Southern History Series: Southern Civilization; or, The Norman in America

Writing in De Bow’s Review in 1862, J. Quitman Moore explains the ethnic and cultural differences between the Anglo-Saxon and Normans, Puritans and Cavaliers, Yankees and Southerners:

“But, when the eye was turned from the contemplation of these social phenomena to a survey of the political institutions of the country, it required no remarkable strength of observation to discover that there were two distinct nationalities existing on the soil of Great Britain; and of the two, the Norman was the ruler.

The Teutonic and the Latin – the Northern and the Southern – types of civilization, with their diverse social systems, their incompatibility of ideas, opinions, and institutions, and their ineradicable national prejudices, were brought into the presence of each other, under the exigencies of a compulsory political union; and so long as the dominant race maintained the principles and institutions that were the native outgrowth of its civilization, its ascendancy was complete.

Aristocracy, based on the feudal relation, is the natural expression of the political thought of the Norman – a social condition, resting on the principle of subordination, and recognizing the family as the primary basis of social union. Democracy, founded on the idea of an unlimited individualism, and without any reference to the conservative organism of institutions, is the fundamental conception of the political philosophy of the Teuton or Saxon.

The English constitution is the result of a compromise between these two hostile systems, with the Norman element always in the ascendant, save during the brief reign of Cromwell.

But the Roundhead, at once a religious fanatic and a political agitator and reformer, could conceive of no government but the rule of the Saints, and form no other idea of the principles of civil liberty than what the levelling philosophy of the covenant taught. A bigot in faith and an idealist in speculation, his sentiments were violent and his convictions impracticable. A visionary from principle and a revolutionist from interest, his prejudices allowed no compromise, while his passions fed equally the flame of his cupidity and ambition. Austere in his morals and inflexible in his principles, he set up his own conduct as the standard of right, and sought to dictate the opinions and control the convictions of others. Rude in his manners and morose in his disposition, he practiced the profoundest dissimulation, while attaining credit for sincerity, and concealed his real character and designs under the cloak of hypocrisy. . . .

Opposite under the banner of the king, stood the Cavalier – the builder, the social architect, the institutionalist, the conservator – the advocate of rational liberty and the supporter of authority, as against the licentiousness and morbid impulse of unregulated passion and unenlightened sentiment. No idealist, enthusiast or speculative system-builder, upheaving ancient landmarks and overthrowing venerable monuments; but a realist, a practical and enlightened utilitarian, bowing to the authority of experience and acknowledging the supremacy of ideas, forms and institutions that had received the hallowing sanction of time . An institutor by genius and a ruler by race, his pride was at once the sword of his most eminent virtues and greatest weaknesses, while honor was the touchstone of his character. Chivalrous in sentiment and magnanimous in deed, glory was his ambition, and loyalty the inspirer of his every thought, impulse and action. Elevated in his ideas and tolerant in his views, his selfishness was vicarious and his very faults wore the semblance of virtue. Unyielding in his principles, but compromising in his opinions, his conduct was governed more by sentiment than reflection, and more by association than either. Courtly in his manners and splendid in his tastes, a knightly generosity he practiced even toward his foes, and never lost his faculties in volumptuousness. Without being an abject advocate of passive obedience or a supporter of arbitrary power, he yet took ground against the revolutionary party, not as an enemy to liberal institutions or a well-regulated liberty: but, discovering in the doctrines and principles of the revolution a greater danger to the social and political system than from the alleged existing abuses, he preferred yielding his loyalty rather to institutions than abstractions, and felt it a duty to attempt to quench the lights of the incendiary philosophy, whose torch had been applied to the noblest monuments of civil wisdom yet erected by the genius of man …