This Is Especially The Land Of
Yankees, And None Can Properly Be Called Yankees But Those Who
Belong To New England.
I have named the States as nearly as may be
in order from the north downward.
Of Rhode Island, the smallest
State in the Union, I have already said what little I have to say.
Of these six States Boston may be called the capital. Not that it
is so in any civil or political sense; it is simply the capital of
Massachusetts. But as it is the Athens of the Western world; as it
was the cradle of American freedom; as everybody of course knows
that into Boston harbor was thrown the tea which George III. would
tax, and that at Boston, on account of that and similar taxes,
sprang up the new revolution; and as it has grown in wealth, and
fame, and size beyond other towns in New England, it may be allowed
to us to regard it as the capital of these six Northern States,
without guilt of lese majeste toward the other five. To me, I
confess this Northern division of our once-unruly colonies is, and
always has been, the dearest. I am no Puritan myself, and fancy
that, had I lived in the days of the Puritans, I should have been
anti-Puritan to the full extent of my capabilities. But I should
have been so through ignorance and prejudice, and actuated by that
love of existing rights and wrongs which men call loyalty. If the
Canadas were to rebel now, I should be for putting down the
Canadians with a strong hand; but not the less have I an idea that
it will become the Canadas to rebel and assert their independence
at some future period, unless it be conceded to them without such
rebellion. Who, on looking back, can now refuse to admire the
political aspirations of the English Puritans, or decline to
acknowledge the beauty and fitness of what they did? It was by
them that these States of New England were colonized. They came
hither, stating themselves to be pilgrims, and as such they first
placed their feet on that hallowed rock at Plymouth, on the shore
of Massachusetts. They came here driven by no thirst of conquest,
by no greed for gold, dreaming of no Western empire such as Cortez
had achieved and Raleigh had meditated. They desired to earn their
bread in the sweat of their brow, worshiping God according to their
own lights, living in harmony under their own laws, and feeling
that no master could claim a right to put a heel upon their necks.
And be it remembered that here in England, in those days, earthly
masters were still apt to put their heels on the necks of men. The
Star Chamber was gone, but Jeffreys had not yet reigned. What
earthly aspirations were ever higher than these, or more manly?
And what earthly efforts ever led to grander results?
We determined to go to Portland, in Maine, from thence to the White
Mountains in New Hampshire - the American Alps, as they love to call
them - and then on to Quebec, and up through the two Canadas to
Niagara; and this route we followed.
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