The Madisonian. [volume] (Washington City [i.e. Washington, D.C.]) 1837-1845, 1838-06-09
NO. III.

horror for cards, dice, and every thing that is
play OF hazard, or even of address, except
ing the innocent game of nine pins. He is
cunning, subtle, sly, always calculating, draw
ing vanity from his tricks, by which he sur
passes his inattentive or confding purchaser,
because he there sees proof of his own su-
periority of mind he has, moreover, the re-
sources of mental restrictions for keeping his
conscience in repose; all cunning, as he is,
he expedites his business, because he well
knows the value Of time. His house is a
sanctuary that he does moi open to the profane
he is little given TO hospitality, but when he
accords It, it is with prodigality. He handles
words without effort being, nevertheless,
not brilliant orator, but close logician. For
to become statesman, he needs that expan-
sion OF spirit and of heart which causes us to
conceive, and love the nature OF another, and
that naturally induces us 10 take the part Of
our neighbor, all in benef,iing ourselves.
The Yankee is individualism incarnaie
with him the bump Of locality and separabili-
~ are developed to the highest degree. But
if he is an inferior statesman he is gifted
administrator, a man Of prodigious business.
If he is little fitted to govern men, he has not
his equal for acting on, and arranging affairs,
and giving them their highest value. There
can be found in no part Of the world more
consummate merchants than those of Boston
But it is above all as colonist that the Yam
kee is admirable. Over him fatigue has the
smallest power. He has not, like the Span
lard. the power of supporting hunger and
thirst; he has the much greater one of being
able, always, and in all places, to eat, and to
drink; to know how to protect himself from
the cold, as well as his wife and his children,
Indifferent of personal comfort till he has
well provided for his family. He attacks
nature, body to body, and the most tenacious
of the two, he always subjects her. He
oblges her to surrender at discretion he
causes her to produce what he wills, and
fashions her to suit himself. Like Hercules,
he conquers the Hydra of presidential marshes,
and brides the rivers.
In the State of Massachusetts, which
counts $4,000 souls, the House Of Repre-
senta,ives is composed Of nearly 600 members;
the smallest village must have its Represen-
tative. ".
More hardy than Hercules, he extends his
empire not only over the earth, but over the
sea, he IS the best sailor in the world. The
ocean is his tributary, and enriching him with
the oil of her whales and all her smaller in
mates. Wiser than the hero of the twelve la
bors, he knows no Omphale who can seduce
him, no Dejaneira whose poisoned presents
can observe his foresightcd penetration. 1t
seems he is rather an Ulysses who has his
Penelope with whom he counts, and to whom
he remains immutably faithful. He has not
even need to stop his ears, when he passes
near the Syrens, and the most tender passions
are deadened in him by religious uusterity,
and the pre-occupation Of his agricultural
work. Like Ulysses, also he has sack full
of expedients. Taken unawares, at night, in
the forest, by a tempest, in an half an hour,
and without other assistance than his knife
he constructs a shelter for himself and his
horse. During the winter, if he is surprised
by one of those tempests of snow unknown
with us, in the twinkIing of an eye he con-
structs for himself sleigh, and pursues his
way, in making himself like the Indian, with
the forks Of the forest trees.
Thus to the genius of commerce, by the aid
of which he draws grain Of that which sends
from the earth, he joins the genius of the labor
which enriches it, and that Of the mechanic
which fashions the products Of it. He is an
incompatible pioneer, an unrivaled colonist.
1t is the Yankee who has impressed his signet
on the United States during the half century
that has just passed. This has been offered
by the Virginian, in the councils of the repub-
lie, but in return it has predominated over, and
even ecipsed him in his own territory, for it is
necessary in order that the Virginian should
tear himself from Southern Incidence, that the |
Yankee should bear to him, even to his own
door, and in spite Of him. An example of the
activity and the enterprising humor Of New
England.
Without the Yankee the cotton fields Of the
South would be yet untitled. 1t was Yankee,
Eli Whitney, who at the close Of the last CEN
fury invented the Cotton Gin, machine for
fortune Of the South. In order that specula-
ton should become la mode in the South, il
is necessary that some Yankees arrived by
hazard from the distance of some 400 leagues,
should have given the idea of it to some Of the
inhabitants Of the country, and have drawn
from it, most fully, the clearest profit.
New England has furnished the Union only
two Presidents, both of them popular on the
eve of their election, both of them unpopular
on the morrow, and both rejected at the end
of their first term, whilst all the other Presi-
dents have originated from Virginia or South
Carolina, and have all obtained a second term.
But as she has taken her retaliation in the af-
fairs, both Of the North and the South, the
East and the West, the Yankee is here true
Marquis de Carabas. At Baltimore even as
at Boston, in New Orleans as at Salem, in
New York as at Portland, if they cite you a
merchant, who by intelligent combinations,
has realized and preserved large fortune, and
if you demand whence that man comes, it is
Yankee, is the reply. If in the South you
pass before plantation, which appears better