Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/141

 lAfe^ Services and Character of Jefferson Davis, 133

1 86 1 in differences between the groups of colonists which settled in Virginia and in Massachusetts, and which they think impressed upon the incipient civilization of the North and South opposing charac- teristics. The one, they say, brought the notions of the Cavaliers, the other of the Puritans, to America, and that an irrepressible con- flict existed between them. To so believe is to be deceived by the merest surface indications. The Puritans and the Cavaliers of Eng- land have long since setded their differences in the Old World, and become so assimilated that the traces of old-time quarrel, and, indeed, of political identity, have been completely obliterated ; and it would be strange indeed if in little England they of the same race and language were thus blended, that in America, where social adapta- tion is so much easier and more rapid, they should have remained separate and hostile. Many Cavaliers went to New England, and many Puritans came to Virginia and the South, and their differences disappeared as quickly as they now disappear between disciples of different parties from different sections when thrown into new sur- roundings with common interests.

NORTH AND SOUTH CONTROLLED BY PREDOMINANT TRAITS OF RACE.

To understand the causes of conflict we must consider the unities of our race, and note the interventions of local causes which dif- ferentiated its northern and southern segments.

When this is done, it will be realized that each section has been guided by the predominant traits which it possessed in common, and which inhered in the very blood of its people, and that differences of physical surrounding, not the differences of moral and intellectual character led to their crystallization in masses separated by diversi- ties of interest and opinion and their resulting passions. These diverse interests and opinions sprung out of the very soil on which they made their homes even as the pine rises to towering heights in the granite hills of the North, and the palmetto spreads its luxuriant foliage on the Southland. The bear of the polar region takes his whiteness from the cold sky, and the bear of the tropics turns dark under the blazing heavens. The same breeze upon the high seas impels one ship north, another south, one east, and another west, according to the angle in which it strikes the sail. Natural causes operating under fixed laws changed the civilization of the North and South ; but though their people were moved in opposite directions, he who searches for impelling forces will find them nearly, if not quite, identical.