The Portland daily press., 1879-11-12
Cavalier and Puritan.


The article on Southern Aristocracy and
Northern Barbarism" copied from the Rich
mond (Va.) State in Saturdays PRESS is
conventional sample Of the arrogant and
ridiculous assumptions of gentility for which
the Southern people are so notorious. Ex-
travagant boasting is pathognomonic of their
kind, and such exhibitions of bombast and
initiation as printed in the extract betray the
boor more pointedly than any philosophical
dissection of their character. The discus
sion Of ones respectability is SO distasteful
to the average gentleman that he always
shrinks from it with an instructive modesty,
and leaves to uncultured people the privilege
of publicly displaying their shoddy ancestral
wares. The voice of the decent Southern
people-an imperceptible fraction, who can
with some show of truth trace their male
descent from noble blood-is not heard in
this noisy din of blatant boasting. Like the
perfect gentlemen whom all know by in
tuition. they do not mix in this rude procla-
nation of chronic respectability, but the
yells of superlatiye nobility proceed from the
throats Of the great mob whose lineage
briefly endsin mess OF mephitic immortality.
The whole population of the South is one
grand mutual admiration society, and when
they weary Of 1attering each other with in
situations of noble birth they turn around
and discharge their unclean artillery OF
abuse upon their Northern fellow citizens.
Gentlemen who thoroughly appreciate the
,i,,,ar, Af hot hnnnVahla
would not strut about the highways and
market places boasting of their remarkable
superiority, an occupation which engages
the entire attention Of the average Southern
er-when he is not swearing. Honor needs
no town crier to herald its fame, and gentle
birth carries with it distinctiveness that is
sadly tarnished by advertising. The eternal
roar of such Incompatible braggarts is both
amusing and irritating. The very absurdiy
of their asseverations, so persisted in beyond
the limits of good taste, has always been a
source of amusement to this section of the
country, because we knew so well their an
tecedent history. But it becomes irritating
when they cease to plume themselves with
stolen feathers and fling the mud of asper-
sion upon portion Of the States, who, lay
ing no loud-mouthed claim to the heritage
of gentility, yet in all that constitutes gentle
men by birth and culture are as far above
their standard of nobility as the lion who
looks down upon the long-eared thing clothed
in the skin Of his dead mate.
This is not a new boast Tor them. We
heard it in 1860, when Bob Toombs of Geor-
gia, fawning upon England with senti-
mentality as nauseating as it was untruth-
full. sought to enlist British sympathy in
their "cause," with the claim that they were
the children of the English cavaliers. He
too, half afraid that no one wonld suspect
their incurable ailment, formulated this
superlative nonsense into the well-known
Southern slogan,
''We are the gentlemen Of America"
On this one idea they breathe, eat, sleep,
exist and die; and it is cause for specula-
ton why they do not wear tags upon their
coats, so that we may distinguish the real
simmered-down article from the rabble.
They are pleased to think that the North is
troubled with an@mia although III the late
war they changed their mind temporarily.
Such preposterous arrogance was not heard
before the Revolution, for their grandfathers
knew better than to claim an heritage of su-
periority which was not their own by birth
or requirement 1t was only when our
country began to assume such magnificent
proportions, when New England culture, led
by Longfellow, Bryant, Whittierand Holmes,
was outstripping them, that the bark of
these pretenders was heard i'll the air. Its
echoes still infest the atmosphere always
gaining a garrulous quality as it becomes
older These asseverations we propose to
puncture without ceremony, not indulg-
ing in phiIippics, however, but seeking
to show by historical evidences that
their claims to superiority of birth
are as far from the truth IS they
are from the standard Of gentlemanly
honor. We intend TO show that SO far
from be ing homogeneous race of gentle
birth that they are the heirs of outcasts and
profigates. To accomplish this purpose
our evidences will be taken frcm material
recorded years ago, som Of it two centu-
res old and all before their brutal slavery
made sectional hatred reality. That the
points deduced may still be more weighty,
the testimony Of Northern authors will not
be employed, but such statements Of their
peculiar colonial civilization as their own
historians have been obliged to record. We
must necessarily be dogmatic because there
is rot much erace fer lengthy dissertation
OF comment, and copious extracts will have
to be Whitfield down to an actual point. 1t