The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864, page 110 by Various Authors
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for our system. But I say we have the germs of the healthiest national development. All that remains is to carry forward those germs to maturity, and let them show their legitimate results unhampered. That is what we want, what we claim. Society here is unformed, in the rough. We lack the outward grace and polish belonging only to old societies. We shall yet attain these, as well as some other desirable things; but I believe that in no other country in the world is there so much genuine, delicate, universal devotion manifested for woman as among the Americans. Have you seen a boy of fourteen, shy, awkward, uncouth in manner, rough in speech, but with a great, tender heart thumping in his bosom? And did you know of the idolatrous worship he could not wholly conceal for some fair, sweet, good girl older than himself, a woman, even--a worship, which was not love, if love be other than a high and tender sentiment, but which was capable of filling his being to overflow with its glory and richness? I liken our American chivalry to this. And it is this instinctive natural politeness of our men toward women that, as much as anything else, keeps us from being rude and unrefined while yet in our first adolescence.
I am aware that, hitherto, the South has laid claim to the lion's share of this gallant spirit, as it has of many other polite and social qualities. But we do not so readily now, as a few years ago, yield to these Southern assumptions. We know now for just how much they stand. And we know, too, in the better light of this hour, that it is not possible for a very high and pure ideal of womanhood to be conceived in the atmosphere of a system which, as slavery does, persistently, on principle, and on a large scale, degrades a portion of the sex, no matter how weak, poor, defenceless. Rather, the more defenceless the greater is the wrong, the shame. I am not lauding that gallantry which stands in polite posture in the presence of a lady, hat in hand, and with its selectest bow and smile, and in the same breat