honorable man. Are we
ready to say that they were not American? Did they differ in any vital
point from those of Lincoln? His social theories were simple in the
extreme. He neither overvalued nor underrated social conventions, for
he knew that they were a part of the fabric of civilized society, not
vitally important and yet not wholly trivial. He was a member of an
aristocracy, it is true, both by birth and situation. There was a
recognized social aristocracy in every colony before the Revolution,
for the drum-beat of the great democratic march had not then sounded.
In the northern colonies it was never strong, and in New England
it was especially weak, for the governments and people there were
essentially democratic, although they hardly recognized it themselves.
In Virginia and the southern colonies, on the other hand, there was a
vigorous aristocracy resting on the permanent foundation of slavery.
Where slaves are there must be masters, and where there are masters
there are aristocrats; but it was an American and not an English
aristocracy. Lineage and family had weight in the south as in the
north, but that which put a man undeniably in the ruling class was the
ownership of black slaves and the possession of a white skin. This
aristocracy lasted with its faults and its virtues until it perished
in the shock of civil war, when its foundation of human slavery was
torn from under it. From the slave-holding aristocracy of Virginia
came, with the exception of Patrick Henry, all the great men of that
State who did so much for American freedom, and who rendered such
imperishable service to the republic in law, in politics, and in war.
From this aristocracy came Marshall, and Mason, and Madison, the Lees,
the Randolphs, the Harrisons, and the rest. From it came also Thomas
Jefferson, the hero of American democracy; and to it was added Patrick
Henry, not by lineage or slave-holding, but by virtue of his brilliant
abilities, and because he, too, was an aristocrat by the immutable
division of race. It was this aristocracy into which Washington was
born, and amid which he was brought up. To say that it colored his
feelings and habits is simply to say that he was human; but to urge
that it made him un-American is to exclude at once from the ranks
of Americans all the great men given to the country by the South.
Washington, in fact, was less affected by his surroundings, and rose
above them more quickly, than any other man of hi