The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1913-07-18
NATIONAL PRIDE

ments, for it is this that gives to it
its strength, grandeur and durability.
In a like sense sectional pride is to
be commended, rather than condemn
ed. One section vieing against anOth-
er section, one nation against anoth-
er nation, are SO many stepping
stones to the worlds greatness.
If men and women had been content
with conditions and had made no eff
forts to improve them we would still
be hiding in caves and wearing fig
leaves.
But a spirit of rivalry between indi-
viduals which fortunately gradually
spread to neighboring communities
and finally to neighboring states, has
led to the achievements which we now
happily behold in all parts of the
world
AS every crow thinks that its off
spring is the blacklist so every nation
hugs to itself the belief that it is SUI
perior to every other nation in all the
things that make for the splendor of
civilization; so there are certain ma
tional characteristics that set one ma
ton off as rivaling all others in it's
peculiar virtues and achievements.
This boast of superiority followed
the Mayflower to our shores, and the
rivalry between Puritan and Cavalier
finally found its elimination in a war
between the states.
Puritdnism was grounded in Massa-
chusetts when the Mayflower landed,
and its shoots gradually extended to
the New England and bordering
states.
Immigrants, principally from
France, landing in South Carolina,
Louisiana and the Old Dominion, es-
tablished a rival school of religious
thought, and there gradually sprung
up antagonisms between Puritan and
Cavalier.
The Puritans in time turned their
to manufactures, and the
Cavaliers became producers of the
soil. They delighted to be called
planters. In the general course of
the New Englanders
became builders of ships, and in this
way became responsible for the in
PRODUCTION of negro slavery into the
United States. simultaneously with
its proving Improbable in New Eng
land, it became exceedingly profitable
In the south, owing to the introduction
Of cotton and the invention of the
cotton gin, and then, and only until
then, the religious fervor of the Puri-
tan gained ascendancy, and he felt it
his bounden duty to manumit the
slave and humiliate his master.
We make a brief extract from an
article in a late issue of the Smart
Set by Mr. H. Mencken, entitled,
THE American His Morals"
'The long battle against slavery
was led from first to last by men OBJ
sessed by the wickedness of the slave
owners, and eager to put it down at
any cost in blood and sweat The his
torians, true enough, show us that
slavery was economically unsound,
and that irresistible natural laws
worked toward it's destruction, but no
one thought of it's economical I'M
soundneSs during the two decades be-
fore the civil war 1t was the moral
of the thing that inf1am-
ed the north against the south and
sent John Brown across the Potomac
and provoked four years of unparal-
leled wrath and butchery. The abOli-
tionists were not moved by any fear
that the south was going bankrupt,
nor even by any tangible feeling that
the north was suffering unfair compe
tition, but simply and solely by an
uncomfortable craving, entirely Puri
tanical in character, to make the
southerners change their brand of vir-
tue. 1t was their unalterable convic-
ton that they themselves were wholly
SOOu anu lHdt Tie SUuCuSIucIS WSIO
wholly bad, and they thought it their
supreme duty as custodians of divine
grace, to purge and punish the err
ing"
But from the landing of the May
flower to the outbreak of our civil war
a long period of time interviewed, and
between which there was a general
"mix-up" between Puritan and Cava-
lier-between Yankee and Johnny
Reb."
In word, a great many Puritans
meandered from their environments
and settled in the south, and num-
Der of Cavaliers got beyond the limits
of their environments and settled
across the Mason and Dixon line, and
lent their talents to the building up of
that section.
So the achievements of the north
does not wholly belong to the north,
nor the achievements of the south