Diversities of American Life | Page 6

industrial energy,
its wealth, or its population, but the stability of the federal power, and
the integrity of the individual States. That is to say, that stress and trial
have welded us into an indestructible nation; and not of less
consequence is the fact that the life of the Union is in the life of the
States. The next most encouraging augury for a great future is the
marvelous diversity among the members of this republican body. If
nothing would be more speedily fatal to our plan of government than
increasing centralization, nothing would be more hopeless in our
development than increasing monotony, the certain end of which is
mediocrity.
Speaking as one whose highest pride it is to be a citizen of a great and
invincible Republic to those whose minds kindle with a like patriotism,
I can say that I am glad there are East and North and South, and West,
Middle, Northwest, and Southwest, with as many diversities of climate,
temperament, habits, idiosyncrasies, genius, as these names imply.
Thank Heaven we are not all alike; and so long as we have a common

purpose in the Union, and mutual toleration, respect, and sympathy, the
greater will be our achievement and the nobler our total development, if
every section is true to the evolution of its local traits. The superficial
foreign observer finds sameness in our different States, tiresome family
likeness in our cities, hideous monotony in our villages, and a certain
common atmosphere of life, which increasing facility of
communication tends to increase. This is a view from a railway train.
But as soon as you observe closely, you find in each city a peculiar
physiognomy, and a peculiar spirit remarkable considering the freedom
of movement and intercourse, and you find the organized action of each
State sui generis to a degree surprising considering the general
similarity of our laws and institutions. In each section differences of
speech, of habits of thought, of temperament prevail. Massachusetts is
unlike Louisiana, Florida unlike Tennessee, Georgia is unlike
California, Pennsylvania is unlike Minnesota, and so on, and the
unlikeness is not alone or chiefly in physical features. By the different
style of living I can tell when I cross the line between Connecticut and
New York as certainly as when I cross the line between Vermont and
Canada. The Virginian expanded in Kentucky is not the same man he
was at home, and the New England Yankee let loose in the West takes
on proportions that would astonish his grandfather. Everywhere there is
a variety in local sentiment, action, and development. Sit down in the
seats of the State governments and study the methods of treatment of
essentially the common institutions of government, of charity and
discipline, and you will be impressed with the variety of local spirit and
performance in the Union. And this, diversity is so important, this
contribution of diverse elements is so necessary to the complex strength
and prosperity of the whole, that one must view with alarm all federal
interference and tendency to greater centralization.
And not less to be dreaded than monotony from the governmental point
of view, is the obliteration of variety in social life and in literary
development. It is not enough for a nation to be great and strong, it
must be interesting, and interesting it cannot be without cultivation of
local variety. Better obtrusive peculiarities than universal sameness. It
is out of variety as well as complexity in American life, and not in
homogeneity and imitation, that we are to expect a civilization
noteworthy in the progress of the human race.

Let us come a little closer to our subject in details. For a hundred years
the South was developed on its own lines, with astonishingly little
exterior bias. This comparative isolation was due partly to the
institution of slavery, partly to devotion to the production of two or
three great staples. While its commercial connection with the North
was intimate and vital, its literary relation with the North was slight.
With few exceptions Northern authors were not read in the South, and
the literary movement of its neighbors, such as it was, from 1820 to
1860, scarcely affected it. With the exception of Louisiana, which was
absolutely ignorant of American literature and drew its inspiration and
assumed its critical point of view almost wholly from the French, the
South was English, but mainly English of the time of Walter Scott and
George the Third. While Scott was read at the North for his knowledge
of human nature, as he always will be read, the chivalric age which
moves in his pages was taken more seriously at the South, as if it were
of continuing importance in life. In any of its rich private libraries you
find yourself in the age of