Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/404

Virginia assumed a superiority that was resented by her Southern sisters as well as by her Northern partners. The Old North State derided the pretensions of the commonwealths that flanked her on either side, and Georgia was not slow to give South Carolina as good as she sent. All this seemed to be harmless banter, but the rivalry was old enough and strong enough to encourage the hopes of the Union leaders that the Confederacy would split along state lines. The cohesive power of the Revolutionary War was not sufficiently strong to make the states sink their contributions to the common cause in the common glory. Washington was the one national hero, and yet the Washington Light Infantry of Charleston was named, not after the illustrious George, but after his kinsman, William. The story of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill did not thrill the South Carolinian of an earlier day, and those great achievements were actually criticized. Who were Putnam and Stark that South Carolinians should worship them, when they had a Marion and a Sumter of their own? Vermont went wild, the other day, over Bennington as she did not over the centenary of the surrender at Yorktown. Take away this local patriotism and you take out all the color that is left in American life. That the local patriotism may not only consist with a wider patriotism, but may serve as a most important element in a wider patriotism, is true. Witness the strong local life in the old provinces of France. No student of history, no painter of manners can neglect it. In "Gerfaut," a novel written before the Franco-Prussian War, Charles de Bernard represents an Alsatian shepherd as saying, "I am not French; I am Alsatian." "Trait de patriotisme de clocher assez commun dans la belle province du Rhin," adds the author, little dreaming of the national significance of that "patriotisme de clocher." The Breton's love of his home is familiar to everyone who has read his "Renan," and Blanche Willis Howard, in "Guenn," makes