s, Hollanders, and
Huguenots--often more so. Such early families as the Welsh Shelbys,
and Gaelic McAfees are no more English than are the Huguenot Seviers
or the German Stoners. Even including merely the immigrants from the
British Isles, the very fact that the Welsh, Irish, and Scotch, in a
few generations, fuse with the English instead of each element
remaining separate, makes the American population widely different
from that of Britain; exactly as a flask of water is different from
two cans of hydrogen and oxygen gas. Mr. Shaler also seems inclined to
look down a little on the Tennesseeans, and to consider their
population as composed in part of inferior elements; but in reality,
though there are very marked differences between the two commonwealths
of Kentucky and Tennessee, yet they resemble one another more closely,
in blood and manners, than either does any other American State; and
both have too just cause for pride to make it necessary for either to
sneer at the other, or indeed at any State of our mighty Federal
Union. In their origin they were precisely alike; but whereas the
original pioneers, the hunters and Indian fighters, kept possession of
Tennessee as long as they lived,--Jackson, at Sevier's death, taking
the latter's place with even more than his power,--in Kentucky, on the
other hand, after twenty years' rule, the first settlers were swamped
by the great inrush of immigration, and with the defeat of Logan for
governor the control passed into the hands of the same class of men
that then ruled Virginia. After that date the "tide-water" stock
assumed an importance in Kentucky it never had in Tennessee; and of
course the influence of the Scotch-Irish blood was greatly diminished.

Mr. Shaler's error is trivial compared to that made by another and
even more brilliant writer. In the "History of the People of the
United States," by Professor McMaster (New York, 1887), p. 70, there
is a mistake so glaring that it would not need notice, were it not for
the many excellencies and wide repute of Professor McMaster's book. He
says that of the immigrants to Kentucky, most had come "from the
neighboring States of Carolina and Georgia," and shows that this is
not a mere slip of the pen, by elaborating the statement in the
following paragraphs, again speaking of North and South Carolina and
Georgia as furnishing the colonists to Kentucky. This shows a complete
misapprehension not only of the feeding-grounds of the