New York is the Empire State, and with the following comprises Yankee land, which word Yankee is most properly a corruption of Yengeese, the old Indian word for English; so that, by parity of reasoning, John Bull is, after all, a Yankee.
| Massachusetts | The Bay State, Steady Habits. |
| Rhode Island | Plantation State. |
| Vermont | Banner State, or Green Mountain Boys. |
| New Hampshire | The Granite State. |
| Connecticut | Freestone State. |
| Maine | Lumber State. |
These are the Yankees, par excellence; and it is not polite or even civil for a traveller to consider or mention any of the other States as labouring under the idea that they ever could, by any possibility, be considered as Yankees; for, in the South, the word Yankee is almost equivalent to a tin pedlar, a sharp, Sam Slick.
| Pennsylvania is | The Keystone State. |
| New Jersey | The Jersey (pronounced Jar-say) Blues. |
| Delaware | Little Delaware. |
| Maryland | Monumental. |
| Virginia | The Old Dominion, and sometimes the Cavaliers. |
| North Carolina | Rip Van Winckle. |
| South Carolina | The Palmetto State. |
| Georgia | Pine State. |
| Ohio | The Buckeyes. |
| Kentucky | The Corncrackers. |
| Alabama | Alabama. |
| Tennessee | The Lion's Den. |
| Missouri | The Pukes. |
| Illinois | The Suckers. |
| Indiana | The Hoosiers. |
| Michigan | The Wolverines. |
| Arkansas | The Toothpickers. |
| Louisiana | The Creole State. |
| Mississippi | The Border Beagles. |
I do not know what elegant names have been given to the Floridas, the Iowa, or any of the other territories, but no doubt they are equally significant. Texas, I suppose, will be called Annexation State.
This information, although it appears frivolous, is very useful, as without it much of the perpetual war of politics in the States cannot be understood. Yankee in Europe is a sort of byword, denoting repudiation and all sorts of chicanery; but the Yankee States are more English, more intellectual, and more enterprising than all the rest put together; and Pennsylvania should be enrolled among them.
In short, in the north-east you have the cool, calculating, confident, and persevering Yankee; in the south, the fiery, somewhat aristocratic, bold, and uncompromising American, full of talent, but with his energies a little slackened by his proximity to the equator and his habitual use of slave assistance.
In the central States, all is progressive; a more agricultural population of mixed races, as energetic as the Yankee, but not possessing his advantages of a seaboard. The Western States are the pioneers of civilization, and have a dauntless, less educated, and more turbulent character, approaching, as you draw towards the setting sun, very much to the half-horse, half-alligator, and paving the way for the arts and sciences of Europe with the rifle and the axe.
It is these Western States and the vast labouring population of the seaboard, who have only their manual labour to maintain them, without property or without possessions of any kind, that control the legislature, their numerical strength beating and bearing down mind, matter, and wealth.
Doubtless it is the bane of the republican institution, as now settled in North America, that every man, woman, and child, in order to assert their equality, must meddle with matters far above the comprehension of a great majority; for, although the people of the United States can, as George the Third so piously wished for the people of England, read their bible, whenever they are inclined to do so, yet it is beyond possibility, as human nature is constituted, that all can be endowed with the same, or any thing like the same, faculties. Too much learning makes them mad; and hence the constant danger of disruption, from opposing interests, which the masses—for the word mob is not applicable here—must always enforce. The north and the south, the east and the west, are as dissimilar in habits, in thought, in action, and in interests, as Young Russia is from Old England, or as republican France was from the monarchy of Louis the Great.