an and Scotch,
English and Irish; our generals and our corporals; our learned and our
unlearned; debtors and creditors--comprising mostly all of us; but
believe me, friend, not a solitary living Indian.

I think we are a generous, hospitable, liberal people, up to the full
limit of our means and capabilities. Being all away from home, as it
were, and all strangers together, we have learned the blessedness of
sympathy, and how a little lift is often a great boost, and a friend in
need a friend indeed. It was formerly said that when a stranger
appeared, the inhabitants emulously set to work to take him in, not
however in the flattering and hospitable sense of the words. But as
almost without exception any man in a new place or position is a verdant
man, so we honestly maintain that they took themselves in, and found it
rather difficult to take themselves out again. I believe that we are as
quiet, honest, genteel, and mind-your-own-business a set of folks as you
may find in most other and more favored communities. With the constant
and increasing accessions to our society from more enlightened regions,
it would be a wonder did we not attain in time to a level with many
other and older-settled countries, who are apt to look abroad with
serene complacency gathering motes in open eyes, We have had our castles
in the air, and some of them are now underground; but we have read of
South Sea bubbles, rise and fall in stocks, 'On to Richmonds,'
McClellans, and Congress; and we don't think the beams are all in our
own eyes and the motes too.

In fact we are not heathen nor barbarian, Goth nor Vandal, Hottentot nor
Fire Eater--but bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh--one with you in
all the customs, proprieties, civilization, and hopes of the great
American people; bound to save the republic of our fathers, if we go to
the death in defence of our mutual rights, principles, and homes.

Do you ask then, 'What is the need of saying all this, since we know it
all?' I reply, there is need of saying it, and of repeating it again.
There may not be need of it for you, my friend; there is need of it for
many others. Talk not of making us of one flesh twain. It cannot be. It
is not a question of mere _interest_ that shall bind us as a people
inseparably in one. God will not solder a chain. It is a higher bond, a
holier bond. We are essentially and intrinsically one; one by nature;
one by mutual sympathies, by blood relations, by dearest