2

Kenneth Jackson and Stanley Schultz briefly outline the persistence and importance of this myth in Cities in American History, 1972,  pp.  6-7, noting the southern planters who, in the 1790s, applauded the destructive yellow fever epidemics because it warned people to avoid populous centers, Thomas Jefferson who denounced the city as incapable of passing along the 'rich American heritage,' Alexis de Tocqueville who 'viewed the growth of great cities as 'a real danger which threatens the future security of the democratic republics of the New World,'" Populist Ignatius Donnelly who felt that the “bright lights of the wicked city would blur the distinctions between night and day,” novelist Joseph H. C.  Ingraham who argued that “Adam and Eve were created and placed in a garden. Cities are the result of the fall,” and William Jennings Bryan who, in his 'Cross of Gold' speech to the 1896 Democratic Convention declaimed: “Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms, and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”