faith with which so many
have listened to the threats of 'a united South.' Until recently the
fierce and furious assurances of the rebel press, that south of Mason
and Dixon's line all were wedded heart and soul to their cause, were
taken almost without a doubt. Who has forgotten the late doleful
convictions of the dough-faces that the South would hold together to the
last in spite of wind or weather, concluding invariably with the old
refrain,--'Suppose we conquer them--what then?' Had the country at large
known in detail, as it _should_ have known from a common-school
education, what the South _really_ is,--or from experience of life what
human nature really is,--it would never have believed that this boasted
unanimity was based on aught save ignorance or falsehood. The Southern
press itself, almost without an exception, betrays gross ignorance of
its own country, and is very superficial in its statistics, inclining
more than any other to warp facts and figures to suit preconceived
views. We, like it, have tacitly adopted the belief that south of a
certain line a certain climate invariably prevailed, and that under its
influences, from the Border to the Gulf of Mexico, there has been
developed a race essentially alike in all its characteristics. The
planter and the slave-owner, or the city merchant, has been the type
with which our writers have become familiar at the hotel and the
watering-place, or in the 'store,' and we have accepted them as speaking
for the South, quite forgetful that in America, as in other countries,
the real man of the middle class travels but little, and when he does,
is seldom to be found mingling in the 'higher circles.' Yet even this
Southern man of the middle class and of 'Alleghania,' when at the North
frequently affects a 'Southern' air, which is not more natural to him
than it is to the youthful scions of Philadelphia and New York, who,
when in Europe, so often talk pro-slavery and bowie knife, as though
they lived in the very heart of planterdom. But the truth is that when
we search the South out closely we find that in reality there is a very
great difference between its districts and their inhabitants, and, in
_fact_, as has been very truly said, 'not only is there no geographical
boundary between the free and slave States, but no moral and
intellectual boundary.'

In the great temperate region which, parting from either side of the
Alleghanies, extends from Virginia to Alabama, and i