The Geography of American Achievement
I
MORE than forty years ago, Henry Cabot Lodge, then a Congressman from Massachusetts, published in the Century Magazine a statistical essay entitled ‘The Distribution of Ability in the United States.’ Most demonstrated ‘ability’ he found in groups that he himself represented: in the preRevolutionary stock as compared with the relative newcomers since 1789, whom he termed ‘immigrants’; in persons of English descent; among Northerners as compared with Southerners; in Easterners as compared with Westerners; and among New Englanders as compared with anybody else at all. In many quarters, until our own day, this article has been regarded as authoritative. On the other hand, numerous readers, including myself, have been provoked by its complacency.
Most of the heated protests upon which my eye has chanced to fall came from my own native section, where the Massachusetts Congressman was already suspect because of his advocacy of the Force Bill and his outspoken desire to send back the Federal soldiers to the conquered provinces, on national election days at least. Southern patriots, characteristically on the defensive, noting that his study was based on the recently published Appletons’ Cyclopœdia of American Biography, hastened to assert that this work could hardly be expected to do justice to natives of the former Confederacy. Edited by James Grant Wilson, a former Union soldier, and John Fiske, a son of New England, it was, according to Southerners, designed for Northern and Eastern consumption. Whether or not the German-Americans protested, I do not know, but they may well have been annoyed by the statement that they had shown less ability, proportionately, than any other group in the country. From the Irish, who were ranked eighth, one might have anticipated vigorous objection. Representatives of both these groups might have pointed out that the author’s uncritical method of determining racial origins by names was distinctly advantageous to the English.
The grandson of a Confederate soldier and a one-time Wilsonian Democrat should not be expected to defend Henry Cabot Lodge against the charge of partisanship. Yet I have no disposition to attack his memory in behalf of any disgruntled group, nor to attempt to placate those insatiable local and racial patriots who raise the cry of prejudice against all conclusions that are unpalatable to them. They will attack me just as quickly if they don’t like what I have to say. Those of us who have been responsible for the management of the Dictionary of AmericanBiography, and who have tried to make this a truly national work, comprehending all sections, sects, and races, at times have dared believe that the charge of prejudice could never, with justice, be raised against us. All we can be sure of, however, is that, with the coöperation of all important groups, we have made the latest comprehensive collection of American biographical material, covering the whole of our history, and that on it generalizations of many sorts will be based. Naturally, the editor has turned to Lodge’s essay, based on old Appletons‘, and has compared the conclusions there expressed with those he has been formulating in his own mind. In some respects, the agreement has been startling; in others, the disagreement has been profound.
Like him, I have addressed myself to the task of ascertaining the distribution of notable Americans, as shown by the places of their birth; but with his title, ‘The Distribution of Ability,’ I will have nothing to do. It cannot be claimed that any dictionary or encyclopædia of biography measures ‘ability.’ The selection of names must be made on the basis of something more tangible and more measurable, chiefly upon recognized achievement and prominence, with which outstanding ability may be generally, but certainly is not always, conjoined. It may be questioned whether Mary Todd Lincoln was a woman of great ability, or accomplished anything significant except in a purely negative way, but she was much in the public eye and has had books written about her. That a large number of people will want to look her up seems a sufficient warrant for her inclusion. The first white child known to have been born within the present limits of the United States, Virginia Dare, has found a place in the Dictionary of American Biography, as she did also in Appletons, yet the days of her life of which there is authentic record are only nine. This is an extreme case, to be sure, but the fact remains that we can speak with accuracy, not of the distribution of ‘ability’ in the colonics and states, but only of the geographical distribution of those persons who for one reason or another have been deemed notable, due allowance being made for the fallibility of human judgment.
It may also be argued that there is much that is fortuitous in being born in a particular place; persons are not necessarily identified with the town, or state, or section, in which they first saw the light of day. Edgar Allan Poe passed significant portions of his life in Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York; he disliked and had little association with Boston, where he happened to be born. His life can hardly be described as an expression of the New England intellect and character, but in any set of geographical statistics he will be credited to Massachusetts. On the other hand, Woodrow Wilson was born in Virginia, of what Lodge would have termed ‘immigrant’ stock, since his American ancestors were post-Revolutionary. Soon his clergyman father moved southward. His early influences were unquestionably Southern, but this last of the Virginia Presidents might be credited with equal justice to either of the Carolinas or to Georgia. It is rather futile to attempt to place him geographically, and it is eminently fitting that his dust should lie in Washington. Even in this there is an inconsistency; he was buried in the National Cathedral, though in nurture and temperament he was Presbyterian.
II
With due allowance for fortuitous circumstance, which probably does not greatly affect the average, it is relatively easy to draw up, from a biographical compendium, statistics on the birthplaces of notable Americans. Their value is entirely dependent upon the value of the source. Lodge used Appletons’, which was unquestionably the best source available to him. Realizing the trials and tribulations of the calling, I am unwilling to question the honesty or the fair-mindedness of the editors. Yet it may be that any compilation made a half century ago would necessarily have a somewhat sectional flavor. The passions of the Civil War and the Reconstruction were not yet calmed; historical scholarship in America was still in its infancy; and coöperation on a national scale was doubtless impossible. In reply to his critics, Lodge claimed that few persons of any importance were omitted from Appletons’. The editors themselves modestly printed on the title-page a quotation from Plato: ‘As it is the commendation of a good huntsman to find game in a wide wood, so it is no imputation if he hath not caught all.’ To investigators of the present time, it would appear that many beasts and birds were snared that ought to have been left undisturbed in their native haunts. Indeed, there were some mythical creatures. At least one group of alleged scientists were included that did not exist at all, though these, I believe, were all supposed early figures of foreign birth. The editors were excessively kind to participants in the Civil War and to minor members of important families, and they did not examine with sufficient care the claims of legendary heroes.
Basing his statistics on this list, the best available at the time, though to us it seems inflated. Lodge found that in the numerical hierarchy the first five states were Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Virginia. He estimated that in proportion to population Connecticut came first, and that in proportion to white population Virginia was ahead of New York and Pennsylvania. He does not state at what date or dates he figured the relative populations — a very important omission. Of the sections, he placed New England first, the Middle States second, the South (including Maryland and Kentucky) third, and the West a very bad fourth. His conclusion was that there had been an immense concentration of ‘ability’ in the United States, Massachusetts and New York having furnished more than a third of it, and, with Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Virginia, two thirds. This conclusion was quoted approvingly by the editor of the Atlantic Monthly in a stimulating article published in that magazine in January 1933; even more than Lodge, he deplored the relative sterility of the great open spaces.
Though I by no means subscribe to this Bostonian pessimism about the hopeless backwardness of the provinces, I must confess that the first analysis of the Dictionary of American Biography seemed to substantiate the claims of Eastern preëminence. As the compilation of statistics of birthplaces has followed the publication of successive volumes, it has appeared that the five leading states are exactly the same as those announced by Lodge in 1891. Massachusetts still ranks first and will probably not be overtaken by New York in the lower reaches of the alphabet. Pennsylvania seems safe in third place. Latest reports, however, reveal that there has been a minor Confederate victory; at the moment, Virginia leads Connecticut for the fourth position, though the margin is extremely small.
There is also an indication of a shift in the centre of gravity from the Atlantic seaboard in the fact that, while Maryland stands sixth on Lodge’s list, that state is supplanted on the later one by Ohio. What is more important, the percentage of the whole number of notable persons contributed by the first five states will be perceptibly smaller. Instead of more than one third, I find (in exactly half the volumes of the D. A. B.) that Massachusetts and New York contributed less than 29 per cent; and that these two states, with Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Connecticut, instead of more than two thirds, contributed less than half. Even if the whole of our history be considered, the case for the Northeast has been overstated.
The case for the lower South and the trans-Mississippi West, in my opinion, has been distinctly understated by the editor of the Atlantic, whose despondency increases as his eye moves southward and westward. ‘But look beyond: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, California, Washington, Oregon, Nebraska, the Dakotas — call the roll and who shall answer present? Go west from the farthest boundary of Illinois. For two thousand miles you shall hardly pass a village where a leader has been born.’ He admits that Hoover was born in Iowa, Thomas J. Walsh in Wisconsin, and Roscoe Pound in Nebraska, but claims that the Western heroes are almost always in the realm of politics. He goes on to say: ‘Scientists, painters, musicians, poets, writers — the temper and the quality of our best are Easternborn.’ He approves of Illinois, Indiana, and Tennessee, but places Georgia among the barren states. In the D. A. B. there are considerably more names from Georgia than from any of the three other states. These include John C. Frémont, who ought to be familiar to all good Republicans, since he was the first nominee of the party for the Presidency, and, among literary lights, Joel Chandler Harris, creator of the immortal ‘Uncle Remus,’ and Sidney Lanier.
The editor of the Atlantic admits that Massachusetts and Virginia have had a longer time in which to give birth to eminent sons and daughters than have, let us say, Oklahoma and New Mexico, but to this consideration he gives insufficient emphasis. Massachusetts and Virginia had had upward of two centuries of glorious history when most of the Western country was still a trackless wilderness. Fair comparisons between commonwealths and sections can be made only for specific chronological periods; and differences in population must be taken into account. It is equally important that the records of the past should not be made the basis for generalizations about the present. Recently, I made some investigations in regard to the persons included in all of the published volumes of the D. A. B. who were born within the last sixty years. Of those born since 1870, much the largest number were natives of New York, Massachusetts being a bad second. This result could be explained as due to the larger population of the Empire State, for in the census of both 1870 and 1880 New York was first and Massachusetts seventh. But how can one explain that despised California came third? In 1870, when exactly twenty years old as a state, in population California ranked twenty-fourth in the Union, as it did also in 1880.
Of these persons born since 1870, foreign countries contributed more than one sixth. Only seven states of the Union gave as many of their sons as did England, and if Russia and Russian Poland be counted as one, the former empire of the late Tsar contributed more than England. It would be shocking indeed if it should appear that out of a million Russian immigrants there were more notable Americans than out of a million natives of South Carolina, where almost the entire stock is preRevolutionary, though not all of it derives from Europe. Another surprising discovery was that these recent Western notables were not mainly political figures. Indeed, of the Californians, not a single one was. The roll of that state includes Jack London, several actors, a well-known dancer (Isadora Duncan), a cartoonist, journalists, a rabbi, a philosopher, and a legal scholar (Wesley N. Hohfeld) who came out of the barbarous West to serve on the faculty of Yale University in enlightened Connecticut. As a matter of fact there are, for this latest period, few political figures from any state, and I am driven to the conclusion either that politicians live longer than devotees of art, science, and letters, or that in recent times in America they have been relatively less distinguished.
This generalization, however, or any other that may be made on the basis of deceased notables born since 1870, has little significance, for the simple reason that the number is too small to be of any statistical value. In thirteen volumes of the D. A. B. there are only 152 of them. The only possible interpretation of our statistics, when they have been finally compiled, will be that up to 1870 the states and sections were productive in a given order. One cannot prove from this source how fertile or sterile Massachusetts or Utah has been in the last sixty years. The fragmentary figures that have been cited are meaningless, except as straws to show the way the wind is blowing.
III
In considering the productiveness of states and sections, as shown by birthplaces, it seems obvious that the time of birth is the vital factor. The latest decade about which it is possible to generalize with any confidence on the basis of the D. A. B., or of any other work that includes only the dead, is 1860-69. Many prominent persons born in that decade are still living and are therefore ineligible, but the statistics are sufficiently full to have some scientific value.
This period is hardly a fair one for comparisons between Northern and Southern states, for the era of the Civil War and its aftermath was probably the most unpropitious of all periods in which Southerners could be born. Lodge attributed the ‘backwardness’ of the region to slavery; it might be shocking to him to discover how great a decline in the production of distinguished Southerners came in the very decade when slavery disappeared. None the less, despite the ravages of war, there was still a large population in the former Confederacy; and, amid the humiliations of poverty and the turmoil of social revolution, children continued to appear.
Less can be said about many of the present states west of the Mississippi, for at the end of the decade no fewer than eleven of them were yet unborn. Two of them, Minnesota and Oregon, had just been ushered into the Union when the period began; three others — Kansas, Nebraska, and Nevada — joined the family circle during the decade. Indeed, only four trans-Mississippi states outside the Confederacy had passed beyond the stage of infancy: Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, and California. They alone can be fairly compared with the older commonwealths to the eastward. Subject to these very marked limitations, comparisons can be made for the decade in question, which is certainly the latest that can be used at all.
An analysis of the birthplaces of persons included in thirteen volumes of the D. A. B., born in the decade 1860-69, reveals the rank of the states as follows: first, New York; second, Pennsylvania; third, Ohio ;fourth, Massachusetts; fifth, Illinois and Missouri (tied). That the size of the population was an important factor is shown clearly by the census returns of 1860. The order of the first three states is identical. Massachusetts and Missouri rank higher than on the census list, and Illinois ranks lower. On a per capita basis, Massachusetts retains first honors in this group, if not in the entire country, being followed by New York. Proportionately, Ohio does as well as Connecticut and better than Pennsylvania, while Missouri surpasses Illinois and Indiana. Virginia reaches the lowest point in her fecundity. The other four states that were lauded by Lodge contributed about 35 per cent of the total number of names. Since they contained only about 27 per cent of the population, they were considerably above the average for the country as a whole, but, from the statistics that are available, it does not appear that they represented at that time an ‘immense concentration of ability.‘
Depression about the backwardness of states that had not got started is obviously premature. Though the figures are too small to prove much, those parts of the trans-Mississippi region that were peopled make a creditable showing on the basis of population. In the production of notable sons and daughters, the four states that had attained fair maturity — Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, and California — all approximate the average for the country as a whole, and equal or surpass the record of those parts of the Middle West (except Ohio) that are nearer the seats of Eastern culture. The Southern states in general slump badly, but North Carolina, twelfth in population, is tied for the seventh place and has a creditable per capita average. Finally, before the statistics become intolerable, let me say that during this decade distinguished Americans of foreign birth exceeded in number those born in any single American state, even New York, and constituted almost one sixth of the whole. These ‘immigrants’ made their chief contributions to American life in science, scholarship, theology, and the arts, and represented a concentration of ‘culture’ that is undeniable.
The Western list will unquestionably grow longer with the compilation of later statistics. The facts that are now available definitely disprove the claim that the Western-born have been notable chiefly in the realms of business and politics. Missouri should probably be credited with one desperado (Robert Dalton), who gained his dubious title to fame in what is now Oklahoma. In uncongenial association with him on Missouri’s roll for this period are, among others, a painter, a couple of actors and playwrights, and several eminently respectable educators.
On Iowa’s list appear the names of no politicians and of only one man of affairs, but, besides tall corn, the state contributed an ancient historian (George Willis Botsford), a minor author, a philologist (Oliver Farrar Emerson), a theologian, a statistician, an anatomist and embryologist (Franklin P. Mall). In the previous decade she gave birth to a noted classicist, Paul Shorey, lately deceased; and in the following ten years to a distinguished university president, Marion LeRoy Burton, and to the founder of the Provincetown Players, George Cram Cook.
In this period, the sons of Wisconsin were rather more political, but she has on her list a physician, a minor playwright, and a college president. California contributed, among others, an actor-playwright (Frank Bacon of Lightnin’), a journalist (Henry George, Jr.), the organizer of the National Park Service (Stephen T. Mather), and a distinguished university president (Sidney E. Mezes). Immature though Kansas was, she gave birth to a wellknown physicist and college president (Ernest Fox Nichols); while Utah, not yet a state, besides the labor agitator, William D. Haywood, produced Solon H. Borglum, sculptor.
IV
Interesting studies of the distribution of notable living Americans have been made by others. So far as I have observed, these agree in condemning on all counts my own native section, the South Central region. To the rising West, however, they pay tribute. It is worthy of comment that on one carefully compiled list (by S. S. Visher) Nebraska is ranked third among the states, in proportion to population, in the production of scientists and Who’s Who notables, and Kansas fifth.
Writers, it would appear, spring up almost everywhere, though ultimately they drift to Eastern centres to be near the publishers. In order to gain some inkling of the contributions of natives of the ‘ provinces’ to creative literature, one may turn to the list of Pulitzer prize winners from 1918 to the present time. This may be objected to, but it is convenient. Most of the birthplaces I succeeded in discovering. Of novelists, who are least dependent on formal training, cultured New England, so far as I can learn, has contributed not one; and sophisticated New York has produced only two — equaling Illinois. Proud old Virginia is represented by a daughter who attended the University of Nebraska; a daughter of South Carolina has given new and vigorous literary life to the plantation Negro; a Tennesseean has portrayed the mountain stock, and a Georgian the hitherto unchronicled dwellers in the wire grass. Indiana is twice represented by a native son who has written of her primarily; natives of Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin are present; while the Nobel prize winner, who declined the Pulitzer award, hails from Minnesota.
Poets have come notably from that part of New England that is nearest the wilderness, Maine, though Massachusetts is also represented. Pennsylvania and Illinois find recognition on this list, along with Georgia; while the name that appears three times is that of a native of California. In the more technical dramatic field, Pennsylvania comes first with four names, though of New York’s two representatives one was thrice a winner. North Carolina has two names; Wisconsin and Iowa one each; and all of New England only one (again from Maine). In biography and history, where, ideally, scholarship and literature join hands, New England takes the lead, but on both lists the South, the Middle West, and even the trans-Mississippi region are represented.
On these suggestive but fragmentary items of information I base no generalization; but I do believe that in practically all fields American achievement has been far more widely and evenly distributed than has been commonly supposed. It seems probable that, with few exceptions, newborn babes of superior natural ability are distributed through this country approximately as other people are, though opportunities still vary and later stimuli are incalculable. If the general level of education means anything, the transMississippi region ought to have an advantage. On the literacy map prepared by the Bureau of Education, districts of highest literacy are shown in white, and those of highest illiteracy in black. The white portions are chiefly beyond the Mississippi, while there are some black districts in New England and a vast number of them in the historic South.
By the time adequate statistics in regard to present productivity are available, however, we shall all be gone, and it may be that state lines will have been obliterated by the traffic that flows over them. It cannot be claimed, even now, that our forty-eight commonwealths are the seats of that many distinctive varieties of culture. In so fluid a society as ours, with a population that shifts on a thousand wings and a myriad of wheels, and with babies that are born in the most convenient hospitals, the place of birth may perhaps be regarded as a geographical incident that is without significance.
V
In the period before 1870, however, or better still before 1860, state or sectional lines did coincide to greater or less degree with the boundaries of economic, social, and cultural regions, so the records that will soon be available will offer rare opportunities to statisticians and to others who may be prone to generalize. It will be possible to arrange in chronological periods the distinguished sons and daughters of particular states and sections, and to determine with considerable accuracy at just what times each region was most productive. With the field thus narrowed, one can take into account the quality as well as the quantity of the product.
Lodge attempted to measure degrees of eminence by counting the pictures in Appletons’. To the small pictures in the text, among them one of himself, he gave one star; to the fullpage engravings two stars. In the former he found that Massachusetts again excelled, but of the stars of the first magnitude he assigned the largest number to Virginia. One suspects that the availability of portraits was a not unimportant factor in the creation of this picture gallery; I have an idea that it was easy to get photographs of those Civil War generals. It would have been better to compare the lengths of the various biographies, though this method of determining relative eminence is itself open to considerable objection. Without going into detail, suffice it to say here that of the dozen or more longest articles that have appeared or will appear in the Diction-ary of American Biography, the largest number are of Virginians, with natives of Massachusetts in second place.
The supremacy of the Old Dominion in the forum and on the battlefield has been more than once admitted by her sons. Several years before the essay on the distribution of ability emanated from Boston, a noted Virginia jurist wrote privately to a friend: ‘What an extraordinary fact it is that a tract of country not more than 200 miles in diameter should have given birth to so many characters of exalted worth, who . . . were greater in simple and unostentatious virtue! What a galaxy of nobleness — Washington, Lee, Jackson, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Monroe! Can the world, in present or in past generations, parallel it? And where in the rest of this broad continent, in comparison — fussy, pedantic, narrow, self-adoring Yankeedom; heavy, purse-proud Middledom; passionate, arrogant, self-seeking Cottondom; and shallow, innovating, reckless Westerndom?‘ One suspects that the local patriotism of Professor John B. Minor is comparable with that of Henry Cabot Lodge. To outsiders it is equally annoying. Yet one cannot seriously question the historic eminence of the extraordinary statesmen and soldiers of Virginia, or the rather less brilliant, but more diverse and more even, genius of New England. It seems appropriate to add a few concluding observations about the contributions of this great state and this great section.
VI
If a chronological chart of eminent sons of Virginia were drawn up, it would probably reveal that, in proportion to population and in quality, her most productive period was between 1725, when George Mason was born, and 1758, the birth year of James Monroe. From this one generation came Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, Madison, Marshall, and George Rogers Clark, George Wythe and John Sevier, a half-dozen famous Lees, several noted Randolphs, and many others whom I shall not take time to name. It is obvious that these constitute the group of Revolutionary heroes and founders of the Republic. They were probably the most brilliant galaxy produced by an American commonwealth in a single generation.
At the time of their birth, Virginia was the foremost colony, with a supply of virgin land that made economic wellbeing possible under any system of labor. The system that was actually in operation, founded on slavery, required of the great planters the management of large affairs, while permitting, as perhaps no commercial or industrial system would have done, relative leisure for reading and study. Public affairs, both past and present, were the dominating interest and avocation of the relatively large group of gentry. Already experienced as governors of men, highly educated in public affairs through participation in them and through association with one another, the Virginians were given by the American Revolution a supreme opportunity to exercise their talents. This was the greater because sentiment in all the other large colonies was more sharply divided, and many of the ablest men elsewhere chose the losing side. Altogether, the combination of circumstances was unique, and it is highly unlikely that American political eminence will ever again be so concentrated in place or time as it was in Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary Virginia.
During the rest of the eighteenth century and the first three decades of the nineteenth, outstanding leaders continued to be born in the state, though apparently not in the same proportion. The year 1830 seems to mark the beginning of an actual decrease. Looking backward, we may now attribute this in considerable part to the loss of so much of Virginia’s budding youth in war before it had had time to flower. Contemporary conditions, however, should not be overlooked. In 1820, Virginia, hitherto first among the states in population, had yielded to New York; the virgin agricultural lands were used up; economic distress had become prevalent. It is not surprising that so many noted sons of the Old Dominion won their laurels in the upbuilding of new commonwealths: colorful John Sevier in Tennessee, magnetic Henry Clay in Kentucky, heroic Sam Houston in Texas. The two greatest figures in the Mexican War were Virginians, Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, and during this conflict Robert E. Lee emerged. The Civil War heroes, born in the early decades of the century, were the last large group of Virginians to be offered a great opportunity and to take advantage of it — almost exclusively, however, upon the battlefield.
That the political genius of the commonwealth shone with rather diminished lustre in the generation before the Civil War cannot be questioned. Whatever other causes may be assigned, it seems safe to say that the statesmanship of Virginia declined when her political philosophy, ceasing to be flexible and dynamic, crystallized into dogma, and became essentially local and defensive. The doctrine of State rights, used by Jefferson himself essentially as a defensive weapon and discarded by him when there was need for constructive action, can never be wielded as a sceptre of national power.
The decade 1860-69 represents probably the lowest point in the productivity of Virginia; the number of even moderately notable persons born within the state during that period is pathetically small. Limited in economic and educational opportunities at a time when most of the country was advancing by leaps and bounds, condemned to localism in politics, the Virginians played during the rest of the century a rôle that was in many ways heroic, but was unquestionably a minor one. Whether or not the surrender of her noble son at Appomattox marked the sunset of Virginia’s greatness, I am not prepared to say. Woodrow Wilson, who, wherever he may have been nurtured, carried on the tradition of the great school, might be regarded as a brilliant afterglow. It is by no means sure, however, that the sun has set. From statistics in Who’s Who, it appears that in proportion to population this historic state has by our day nearly reached the average productiveness of the country as a whole, and that in proportion to white population she has distinctly surpassed that average. It seems a fair assumption that by 1880 Virginia regained something of her old productiveness, even though she lacked her old opportunities. It will doubtless also appear that she no longer confines herself to a few staple crops, such as soldiers and statesmen, but that concentrated luxuriance has given place to diversity. Few Americans, I think, would do other than rejoice if something of that old glory should be regained, for they can never forget that it was won primarily in the public service.
VII
The New England picture contains rather fewer high lights and far fewer shadows. Her distinguished sons appear to have been distributed much more evenly both in chronological periods and in occupational groups, although there was certainly a literary outburst in the middle of the last century. Figures that are already available show that there was a decline in productiveness after 1860, but; in proportion to population the percentage remained very high, as it does, indeed, in the latest figures available from Who’s Who in America. Whatever the productiveness of the section may or may not now be, so far as the prominent men and women of the present are concerned it has been largely maintained.
In the historic past, New England has had her share, and more, of the eminent figures in practically every field, except possibly military men and statesmen. She has been weakest just where Virginia has been, until recent times, supreme. I can think of no statesman of the first rank who ever came out of little Connecticut, so prolific in other lines, and, as compared with Virginia and New York, the record of Massachusetts is poor. This relative backwardness in eminent statesmanship may be attributed in part to the diversity of New England interests, in part perhaps to the weakness of the Puritan temperament in matters involving large coöperation. A further explanation is that after the terrifying French Revolution the political philosophy of the section crystallized, became barren in its extreme conservatism, and essentially defensive. This moribund condition might have been perceived almost a generation before it became apparent in Virginia.
The land that produced Jonathan Edwards, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher, and Phillips Brooks has been preëminent in clergymen. Her roll of educators, headed by Charles W. Eliot, is certainly the longest and probably contains more eminent names than that from any other section. Even if Poe be omitted, New England, with Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier, stands among the first in the production of men of letters. She has been almost unrivaled in invention, and has had her full share of men of affairs, artists, and architects. In almost every respect, the historic record of New England challenges admiration.
As a rather incredulous outsider, I have long been groping for some adequate explanation of the extraordinary achievements of the sons and daughters of that physically infertile land. The time-honored explanation that they have been chiefly due to religious and political institutions has been on the defensive in recent years, as the harshness of Puritanism and the illiberality of the prevailing politico-economic philosophy of the section have received extensive literary exploitation. In view of the relative poverty of New England in political leadership of national calibre, it may well be that too much has been said about the town meeting, except perhaps as a fierce school of localism. Major credit must also be given to the various agencies of education and to the essential democracy of labor that so long obtained.
The literary development of the nineteenth century, it may well be, could not have come if the theological shell had not been broken. Yet, whatever one may think of Puritanism, it was the granite foundation upon which the whole superstructure was erected. In it there was more of the Old Testament lawgivers than of the Christ, but it was a faith that made men of iron. Furthermore, it may be claimed that the principles of Puritanism were to an extraordinary degree compatible with success in the practical affairs of life. Puritanism emphasized, not the social virtues, such as charity and self-sacrifice, but the economic, such as thrift and industry, attributing to them an ethical value which to the religious philosophers of the Middle Ages would have seemed excessive. As R. H. Tawney, writing from the English point of view, has said, ’the Puritan flings himself into practical activities with the dæmonic energy of one who, all doubts allayed, is conscious that he is a sealed and chosen vessel. . . . Tempered by self-examination, self-discipline, selfcontrol, he is the practical ascetic, whose victories are won not in the cloister, but on the battlefield, in the counting house, and in the market.’
A further comment, upon the American group, may be quoted from Professor Morison, whose general admiration for his forbears is tempered by keen historical insight. The New Englanders, as they had developed by the middle of the eighteenth century, he describes as ’a tough but nervous, tenacious but restless race; materially ambitious, yet prone to introspection, and subject to waves of religious emotion. . . . A race whose typical member is eternally torn between a passion for righteousness and a desire to get on in the world.’ From this dualism of nature has come, on the one hand, leadership in religion, in education, in reform; on the other, a success in practical affairs such as perhaps no comparable group of Americans have attained. If the formula should seem not to allow for letters and the arts, it may be added that flowers grew after the rock began to crumble.