from infancy the Southerner is more free from [240] control, in all respects, I should judge, than any other person in the world), leads him to be habitually impulsive, impetuous, and enthusiastic; gives him self-respect and dignity of character, and makes him bold, confident, and true. Yet it has not appeared to me that the Southerner was [as] frank as he is, I believe, commonly thought to be. He seems to me to be very secretive, or at least reserved on topics which most nearly concern himself. He minds his own business, and lets alone that of others; not in the English way, but in a way peculiarly his own; resulting partly, perhaps, from want of curiosity, in part from habits formed by such a constant intercourse as he has with his inferiors (negroes) and partly from the caution in conversation which the “rules of honor” are calculated to give. Not, I said, in the English way, because he meets a stranger easily, and without timidity, or thought of how he is himself appearing, and is ready and usually accomplished in conversation. He is much given to vague and careless generalization; and greatly disinclined to exact and careful reasoning. He follows his natural impulses nobly, has nothing to be ashamed of, and is, therefore, habitually truthful; but his carelessness, impulsiveness, vagueness, and want of exactness in everything, make him speak from his mouth that which is in point of fact untrue, rather oftener than anyone else.

From early intimacy with the negro (an association fruitful in other respects of evil) he has acquired much of his ready, artless and superficial benevolence, good nature and geniality. The comparatively solitary nature and somewhat monotonous duties of plantation life, make guests usually exceedingly welcome, while the abundance of servants at command, and other circumstances, make the ordinary duties of hospitality very light. The Southerner, however, is greatly wanting in hospitality of mind, closing his doors to all opinions and schemes to which he has been bred a stranger, with a contempt and bigotry which sometimes seems incompatible with his character as a gentleman. He has a large but unexpansive mind.

The Southerner has no pleasure in labor except with reference to a result. He enjoys life in itself. He is content with being. Here is the grand distinction between him and the Northerner; for the Northerner enjoys progress in itself. He finds his happiness in doing. Rest, in itself, is irksome and offensive to him, and however graceful or beatific that rest may be, he values it only with reference to the power of future progress it will bring him. Heaven itself will be dull and stupid to him, if there is no work to be done in it—nothing to struggle for—if he reaches perfection at a jump, and has no chance to make an improvement.

The Southerner cares for the end only; he is impatient of the means. He is passionate, and labors passionately, fitfully, with the energy and strength of anger, rather than of resolute will. He fights rather than works to carry his purpose. He has the intensity of character which belongs to Americans in general, and therefore enjoys excitement and is fond of novelty. But he has much less curiosity than the Northerner; less originating genius, less inventive talent, less patient and persevering energy. And I think this all comes from his [241] want of aptitude for close observation and his dislike for application to small details. And this, I think, may be reasonably supposed to be mainly the result of habitually leaving all matters not either of grand and exciting importance, or of immediate consequence to his comfort, to his slaves, and of being accustomed to see them slighted or neglected as much as he will, in his indolence, allow them to be by them.

Of course, I have been speaking of the general tendencies only of character in the North and the South. There are individuals in both communities in whom these extreme characteristics are reversed, as there are graceful Englishmen and awkward Frenchmen. There are, also, in each, those in whom they are more or less harmoniously blended. Those in whom they are most enviably so—the happiest and the most useful in the social sphere—are equally common, so far as I know, in both; and the grand distinction remains in the mass—manifesting itself, by strikingly contrasting symptoms, in our religion, politics and social life.

In no way more than this: The South endeavors to close its eyes to every evil the removal of which will require self-denial, labor and skill. If, however, an evil is too glaring to be passed by unnoticed, it is immediately declared to be constitutional, or providential, and its removal is declared to be either treasonable or impious—usually both; and what is worse, it is improper, impolite, ungentlemanly, unmanlike. And so it is ended at the South. But, at the North this sort of opposition only serves to develop the reform, by ridding it of useless weight and drapery.

Northern social life usually leaves a rather melancholy and disagreeable feeling upon the minds of our Southern friends, as many have confessed to me. I think the different tendency of life at the North from that of existence at the South, which I have asserted, will give a key to this unfavorable impression which the Southerner obtains of our social character.

The aspect in which Northern society, even apparently of the more sensible sort, appears to the Southern gentlemen, was clearly shown by a candid and plain-spoken but not unfriendly hand in an article originally published last year in the Daily Times and since issued by the Appletons in a pamphlet, under the title of North and South, which has deservedly attracted much more attention, and probably been effective of good. I am not disposed to deny the general truth of the allegations of the writer against Northern society. I think he is wholly right in his descriptions of symptoms. His inferences as to the nature and causes of the disease are more questionable.

The people of the North are generally well aware of their social deficiencies, and of the unfitness of many of the customs and mannerisms, required by conventional politeness, to their character and duties. A man comes to our house, and custom requires that our countenance should brighten, and that we should say we are glad to see him. Thus custom makes it unkind in us towards him not to do so. We have no unkindness in our hearts to the man, but entirely the contrary; yet it happens that we are not glad to see him, and such is [242] our constitution that we have no impulsive and natural brightening up under hardly any circumstances. Now we have to choose between a forced, artificial, formal and false expression of a true kindness, and truth and simplicity. Amiable people take sides with kindness—the silent and reliable sort, with truth. Each are constantly aware, to a greater or less degree, of the difficulty they are engaged with. Some attach an absurd importance to the value of expression, and become “affected;” others rebel against the falseness of the conventional forms of expression, and become supercilious or sour and forbidding. Both classes are constantly led to make awkward attempts to compromise their quarrel with themselves.

The Southerner can understand nothing of all this. He naturally accepts the institutions, manners and customs in which he is educated, as necessities imposed upon him by Providence. He is loyal to “Society,” and it is opposed to his fundamental idea of a gentleman to essentially deduct from them or add to them. This “clothes philosophy” of the North he does not in the least comprehend, or if he does he sees nothing in it but impudent and vulgar quackery. And yet I think there is, perhaps, good to come out of it. We believe not, in our day, in good William of Wickham’s maxim. This new Democratic man is not “made of manners;” it may be best he should make manners to suit himself. Between this slavish conformity and anarchical non-conformity, it is to be hoped that the good sense of our society is drifting towards both a nobler and a happier social life.

But, at the present, the social intercourse of the wealthy people of the South is certainly more agreeable, rational, and to be respected, than that of the nearest corresponding class at the North. I should be sorry to think this the highest compliment it deserved.

The wealthy class is the commanding class in most districts of the South, and gives character to all the slaveholding class. Wealth is less distributed, and is more retained in families at the South than the North. With the slaveholding class there is a pride of birth and social position, much more than in any class at the North. This affects the character and conduct of individuals, and reacts on their associates, and on the whole community—in some respects perniciously, but in many respects favorably.

The “high-toned gentleman” (a Southern expression) of the South is rare at the North. He is not an article of city manufacture, as the most cultivated people of the North are. He has a peculiar character, and peculiar habits—more like those of the “old English gentleman” than any class to be found now, perhaps, even in England itself. He rides much, and hunts, and is given to field sports and never knows the want of oxygen; for, even in Winter, his windows and doors are always forgotten to be closed. Accordingly, though his diet is detestable, he is generally well physically developed—lighter and more delicate of frame than the English squires, but tall and sinewy. His face would commonly be handsome but that his mouth is made gross, lifeless, and inexpressive, by his habit of using tobacco excessively. He has a peculiar pride [243] and romance, and, though he often appears laughably Quixotic, he is, in the best sense of the word, also chivalrous. He is brave and magnanimous, courteous and polite, to all white people. If he often values his comfort, or the success of his designs, or the gratification of his passions, more than he does a strict adherence to the received rules of Christian morality, he never values life or aught else more than he does his honor. This “honor”—though if you analyze it, it comes to be little else than a conventional standard of feelings and actions, which must be habitual to entitle a man to consider himself a gentleman—is often really far nobler, and makes a nobler man than what often passes for religion at the North—at least in this world.

There is, however, a quality, or perhaps it is a faculty of the soul, which is distinct, though seldom separate, from love to the person of God and love to man, or in our time from the Christian faith, which is most nearly defined by the term, an enlightened conscience—a spontaneous requisite perception and loyal love of the fundamental laws of Right—the laws that God himself is subject to. This quality or faculty is the noblest endowment of man, and is essential to the noblest character. I think it is strongly developed in more individuals at the North than at the South, and I think there are obvious causes for its absence at the South. The habitual reference of the Southerner in his judgment of conduct, whether of himself or another, whether past or contemplated, to the conventional standard of honor, prevents the ascendancy of a higher standard. This habitual contemplation of a relation so essentially wrong as that of slavery, as a permanent and necessary one not reformable, not in progress of removal and abolition, destroys or prevents the development of his sense of any standard of right and wrong above a mere code of laws, or conventional rules.

But to the Southern gentleman, by distinction, as I have often met him, I wish to pay great respect. The honest and unstudied dignity of character, the generosity and the real nobleness of habitual impulses, and the wellbred, manly courtesy which distinguish him in all the relations and occupations of life, equally in his business, in his family, and in general society, are sadly rare at the North—much more rare at the North than the South. I acknowledge it freely but with deep regret and melancholy. There are qualities of character (not of deportment, merely) which are common among the planters of many parts of the South, as they are among the aristocratic classes of Europe, which are incompatible with the possession of nothing else that a man should glory in, which the mass of the people of the North have merely lost, or have failed to gain.

This has been often observed by intelligent travelers visiting us, and is sometimes thought sufficient to condemn our democratic form of government, and our approximately democratic state of society. This is the judgment of many Southerners (for the government and society of the South is the most essentially aristocratic in the world), and I have reason to believe that there are many whose confidence in the democracy of the North is so small that they [244] anticipate, and are acting politically with reference to, a division of the present Union and the formation of another great Southern republic—that is, a republic of white capitalists, in which the slavery of the working classes shall be provided for, and every means taken to make it complete and permanent.

But acknowledging the rarity of the thorough-bred gentleman at the North, is an inference to be drawn from it unfavorable to Democratic Institutions? I think not. Without regard to the future, and to what we may yet become under Democracy, the condition and the character of our people as a whole, to the best of my judgment, is better, more gentlemanly even, far more entitled to respect than that of the people, including all classes, of any other nation. Very much more so than of the South. I do not say more happy. The people of the Northern States, as a whole, probably enjoy life less than any other civilized people. Perhaps it would be equally true to add—or than any uncivilized people. Those who consider that, if so, the uncivilized people (perchance slaves) are to be envied, will do right to condemn Democracy.

But the only conclusion which the fact seems to me to suggest, with regard to our Democratic Government, is perhaps this: that simple protection to capital and letting-alone to native genius and talent is not the whole duty of Government; possibly that patent laws, and the common schools, with their common teachers, and common instruction (not education) such as our institutions as yet give to the people, are not enough. That the aesthetic faculties need to be educated—drawn out; that taste and refinement need to be encouraged as well as the useful arts. That there need to be places and times for re-unions, which shall be so attractive to the nature of all but the most depraved men, that the rich and the poor, the cultivated and well bred, and the sturdy and self-made people shall be attracted together and encouraged to assimilate.

I think there is no sufficient reason why the aid of the State should not be given to assist corporations and voluntary associations for such purposes, on the same principle, and with the same restrictions, that it is in New York to schools, to colleges, and to agricultural societies. Thus, I think, with a necessity for scarcely any additional governmental offices, or increase of the friction of governmental machinery, might be encouraged and sustained, at points so frequent and convenient that they would exert an elevating influence upon all the people, public parks and gardens, galleries of art and instruction in art, music, athletic sports and healthful recreations, and other means of cultivating taste and lessening that excessive materialism of purpose in which we are, as a people, so cursedly absorbed, that even the natural capacity for domestic happiness, and, more obviously, for the employment of simple and sensible social life in our community, seems likely to be entirely destroyed. The enemies of Democracy could bring no charge more severe against it, than that such is its tendency, and that it has no means of counteracting it.

Slavery is claimed at the South to be the remedy for this evil. In some respects it is a remedy. But (disregarding the slaves and the poor whites) where there is one true gentleman, and to be respected, at the South, there are two [245] whose whole life seems to be absorbed in sensualism and sickly excitements. Everywhere you meet them, well dressed and spending money freely, constantly drinking, smoking and chewing; card-playing and betting; and unable to converse upon anything that is not either grossly sensual or exciting, such as street encounters, filibustering schemes, or projects of disunion or war. These persons are, however, gentlemen, in the sense that they are familiar with the forms and usages of the best society, that they are deferential to women, and that (except in money matters) their word is to be implicitly relied upon. They far exceed in numbers any class of at all similar habits that we yet have at the North.

They are invariably politicians, and they generally rule in all political conventions and caucuses. They are brave, in the sense that they are reckless of life, and they are exceedingly fond of the excitement of the hazard of life. They are as careless of the life of others as of themselves. They are especially ambitious of military renown, and in the Mexican war they volunteered almost to a man, many of those who went as privates taking with them several negro servants. If they were not dependent on the price of cotton for the means of their idleness, they would keep the country incessantly at war. Being so, however, they are as conversative in the policy they favor towards any powerful nation as the cotton lords of England or the land lords of Austria. They hate and despise the Democrats of Europe as much as Francis Joseph himself. They glorify Napoleon, and they boast of the contempt with which they were able to treat the humbug Kossuth.

They call themselves Democrats, and sometimes Democratic Whigs. Call them what you will, they are a mischievous class—the dangerous class at the present of the United States. They are not the legitimate offspring of Democracy, thanks to God, but of Slavery under a Democracy.