dinate to
this. Patriotism was a secondary sentiment. Hypocritical pretension to
the purity of religion was used to cover the vilest practices, and to
shield from public indignation men who, praying, pressed into their
service the vilest means to make haste to be rich. The sordid parsimony
of ninety-hundredths of the population shut out every sentiment of
generosity, and rooted from the heart every emotion honorable to human
nature. Neighborhood intercourse was poisoned with selfishness, and the
effort to overreach, and make money out of, the ignorance or
necessities of these, was universal. These degrading practices crept
into every business, and petty frauds soon became designated as Yankee
tricks. There was nothing ennobling in their pursuits. The honorable
profession of law dwindled into pettifogging tricks. Commerce was
degraded in their hands by fraud and chicanery. The pernicious and
grasping nature everywhere cultivated, soon fastened upon the features.
Their eyes were pale, their features lank and hard, and the stony
nature was apparent in the icy coldness of manner, in the deceitful
grin, and lip-laugh, which the eye never shared, and which was only
affected, when interest prompted, or the started suspicions of an
intended victim warned them to be wary. The climate, and the
inhospitable and ungenerous soil, seemed to impart to the people their
own natures.

The men were all growing sharp, and the women, cold and passionless;
the soul appeared to shrivel and sink into induration, and the whole
people were growing into a nation of cheats and dastards. Such was the
promise for the people of New England, in 1820. Has it not been
realized in the years of the recent intestine war? The incentive held
out to her people to volunteer into her armies, was the plunder of the
South. The world has never witnessed such rapacity for gain as marked
the armies of the United States in their march through the South.
Religion and humanity were lost sight of in the general scramble for
the goods and the money of the Southern people. Rings were snatched
from the fingers of ladies and torn from their ears; their wardrobes
plundered and forwarded to expectant families at home; graves were
violated for the plates of gold and silver that might be found upon the
coffins; the dead bodies of women and men were unshrouded after
exhumation, to search in the coffins and shrouds to see if valuables
were not here concealed; and, in numerous in