" Everywhere else, the intellectual class have some
sense of the ill-consequences of "breeding in and in," and take care
to infuse into their minds the vigor of new ideas and the nourishment
of strange knowledge. How impossible for a Northern State to think of
doing what Alabama did last winter, pass a law designed to limit the
circulation in that State of Northern newspapers and periodicals! What
Southern men mean by "State pride" is really not known in the Northern
States. All men of every land are fond of their native place; but the
pride that Northern people may feel in the State wherein they happened
to be born is as subordinate to their national feeling, as the
attachment of a Frenchman to his native province is to his pride in
France.
Why this difference? It did not always exist. It cost New York and
Massachusetts as severe a struggle to accept the Constitution of 1787
as it did Virginia. George Clinton, Governor of New York, had as much
State pride as Patrick Henry, orator of Virginia, and parted as
reluctantly with a portion of the sovereignty which he wielded.
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