The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1894-05-24
DENSE IGNORANCE.
DEPRECIATING NORTH CARO-
LIMA.
A Leading New England Newspaper
Shows What it Does not Know
About Our State and PeOple---A
Timely and Admirable Defense by
DR.. kingsbury.
Wilmington Messenger. !

Or. kingsbury.
Wilmington Messenger
If "ignorance is bliss" what d" folly
to be wise" The North-New Eng
land particularly is as ignorant of
the South as of Timbuctoo. It knows
Plymouth Rock and the Rebellion"
and high tariffs for robbery of the
South, but nothing of the people Of
the South and their history. 1t is not
surprising perhaps when great six
volume American Biography" gives
more space to New England or to
Massachusetts, perhaps than to all the
South. There have been scholars and
writer's in the Soulh-men like Rev.
DIR. William Hooper and Rev. DR..
Lipscomb, both gone in green old age
who were every way qualified to
have kept company with the best of
old literati OF Boston, that made it
famous as the centre Of culture and
productiveness in letters and caused it
to be called "the Hub" and by its
own admiring people "The Athens of
America. DR.. Hooper had just the
scholarship and the rare literary gift,
with a most genial and winsome
humor, that would have given him
fame if he had been a citizen
of Boston. DIR. Lipscomb, late
Chancellor of Vanderbilt University,
has produced many delightful essays
and exquisite criticisms that showed
the master, and that were suffused with
the genuine aroma OF high scholarship,
and showed the knack of writing most
charmingly which if done in Boston
would have made him one of the
choicest spirits of the immortal few
that gave to that city its chiefest
charm. We wish some man of genuine
taste and rounded culture would edit
and publish tentative volume of DR..
best essays and addresses
and other memorabilia. We never
saw this fine Southern gentleman, SO
pure and gentle and lovable, in the
flesh, but we received more than one
delightful letter from him-one giving
an account of visit to our friend
Paul Hamilton Hayne, only year or
so before the poet passed away. 1t
was charming in its delicacy of COM
pliment and rhetorical art. Both are
gone now to better and happier
world tor both were humble, earnest,
trusting followers of the Saviour of the
world and followed in his footsteps.
We knew personally and most
pleasantly the late DR.. Hooper, and
was once guest in his home when he
lived in Warren county. We have for
more than forty years thought him the
foremost representative Of scholarship,
culture and literary gifts in all North
Carolina history.
We have unpremeditatedly been
drawn into this brief reference to two
remarkably gifted men of the South
one North Carolinian by birth,
Baptist minister and son of a signer of
the National Declaration of Independ-
ence, and the other born in Maryland,
living most of his days in States farther
South, thoroughly Southern in the
tone and fibre Of his being, and a
minister. Both were Pro-
fessors in colleges and Universities.
We are reminded of New England's
ignorance of North Carolina and the
South by statement-a reflection
upon North Carolina, made by the
Providence (Rhode Island) Iel<gyam.
1t ought to be called the Be0tian. Re-
ferring to the death of our great and
well beloved Senator, this Yankee
Be0fian says, as we see it given in the
Richmond Di5bateh, that he was ga
great public speaker but not Daniel
Webster" said that North Carolina
had furnished few men of national
reputation-that she &C had never had
President, Vice-President, President
of the Senate, or Speaker of the House
of Representatives, or Justice of the
Supreme court"
New England and the whole North
with its 100000 people have not
been able to bring forth but one
Webster. He is the one colossal man
of all that land of many able, scholarly,
eminent men. But North Carolina is
misrepresented, we suppose, in dense
ignorance and not from pitiful spite
and love of lying. The proof has
been abundantly collected and pub
Ilished by the late James Parton, who
was English but long resident in New
England, that Andrew Jackson was
born in Union county North Carolina
Every school boy should know, and
even Rhode Island editor should
possess that much Of biographical
knowledge, that James K. Polk wa:
born in Mefklenburg county (where
there was once Declaration OF Inde
pendence more than thirteen month:
ahead Of the Philadelphia Declaration
but the Beohaneditor of course never
heard of it,, and Andrew Johnson, {
Republican, was born in Wake county
in which Raleigh is situated.
The Dispakeh is kind enough te
take up the cudgets for North Carolina
and after referring to the three Presi
dents born in this State, it says this
In theperson OF Nathaniel Macon Nortf
Carolina furnished one of the President.
of the Senate, and he was also at snothe
time Speaker of the House, and of asso
ciate justices of the Supreme court VIII,
were North CaroIinians we recall tn
names OF Alfred Moore and Jane
Iredell.
We have not the time TO go int,
this as We might. II would Ienuire