Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge[7] attempted, some years ago, to assign to the different races in America the 14,243 men eminent enough to find a place in “Appleton’s Encyclopedia of American Biography.” He prepared a statistical summary as follows:—
EMINENT AMERICANS
| English | 10,376 | |
| Scotch-Irish | 1,439 | |
| German | 659 | |
| Huguenot | 589 | |
| Scotch | 436 | |
| Dutch | 336 | |
| Welsh | 159 | |
| Irish | 109 | |
| French | 85 | |
| Scandinavian | 31 | |
| Spanish | 7 | |
| Italian | 7 | |
| Swiss | 5 | |
| Greek | 3 | |
| Russian | 1 | |
| Polish | 1 | |
| Total | 14,243 |
When we inquire into the methods necessarily adopted in preparing a statistical table of this kind we discover serious limitations. Mr. Lodge was confined to the paternal line alone, but if, as some biologists assert, the female is the conservative element which holds to the type, and the male is the variable element which departs from the type, then the specific contribution of the race factor would be found in the maternal line. However, let this dubious point pass. We find that in American life two hundred years of intermingling has in many if not in most cases of greatness broken into the continuity of race. True, the New England and Virginia stock has remained during most of this time of purely English origin, but the very fact that in Mr. Lodge’s tables Massachusetts has produced 2686 notables, while Virginia, of the same blood, has produced only 1038, must lead to the suspicion that factors other than race extraction are the mainspring of greatness.
It must be remembered that ability is not identical with eminence. Ability is the product of ancestry and training. Eminence is an accident of social conditions. The English race was the main contributor to population during the seventeenth century, and English conquest determined the form of government, the language, and the opportunities for individual advancement. During the succeeding century the Scotch-Irish and the Germans migrated in nearly equal numbers, and their combined migration was perhaps as great as that of the English in the seventeenth century. But they were compelled to move to the interior, to become frontiersmen, to earn their living directly from the soil, and to leave to their English-sprung predecessors the more prominent occupations of politics, literature, law, commerce, and the army. The Germans, who, according to Lodge, “produced fewer men of ability than any other race in the United States,” were further handicapped by their language and isolation, which continue to this day in the counties of Pennsylvania where they originally settled. On the other hand, the Huguenots and the Dutch came in the first century of colonization. They rapidly merged with the English, lost their language, and hence contributed their full share of eminence. Finally, the Irish, Scandinavian and other races, inconspicuous in the galaxy of notables, did not migrate in numbers until the middle of the nineteenth century, and, in addition to the restraints of language and poverty, they found the roads to prominence preoccupied.
“Return of the Mayflower”
Painting by Boughton, 1834
Besides the accident of precedence in time, a second factor distinct from race itself has contributed to the eminence of one race over another. The Huguenots and the French, according to Lodge’s statistics, show a percentage of ability in proportion to their total immigration much higher than that of any other race. But the Huguenots were a select class of people, manufacturers and merchants, perhaps the most intelligent and enterprising of Frenchmen in the seventeenth century. Furthermore the direct migration from France to this country has never included many peasants and wage-earners, but has been limited to the adventurous and educated. Had the French-Canadians who represent the peasantry of France been included in these comparisons, the proportion of French eminence would have been materially reduced.
The same is true of the English. Although sprung from one race, those who came to America represented at least two grades of society as widely apart as two races. The Pilgrims and Puritans of New England were the yeomen, the merchants, the manufacturers, skilled in industry, often independent in resources, and well trained in the intellectual controversies of religion and politics. The Southern planters also sprang from a class of similar standing, though not so strongly addicted to intellectual pursuits. Beneath both these classes were the indentured servants, a few of whom were men of ability forced to pay their passage by service. But the majority of them were brought to this country through the advertisements of shipowners and landholders or even forcibly captured on the streets of cities or transported for crimes and pauperism. Though all of these classes were of the same race, they were about as widely divergent as races themselves in point of native ability and preparatory training.