We don't ever call it the "Old North," of course, because that would imply that there is some disconnect in Northern history that would be awkward to explain. But spend a few moments in downtown Pittsburgh and you will see that there was once a race of giants in the North. They crushed the South, they slaughtered the Indians, they mistreated their workers, they built up enormous fortunes, and they turned the United States into the most powerful country on earth.
We, of course, have been taught to think of them as cold, ruthless men -- the "robber barons" of American history. And that is not surprising, because that is how the Ellis Island immigrants and Southern populists -- the two dominant factions in modern American life -- saw them. And almost all of the criticisms made about them were true. But unlike the elites of today -- who generally see themselves as part of a global society -- these men strongly self-identified as Americans, and they spent a lot of time and energy trying to improve America. They gave us great universities (Vanderbilt, Duke, Stanford, and Chicago, to name a few); they funded almost all of our symphonies, art museums, and opera companies; and they built really amazing buildings all over the country. They are directly responsible for the skyline of nearly every Northern city.
They also gave us our sports. They started the World Series, the National Football League, the U.S. Opens (in golf and tennis), and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. They built almost all of our famous golf courses, along with Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Yankees Stadium, and the Polo Grounds. They also gave us croquet, badminton, ping pong, and miniature golf. (For that matter, they were the ones who decided that Americans would live surrounded by huge grassy lawns, suitable for playing games.) They opened up Florida, California, and Hawaii as vacation destinations. To this day, when middle-aged Americans want to have fun, they usually take up some activity (golf, tennis, fly-fishing) that the Old Northerners perfected. And when middle-aged American men want to look their best, they wear clothes that the Old Northerners loved.
Their civilization has largely disappeared now, of course. You can turn on your radio and find people who sound almost exactly like 21st-century supporters of Andrew Jackson or Ralph Waldo Emerson. Southern populism and New England liberalism remain powerful to this day. But the weird mix of patriotism, violence, protectionism, love of industry, and moralism (at least weird from the perspective of a Southern populist or a New England liberal) that motivated men as diverse as Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Andrew Carnegie is gone with the wind. In one of history's great ironies, the immigrants they exploited have taken over the great Northern cities, while the old elites have faded from view. (It's not even that easy to find the old-fashioned American foods that they loved -- nowadays we all eat tacos and curry, not steak and potatoes.)
But their work endures. You can come to Pittsburgh, and see the beautiful buildings that they built, and revel in the civic pride that they encouraged, and watch the games that they loved. And you will see that for all their faults -- and they were legion -- they really did create something beautiful that has lasted. Can the rich people of our generation say the same?
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