Still, as no point in a contest should be thrown away, let it be avowed that Puritanic New England could always display a greater array of 'gentlemen by birth' than Virginia, or even the entire South. This is said deliberately, because we know whereof we speak. If the fact be of service in any way, it can easily be substantiated. A list of such names as I can at present remember is longer than any list I have been able to collect from Southern publications. These are, Adams, Amory, Anderson, Appleton, Belcher, Bond, Bowdoin, Bromfield, Browne, Burrill, Chauncy, Chester, Chute, Checkley, Clark, Clarke, Cotton, Coolidge, Corwin, Cradock, Davenport, Downing, Dudley, Dummer, Eyre, Fairfax, Foxcroft, Giffard, Jaffrey, Jeffries, Johnson, Hawthorne, Herrick, Holyoke, Hutchinson, Lawrence, Lake, Lechmere, Legge, Leverett, Lloyd, Lowell, Mascarene, Mather, Miner, Norton, Oliver, Pepperell, Phips, Phippen, Prince, Pynchon, Saltonstall, Sears, Sewall, Thornton, Usher, Vassall, Ward, Wendell, Wetmore, Wilson, Winslow, Winthrop, Wyllys.
I insert this list only for the benefit of those who have yielded to the claims of Virginia through ignorance on points which are peculiarly the care of genealogists. It can easily be extended, and every year, as our records are more fully examined, it will increase.
If we leave the dry details, which I have presented simply as indications of the method in which this question can be discussed, and regard the problem in a more general view, it is surprising to see how theory and fact agree. The United States are essentially English to-day, despite the millions of foreigners which have been absorbed into its population. The tendency of its citizens has been toward a democracy, and yet not toward anarchy and lawlessness. The throes of a gigantic revolution have not sufficed to outweigh the instinctive love of law and order peculiar to the English race. Though events unforeseen by the authors of the Federal Constitution have called for exercises of power, obscurely permitted perhaps by that instrument, yet unknown to former practice, still there has been no popular convulsion at the North, no armed outbreak, no phrensy of mob power. There is as yet no such thing known as an American mob.
When we inquire what controlling influence has impressed this form upon the national character, the enemies of the predominant party instinctively show that it is New England. Not the comparatively limited New England of 1863, but the New England stock and influence which has invigorated nearly every State of the Union. In their ignorance of the past, these revilers of New England have been blindly attacking a greater fact than they were aware of. Not only is nearly a third part of our native-born population the offspring of the New England of the Revolution, but long before that time the intermixture had commenced. Whitehead's 'New Jersey' (p. 159) quotes Governor Burnet's letter, written in 1729:
'The people of New Jersey (being generally of New England extraction, and therefore enthusiasts) would consider the number of planters, etc., as a repetition of the same sin as David committed in numbering the people.'
The History of Dorchester, Massachusetts, quotes a letter from the Secretary of Georgia, in 1755, in relation to a colony from that town, in which he says:
'I really look upon these people moving here to be one of the most favorable circumstances that could befall the colony.'
It is added:
'This settlement has furnished Georgia with two governors, two of its most distinguished judges, the theological seminary of South Carolina and Georgia with an able professor, the Methodist Episcopal Church with an influential and pious bishop, the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches of that State with many of their ablest and most useful ministers; and six of her sons have been called to professorial chairs in collegiate institutions.'
The first attempt at colonizing the Mississippi delta was made by the Lymans, Dwights, and their associates from Connecticut. New York received a constant accession from New England long before 1775.