e and anomalous state of things is
alike rare and anomalous. No other people ever so commingled in
themselves the elements of barbarous and even savage life with traits of
the highest civilization. No other community were ever so instinct with
the life of the worst ages of the past, and so endowed with the physical
and intellectual potencies of the present. The national character of the
South is that of the gentlemanly blackleg, bully, and desperado.
Courteous when polished, but always overbearing; pretentious of a
conventional sense of honor--which consists solely in a readiness to
fight in the duel, the brawl, or the regular campaign, and to take
offence on every occasion; with no trace of that modesty or delicacy of
sentiment which constitutes the soul of true honor; ambitious,
unscrupulous, bold; dashing and expert; with absolutely no restrictions
from conscience, routine, or the ordinary suggestions of prudence; false
and, like all braggarts, cowardly when beaten; confident of their own
strength until brought to the severest tests; capable of endurance and
shifts of all kinds; awaiting none of the usual conditions of
success--the Southern man and the Southern people are neither
comfortable neighbors in a state of peace, nor enemies to be slightly
considered or despised in war.

The anomalous character of Southern society, it cannot be too often
repeated, is not understood and cannot be understood by the people of
the North, or of Europe, otherwise than through the sharp experience of
hostile and actual contact; nor otherwise than in the light of the
inherent tendency and necessary educational influences of the one
institution of slavery. Of the whole South, in degree, and of the
Southwestern States preeminently, it may be said as a whole description
in a single form of expression: _They know no other virtue than brute
physical courage, and no other crime than abolitionism or
negro-stealing._

All this is said, not for the purpose of blackening the South, not from
partisan rancor or local prejudice, or exaggerated patriotic zeal, but
because it is true. It is not true, however, of the whole population of
the South, nor true, perhaps, in the absolute sense of any portion. It
is impossible to characterize any people without a portion of individual
injustice, or to state the drift of an individual character even,
without a like injustice to better traits, adverse to the general drift,
and which, to constitute a compl