ete inventory of national or personal
attributes, should be enumerated. There is at the South a large
counterpoise, therefore, of adverse statement, which might be, and
should be made if the object of the present writing were a complete
analysis of the subject. It is, however, not so, but a statement of the
preponderance of public character and opinion in those States. As a
people they have their countervailing side of advantage--a great deal of
amiability and refinement in certain neighborhoods, so long as their
inherent right of domination is not disputed. Men and women are found,
all over the South, who as individuals are better than the institution
by which their characters are affected, and whose native goodness could
not be wholly spoiled by its adverse operation. Slavery, too, offers
certain advantages for some special kinds of culture. We of the North,
on the other hand, have our own vices of a kind not to be disguised nor
denied; so that the present statement should not be mistaken for an
attempt to characterize in full either population. It is simply
perceived that the grand distinctive drift of Southern society is
directly away from the democratic moorings of our favorite republican
institutions; is rapid in its current and irresistible in its momentum;
and that already the divergency attained between the political and
popular character of the people at the North and the South is immense;
that these constantly widening tendencies--one in behalf of more and
more practical enlargement of the liberty of the individual; the other
backward and downward toward the despotic political dogmas and practices
of the ignorant and benighted past--have proceeded altogether beyond
anything which has been seen and recognized by the people of the North;
and that, consequently, the whole North has been acting under a
misapprehension.

The spirit of the South is and has been belligerent, rancorous, and
unscrupulous. The idea of settling any question by the discussion of
principles, by mutual concessions, by the understanding, admission, and
defence of the rights of each, is not in all their thoughts. They are
inherently and essentially invaders and conquerors, in disposition, and
so far as it might chance to prove for them feasible, would ever be so
in fact. War with them is therefore no matter of child's play, no matter
of courtesy or chivalry toward enemies, except from a pompous and
theatrical show of a knightly character, wh