By William Howard Russell. I haven't read much of it yet. I was pointed to it by Sgt Mom. He seems to have employed a wicked sense of humor as he reported on the USA during the Civil War.
"Had the pages been literally transcribed, without omitting a word, the fate of one whose task it was to sift the true from the false and to avoid error in statements of fact, in a country remarkable for the extraordinary fertility with which the unreal is produced, would have excited much commiseration;"
Some things haven't changed much.
...
"The swarming communities and happy homes of the New England States -- the most complete exhibition of the best results of the American system -- it was denied me to witness; but if I was deprived of the gratification of worshiping the frigid intellectualism of Boston, I saw the effects in the field, among the men I met, of the teachings and theories of the political, moral and religious professors, who are the chiefs of that universal Yankee nation, as they delight to call themselves, and there recognized the radical differences which must sever them forever from a true union with the Southern States."
I think some of us have a slightly different take on this description than he may have intended.
3 comments:
New England and the South have been the opposing factions in our history since the beginning. The northern three New England states are not so much like Massachusetts and Connecticut as supposed, but neither are they so different. Going to school in Virginia, I became aware of how the South divides itself as well.
I don't know about the rest of New England, but New Hampshire is definitely superior in many ways to the rest of the states. I am sorry the author did not get to witness this.
Frederick Law Olmsted, better known as the landscape architect who designed Central Park and Golden Gate Park, wrote some books on his travels through the South in the 1950s.
A Journey in the Back Country
A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier
A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States,
Abridgments in The Cotton Kingdom
At Google Books in addition to Amazon and B&N
I read the Kingdom of Cotton, part 1: it is available online
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