d
adage, 'Straws show which way the wind blows.' In the realm of moral and
social law, however, the indications, just as palpable, of the direction
in which the current of public sentiment is setting, are usually ignored
or pass unobserved at the time being; and not till great events have
called attention to the causes that produced them, do these indications
take all the prominence due to them. These minor symptoms I have
noticed, of the dislike of New England in the Southern mind, have been
plainly to be seen in all the doings and sayings of their public men of
this generation at least, to go no further back, and in the utterances
of the press throughout the South. Flings, innuendoes, sarcasms,
condescensions, insults, have been heaped upon the _Yankees_, by the
representatives of the slave power, in the National Congress, in the
State Legislatures, in their public speeches, and by the minions of the
press, until it would seem as if they must have fallen on dead ears, so
little fever they have stirred in the blood of the North. Still, if
anyone supposes that the ostensible causes of dislike are the real ones,
he is mistaken. Does any man of them all, of these leaders, I mean,
suppose for one instant that the Yankee negro-trader, overseer, peddler,
lucre-loving tradesman, slaver, slave catcher, subservient politician,
or mouthing, dirt-swallowing pulpit huckster, is a true representative
of the influence and ideas of New England? Or that the present
Copperhead Democracy of that section is the real exponent of the genuine
spirit of the Puritan Democracy? Certainly not. They are shrewd men, of
great discernment, and in their way brave and chivalrous, and I verily
do not wonder if they would not have these renegade Yankees even as
_slaves_. No! the actual cause of their hatred is the silent,
all-pervading influence of the _free institutions_ of New England, which
derive their power and efficacy from the universal means of education
there enjoyed. Shut up the schoolhouses, and burn the schoolbooks in New
England, to-day, and let these free institutions become a dead letter
thereby, and the _Yankees_ would be as good as anybody in their eyes,
because the sword which their intelligence keeps ever suspended over the
head of slavery would be effectually laid to rust in its scabbard. Is it
not a pitiful, a disgusting sight, that men are found, Northern men,
_New-England Yankees_ even, to kneel before the slaveocrats still, after