THE SPANISH ELEMENT IN OUR NATIONALITY
[Our friends at Santa Fe, New Mexico, have just finish'd their
long-drawn-out anniversary of the 333d year of the settlement of their
city by the Spanish. The good, gray Walt Whitman was asked to write
them a poem in commemoration. Instead he wrote them a letter as
follows:--_Philadelphia Press_, August 5, 1883.]
CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, _July 20, 1883_.
_To Messrs. Griffin, Martinez, Prince, and other Gentlemen at Santa
Fe_:
DEAR SIRS:--Your kind invitation to visit you and deliver a poem for
the 333d Anniversary of founding Santa Fe has reach'd me so late that
I have to decline, with sincere regret. But I will say a few words
offhand.
We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort
them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed,
and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England
writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion
that our United States have been fashion'd from the British Islands
only, and essentially form a second England only--which is a
very great mistake. Many leading traits for our future national
personality, and some of the best ones, will certainly prove to have
originated from other than British stock. As it is, the British and
German, valuable as they are in the concrete, already threaten excess.
Or rather, I should say, they have certainly reach'd that excess.
To-day, something outside of them, and to counterbalance them, is
seriously needed.
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