OPINIONSrnNew England Against Americarnby Clyde Wilsonrn”The fiction of Mr. Simms gave indication, we repeat, of genius, and that of norncommon order. Had he been even a Yankee, this genius would have been renderedrnimmediately manifest to his countrymen, but unhappily (perhaps) he was arnSoutherner…. His book, therefore, depended entirely upon its own intrinsicrnvalue and resources, but with these it made its way in the end.”rn— Edgar Allan PoernIn the heroic effort to estabhsh anrnAmerican literatnre, intellect, and cultnrernbefore the Civil War, the main linernof tension was not between cosmopolitansrnand provincials, nor between classicistsrnand romanticists. It was regional.rnBnt the primary regional dividing linernwas not drawn, as yon may think, alongrnthe Appalachians (East vs. West), norrnalong the Potomac (North vs. South).rnRather, it was at the Hudson River (NewrnEngland vs. America).rnThis descriptive historical truth is nowrnobscured by the fact that the New Englandersrnwere successful in convincingrnmuch of posterity that they were Americanrncidtiire, a process that was assisted byrntheir colonization of Manhattan duringrnthe antebellum period through such figuresrnas Horace Greeley and WilliamrnCullen Br)’ant. Yet the lines of tensionrnwere clearly drawn and obvious to everybodyrnat the time: on the one hand, moralistic,rnreformist, sentimental, pushy, genteel,rndevolved Puritan, transcendentalrnNew Englanders, eager to impose thernsupremely virtuous model of the closedrncommunities of Massachusetts as the patternrnnot only for America but for allrnmankind; on the other hand, a morernClyde Wilson is a professor of history atrnthe University of South Carolina. Thisrnarticle first appeared in the May J 989rnissue.rnleisurely and tolerant, openhanded, rural,rnfrontier, traditional, Anglican, gentiemanlyrn(not genteel) spirit that visualizedrnthe true American cidtiire as arising fromrnthe open spaces South and West of thernHudson (or in the case of Melville, thernseas). New York and Philadelphia werernin many cultural respects closer to thernSouth than to Boston, at least before thern1850’s.rnIn the literary politics that characterizedrnthe antebellum period, a host ofrnwell-organized, industrious, mutually admiringrnNew England scribblers pursuedrna totally ungenerous policy of self-aggrandizement,rnpresenting themselves to thernworld as America and ignoring or slanderingrnthe rest of the countr’ whenever itrnsuited their purposes. After the CivilrnWar, lacking any formal opposition, theyrnhad the field prett’ much to themselvesrnexcept for sporadic populist rumblingsrnfrom the Midwest.rnAnyone who will look at what passedrnfor mainstream literary histor’ and criticismrnin the late 19th and early 20th centuries,rnfor instance, will find a host of second-rnand third-rate New England writersrn(Longfellow, Lowell, Wliittier, Bancroft,rnMotiey, and many others now justly forgotten)rnshamelessly celebrated as the perihelionrnof American letters, witii only anrnoccasional slighting reference to Poe orrnMelville. Wlien Hawthorne appears it isrnin an interpretation sanitized to pleasernNew England schoolmarms of both sexes.rnIt is littic known (but true) that thernpresent stature of Poe and Melville andrnunderstanding of Hawthorne (all ofrnwhom were outside the New Englandrncanon) rests upon the heroic efforts of arnfew scholars and critics in this century torncorrect, in part, the incredibly mean-spiritedrnand petty Bostonian warp that wasrnimposed on the evaluation of Americanrnliteratiirc after the Civil War.rnIt is also a fact that the success of thernBostonians in literan,’ reputation was notrnmatched by the qualit}- of their contributionsrnas measured in the perspective ofrnthe ages. American creative literature ofrnthe first rank was made almost entirelyrnoutside of the Boston-Cambridge ethos.rnPoe was a self-declared Southerner inrnperpetual combat all of his short careerrnwith the New Flngland spirit; Melville arnNew York Democrat who could writernverse in celebration of the ancient honorrnJULY 2001/23rnrnrn