Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1866-03-08

brass.
Letus give them the credit of making
the best of it when they found that there
was nothing left tor them but to ''rOot or
die.p They were Englishmen, men of the
same race with Gilbert and Drake, and
Hawkins and FrObisher. They bore with
the trials they had never sought as man
fully as hundreds of thousands of English
men and Americans since have borne with
similar trials; as mantully-but not one
whit more manfully. The French settlers
of Arcadia went through as many hard
ships as the Pilgrims Of Plymouth; so, too,
did the French settlers OF Canada. In our
fathers time the pioneers OF Virginia and
North Carolina went through vastly great
er hardships in opening the pathway OF
civilization and freedom across the Allegha-
MES and through that glorious prairied
West which the Old Dominion gave to the
Union at the dawn of our national day.
But If there was nothing particularly
singular the trials of the May yfiOwer peo-
pie, there was good deal that was singu-
lar in their behavior as soon as they had
secured footing in the New World. Ihey
began at once to bully and tyrannize over
everybody who fell among them without
being of them. They whipped the Bap-
fists and slit the ears of the Quakers. and
themselves tn be the Lords people, they
set about making the children of this
world as uncomfortable as possible. Their
early annals are filled with horrible stories
of persecution, with foul scandal, with all
imaginable perversitieS, born, and natural
ly born, of system which denied the in
diVidual all freedom of action. Massachu-
setts Bay fell quarreling with Plymouth
about territory before either colony was
strong enough to eject the Indians from
the territory of which they had been
whcedled. No reader of Washington lr-
wing needs to be reminded how soon these
followers of the Lord made themselves
such a thorn as worried even the placid
New Amsterdamers of their seat, in spite
of their multitudinous and vOluminous
breeches.
An early English traveller, coming over
to see what sort of place these colonies
might be, says of Boston, "The buildings,
like their women, are neat and handsome,
and their streets, like the hearts OF their
men, are paved with pebbles. They have
four churches, built with clapboards and
shingles, and supplied with four ministers
--one a scholar, ono a gentleman, one a
Ounce, and one clown. The captain of
ship met his wife on the street, after long
voyage, and kissed her, for which he was
fined ten shillings. What happiness,
thought /, do we enjoy in Old England,
where we can not only kiss our own wives,
but other mems, without danger of pen
atty" Laughter
By degrees there flowed in upon and
around this Puritan clan tide OF British
emigration made up of other materials;
but the dominant influence OF the original
Puritants would have made Massachusetts
compromise with the Crown in 1775, as she
so often had done before, but for the atti-
tude taken up at once by the great Ameri-
can people, then just becoming conscious
of its strength and its destiny.
Yet, although it was thus drawn into
grand continental relations, the Puritan
element remained throughout the RevOlu-
tion, and to this day remains, an insoluble,
discomfortable thing. 1t has plagued us in
politics before to-day. 1t would not live in
peace in the Union. 1t made war. The
war being over, it will not let the Union be
the result. 1t denounces johnson as it did
Jackson and jefferson. 1t would be very
unhappy if it were content. 1t invented
secession for us before the ink was dry on
the treaty which gave us Louisiana and the
superb regions of the Mississippi. How it
is now tormenting us in this field need
only refer to the Reconstruction committee
and the bills before Congress. Enough
that every New England man who has
shown himself capable of being an Ameri-
can has been assailed and slandered by the
permanent Plymouth Rock Church. Web
ster, Choate, Pierce, Douglas, all passed un-
der its ban. None Of these men came of
the original Puritan stock; in none of them
do we find the characteristic traits of the
Puritan. Yetyour bibulous New England
Al NJ Ncn ,Hnr = onfa
pable of carrying such men as these to the
credit of his ancestral blarney-stone.
American Puritanism had neither great
poets nor artists, nor even, in any proper
sense of the phrase, men lot letters. 1t
founded theological seminaries in disguise
as colleges, and kept such learning as it
was capable of, after the manner of the
Brabmns and the Lemaites of ASIA for the
benefit of the priestly order, putting the
pen in the heel of the minister as a spur,
wherewith the more safely to ride the peO-
pie. 1t makes one shudder to think how
thoroughly the Sabbath was kept sour and
solemn, under the ministration of the au-
tourat of the pulpit. Children were fright
ened to sleep with the terrific name of the
preacher. He represented the terrors of the
unseen world. This very bigotry has pro-
duced its extreme. The transcendentalism
OF to-day is partly protest and dissent
from the severity of the pulpit.
The blight of Puritanism has acted both
directly and Indirectly upon the New Eng
land mind, killing all real vigor and origin
ality in the New England literature. The
one great writerot New England is the one
man who has most thoroughly and merci-
lessly analyzed.the weaknesses and the dis
ease of Puritanism the one man who has
most fearlesslV scrubbed aWaV the white
wash from its sepulchres. Nathaniel Haw-
thorne, indeed, may be regarded as sort
of Attilla of genius, a "scourge of God,"
sent to chastise PuritaniSm. The people
among whom he lived cannot help decking
themselves with the renown of his genius |;
but they take their revenge by declaring
that he died of being Democrat.
The other writer's whose activity has filled
the land with the East wind, Longfellow,
Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, are in
the main the outcome of that modern New
England transcendentalism, which is as
pretentious as it is unoriginai, as useless in
print as it is impossible to comprehend
We can understand the Puritan, but who
can find out the Transcendentalist? The
nearest to it in definition is Puritanisnl in
verted; Godlihess turned wrong side out.
Thirty years ago certain numbers of New
Englanders of a literary turn of mind took
to learning German and reading Thomas
Carlyle. In this way they made the i'm
portant discovery that if you will only let
go your hold upon tradition, there is no
knowing where you may bring up; and de-
lighted with the venture, they proceeded at
once to cut loose and drift. H"
Decency was tradition; so to these dis
coverers indecency became progress. Under