The morning call., 1891-04-29
TYPICAL AMERTCANs.

Chauncey Depew has uttered more bright
fallacies than any man of his time. He pos
sesses the art of presenting sophistry in so
striking and brilliant light that his hearers
have to think twice before they realize that
he is not stating a fact. The habit may per-
haps be in part accounted for by the part he
plays of the eYer-ready, ever-shOwy, ever
dashing extemporaneous speaker. He might
be more reliable if he were less fluent.
His last utteranee is TO the effect that
'ihe South, which has not been invaded by
immigrants, is the only part of the country
which is purely and typically American"
If Mr. Depew had taken time to think, be
would have realized that this statement i'm
plies msapprehensiOn of the true meaning
of Americanism. 1t is not the accident of
birth which makes man typical Ameri-
can; Galatin and Hamilton in the old days,
and A. I. Stewart and E. q. Baker in ours,
were good American types. 1t is the adapta-
ton of the soul to American ideas, and the
complete saturation of the mind by Ameri-
can principles, which make a man truly
American. He may have been American
for several generations. and yet if his spirit
is imbued with foreign doctrines. and he
fails to apprehend the purpose for which
this nation was created. the aims which it
sets before it and the means by which it
proposes to attain those aims, he is 10 more
an American type than if he had never set
foot on this continent. And, on the other
hand, he may have been only score of years
in the country, yet if he thoroughly compre-
hends the meaning of our institutions and
our political system, and honestly pins his
faith to both, he is as good an American as
if his ancestors had come over in the May
flower.
Whether the citizens of the States lately
in rebellion are as typiGally American as the
people OF New England and the people of the
Central States, who borrowed their political
creeds from New England, might be a topic
for a college debating society TO discuss. OF
a certainty, neither the doctrine of secession
nor the theory that society should be divided
into master class and servile class was
American. Both were Numerically opposed
to the underlying principles of the Deelara-
ton of Independence and the Constitution
of the United States. These were bottomed
on the fundamental axiom that men are born
equal, and that all races are equally entitled
to life. liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
To maintain that communities which tried
to found nation on a denial OF this axiom
were purely and typically American" is
strangely to underrate its Importance.
No careful reader of American political
history will underrate the services which
in times gone by were rendered to the ma
ton by eminent Southerners in expounding
the Constitution and working out the intri-
cate problems involved in a dual soyer-
eighty and Supreme Judiciary. During
the first seventy years of the nations life
some of its most commanding intellects and
its clearest minds were from the South, and
they were. as Mr.. Depew says, purely and
distinetIvely American. But the promi-
nence which slavery attained toward the
middle of the century derailed these South
ern leaders. They ceased to be typically
American to become champions of an IN
American institution. They did not become
European. They borrowed no foreign
clothes. But they started out on a new de-
parture which was neither American nor
European, and which was purely and exclu-
sively their own.
Mr.. Depew implies that they have got
over all this folly, and that they are now
the purest citizens of the nation they tried
to destroy. 1t is to be hoped that it is so.
But the world will not take MT. Depew's
word for the fact. Slavery is abolished,
but absolute equality between the races
has not been established in It's place. There
is no social equality, nor even political
equality, between the white and the negro
in the Southern States. The planter can
no longer buy field-hands. nor the slave
dealer deal in likely blacks; but the seryile
class remains as distinctly demarcatedfro
the master class as it was in the old slavery
days. So long as that is the case the witty
President of the New York Central will find
it difficult to prove that the purest and most
typical Americans are to be found in the
Smith