The Northern journals and orators have lavished a great variety of affectionate epithets in describing the relationship between North and South.--Each of these epithets is significant of kinship, for, wicked, perverse and infernal as we are, we are still "estranged brethren," or "wayward sisters," or "rebellious children," or, climax of amatory rhetoric, the Northern States are the bridegroom, and the Southern the bride. This symbol of wedlock is the favorite mode of looking at the thing from a Northern point of observation. The bride,--refractory and false, of course, --but still the bride, who promised to "love, honor and obey," and said at the altar, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow!"
Nothing in history, in poetry, or in fable, equals the devotion of the Northern bridegroom to the false Southern bride, except the inexhaustible assiduity of Menelaus to Helen after Paris had run away with his incomparable spouse. Menelaus persisting in running after Helen, after Helen had run away from him, is the only instance of such constancy on record. But Helen, with all her faults, was the animating soul of a great epic, and we do not wonder at the bewildered husband walking his deserted halls and feeding his love by gazing upon the many statues of his truant flame. But here the parallel comes to a halt. If Brother Jonathan had contented himself with the moral suasion of Helen's husband, the peerless bride might longer this have been back in his loving arms.
But Jonathan is not of the Greeks.--He is descended from John, surnamed Bull. And John is not a man to be trifid with in marital relations. When his wife or his donkey kicks up, he wallops 'em. Punch and Judy represent the standard of British sentiment on that interesting subject. There is not as popular an exhibition in all the streets of London as that merry villain, Punch.--Men of all grades gather at the sound of Punch's trumpet, but rarely women. The best of all jokes in the world is the terrific cudgeling which the mirthful tyrant administers to the luckless Judy and her child. It is Punch and Judy, and not Menelaus and Helen, that represent the Anglo-American idea of political wedlock.
We have never been able to appreciate, however, the choice analogy of the Union to man and wife, the North being the man. When did the South accept the position of a "minister angel" to the North; when promise to endow it with sovereignty and chattels; when display weakness of will and effeminacy of character? It was surely not the weaker vessel which carried through the war of the Revolution on its broad shoulders, or which has for four years fought successfully against such enormous odds. We advise the Northern rhetoricians to discard the wedlock symbol and recur to the fraternal type. "Estranged brethren" is a term of sufficient endearment when you are knocking people in the head and relieving them of their pocket-books.
