Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1872-07-03
NO NORTH. NO SOUTH.

Senator Thurman, of Ohio, is generally
regarded as one of the ablest men of his
party in the United States. He delivered
an address few days ago to the stu
dents of the University of Virginia, in
which, we are sorry to say, he encouraged
sentiments that should find no place to-
day in any patriot heart. lie appealed to
the sectional prejudices of the South by
urging upon the vast body of young men
before him the necessity of having a
Southern literature, a Southern press and
Southern schools. If he had plead for n
greater interest in or Il more general effort
Cor better literature South as well as
North if he had interceded for a more
earnest interest in the work of general ed
ucation and for more school houses and
school teachers if he had rebuked the
bitter sectional character and prejudices of
the press, particularly in that of Virginia,
he would have done work more consis-
tent with his reputation and more fruit
full of general good. Senator Thur
man knows, for he is man of
experience in public affairs, and II
shrewd observer, that the great curse of
the South to-day is the intense sectionalism
that prevails in some of our States, and
particularly in Virginia, to whose people
he spoke. Senator Thurman knows that
the literature of which Americans pride
themselves is not the literature of the East
or the West, neither is it of the South or of
the North. A literature that will last be-
You'd day breathes no sectional spirit or
State prejudices 1t springs from nobler
and holer sentiments and takes root in
larger and warmer hearts than those that
nurse sectional animosities.
Senator Thurman ought toknow that ed
ucational institutions that hope to gather
about them young men, or old men, whose
aspirations are no higher than to send
from their halls hearts and intellects pois-
oned by such sectional prejudices can new
er thrive or have an enduring foundation.
A press that will sow the seeds of strife
by teaching TO Americans that their coun-
try is compassed by State lines, is false to
its trust and unworthy of support
If all the blood and treasure expended
i'm our recent war has not blotted out such
pernicious sentiments by charging the
patriotism of Americans, we have yet to
win the victory. The truth is, no such
words as North or South, East or West
should be known in our political nomen-
clature. No such natural divisions really
exist, and our commercial, financial
and Industrial interests know no such di-
visions. Why then should our patriotism
or even our partisanism be measured by
such fancied limits. The abolition of
slavery removed every preteXt for such q
division as the South and the North, and
we should no longer tolerate the use of the
words in the sense given to them in Sena-
tor Thurman's address. We are sorry that
the young men of Virginia and of the
South find encouragement for any section
alism from the source referred to. 1t is
time, high time, that we should know no
South or North, but that all our hopes
should be of America, and all our aspira-
lions to make its literature, its wealth and
its people, not the glory of Virginians or
New Englanders, but of every American,
ions