Plains to the uses
of civilization should for a time overweigh art and literature, and even
high political and social ideals, it would not be surprising. But if the
ideals of the pioneers shall survive the inundation of material success,
we may expect to see in the Middle West the rise of a highly intelligent
society where culture shall be reconciled with democracy in the large.

FOOTNOTES:

[126:1] With acknowledgments to the _International Monthly_, December,
1901.

[129:1] 1901.

[132:1] See F. J. Turner, "Western State-Making in the Revolutionary
Era," in _Am. Historical Review_, i, pp. 70 _et seq._

V

THE OHIO VALLEY IN AMERICAN HISTORY[157:1]

In a notable essay Professor Josiah Royce has asserted the salutary
influence of a highly organized provincial life in order to counteract
certain evils arising from the tremendous development of nationalism in
our own day. Among these evils he enumerates: first, the frequent
changes of dwelling place, whereby the community is in danger of losing
the well-knit organization of a common life; second, the tendency to
reduce variety in national civilization, to assimilate all to a common
type and thus to discourage individuality, and produce a "remorseless
mechanism--vast, irrational;" third, the evils arising from the fact
that waves of emotion, the passion of the mob, tend in our day to sweep
across the nation.

Against these surges of national feeling Professor Royce would erect
dikes in the form of provincialism, the resistance of separate sections
each with its own traditions, beliefs and aspirations. "Our national
unities have grown so vast, our forces of social consolidation so
paramount, the resulting problems, conflicts, evils, have become so
intensified," he says, that we must seek in the province renewed
strength, usefulness and beauty of American life.

Whatever may be thought of this philosopher's appeal for a revival of
sectionalism, on a higher level, in order to check the tendencies to a
deadening uniformity of national consolidation (and to me this appeal,
under the limitations which he gives it, seems warranted by the
conditions)--it is certainly true that in the history of the United
States sectionalism holds a place too little recognized by the
historians.

By sectionalism I do not mean the struggle between North and South which
culminated in the Civil War. That extreme and tragic form of
sectionalism indeed has almost engrossed the a