YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Bought with the income
of the
ALFRED E. PERKINS FUND

FOUTY YEARS

AMEEICAN LIFE

VOL. I.

FORTY "YEARS

AMERICAN LIFE

DR. THOMAS L. NICHOLS

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I

LONDON
JOHN MAXWELL AND COMPANY
122, FLEET STREET
MDCCCLXIV
[All rights reserved]

LONDON :
BAVILL AND EDWAEDB, PBINTEES, CHANDOB STEEET,
COVENT GARDEN.

Cb56.G35 /

CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME

CHAPTER I.
AN AMEEICAN REFUGEE IN ENGLAND.
The Civil War in America — State Eights — North or South —
" Traitors" — The " Land of the Free" — Silence, prison, or
exile — Passports and oaths of allegiance — A party of re
fugees — Waiting for news . ....... pp. 1 — 12
CHAPTER II.
NEW ENGLAND FORTY TEARS AGO.
Birth and Parentage — The "Old Granite State" — The Switzer
land of America — Climate — Extremes of heat and cold —
Sleigh-rides and skating — Panning in New England. pp. 13—23
CHAPTER III.
LIFE IN A NEW COUNTRY.
Social customs — A raising — Log-rolling — Making potash — A
husking — An apple-paring — A quilting — Making maple-
sugar — Shooting-matches — Good shots — Travelling and
road-making — Going to market  pp. 24 — 34

vi Contents.
CHAPTER IV.
"the spirit of seventy-six."
American militia system — Training day — A regimental muster
— Military titles — My first Fourth of July celebration —
Revolutionary soldiers  . pp. 35 — 44
CHAPTER V.
AMERICAN HATRED TO ENGLAND.
Waterloo and New Orleans — Songs of victory — England's con
querors — National animosities — " America for Americans"
— -Invasions of Canada from 1775 to 1837 — Speech of Senator
Seward — Our Natural enemy  pp. 45 — 57
CHAPTER VI.
EDUCATION AND THE LECTURE SYSTEM.
Common schools and teachers — Sold at auction — Boarding round
— The universal stimulus — Our chief lesson — Lyceums and
lectures — Lecturers and systems  pp. 58 — 69
CHAPTER VII.
OF RELIGION IN AMERICA.
The New England Puritans — Multifarious denominations —
Religious liberty — Calvinism — Church membership — A
camp-meeting — Revivals  pp. 70  83
CHAPTER VIII.
AMERICAN MORALS.
Morals and religion — Lack of temptation— Drunkenness  The
temperance reform — Teetotalism— The Maine Law — Breaches
of trust and defalcations — Failures and repudiations  The
social evil — Infanticide  pp. §4  94
CHAPTER IX.
BOSTON, AND A MOB I SAW THERE.
City sights— Wharves and shipping— Honest customs— Boston
society— A merchant's story— George Thompson and William
Lloyd Garrison— Opposition to abolition— A mob in broad
cloth—The peril and the rescue  pp_ 95  106

Contents. .vii

CHAPTER X.
LOWELL.
" The Manchester of America" — Factory girls — Petticoat govern
ment — Visit of General Jackson — A Yankee family — •
Massachusetts abolitionists on Louisiana plantations — Merri
mack river  pp. 107 — 115

CHAPTER XI.
BUFFALO.
A frontier town — The canal-packet — The ups and downs of life
— Deep cuts and Irish labourers — A hospitable reception — A
taste of war — Lake-steamers — Lake Erie' — Red-tape and
fresh-water sailors — Steamboat captains and pilots — A night
in Buffalo  pp. 116— 130

CHAPTER XII.
BUFFALONIANS AND THE NAVY ISLAND WAR.
A Texan colonel — The hero of San Jacinto — Christy's minstrels
— Benjamin Rathbun — Winter in Buffalo — Mackenzie's re
bellion — Occupation of Navy Island — Burning of the
Caroline — Neutrality at Washington — Hunters' lodges —
Defeat of Mr. Van Buren  pp. 131— 141
CHAPTER XIII.
AN EXCURSION ON THE LAKES.
The steamboat Erie — A nice party — Cleveland — Detroit —
Perry's victory — Lake Huron — Mackinaw — Indians —
Green Bay — An aboriginal dandy — Milwaukie — A party
and a pow-wow — Chicago — Twenty years after — A thunder
storm on. Lake Michigan  pp. 142—149

vm

Contents.

CHAPTER XIV.
CINCINNATI.
A working men's city— Mrs. Trollope — Dinner costume— Growth
and progress — Staples of trade — Too much corn — Hogs —
Whisky— Catawba wine and Nicholas Longworth — Tobacco
—A land of plenty  pp. 150— 159
CHAPTER XV. ,
FROM NEW YORK TO NEW ORLEANS.
A Navy Island Patriot— A fight for life— A long journey— On
the Monongahela — Convenient coal-mines — Flat boat navi
gation — Low water on the Ohio — Fever and ague — Cairo —
Gambling on the Mississippi — The father of waters — Sugar
plantations — Negroes — Cotton and cane culture — Facts and
figures  pp. 160 — 180
CHAPTER XVI.
NEW ORLEANS.
The town from the river — Floating prairies — Buildings without
foundations — Hotels — Trade and population — A gay city —
A Sunday in New Orleans — The cathedral — French and
Americans — New Orleans revisited — A French cemetery —
High water — Northern men of Southern principles — A
charming city — Generous customs — Slave auctions — Trade
and prosperity — Yellow fever — Its propagation and mortality
— Albert Pike and his " Fine Arkansas Gentleman." pp. 181—204
CHAPTER XVII.
GALVESTON.
Texas — Routes from New Orleans — A crevasse — Semi-tropical
vegetation — On the Gulf of Mexico — Uncomfortable economy
— The coast — Galveston Island — A city on the sands — Grand
sea-beach— Mixed population— " G. T. T." — Yellow fever —
A land of promise — Comanches — Texan society — A French
socialist and a frontier bishop — Battle of San Jacinto — Sam
Houston and Santa Anna/ — A Slave State — Negro ball 
Perils of the Gulf— Mouths of the- Mississippi . pp. 205-— 218

Contents.

ix

CHAPTER XVIII.
MOBILE.
A pleasant voyage — Moonlight and music — A fiery Southerner
— Negro manners — A glimpse at Mobile — A Southern lady
and the Prince of Wales — Four generations — A live patri
mony  pp. 219—228
CHAPTER XIX.
UP THE ALABAMA.
A steam organ — The rivers — An Irish steamboat captain, and
how he came so — A crooked river — Planters and negroes —
Selma — Montgomery — African negroes — Plantation Ufe — A
cemetery  pp. 229 — 238
CHAPTER XX.
FROM CLEVELAND TO MEMPHIS.
American names — Railway cars — A Chinese party — A New York
belle and a Mexican general — Monotonous scenery — Cairo—
A model steamboat — Life on the Mississippi — Memphis —
Ice — Negroes out for a holiday — Theatre and floating circus
— Negro enjoyments — Vile habits — Churches and convents —
Slavery couleur de rose — Conquest and confiscation. pp. 239—253
CHAPTER XXI.
WASHINGTON.
James K. Polk — A sad capital — The President's levees — Houses
of Congress — Strangers' galleries here and there — Senators
and representatives — Congressional customs — Lobby agents
and contractors — North and South — Monuments. pp. 254—261
CHAPTER XXII.
NEW YORK.
Steaming through the ice — Then and now — Mr. Bennett of
the Herald — Editing newspapers — A clever compositor —
Summer enjoyments — Mint-juleps d, la, Virginia — Ice-cream
— American oysters — Oyster cellars — Oyster expresses — A
hint to the Acclimatization Society — Oysters on trees. '
pp. 262—272

x Contents.
CHAPTER XXIII.
NEW YORK INSTITUTIONS.
Central Park— The Croton Waterworks— The Astor Library-
Reading-room of the British Museum — Cooper Institute —
Squares without locks — Newsboys — Festivals — Fourth of
July — Declaration of Independence — Patriotism and gun
powder — Military procession and fireworks — Dancing —
Balls and assemblies — American beauty . . pp. 273 — 281

CHAPTER XXIV.
AMERICAN EXCITEMENTS AND SENSATIONS.
Visit of Marquis de Lafayette — A generous volunteer — The
American and French revolutions — Thomas Paine — Pro
gress of General Jackson — Erie Canal celebration — Recep
tion of Mr. Charles Dickens — The copyright question —
The "Boz ball" — General Scott and the volunteers in the
Mexican war — Henry Clay's last visit to New York — Re
ception of Kossuth — The Atlantic telegraph — Japanese
embassy — Visit of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales
— The real feeling — Irish disaffection — An outburst of
Poetry— "The Prince;" " Before him ;" "Baron Renfrew's
ball j" " Brown's Light Brigade ;'' a bit of blarney ; at the
tomb of Washington ; Yankee God save the Queen. pp. 282—318
CHAPTER XXV.
EXTENT AND RESOURCES OF AMERICA.
America compared with England — Progress of population 
Rivers and railways — Mines and Minerals — Agricultural
resources — A land of plenty — Fruits and wine — Food for
Europe — Public land and squatters — A country of magni
ficent distances — A well-peopled country — Natural extent of
countries and governments  pp. 309  318

Contents.

xi

CHAPTER XXVI.
THE PERIODICAL PRESS OF AMERICA.
American newspaper statistics — Laws of newspaper circulation —
Newspapers in the slave states — Freedom of the Press — The
New York Herald and James Gordon Bennett — The New
Tork Tribune and Horace Greeley — The New York Times and
Henry J. Raymond — War and anti-war papers — Harper's
Weekly and Monthly — Home Journal — Bonner's Ledger —
Sensation prices and sensation writers — Comic papers — The
Independent and Henry Ward Beecher — Isms and organs —
Position of editors  pp.319 — 339
CHAPTER XXVII.
AMERICAN BOOKS AND AUTHORS.
English reprints in America — International Copyright — A Yankee
poetess — Whittier, the Quaker poet — Stephens' Travels —
Herman Melville and Typee — Edgar A. Poe, and a whim
sical introduction — J. Fenimore Cooper — Fitz-Greene Hal
leck — Mr. Bryant — Mr. Bancroft, and his " ease in composi
tion" — English influence on American opinion — Charlotte
Cushman — Motives for literary piracy — An English novelist
and the American copyright law — American originality-
Government recognition of literary merit . pp. 340 — 359
CHAPTER XXVIII.
LAW, PHYSIC, AND DIVINITY.
The learned professions — No grades among lawyers — A road to
political distinction — America governed by lawyers — No
wigs — No monopoly — Health of America — Medical education
— Cheap diplomas — No distinction of classes — No standard
of medical science — Triumphant quackery — Hygiene — Causes
of diseases — American Cookery — Medical superstition — Ame
rican clergy — Episcopalians — Other denominations — Chang
ing professions — Eccentric preachers — MafBt, Finney, and
Beecner — Political and sensation preachers — The shepherd
and the flock  pp. 360—376

xii Contents.
CHAPTER XXIX.
AMERICAN INDUSTRY AND INGENUITY.
The great want, labour— Motive power— Versatility— Automatic
machinery— Hooks and eyes, pins, clocks and watches-
Iron works— Rapid labour-saving machinery — Stone- dressing
and brick-making machines — Curious looms — Hoe's printing-
press — Type-setting machines — Morse's telegraph — Emanci
pation of labour — The Yankee millennium . pp. 377 — 383
CHAPTER XXX.
AMERICAN PECULIARITIES AND ECCENTRICITIES.
Yankees in books and on the stage — Why Yankees talk through
their noses — Yankee forms of speech — The Western vocabu
lary — South-western characteristics — Southern peculiarities —
American humour — Etymologies — A steamboat explosion —
Character and manners — Lack of reverence — Yankee sharp
ness and self-confidence — A model Yankee . pp. 384 — 392
CHAPTER XXXI.
AMERICAN RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS.
Field sports in America/ — Floating theatres and circuses — Stars
that have shown — Music — Negro melodies — " Dixie's Land"
in St. Louis — Art culture — Summer resorts — The Cattskill
Mountain House — Saratoga — A dinner at Niagara — Sea
bathing — Work and worry — Making money — Morals of trade
— Contentment — The domestic affections — Calvinistic stoicism
— Scattered families — Socialism — Emigration . pp. 393 — 408

FORTY YEARS

OF

AMEEICAN LIFE.

CHAPTER I.
AN AMERICAN REFUGEE IN ENGLAND.
The Civil War in America. — State rights. — North or South. —
" Traitors." — The " Land of the Free." — Silence, prison, or
exile. — Passports and oaths of allegiance. — A party of re
fugees. — Waiting for news.
London is the asylum of refugees. They have come
from France, Italy, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Russia
— from what country have they not come ? — to a land
free, generous, and powerful enough to give them
protection. And now, at last, there are in London
political refugees from America. That " asylum of
the oppressed" having become the oppressor of her
own citizens, they are obliged to take refuge in the
mother country, whose tyranny they were, perhaps,
educated to detest. But here we are, refugees from
the North and the South — escaped from Seward,
Stanton, and Forts Lafayette and Warren in the
North, or from Butler, Ship Island, and Forts St.
Philip and Pickens in the South.
vol. i. 1

2 An American Refugee in JAhgland.
A Northerner by birth, born on the banks of its
loveliest river, the Connecticut, I am also familiar with
the Hudson, the Potomac, the Ohio, Mississippi, and
the Alabama. I have been in twenty-four States, and
have loved the whole country, and the Union which
made them prosperous, and promised to make them
great and powerful. I have no blame for the action
of the South. A nation must be the judge of its own
actions, because there is no higher earthly tribunal.
There is no High Court of National Judicature, before
which such a cause can be brought. Eighty years
ago, the American colonies separated from England —
renounced their allegiance to the British. Crown —
because a trifling tax was imposed upon them in what
they considered an unconstitutional manner. The
American doctrine of government, expressed in the
Declaration of Independence, and embodied in tbe
constitutions of the States, is, that " all government
derives its just powers from the consent of the
governed." It is not to be supposed that six or eight
millions of people, acting through the constitutional
organizations of ten or twelve sovereign States, will
change their form of government without a cause
which they believe to be sufficient; Grieved as I was
to see the Union destroyed, and that great empire,
bounded by the lakes, the gulf, and the two oceans,
broken into fragments, I could see no right that one
portion of the country had to subject the other — no
reason why twenty States should compel the rest to
remain united with them, or failing that, should
invade, conquer, subjugate, or exterminate them.

Fraternite, ou la Mort! 3
When Mr. Lincoln, elected by a minority, and con
trolled by a violent faction, decided upon war, what
was I to do ? My allegiance was due to constitutions,
not to presidents. The war, in my opinion, was
unconstitutional. It was opposed to the political
principles I had learnt and had taught. If I spoke,
it must be to denounce the action of the Government.
If I wrote, it must be to protest against a fratricidal
and suicidal war. War for the Union ! Fraternity
or death ! Be my brother, or I will kill you ! Unite
with me, or I will exterminate you !
Was it for this that Jefferson had laid the founda
tions of liberty in America ? for this that Washington
had led his naked, starved, and. frozen armies through
the War of Independence ? Was it for this that we
had boasted ourselves the greatest, freest, and happiest
of nations ? All our freedom, all our glory, had come
to this — the miserable work of making war upon our
brethren ; it was for this that father took up arms
against his son, and that brother raised his hand
against his brother.
I became a " traitor." It was " treason" to assert
the sovereignty of States ; " treason" to quote the
Declaration of Independence ; " treason" to talk of
the rights of peoples. True, this had been done, as
long as there had been anything to gain by it, by the
men at the head of the government. Lincoln had
upheld the sacred right of revolution ; Seward had
denounced the folly of a war to restore the Union,
comparing it to the conduct of a husband who should
beat his wife to compel her to live with him as his
1— a

4 An American Refugee in England.
loving companion; Greeley had declared that six
millions of people in the South had as clear a right to
separate from the Union as three millions of colonists
had to rebel against Great Britain. There was not a
man of them who had ever held that the strength and
the right of the Union rested upon anything but the
voluntary adhesion of its members. I held them to
the principles they professed, and out of their own
mouths they stood condemned. They changed their
principles, and became patriots. I adhered to mine,
and was a " traitor."
But, as the rage at the loss of business and glory
increased ; as the madness and the greed of war grew
day by day ; as the dominant faction felt itself more
powerful with the increase of its army, we of the
minority, "denounced as traitors, began to feel the ven
geance of those whose usurpations we condemned. If
a newspaper doubted that the South could be con
quered in ninety days, it was excluded from the mails.
If it questioned the policy of invading the South, the
edition was seized by the police. If the editor per
sisted in his delusion that the press was free, he was
sent down to Fort Lafayette, lodged in a casemate,
and fed on the rations of a common soldier, until the
Government forgot who he was, and for what he had
been imprisoned. The man who could not answer
your arguments could call you a traitor ; the enemy
who dared not meet you in the street could point you
out to the policeman.
The " land of the free and the home of the brave"
got to be a very uncomfortable place to live in. One

The Dream of Empire. 5
day, a German, in East New Tork, expressed the
opinion that he might as well be fighting for kings in
Europe as for the Union in America. The policeman
not being at hand to take him into custody, his more
patriotic fellow-citizens put a rope round his neck and
run him up to the limb of a tree. Luckily the police
man came and cut him down before life was extinct.
He was more fortunate than a Democrat who was
opposing the war-policy in a coffee-house, and was
shot dead at the table by a Republican, who considered
powder and lead the right sort of arguments to use on
such occasions. I had read about pretty sharp practice
at Warsaw and Venice, but really New Tork, the
Democratic metropolis, was becoming, for a man who
likes to speak his mind, rather a hazardous locality.
Which of the two to choose ? I had made my
choice. It could be but one ; and yet it may be con
fessed that there was a strong temptation on the
other side : — the pride and glory of a great nation —
an empire which should include the Heights of
Abraham and the Halls of the Montezumas. I have
dreamed of it as well as another. I have looked for
ward to the time when the " Stars and Stripes" should
wave over the Citadel of Quebec and the Moro Castle
at Havana, and our fleets should sweep both oceans,
which should be our only boundaries. But there was
something dearer than national power or glory. The
American Republic had been based upon the prin
ciples of political liberty. The Union lost all charm
for me when it was no longer the free choice of the
people, and had to be imposed by arms upon even a

6 An American Befugee in England.
single State. Not with my aid should the smallest
section of the Union become a Poland. Every State
entered the Union " free, sovereign, and independent "
and so, if at all, it should remain.
When eleven States of the "Onion passed Acts of
Secession, and recalled their representatives from
Washington, I felt that I had lost a part of my
country. When the North made war upon the South
to force them back again, I had a country no longer.
When the constitution was destroyed, my allegiance
was ended. I owed no duty to a military despotism ;
and when Mr. Seward ordered that no citizen should
be allowed to leave the country without a passport, I
thought it was time to leave.
There were three courses to take — go South, risk
martyrdom in the North, or find refuge abroad. I
could have gone South and joined the Confederate
army. It was possible to cross the Potomac or the
Ohio. But it was one thing to repudiate the action
of my own section, and another to take up arms
against it. In the war of American Independence
there were Englishmen who opposed the action of
their own Government, without being imprisoned for
their opposition ; but it would have been another thing
to have gone to Massachusetts or Virginia, to fight
against the Crown. True, the cases are not equal. I
had a perfect right to transfer my allegiance from
New Tork to Alabama. Still, a man must shrink from
taking up arms against his neighbours, friends, and
near relations. It would have been the same in either
army. I had friends in both. As a soldier of the

Injustice and Fratricide. 7
North, I might have shed the blood of gallant men who
had welcomed me to the hospitalities of their Southern
homes. Could I imbrue my hand in the blood of men
who had grasped mine in the warmest friendship, and
with whom I had spent so many happy hours of social
intercourse ? Was it for me to make that fair lady,
my noble and elegant hostess, a widow, and those
charming girls, her beautiful children, orphans? I
might have found any day at the point of my
bayonet the boy I had loved as a son, the man I had
embraced as a brother.
Fight the South I could not. There was no pre
tence of right to nerve my arm or harden my heart.
I felt the war to be unjust, and I knew enough of the
South' to be sure that it would be at once sanguinary
and ineffectual. I could not carry my family to the
Confederacy, nor leave them ; and I could not, without
danger, remain in the North. One day it was a con
troversy in the streets — another the publication of
more truth than was consistent with the views of the
Government. Wherever, in the civilized world, a man gets into
such difficulties, he instinctively turns his thoughts to
England. There is a secure asylum. There, however
poor, or solitary, or friendless, he may be free. The
path of safety lay across the heaving billows of the
Atlantic. And I, it seemed to me, had some right to
claim an asylum in the land of my forefathers, the land
whose history was theirs, whose soil was made of their
dust and ashes for a hundred generations.
But the passport ! An American obliged to get a

8 An American Refugee in England.
passport ! The country was a prison, and Mr. Seward
the jailor. Even if I applied for one, I might be arrested
on suspicion of treasonable purposes. I could not get
one without taking an oath of allegiance, strengthened
to meet the emergency, and that I would not do. I do
not say that under no circumstances would I have
taken it, because a man cannot always tell what he
would or ought to do. Thousands have taken the
oath under duress, who never for one moment meant
to keep it. Thousands took it at New Orleans,
who the next moment would have trampled the
Government and their local tyrant under their feet.
But I believed that this perjury with extenuating cir
cumstances might be avoided.
So I walked moodily along the docks, looking for a
ship bound for London. There were steamers in
plenty — the great fleet of Cunarders on the Jersey City
side, the German line to Southampton and Bremen,
the Inman line ; but the police would watch them all.
I did not think even a Liverpool packet safe ; but a
London one carries so few passengers that it was likely
to be overlooked. And so it was. One day we glided
past Fort Lafayette — past the watch-dog war-steamer
off the mouth of the Narrows, and saw the spires of
New Tork, the beautiful hills of Staten Island, and
the blue highlands of Neversink disappear below the
horizon. Hurrah ! we were on the sea !
Joy to leave one's native land! It is a bitter joy.
But it is a joy. It is sad to have no country. It is
sad to lose a country which contains so much to lose ;
sad to be an exile and a stranger, even in the land of

Safe on the Sea. 9
my ancestry — the country I can almost call my own
— which in all beyond this brief century is mine.
Were not my grandfathers British subjects ? Proud
and loyal ones, I doubt not, one day, and very reverent
to King George III. One of them threw overboard
the tea, and fought at Bunker Hill. But that is an
old story. The present Bunker Hills are on the
Potomac and the Mississippi. The " Hessians" of to
day are Northern mercenaries plundering the South.
Tes, there was a deep joy when our little company of
refugees was far out at sea. What a droll company it
was ! In one state-room was a Northern editor with
Southern principles, whose paper had been suppressed,
but who had escaped imprisonment, and was flying
with his wife and child. In another was a red-hot
Secessionist editor from Missouri, a South Carolinian
by birth, and ardent as a southern sun could make
him, who had been brought oEvi et armis by his clever
and handsome wife, aided by three little children.
The lady, who has relatives in the " old country," told
me how she managed it. They lived in St. Louis.
Unarmed citizens had been massacred in the streets
by Union troops, the prisons were filling with Seces
sionists, and she saw that her husband would either be
in prison or in the Confederate army — and lost to her
and her little ones. She acted promptly and without
consultation, sold their household goods, collected
what money she could in his name, and when he came
home at night the house was empty, trunks packed,
the railway -tickets bought, and the children ready for
a journey of a thousand miles across the country, and

10 An American Refugee in England.
a voyage across the Atlantic. The husband and
father submitted, not too patiently, but still submitted
to his destiny. Then there was a Zouave, a wiry little
Frenchman, who had escaped from Bull Run, all the
way to New Tork, and who, imagining he might be
arrested as a deserter, thought he would be safer in
London. There were Irishmen who had been turned
out of employment to compel them to volunteer; and
out of the whole ship's company, officers, crew, and
passengers, there were but two persons who did not
prefer Jefferson Davis to Abraham Lincoln. For all
of us exiles there was joy when we hailed the white
cliffs of Albion, — joy when our feet pressed the soil of
the old fatherland.
A grimy London street, but liberty — a humble
lodging, hard fare, and a dim outlook for the future,
but no blood on my soul. A hundred thousand corpses
of Northern volunteers — did I not see them, poor
starving wretches, with no work for themselves, and
no food for their families, marched off by thousands to
be slaughtered, or die of Southern fevers ? I am not
responsible for their death. " Thou canst not say I
did it !"
It was not heroic to run away. I admit it and
feel it, sometimes more deeply than I care to express.
" I ought to have stayed and done what I could to
put down that miserable usurpation at Washington,"
I say sometimes.
" What good would it have done had you stayed a
year in Fort Lafayette?" she asks, who has some
right.

Waiting for the News. 11
" I might have gone to Richmond, where I could
have done some good."
" And what would have become of us ?" cries the
little one, her blue eyes filling with tears.
Perhaps it is best as it is. There has been no want
of men in the South. They have fought a good fight.
The world must honour brave men who at every odds
defend their country and liberty. They will defend
them to the last.
How we look back three thousand miles across the
Atlantic, we refugees and exiles, at our torn and bleed
ing native land, late so peaceful, so proud, so happy,
no Englishman can know. How we wait for the news
from hour to hour ; how eagerly we read it again and
again, and look to England, to France — look every
where for some hope of peace ! Others may look
eagerly for news, and watch the progress of the war,
but not as we look and watch, to whom the scenes of
the war are so familiar. Is it a battle on the Poto
mac ? We have followed its stream from the spark
ling rivulet on the summit of the Alleghanies, to
where it opens into the Chesapeake Bay, broad and
deep enough to bear the navies of the world. Is it
Vicksburg ? We remember the last time our steamer
lay under the bluffs, and we had a run up the steep
hill-sides since then so bravely defended. Is it Gal
veston ? We see the pretty little garden city on the
white sands of the low island, surrounded by the clear
and sparkling waters of its almost tropic seas.
We do not skip over the names of killed and wounded.
Upon those bloody fields may have lain the mutilated

12 An American Refugee in England.
bodies or the mangled corpses of our schoolfellows,
associates, and dearest friends. We knew the generals
of one army in New Tork and Cincinnati, and of the
other at Mobile and New Orleans. And we read over
the lists on either side, and as one and another gets
his brief record of glory, the tears fall for Federal and
Confederate, and we say, "Poor fellow! poor fel
low !" and curse in our hearts those whose fanaticism,
or greed, or ambition urges them on to a war of in
vasion, rapine, and the unutterable horrors that throw
their gloomy shadows upon the future of our country.
0, Powers of Europe ! — Powers of civilization !
When brother is murdering brother, it is every man's
duty to stop the fratricidal strife. How long must
nations stand aside, and ask, " Am I my brother's
keeper ?" Is there one morality and one religion for
men, and another for nations ? The public opinion of
Europe has denounced this war as a useless conflict.
Why cannot the opinion of Europe — " the just judg
ment of mankind" — make itself respected ?
In the weary hours of a most anxious exile, I have
written the following pages. I have described America,
and what seems to me most distinctive in its institu
tions and people, as I remember them, looking back
through a vista of nearly half a century of a busy and
varied life, and as they appear to me viewed across the
intervening ocean. Americans have usually written
of their country with pride and exultation. I have
written in sorrow and humiliation ; yet not without
the hope that, purified as in the fire, she may in the
future be worthy of the promise of the past.

13

CHAPTER II.
NEW ENGLAND FORTY TEARS AGO.
Birth and parentage. — The " Old Granite State." — The Switzer
land of America. — Climate. — Extremes of heat and cold. —
Sleigh-rides and skating. — Farming in New England.
I was born in 1815, in Orford, Grafton County, State
of New Hampshire. These are names very familiar
to the English reader. New Hampshire was one of
the thirteen colonies of Great Britain which were
acknowledged by George III., after the War of the
Revolution of 1776, as free, sovereign, and indepen
dent States. It is one of the five Eastern or New
England States, and its early settlers came from the
English county from which it derives its name.
My father was born on the seacoast of Massachu
setts, and my mother was a native of Boston. Both
were, I believe — for few Americans take the trouble
to trace back their ancestry — descendants of the early
English settlers of the colony of Massachusetts Bay.
My maternal grandfather was an active Whig, or
rebel, in the Revolution. He attended the patriotic
meetings in Fanueil Hall, which was named the
" Cradle of Liberty ;" was one of the party that threw
the tea, loaded with a duty of threepence a pound,
into Boston Harbour ; and he fought, as I was always

14 New England Forty Years ago.
told, in the battle of Bunker Hill — that famous action,
which, though an actual defeat of the rebel colonists,
cost the British troops so much, that it has always
been celebrated by Americans as a victory. Full of
patriotism, my grandfather invested his savings in
Continental paper- money, and, by its depreciation to
utter worthlessness, lost all he possessed.
I was born, then, in the beautiful valley of the river
Connecticut, which separates New Hampshire from
Vermont, and, after running southward through Mas
sachusetts and Connecticut, empties into Long Island
Sound. New Hampshire is a little wedge-shaped State,
lying between Vermont and Maine, with its broad
end resting on Massachusetts, and its point sticking
into Canada, toward Quebec. Besides the Connecticut
on its western border, it has another clear and rapid
river, the Merrimack, running through the centre of
the State, and passing into Massachusetts, where it
gives water-power to the cotton-mills of Lowell and
Lawrence, before emptying into the Atlantic, on which
there are a few miles of coast and one excellent har
bour, Portsmouth, on the ocean, between the coasts of
Maine and Massachusetts. The State- is about two
hundred miles long, and nearly one hundred broad in
its widest part, with a triangular area of a little more
than eight thousand square miles.
Nearly half of this area, I think, is covered by
mountains and lakes. New Hampshire has been
called the " Granite State," and " the Switzerland of
America." The mountains are grand and crao-oy.

The Switzerland of America. 1 5
with peaks glittering with quartz or mica, and the
highest are covered with snow three-quarters of the
year. The lakes are of transparent water, nestled
among the mountains ; and the larger ones are full of
picturesque islands, from a rock a few yards across to
those of several acres, but all covered with the finest
evergreens. It is a wonderfully rough,- picturesque
little State, full of sublimity and beauty.
The Icelander loves his treeless northern isle ; the
Arab his sandy desert ; the Swiss his mountains. All
men seem to love the land of their birth — it may be
that all men think the scenes they first looked upon
beautiful. It is thirty years since I have seen the
Upper Connecticut valley, and the more mountainous
regions of the Old Granite State. We speak of Old
Virginia, Old Massachusetts, &c, to distinguish those
early settled States upon the Atlantic from the mighty
brood of New States which have sprung up in the
West.. Even Kentucky, which began to be settled at
the period of the Revolution, is called Old Kaintuck
by the settlers of the newer States beyond the Mis
sissippi. My native State glows in my memory — a land of
craggy mountains, whose summits glisten in the sun,
or fade in the blue distance ; of silvery lakes cradled
in the forests and among the hills ; of crystal springs,
singing brooks, roaring waterfalls, and clear arrowy
rivers, swollen in the spring-time to magnificent tor
rents ; of the loveliest of green valleys, walled by the
grandest of precipitous mountain ranges, with villages
of white cottages and mansions with green blinds,

16 New England Forty Tears ago.
shaded by broad-spreading elms and shining sugar-
maples. The forests are pine, hemlock, spruce,
odorous balsam-fir, the great white birch (of whose
bark the Indians made canoes, and which I rolled into
torches for night-fishing), beech, maple, oak, and more
trees than I can remember. The ground was fragrant
with pine-leaves, mosses, and the winter-green, with its
bright red berries, alive with playful squirrels and
musical with singing birds. The ponds are full of
fish; the mountains and pasture lands are covered with
berries. A glowing landscape in summer ; in winter a
robe of glittering snow.
True, the winters are long and cold, and the sum
mers are very hot. In the mild and equable climate
of the British Islands, though in a higher latitude,
people have little idea of the extremes of heat and
cold that exist in the Northern States of America.
Men die of sun- stroke in summer, and are frozen —
sometimes frozen to death — in winter. In New Tork
coachmen have sometimes been frozen to death on
their boxes, and scarcely a summer passes that men
do not fall down dead with the intense heat. General
Hooker is reported to have lost a thousand men by
sun-stroke in a single forced march, when he was
hastening to the defence of Washington, threatened
by the advance of General Lee.
The climate is a combination of tropical summers
and polar winters, — Madras and Nova Zembla. In
England and Ireland the grass is for ever green ; in
America it is frozen dead in winter, and sometimes
parched to death in summer. There are years of

A New England Winter. 17
drought, when streams and wells are dry ; when the
pastures are brown, and meadows like fields of ashes ;
when cattle are driven miles to water, and browse in
the woods, or starve. It was from such a drought that
the people of Kansas nearly perished a few years ago,
and would have starved had not supplies of corn and
other provisions been sent them from more favoured
regions. , «¦
My birthplace is about the same latitude as Lyons,
in France, yet the snows fall three or four feet deep,
and lay on the ground three months at a time. The
ice froze twenty inches in thickness ; the thermometer
went down at times to twenty, thirty, and in some
mountain regions forty degrees below zero. Then the
trees would burst with the frost with a sound like a
cannon, and the ground, frozen three feet deep, would
crack with a noise like thunder, shaking the house
when it passed near it. These cracks extended across
the fields in straight lines for a long distance, and
were as deep as the frost extended, and nearly an inch
wide ; but after reaching a certain point of cold, ten
or twenty degrees make little difference with the feel
ings. Protect the hands and feet and the ears and
nose from freezing, and the cold stimulates the system
to resist it, and is less uncomfortable than a drizzly
chill above the freezing point. Steady, intense cold
is by no means the worst of weather : it makes the
blood circulate briskly, and the system put forth its
energies. The air condensed with the cold is rich in
oxygen, and the frost is exhilarating.
Then the sleigh-rides ! The snow is four feet deep,
VOL. i. 2

18 New England Forty Tears ago.
but trodden in the roadway hard as a rock. All the
landscape is glistening white in the dazzling sunshine.
The trees may be cased all in diamonds, glittering
with prismatic light. Tou glide along swiftly to the
music of the jingling bells, just feeling the motion,
and wrapped in buffalo robes, bear-skins, or softer furs.
Perhaps it is a string of twenty sleighs, with as many
couples, gliding through the frozen landscape by
moonlight, with the silvery ringing of a thousand
bells and shouts of merry laughter, ending with a
supper and a dance, and then home again before the
day breaks.
Skating, too. It is hardly worth buying skates, or
learning the beautiful exercise, for the chance one has
of enjoying it in England ; but in the Northern States
of America you can calculate on three or four months
of skating when the snow is not too deep upon the
ice. Sometimes the snow falls before the large ponds
and rivers freeze over ; sometimes it is blown from
the ice. I used to skate miles up and down the Con
necticut river, and when thirsty, creep carefully to the
edges of the air-holes,or "glades," in the ice, and drink.
The water, clear as crystal, ten or twelve feet deep,
ran in a strong current under me. It seems very
absurd now that I should have run such a risk for a
drink of water ; but every boy, I believe, runs many
such, and shudders at the danger in after years.
The broad intervales on the rivers are fertile. The
hills are excellent pasturage, where the stones allow
grass to grow between them ; and these rough uplands,
when at all tillable, produce good crops of wheat, rye,

The Land and the People. 1 9
Indian corn, and potatoes. Orchards of apples, pears,
cherries, and plums also flourish with great vigour;
so would hardy grapes, for there are wild ones in great
abundance. In my boyhood the population of this
State was about 250,000, mostly agricultural. All
the best lands were occupied, and a surplus population
was already emigrating to the richer country of
Western New Tork and Ohio. A farmer-proprietor,
having from one hundred to three hundred acres of
land, " suitably divided into arable, pasturage, and
woodland," would have half a dozen sons and as many
daughters. Such a farm does not divide to advantage.
One son, not always the eldest, takes the homestead,
assuming the support of his parents in their old age,
and any unmarried aunts or sisters ; the rest go out
to make their way in the world. One becomes a
lawyer, another a doctor, another a merchant, an
editor, a politician, member of Congress, cabinet
minister, president perhaps; who knows? Daniel
Webster was the son of a New Hampshire farmer ;
so was General Cass, and Horace Greeley, and long
John Wentworth. In a group of distinguished men
of various professions in a western town, I have
recognised four out of five as sons of New Hampshire
farmers, who, as boys, had held the plough, hoed conij
dug potatoes, chopped wood, and hardened their bodies
with useful toil, while they picked up their education
•at the common school, or by the light of pine-knots
blazing in the kitchen fireplace.
The State is divided into townships of about six
miles square. The township in which I was born had
2—3

20 New England Forty Years ago.
about 1000 inhabitants. There was a pretty village,
with a meeting-house, post-office, tavern, two or three
shops called stores, with assortments of dry goods,
hardware, groceries, crockery, glass — almost every
thing, in fact. There were also two or three lawyers,
and a blacksmith, hatter, shoemaker, wheelwright,
cabinet-maker, tailor, &c. A smaller village, two or
three miles back among the hills, supplied its own
neighbourhood. Grist-mills which ground our corn,
and saw-mills which supplied our timber, were upon
a mill brook which brawled down from the hills and
wound through the loveliest of meadows into the
Connecticut. There were no landlords in this country. Almost
every man owned the land he cultivated. And they
believed in the motto of Poor Richard : —
" He that by the plough would thrive,
Must either hold himself, or drive."
The proprietor of hundreds of acres generally worked
harder than any man he could hire. And whom could
he hire ? That was the great difficulty. There were
very few men to go out at "day's works." The sons of j
small farmers, wishing to raise a little money for '
themselves, would sometimes hire out at about three
pounds a month and found. They lived with their
employer, fared as he did, worked by his side ; and
when the hired man put on his Sunday suit, he
offered his arm to the prettiest of the farmer's daugh
ters and escorted her gallantly to meeting. The term
servant, and the idea of service, were unknown. He
was a "hand," or a "help." And the young lady

Farms and Fortunes. 21
who assisted in doing the housework associated on
terms of perfect equality with her employer's family,
and considered that she was conferring an obligation,
as indeed she was, and was entitled to gratitude and
very respectful treatment, as well as very good wages.
Farms were sometimes hired, or taken on shares,
the owner and tenant dividing the produce equally ;
but this was rare. Any man could buy the best
Government land in the new States for five shillings
an acre, and from that extreme price down to sixpence
an acre, at which millions of acres may still be bought.
Moreover, by squatting on unsurveyed land, he could
have five or ten years' time to pay for a farm, when,
perhaps, a single crop would bring money enough
for that purpose.
The two or three richest men in our parts were
wildly reputed to be worth eight or ten thousand
pounds. These were merchants or lawyers. But
the possessor of property worth two thousand pounds
was called rich. No one ever spoke of incomes ;
they were not much reckoned. The farmer who
made both ends meet, with a little increase of his
stock, thought himself doing well enough.
Let me give an idea of such a farmer's home as I
remember it, forty years ago. The farm was about a
hundred acres of land, running back from the river in
a series of three level terraces, and then up a steep,
rocky hill. These alluvial terraces or levels, of per
haps an eighth of a mile in width, appeared to me
to have been at some period the successive bottoms
either of a much broader river, or, more probably, of

22 New England Forty Years ago.
a great lake, bounded by the chain of precipitous
mountains that girt our valley, excepting where they
were broken through at the north and south. This
farm was fenced with the stumps of the great pine-
trees that had once covered the meadows, and which
had been cut down at an earlier period and sawn into
boards, or made into shingles, or rafted down the
river to become " Fit masts for some tall admiral."
The fences were made by placing these stumps — ex
tracted from the ground with great labour and the
aid of machinery — on their sides, with their gnarled
roots stretching into the air, arid forming a chevaux de
frise which few animals would venture to jump over,
but which, with an occasional tear of the trousers, I
managed to climb with great facility. There were no
hedges. In the rocky uplands there were stone walls,
elsewhere board fences and palings.
The stage road passed along the second terrace, and
here were the farm buildings — a storey-and-a-half
wooden house, with a steep shingled roof, having ten
rooms, a wash-house, dairy, wood-house, where the
year's firewood was stored, and hog-house. At a
little distance was the barn-yard, with two large barns
for hay, unthreshed grain, and stables for horses and
cattle, and a corn-barn for storing Indian corn and
the threshed and winnowed grain. Back of the
buildings was an orchard of ten or fifteen acres ; and
back of this, by a rich bank of blue clay, a brick
yard. Our neighbour was an industrious man. He raised

Domestic Manufactures. 23
large crops of wheat, rye, maize, potatoes, and flax.
He kept horses, cattle, sheep, and swine. The women
carded, spun, and wove the wool, and flax, making
the blankets, fulled cloth, and linen of the family.
They also made plenty of butter and cheese. The
farmer and his stout boys cut their wood, shaved
pine-shingles, converted the apples into cider, made
bricks, washed and sheared the sheep, prepared the
flax, and had plenty of work for every week in the
year. They raised their food, made their clothing, and
had a large surplus of everything to exchange for
what they could not manufacture or produce — tea,
coffee, tobacco — the last of which they could grow —
and all the goods furnished by the stores. In those
days the buzz of the spinning-wheel and the clang of
the loom were heard, and the odour of the dye-pot
smelt, in every farmer's dwelling. Now, these instru
ments of domestic manufacture are stowed away in
the garret, and the young ladies, dressed in the pro
duce of the looms of Manchester, Lyons, or Lowell,
" spin street yarn," exercise at the pianoforte, and are
learned in the mysteries of crochet. I doubt if they
are the better for it.

24

CHAPTER III.
LIFE IN A NEW COUNTRY.
Social customs. — A raising. — Log-rolling. — Making potash. — A
husking. — An apple-paring. — A quilting. — Making maple-
sugar. — Shooting-matches.— Good shots. — Travelling and
road-making. — Going to market.
The settlers of new countries are forced to be more
gregarious and social in their habits and customs than
the people of older communities. They associate for
mutual defence and assistance. When the American
settlements were surrounded by hostile Indians, the
colonists were bound together by a common danger.
When no such danger existed, they joined together to
perform many operations that could be done more
easily or more pleasantly by associated effort.
For example, when a new settler took possession of
his one hundred and sixty acres of land, covered with
its dense forests, he had, first of all, to make a log
cabin for his family. They might camp in the woods,
in a shantee of hemlock-boughs, until the timber
house was ready. The stout settler would chop down
trees enough of a suitable size to build his house.
For this purpose he would require twenty lengths of
thirty feet, and as many of fifteen. These, notched
at the ends, and built up one upon another, would

A Log- House and Clearing. 25
make the four walls of a house. A ridge-pole, laid
upon two crotched sticks fifteen feet high, would sup
port a roof of slabs. The door and windows are cut
out, a chimney of stone and clay built in one corner
or at the side, and the family can move in.
But all this would be heavy work for one man, and
some of it nearly impossible. He has no money to
hire help, and there are none who need wages. But
any man within five or six miles' distance is willing
to take his axe or his yoke of oxen, and give his
neighbour a day's work. Not exactly give, either, for
the favour can be repaid at some future time. Many
hands make light work. A dozen or twenty men
assemble to give their new neighbour a welcome.
They bring their own provisions, and make a sort of
pic-nic in the forest. The trees are felled, shaped,
hauled to their places, and when all is ready the house
goes up with a will, and the roof is covered. The
interstices in the logs can be filled in with clay or
strips of wood, or the walls clapboarded, when the
settler gets time, or the weather makes it needful.
But there is more work to be done. The trees must
be got rid of, and the soil opened up to the sunshine.
It is slow and hard work. Sometimes the largest
timber is deadened — cut round so as to stop the ascent
of sap. Having no more foliage, it casts but little
shadow, and the branches and then the trunk gradu
ally decay. But in settling heavy-timbered land there
is a great deal of hard work necessary to clear it.
There is no market for fire-wood or timber. Every
body has more than he wants. So the trees are cut

i

26 Life in a New Country.
down, and their tops trimmed off; then comes the,]
log-rolling. The neighbours are invited, and come,
men and cattle, and in a few hours roll the logs into
great heaps. The dry brush is piled upon them, I
the fires lighted, and for days and nights the " burnt |
piece " presents a grand spectacle. The smoke rolls \
up into the sky, and clouds are formed, ending often
in a heavy rain. By night the field of fire is a lake 1
of flame. When the wood is consumed, the scattered j
ashes enrich the ground ; but that which lies in heaps .
is gathered into great cylinders, cut from hollow
logs, which are set on end. Water is poured upon
the ashes, and a strong ley runs out at the bottom.
This ley is evaporated in large iron kettles until it
crystallizes and becomes the potash of commerce.
So the burnt wood of the forest is not lost. In fact,
this potash, for which there is always a steady price
and a large demand, goes far to pay for the land.
The settler sows his wheat and rye, and plants j
his Indian corn and potatoes. When these crops \
are gathered there is another job to do, best done*
in company. At least, it is an excuse for an even-'
ing gathering, and the settler is able by this time
to give a little treat to those who help him. So alii
the neighbours, and especially the young men and]
girls, are invited to a "husking." The Indian corn'
has been gathered into one end of the house, if there
is no barn. It is still upon the stalk, and the long
yellow ears, or white they may be, with sometimes a
red one, are still enclosed in their tough, fibrous
husks, or shucks, from which latter name this pleasant

Hustings and Apple-parings. 27
gathering is sometimes called a "corn-shucking."
This is the western and southern term ; and as these
shucks have little value, it is said of an idle, good-
for-nothing person, that he " isn't worth shucks."
The husking takes place in the evening, by the
Hght- of a good fire, pine knots, or candles where
civilization has advanced so far. Both sexes join in
the pleasant labour, with songs, stories, chaffing, and
the understanding that the fellow who husks a red
ear has the privilege of kissing the girl next him.
The corn-baskets are filled, the pile diminishes, the
stalks and husks are cleared away. Then comes a
profuse supper of pork and beans, pumpkin-pie, dough
nuts, apples and cider, if these have been produced,
or other and stronger beverages. Then, if the Puri
tanism is not too strong, a fiddle and a dance ; if it is,
games of romps and forfeits, certainly quite as objec
tionable, and a walk home by moonlight.
When orchards have grown — and they grow very
rapidly in America, where the finest fruit costs the
farmer less than three -halfpence a bushel, less than a
single good apple often costs in London — where de
licious peaches rot on the ground by the . thousand
bushels, more than even the hogs can eat, — then come
the "apple-paring bees." They did come, at least,
before ingenious Tankees invented paring machines.
The apples were pared with sharp knives and rapid
hands, quartered, cored, strung on twine, and hung
up to dry in festoons over the kitchen , ceiling. The
paring bee was a milder kind of evening party than
the husking, and ended with the same festivities.

28 Life in a New Country.
The quilting is mostly a feminine arrangement.
Its ostensible object is the manufacture of a bed-
quilt. This involves a social gathering— talk, tea,
probably a little gossip and scandal, and in the evening
the accession of masculinity, with more or less of fun
and frolic. The upper surface of the quilt is that
marvellous result of feminine industry — patchwork;
the lower stratum is more modest calico ; the interior
cotton or wool ; and the whole is united by quiltings
in elaborate figures, composed of a vast number of
stitches, made by as many old and young ladies as
can sit around the frame, beginning on the borders,
and, as the frame is rolled up, gradually working
toward the centre. The reasons for making this
a social undertaking are obvious. When the quilt is
in the frame it occupies a large space. It would take
a long time for one or two persons to do it, and would
be a long time in the way. Finally, it is an excuse
gathering. The sugar-maple, if tapped early in the spring, while
the ground in the forest is covered with two or thr*ee
feet of snow, yields a sweet sap in large quantities.
This is caught in troughs, gathered to a central camp,
and boiled down to a delicious syrup or sugar. Great
kettles are swung over a log-fire in the forest. Hem
lock-boughs make a couch on the snow. Toung men
and maidens gather round the fire at night, when the
sap has been boiled down to the sugaring-off point,
when it will harden into candy on the snow, or crys
tallize into sugar. These are among the pleasantest
of rural gatherings.

Shooting Matches. 29
( I have spoken of winter sleigh-rides. In summer,
parties are made to pick whortle-berries and blue
berries, on the mountains or in the plains, and the
raspberries and blackberries, which grow large and
delicious on the hill-sides and rough pasture-lands.
The men have shooting-matches all to themselves.
These come off in the autumn, when turkeys are fat
and thanksgiving is coming. Turkeys are put up to
be shot for at so many rods' distance, at so much a
shot. Of course the poor shots pay for the turkeys
which the good ones carry home. In my memory
good shots were very common. Every man and every
boy could shoot. Guns and rifles were in every house,
and when I was eight or nine years old, a light fowling-
piece, with which I shot at birds or squirrels, or at a
mark, was my favourite plaything. I shot with a
rifle long before I could hold one out at arm's length,
resting over a rail in the fence, or across the stump of
a tree, and putting my ball into the bull's-eye at a
hundred yards. Our practised shots did what were
considered very handsome feats in those days, before
arms of precision and long ranges were invented.
These riflemen, who killed their game without in
juring their skins, barked squirrels off the trees, and
shot wild turkeys in the head, would hold candles in
the night for each other to snuff with a bullet without
extinguishing the light, drive a nail into a tree with
a ball without bending it, or split a bullet into two
equal halves on a knife-blade.
The fathers or grandfathers of these men had
fought with the Indians, and carried their rifles into

30 Life in a New Country.
the field to their work, and to church on Sundays,
that the war-whoop might never surprise them un
armed. Marksmanship always seemed to me an instinct,
and hereditary. Why should not the skill of a hunter
be hereditary, as well as that of his dog ? and that, I
believe, there is no doubt about. The pup of a trained
pointer, setter, or retriever scarcely needs to be taught,
it takes so readily to the practices of its parents.
I used to know Colonel Scott, of the American army,
about whom the 'coon story was told. He was out
shooting one day in the west, the story said, and took,
aim at an old 'coon, or, as the ring-tailed quadruped is
more properly called, raccoon, in a tall tree : —
" Hillo !" said the 'coon ; " who are you ?"
" My name is Scott," said the hunter, taking the
opportunity to inspect his priming.
" Scott ? Scott ?" said the 'coon—" what Scott ?"
" Martin Scott."
" Captain Martin Scott?" asked the 'coon, with
some trepidation.
"Tes, Captain Martin Scott," said the mighty
hunter, raising his rifle to take aim and end the
colloquy. " Well, then, you needn't shoot," said the animal ;
" I'll come down. I'm a gone 'coon."
This was the origin of the saying.
Colonel Scott used to throw two apples into the
air, one after the other, and pierce both with a" pistol-
ball as they crossed each other. I believe that he
rose from the ranks. If so, the officers educated at
Westpoint probably treated him with courtesy.

A Duel. — Telegraphs and Travelling. 31
There was a captain in the Florida war who had been
a private, and received a commission for his gallantry.
One day a Westpoint officer said that some observa
tion made by D  in the mess-room smelt of the
ranks. A challenge passed instanter, and as the
Government had been severe about duelling, they
went out early in the morning, and fought without
seconds. The first that was. known of the affair was
when Captain D  came into the camp, bearing on
his shoulders the dead body of his opponent. The
commandant took no notice of the affair, and D 
was not again insulted.
The period of which I write, forty years ago, was
before the era of railways, and steamboats had not
come into general use. The electro-magnetic tele
graph, except as a philosophical toy, had not been
thought of. Lavoisier, long before, communicated
from his study to his wife's boudoir by an electric con
ductor, but no one thought of covering the world by
land and sea with a network of thought-conveying
wires. We traversed our rough New England roads with
mail-coaches, drawn by four or six horses, at the rate
of six or eight miles an hour. But when I mounted
to the driver's seat on a fine autumnal morning, and
drove off twenty miles up the romantic valley, to the
academy where I was expected to acquire the rudi
ments of a classical education, there was more joy and
triumph in that high seat, and the progress of those
well-matched steeds, than I have ever found in the
express train at sixty miles an hour.

32 Life in a New Country.
The roads, never very good, were very bad in the
spring, when the melting snows and the upheaving of
the frost made mud a foot or more in depth. In
swampy places logs and poles were laid across, to form
a roadway called corduroy, over which vehicles bumped
and jolted at the slowest pace. These roads were
mended every year, but only by hauling the loam
from the gutters at the side toward the centre, and it
is a proverb that " no road is so rough as one that has
just been mended." There were a few turnpike roads,
made and kept in repair by companies, who gathered
tolls for their use ; but these were never properly
made. Nothing in England strikes an American I
with more surprise than the smooth, solid, admirable ;
roads over the whole island, and even in Ireland in
such parts as I have visited.
Road-making and mending was one of our gregarious \
occupations. Each town is divided into districts, and
a certain highway-tax levied, which the people can
pay in money, or work out at their option under one
of their number who has been elected surveyor or
road-master. So much a day is allowed for each man
or boy, and so much for each span of horses or yoke
of cattle. The people work out the tax after a fashion.
It is a working holiday. They begin late, leave off
early, take long noonings, and do the business in a
very leisurely manner, unless there happens to be an
energetic surveyor, who can inspire the people with
his own spirit.
Before the railways, most of the traffic was carried
on in winter, when the snow made good roads for

Going to Market. 33
everybody. Then the farmers, in great numbers,
harnessed up their teams, loaded their large . double
sleighs with their surplus produce — hogs frozen stiff,
and packed down with snow, tallow, butter, cheese,
dried apples, apple-sauce, honey, home-made cloth,
woollen socks and mittens — and, with the jingle of
merry beUs, drove off one or two hundred miles to
Boston, to sell their loads, and bring home salt, sugar,
molasses, rum — before the days of temperance — tea,
and other foreign luxuries, salt cod-fish, and generally
a stock of fresh ones, frozen hard as stones, which,
packed in snow, would keep in the same condition till
the warm weather.
These prudent New England farmers, who took
their own produce to the best market, and bought
their supply of goods at wholesale prices, were of very
little profit to the tavern-keepers on the way, or to
those in town. They carried their provisions ready
cooked, in the shape of bean-porridge frozen into
cakes, ready to be warmed by the tavern-fire, dough
nuts and cheese, sausages, &c. They also carried oats
for their horses, and as much hay as they could stow.
The tavern-keeper could only charge for a baiting of
hay and a lodging, and their whole cash travelling
expenses would be scarcely more than a shilling
a day. The snow-road had its difficulties. It was liable to
drifts, so that in places it would be ten or fifteen feet
deep, and the teamsters always carried shovels to dig
through them. On the other hand, a sudden thaw
might carry off all the snow and leave them in the
vol. i. 3

34 Life in a New Country.
mud. Still, the old fashion of going to the winter
market, was a jolly one; and a train of twenty teams
driving along, with all their bells cheerily jingling,
and their drivers at night gathered round the tavern-
fire, telling stories, cracking homely jokes, and drinking
hot cider or something stronger, when stronger liquors
were in fashion, had more life and variety than the
railway- trains of the present day.

35

CHAPTER IV.
"THE SPIRIT OF SEVENTY-SIX."
American militia system. — Training day. — A regimental muster.
— Military titles. — My first Fourth of July celebration. —
Revolutionary soldiers.
My father had been drafted as a militia-man during
the war of 1812, and might have fought in the famous
battle of Plattsburg, had not his business engage
ments made it necessary for him to hire a substitute,
by which he lost not only much glory, but the bounty
money and a hundred and sixty acres of land which was
afterwards given to every surviving soldier whose
name could be found upon the rolls of the army. But,
though compelled by circumstances to forego the
honours and profits of serving his country during the
war, he was full of a martial spirit, and rose in the
miUtia from the ranks to be corporal, sergeant, en
sign, lieutenant, captain, major, and finally the colonel
of a regiment. We had drills, trainings, officers' drills,
and once a year that glorious military spectacle of the
muster of a whole regiment, and every few years the
general muster of an entire brigade.
The company-trainings on the green before the
meeting-house were great days. The spectators
gathered in crowds, drank sweet cider and New Eng-
3— a

36 . " The Spirit of Seventy-six?'
land rum, and ate molasses-gingerbread. Emulous
pedlars sold tin-ware and Tankee notions at auction
with stentorian lungs, and jokes that made the crowd
snicker. Tankees are not given to loud laughter.
Our citizen soldiers were dressed in every kind of
homespun fashion, and as variously armed, with old
Queen's arms which had come down from the colony
days of Queen Anne, or been captured with the army
of Burgoyne ; with fowling-pieces, ducking guns, or
rifles. When they were tired of manoeuvring, firing by
platoons, and burning powder in a sham-fight, full of
roars of command, rattle, and smoke, the captain, if
oratorically gifted, made a speech, and the company
was dismissed, satisfied that there was glory enough
for one day, and that they had served their country.
At the muster of a regiment there was, of course, a
larger gathering. People came ten or fifteen miles,
in waggons and on horseback. The collection of
pretty girls, sellers of cider and gingerbread, was
larger, and the pedlar auctioneers more vociferous.
Several companies were in uniform — no two alike,
indeed, but each uniform with itself. There was a
company of cavalry and one of artillery, with a four
or six-pounder, iron or brass, which had to burn a
great many blank cartridges, and was used not only
on training-days, but also to fire the salutes on the
Fourth of July, and for political victories, as well as
on other joyful occasions.
After the morning evolutions came the grand re
view, and the most interesting ceremony of the day.
The regiment formed a hollow square; the chap-

A Regimental Muster. 37
lain made a prayer, sitting on horseback. I do not
exactly see why, but the military prayer on horse
back, under the blue sky, with cavalry, infantry, and
artillery standing motionless in regular lines, and the
crowd of spectators devoutly uncovered, seemed more
solemn to me than one made in a pulpit.
Then the colonel, if gifted in that line — and there
are few Americans who are not more or less so — made
a speech to the soldiers, in which he recited the glories
won by a citizen soldiery in the two past wars, al
luded touchingly to the grey-headed revolutionary
heroes then present, and the veterans of the last war.
He told them they were the pride and strength of their
country, the pillars of the State, defenders of homes
and firesides, ever ready to defend them from inva
sion and punish aggression. Then he wound up with
a magnificent spread-eagle flourish about the great
ness and glory of the country, which reached from
ocean to ocean, and from the great lakes to the Gulf
of Mexico ; with an intimation, perhaps, that they
might be called upon to extend its boundaries in'
either of these practicable directions. The programme
is sometimes slightly varied, and I have known a
pious colonel, in the absence of a chaplain, to make
the prayer, or the speech to be assigned to an oratorical
regimental surgeon.
If my father rose rapidly to the post of colonel,
he did not hold it long. Being unable to rise higher,
he resigned to make way for those below him who
were ambitious of promotion. As there was no pay
or perquisites but glory, and the expense increased

38 " Tlte Spirit of Seventy -six?'
with the elevation, he prudently declined to be made
a general. Many resign on being made captains;
others, with a shade more of ambition, attain the title
of major, and these titles they always retain. This is
the reason why every American of any account has a
military title. They all pass through some of the
grades, and then resign and are clear of mihtary
duty. It is a mode of exemption. In a year or two
a man gets the title of captain, and is for ever free
from service. Then hundreds of young men are ap
pointed on the military staffs of governors or generals,
and all these, after a nominal service of one or two
years, retain their titles. In America it is safe to call
any decent man — a stage-driver or ostler — captain ;
and any gentlemanly person — a railway-conductor or
tavern-keeper — major or colonel. Republicans visit
ing monarchical countries, naturally wish to be pre
sented at Court, and as naturally carry with them
their militia uniforms, which they display with suitable
magnificence on such occasions. No American can be
made to understand why he should not be eligible for
presentation to queen or emperor. He is the political '
equal of the president, and, probably enough, his
social superior. If he belongs to the highest rank of
his own country, why should he not associate on
equal terms with the highest rank of any other ?
Every American who visits Washington calls to see
the president, shakes hands with him, and asks him
how he does, and how his family is ; and sees no
reason why he should not do the same by the Queen
of England or the Russian Czar.

Fourth of July Celebration. ' 39
The military spirit and the spirit of patriotism, in
my early days were alike encouraged. We did not
think of conquering the world then, but of preserving
the liberties our fathers had gained. We had no
doubt that ours was the finest, most enlightened, and
happiest country in the world ; and, in spite of the
envy of tyrants, we felt sure that all the rest of man
kind would soon be of the same opinion, and only too
glad to follow our example. We entertained these sen
timents at all times, but devoted one day in the year
in an especial manner to their expression. This was
the Fourth of July.
The first celebration of the anniversary of the De
claration of American Independence, I can remember,
was on the brow of the plateau which overlooked the
beautiful valley in which I was born. I remember
the shining river winding off into the distance, the
cliffs of grey rock more than perpendicular, the blue
mountain-peaks far away on the horizon, the meadows
with broad elms, butter-nuts, and sugar-maples, the
village with its white houses embowered in trees, the
sky intensely blue, and the glorious July sunshine.
The music was a fife and drum. The militia com
pany of our district was posted on the field, and later
in the day fired off a rattling feu-de-joie. I cannot
say much for the appearance of the company, as each
man wore his ordinary costume, and not much time
had ever - been given to drill. In the large towns,
where there is competition and opportunities for dis
play, there are well-drilled regiments of citizen sol
diery. In the country the men are generally satisfied

40 " The Spirit of Seventy-six?'
with knowing how to use their weapons, and care
little for evolutions, discipline, or strategy.
There was a salute, to open the ceremonies of the
celebration. The hills and mountains were filled
with the echoes and reverberations. I have heard
the report of a cannon distinctly repeated seven times,
besides the roaring thunders of continuous echoes.
But we had no cannon. Our company was infantry,
not artillery, and not a four-pounder could be procured.
All were noisily engaged elsewhere on the great occa
sion, when gunpowder enough is wasted every year
to fight a hundred battles. We had a grand salute,
notwithstanding, fired from a fifty-six ; not a fifty-
six pounder cannon — there was scarcely so large a
piece of field-artillery in those days — but a fifty-six
pound weight. These weights of cast iron have a
hole about an inch in diameter through the centre,
into which melted lead is poured until they are of the
standard weight. Into this hole a charge of gun
powder was poured, and upon it driven a wooden
plug, with a crease cut in its side for priming. It
made all the noise that was necessary, and each dis
charge was accompanied by the screams of the fife,
the roll of the drum, and the shouts of all the boys in
the neighbourhood.
In America, almost every important public mani
festation is opened with prayer. I do not think that
people care much about it ; but it is a custom. Each
day's sitting in Congress and the State legislatures
opens with prayer. Political meetings are opened with

Prayers and Orations. 41
prayer. So the captain of the militia company, who
happened to be the most pious man about, made a
prayer, which, being unpremeditated, earnest, and
patriotic, may be presumed to have been suitable to
the occasion.
It is wonderful what a deal of work is done in
America with these extempore prayers. The chap
lain of Congress every day can put a speech into his
prayer. A timid clergyman can say things to the
Almighty that he would not dare tell his people. He
begins with, " 0 Lord, thou knowest — " and then
goes on with his complaints or reproofs. I cannot, of
course, remember, but have no doubt that our good
captain made the best use of his opportunities.
The prayer was followed by the inevitable reading
of the Declaration of Independence, in which Jefferson
proclaimed the rights of man, and indicted George the
Third for numerous violations of those rights, and
declared that the thirteen colonies " are, and of right
ought to be, free, sovereign, and independent States ;"
to which declaration the signers nobly pledged " our
lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour."
After the reading came the oration. It was given
by an intelligent farmer, militia colonel, and deputy
sheriff. It recounted the labours, sacrifices, and perils
of the past, the freedom and prosperity of the present,
and the glories of the coming future; for America,
being in her childhood, was more prone to look forward
to the future, than back upon the past. She had but
little in the past to look back upon, and the less she

42 " The Spirit of Seventy -six?'
had of history the more her sanguine orators indulged
in hope. The history of the future was as glorious as
we chose to make it.
After the oration came another national salute — • ;
thirteen guns, one for each of the original States, front
the fifty-six, afeu-de-joie from the old flint-lock muskets
of the militia, and then an attack upon the bread and
cheese and rum-punch provided by the committee. I
sat on the breezy brow of the hill, in the shade of the
. i
singing pine-trees, looking down the beautiful valley 1
of my world, thinking of all I had heard of our
glorious country and its great destiny, and wondering >i
what share I, a boy then of eight or nine years old,
was to have in its future — that future which I have
seen drenched in blood and tears.
In those days, no military training, patriotic cele
bration, or political meeting was complete without the
presence of revolutionary soldiers, who were to be
found in every neighbourhood. Naturally, as the old
soldiers of the revolution diminished in numbers, their
honours increased. They had pensions from the
Government, sufficient to make their latter days com
fortable, and on every public occasion - were treated'!
with peculiar respect. If a man had but served a few i
months as a common soldier in the War of Inde-:
pendence, he was a veteran, patriot, and hero, to be
apostrophized in Fourth of July orations and political!
speeches. The party that could get the largest number]
of these heroes of Seventy-six to attend its gatherings'
was pretty sure to carry the majority. They went for
General Jackson, but they also went for General

A Revolutionary Hero. 43
Harrison. Whichever the party he belonged to, they
naturally preferred a soldier to a civilian. I think
even General Scott might have been elected if the
Democrats had not had the good fortune to nominate
General Pierce.
During the Harrison Hard-Cider campaign, there
was a great "Tippecanoe" and Tyler too mass-meeting
at Saratoga, the fashionable summer resort in the
northern part of New Tork. The meeting was very
large ; several counties assembled. Conspicuous on the
platform was a group of white-headed revolutionary
soldiers, whom the orators duly celebrated, and who
were giving their support to the hero of sundry Indian
battle-fields. One of the orators, not content with the
customary allusions, determined to have something
more effective, and, addressing one of the venerable
patriots, said —
"Tou fought in the glorious War of Independence ?"
" Taas," said the old man, with a German accent ;
" yaas, I vas in te var."
" This white-haired veteran was in that glorious
contest for our liberties, fellow-citizens ; and here he
is, ready to fight or to vote for them once more. And
now, my venerable friend, who was your commander
— what general did you serve under in that great
struggle for freedom and independence ?"
" General Burgoyne !" was the honest reply ; which,
after a moment of consternation, was greeted with a
shout of laughter. General Burgoyne was the unfor
tunate British commander who, cut off from supplies,
harassed and surrounded, was compelled to surrender

44 " The Spirit of Seventy-six."
his whole army at Saratoga, and this " Hero of
Seventy-six" was one of his Hessians, a prisoner of
war, who had settled in the country. He had fought I
in the revolution — as it happened, on the wrong side
for the purposes of the meeting. There were thousands
of such heroes of the revolution, who fought under
British commanders — soldiers hired from Germany, \
sent from England, or colonists who adhered to the
loyal cause ; but, where not too closely questioned, \
they answered every purpose.

45

CHAPTER V.
AMERICAN HATRED TO ENGLAND.
Waterloo and New Orleans. — Songs of victory. — England's con
querors. — National animosities. — "America for Americans."
— Invasions of Canada from 1775 to 1837. — Speech of Senator
Seward. — Our natural enemy.
The year of my birth (1815) was that of the battle of
Waterloo, and also that of New Orleans, which we
Americans have always considered much the most
glorious affair of the two, since General Jackson, with
a few thousand Tennessee riflemen and hunters of
Kentucky, conquered the conquerors of Napoleon.
The same troops which .were defeated by him on the
8th of January, 1815, returned to Europe and fought
under Wellington at Waterloo, but with a different
result. " Old Jackson, he was wide awake,
And was not scared at trifles,
For well he knew what aim we take
With our Kentucky rifles."
Chorus. — " O Kentucky ! The Hunters of Kentucky !"
Every American is proud of New Orleans, only it
was a pity that such a battle should have been fought
after peace had been made, as it had, by the commis
sioners at Ghent, the previous autumn. Steam would

46 American Hatred to England.
have saved the useless bloodshed, and General Jackson
might never have been president. England thought \
little of the repulse. If it caused any mortification,!
it was lost in the glories of Waterloo. America cele
brated it as one of her grandest and most decisive!
victories. As we had just come out of the second war with
England happy and glorious, having beaten the most
powerful nation in the world in two great wars, and
alike on land and sea, my earliest recollections are of
the boasts of our national prowess. The sucpesses of
the new war revived the recollections of the old. The
younger soldiers of the revolution were leaders in the
war of 1812. One of the earliest songs that I remem
ber began with the lines —
" Old England forty years ago,
When we were young and slender,
Conspired to give a mortal blow,
But God was our defender."
We also had a famous song which described the
victory of the American squadron, commanded by
Commodore Perry, over the British fleet, on Lake
Erie, and another which gave a metrical and histo- 1
rical account of a similar naval victory on Lake.5
Champlain. As in more classic or barbaric ages, every
herd had his song. Our pretty numerous defeats were
not celebrated or much talked about. One of the
liveliest pf the naval songs which I learned to sing in
my childhood was a long description of the taking of
the British frigate Guerriere, Hon. Captain Dacres,
by the American frigate Constitution, Captain Hull.

American War Songs. 47
It was set to the once popular air of " A Landlady of
France," and began in this fashion : —
" It oft-times has been told
How the British seamen bold
Could flog the tars of France so neat and handy, 0 !
But they never found their match
Till the Yankees did them catch ;
Oh, the Yankee boys for fighting are the dandy, 0 !
" The ' Guerriere,' a frigate bold,
On the foaming ocean rolled,
Commanded by proud Dacres, the grandee, 0 !
With as choice a British crew
As a rammer ever drew, —
They could beat the Frenchman two to one so handy, 0 !"
So it went on, giving a full and particular account
of the whole transaction, and crowing melodiously
over the discomfited Britons.
The men of middle age now living in America all
sang or heard these songs in their boyhood. Every
Fourth of July, if not oftener, they listened to orations
in praise of American patriotism and valour in the
two wars with Great Britain, that tyrant power across
the ocean, against which our fathers and grandfathers
had fought, and which they had conquered. Many
of the aged men I knew had fought in the revolution.
The middle-aged were the heroes of the last war.
Not a few had fought in both. Our whole history
was in these two wars. Stories were told of them
around the winter fireside. The grey -haired old man
in the chimney-corner had fought the Hessians at
Bennington under the New Hampshire hero, General
Stark, who said, " We must beat them to-night, boys,
or Molly Stark is a widow." Or he had been with

48 American Hatred to England.
Ethan Allen, when he called for the surrender of
Ticonderoga, a mountain fortress on Lake Champlain. 1
" By whose authority ?" asked the British commander
of the file of men that did garrison duty in this post
in the wilderness. " In the name of God and the
Continental Congress !" said Allen. Not much, ac
cording to all accounts, did the Vermont partisan care
for either. Then we had long stories of the terrible
battles of Saratoga, and the surrender of the British
army under General Burgoyne. Five thousand men
in those days was a great number. The loss of a
second army of seven thousand, under General Corn
wallis, surrendered to the Americans and French
land and naval forces at Torktown, ended the War
of Independence.
Then came the stories of the younger men who
were with General Scott on the Niagara, or who
shared in the fresh- water naval victories of Perry or
McDonough. But the land laurels, excepting those!
gathered out of season by General Jackson at New
Orleans, were, it must be confessed, a rather scanty !
crop. There were really some smart victories at sea ;
but in both wars we had at least two defeats to one
victory. Washington's great merit was in making
good retreats, and keeping an army together under
the most adverse circumstances. He wore out armies
by compelling them to follow him through difficult j
and exhausted regions. The extent of the countryjl
the sparseness of its population, the cost and weariness I
of the struggle, and the aid of France, combined with!
the prudence of Washington and the valour of myl

Tlie Last War with England. 49
countrymen, enabled them to gain their independence.
In the last war — I mean that of 1812 — England was
fighting with Napoleon, or it might not have ended
so soon, or, for us, so gloriously. There were a good
many Americans who thought that it ought never to
have been begun. It was declared, in some degree,
no doubt, out of sympathy with France, and from
motives of gratitude for her help in the revolution ;
but it is also true that the high-handed measures the
British Government thought it necessary to take, in
destroying American commerce and impressing seamen
from American vessels, gave the Government of Mr.
Madison a very sufficient excuse for declaring war.
The war was popular, especially after it had ended.
The party that had declared and maintained it made
plenty of political capital out of it ; while the party
that opposed it — the Peace party, the Hartford . Con
vention federalists — have never recovered from the
odium of alleged British sympathies, There has not
been an election in America in forty years— no, nor in
eighty — in which a sustained charge of friendship to
England would not have defeated the most hopeful
prospects of success. Every one knows the fact. Let
me try to give the reason.
America has, properly speaking, no past. Her
colonial history is British. Her nonage is scarcely
remembered. Her whole history, beginning with the
Declaration of Independence in 1776, comprises less
than a century. England was the enemy of her inde
pendence in a war of eight years. She has had no
other enemy. Her whole hatred has been concentred
vol. i. 4

50 American Hatred to England.
here. The war of 1812 revived and embittered these
feelings, which have not had time to die away. We
had a brief war with Mexico, but the Mexicans were
despised or pitied, not hated. The war was the con
sequence of a political movement, the annexation of
Texas, and ended in the acquisition of vast territories.^
But there is England on the north, a perpetual bar to
American ambition in that direction.
The British flag floats over one-third of the conti
nent, from ocean to ocean, and from the great lakes
to the polar regions, including some of the richest
and most beautiful territories in the temperate re
gions of the world.
From the day when the thirteen American colonies
were lost to England by the perversity of her rulers,
Americans have never given up the desire nor aban
doned the design of separating these loyal provinces!
from the government of Great Britain, and adding
them to their confederation. It is the favourite idea
of Americans that the "Stars and Stripes" must float
over every foot of land on the American continent.
" America for Americans !" It is even a political
dogma, called the Monroe doctrine.
At the outbreak of the American Revolution, and
before the Declaration of Independence, in 1775,
almost the first act of the revolted colonists was to
organize expeditions for the conquest of Canada.
General Montgomery marched on Montreal by the
route of Lake Champlain ; which city, being defended
by a small garrison, he took, after a slight resistance.J
General Arnold, in the meantime, and with almost

Invasions of Canada. 51
incredible labours and hardships, had led a small
army through the forests of Maine, and the two
rebel generals united to besiege Quebec. Montgomery
was killed at the head of an assaulting column, Arnold
was severely wounded, the Americans were repulsed
with heavy loss, the Canadians remained loyal, and
the whole expedition proved an utter and mortifying
failure. The Northern army, as it was called, re
treated from Canada — according to John Adams, the
second President of the United States, "disgraced,
defeated, discontented, dispirited, diseased, undisci
plined, eaten up with vermin, with no clothes, beds,
blankets, medicines, and no victuals but a scant
supply of pork and flour." A physician sent to Lake
Champlain to aid in the care of the sick, wrote — " At
the sight of so much distress I wept till I had no
power to weep."
Undeterred by this miserable experience, we had
no sooner declared war on England, in 1812, than
our old dreams of conquest and annexation were re
vived. General Hull invaded Canada from Detroit,
but his expedition ended in his being driven back and
attacked in his own stronghold, where he ingloriously
surrendered to an inferior British force.
During the same summer another invasion was
made from the New Tork frontier, near the Falls of
Niagara, by General Van Rensselaer. One of his
captains was the present General Wool, of the
American army. The invading force was met on
the heights of Queenstown ; a battle was fought in
sight of the great cataract; and the heroic British
4 — 3

52 American Hatred to England.
General Brock, whose monument now crowns those
heights, fell gloriously, while the Americans' were
hurled into the great chasm of the rapids, and few
escaped to tell the story of their defeat. While the
attacking column of one thousand was being defeated,!
killed, or taken prisoners by the British troops, a
reinforcement of fifteen hundred of their countrymen
stood on the opposite bank of the river, spectators of
the fight, but, with a poltroonery worthy of the pro
genitors of the heroes of Bull's Run, utterly refused
to cross the river to the aid of their brethren, on the
ground that as militia volunteers they were not
obliged to leave their own territory.
In 1813, a third attempt, directed this time against
Montreal, was made by General Wilkinson with a
force of seven thousand men. This force was defeated 1
near Williamsburg, while descending the St. Lawrence,
and the expedition was abandoned.
This did not prevent a fourth invasion the following
year, under General Brown, on the Niagara frontier. \
Here Lieut.-General Scott," late commander-in-chief :
of the Federal army, won his earliest laurels in a
sharp engagement at Lundy's Lane, The losses of
the British and Americans were nearly equal. General
Brown and Captain Scott were both wounded ; and
the Americans thought it prudent to retire to Fort
Erie, which they soon abandoned, making a further
retreat to their own territories.
Americans have never abandoned this idea of the
annexation of Canada. The disturbances of 1837
came near being magnified, by their sympathy ani

Invasions of Canada. 53
assistance, into a formidable rebellion. They supplied
the money, the men, and the provisions. Nine-tenths
of the insurgent forces that gathered at Navy Island,
Prescott, and in the Detroit river, and all the officers,
were Americans. Powder and arms were furnished
from American arsenals. While organized companies
of sympathizers invaded Canada, the American farmers
along the frontier made liberal contributions for their
support. The rebels on Navy Island were commanded
by Van Rensselaer, a grandson of the general who, in
1813, had commanded the invading Americans at the
battle of Queenstown. The defences of the island
were planned by an American graduate of the West-
point Military Academy.
Not only have the great body of the people of the
United States, during a period of eighty years, looked
upon the annexation of the British Provinces of North
America as a most desirable event, and one certain,
sooner or later, to be accomplished, but American
-statesmen, and those of the highest positions, have a
thorough sympathy with these popular ideas. I
cannot cite a better instance than that of Mr. Seward,
the American Secretary of State, who has very recently
given bold expression to this idea on several occasions,
and particularly in his remarkable speech at St. Paul,
the capital of Minnesota, September 18, 1860, during
the political canvass for the election of his successful
rival and present chief, Mr. Lincoln, to the Presidency.
When Mr. Seward made this speech he doubtless ex
pected to become what he is, the leading mind in the
Government.

54 American Hatred to England.
Mr. Seward said : " I find myself now, for the first
time, on the highlands of the centre of the continent
of North America, equidistant from the waters of
Hudson's Bay and the Gulf of Mexico — from the At
lantic Ocean to the ocean in which the sun sets — here,
on the spot where spring up, almost side by side, so
that they may kiss each other, the two great rivers ;
the one of which, pursuing its strange, capricious,
majestic career through cascade and river and rapid,
lake after lake, and river after river, finally — after a
course of twenty-five hundred miles — brings your com
merce half way to the ports of Europe ; and the other,
after meandering through woodland and prairie a dis
tance of twenty-five hundred miles, taking in tributary
after tributary, from the east and from the west, bring
ing together the waters of the western declivities of
the Alleghanies, and those which trickle down the
eastern sides of the Rocky Mountains, finds the At
lantic Ocean in the Gulf of Mexico. Here is the
central place where the agriculture of the richest'
region of North America must bear its tribute to the
supplies of the whole world. On the east, all along
the shores of Lake Superior, and on the west, stretching'! j
in one broad plain, in a belt quite across the conti
nent, is a country where State after State is yet to rise,
and where the productions for the support of human
society in other crowded States must be brought forth.
This is, then, a commanding field; but it is as com
manding in regard to the destinies of this continent, as
it is in regard to its commercial future, for power is
not to reside permanently on the eastern slope of the

Speech of Wm. H. Seward. 55
Alleghany Mountains, nor in the seaports. Seaports
have always been overrun and controlled by the people
of the interior. The power of this Government is not
to be established on the Atlantic or the Pacific coast.
The power that shall speak and express the will of
men on this continent is to be located in the Missis
sippi valley, and at the sources of the Mississippi and
the St. Lawrence.
" In other days I have cast about for the future, the
ultimate central seat of power of the North American
people. I had looked at Quebec and NewOrleans, at Wash
ington and San Francisco, at Cincinnati and St. Louis,
and it had been the result of my last conjecture that
the seat of power for North America would yet be found
in the valley of Mexico ; that the glories of the Aztec
capital would be renewed,and that it would become
ultimately the capital of the United States of America.
But I have corrected that view, and I now believe that
the ultimate, last seat of power on this continent will
be found somewhere within a radius not very far from
the spot where I stand, at the head of navigation on
the Mississippi river. I had never, until now, occu
pied that place whence I could take in and grasp the
whole grand panorama of the continent, for the happiness
of whose present people and future millions it is the duty
of the American statesman to labour."
In this remarkable speech Mr. Seward has embodied
the ideas, hopes, and ambitions of the American people.
He adopts their motto —
" No pent-up Utica contracts our powers,
But the whole boundless continent is ours."

56 American Hatred to England.
Canada and Mexico, the British possessions and
-Central America, all help to form the empire of his
aspirations, and for which he seeks a fitting capital, ;
He examines and rejects Quebec and Mexico with an
impartial consideration.
Up to the present time there has been one insuper
able obstacle to the annexation of the British Pro
vinces, supposing that they could be conquered. The
South would never, of late years, have consented to
such a preponderance of Northern and Free States.
Only by adding a Southern State for each Northern
one could her co-operation have been secured. This
obstacle no longer exists. Either the Southern Con
federacy will be separated from the North, leaving the
latter free to carry out, if she be able, her dreams of
annexation or conquest, or the Southern States will
be subjugated to the North and unable to resist her
will. If the Southern States are lost to the Union,
the eyes of Northern statesmen will look more greedily
than ever to the possession of the great territories on
their Northern border, and the control of the St. Law
rence and the lakes, which may compensate them for
the loss of the cotton regions of the South and the
mouths of the Mississippi.
Tes, England was a tyrant, which America, after a
long struggle, had overcome. England, full of rage
and jealousy, began again to insult and outrage^
America, which led to a second war, in which America! i
was also victorious. But England still hinders;
American progress by keeping her grasp upon large
neighbouring territories. Americans beheve that Eng-1 j

England, France, and Russia. 57
land dreads their growing power, and is envious of their
prosperity. They detest and hate England accord
ingly. They have "licked" her twice, and can "lick"
her again. I cannot remember the time when the idea
of a war with England was not popular in America.
I never, except for a brief period, heard a threat of
war with any other power. France was our earliest
friend. We like Russia, perhaps, still better. In the
Crimean war, as England was the ally of France, we
gave our best sympathies to the great northern power.
We hoped the allies would be driven out of the Crimea ;
or, if they met with any success, we wished the French
off all the glory.
This was the feeling of America when I was born,
and it is the feeling to-day of, at least, the Northern
half of it. The South does not border on Canada — it
was not the scene of so many conflicts in either war,
and there is not in the South a great mass of Irish
citizens whose votes carry elections, and who partici
pate in, if they do not increase, the anti-English feel
ing in the Northern States of America.
I do not mention these facts to revive hard and
hateful feelings on either side. Nations of the same
race, language, civilization, and religion ought to be
friends ; but we see them the bitterest and most re
lentless of foes. I lament the fact — but why seek to
hide what will not be hidden ?
That there are great numbers of Americans who
have a real love and genuine reverence for the great
country of their ancestry is not less true, and I wish
to be understood as making all needful exceptions.

58

CHAPTER VI.
EDUCATION AND THE LECTURE SYSTEM.
Common schools and teachers. — Sold at auction. — Boarding round.
— The universal stimulus. — Our chief lesson. — Lyceums and
lectures. — Lecturers and systems.
The founders of the New England Repubhcs believed
that the safety of democratic institutions depended
upon the intelligence and virtue of the people. In
the early days of the colonies, no one was allowed to
vote who did not belong to the Church. In Connecti
cut, to-day, every voter must be able to read the
constitution he is bound to support. Provision was
made in the early times for both preaching and
teaching. In my native State, and in all the States of New
England, there was a school-house every three miles,
an academy in every considerable village, and colleges
enough to supply the demand for a classical education.
We went, first of all, to the common or free school..
There wereVery few private or pay schools ; and board
ing-schools, except in the largest towns, were unknown.
As none were very rich, and none had any need to
be poor, and as all were equal in theory, and not very
far from it in practice, we all went to the same schools,
and were taught by the same schoolmasters in winter,

Schools and Teachers. 59
and the same " schoolma'ams " in summer. At the age
of four years I trudged off a mile and a quarter to the
district school-house, at the foot of a sandy hill, neaf
the bank of the beautiful river, with fields to play in
shaded by spreading pine-trees, with winter-green,
strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, wild cherries,
and grapes in their season, all free to us. Trespass !
we never knew the meaning of the word.
In the winter we had the deep snow to wallow
through and play in, sliding down-hill on our sleds,
and skating when the ice was not too deeply covered.
We had no professional teachers in those days for
our common schools. Some bright, well-taught girl,
who loved books better than spinning, taught our
school in summer. In winter we generally had a
student from the nearest college, who paid his fees
and expenses by keeping school three months in the
year, and graduated none the worse for his pedagogic
experience. If a young man had the ambition to get
a collegiate education, poverty was no obstacle, and
only a slight inconvenience. He had only to teach
school three or four months a year to get his degree
and finish his course in law or medicine. In divinity
there were foundations to help him. Hundreds of
the most eminent men in America have educated them
selves in this manner.
The character of our teachers gave us boys who
wished to get on a better chance with our studies.
The college- student teacher did not object to our
learning Latin or Greek. To the ordinary English
studies of the common schools many added natural

60 Education and the Lecture System.
philosophy, chemistry, algebra, geometry, and survey* .
ing. After the regular branches we could add as
many as we liked.
The expenses of the schools are raised partly by a
direct tax, voted in each district, and partly from a
general educational fund. In some States, espe
cially the newer ones, where lands were reserved for
the purpose, this fund is very large, and ample for
all educational purposes. In New Hampshire the
people taxed themselves generously, and to make the
money raised in or coming to the district go as far as
possible, the teacher was either put up at auction and
boarded with the lowest bidder, or boarded round.
Every year, at town-meeting, the paupers of the
town were sold at auction to those who would keep
them cheapest, taking into account the work they
were capable of doing. The pauper was a slave, sold
for a year at a time, but sold yearly as long as he
Uved. The schoolmaster was treated in the same
inglorious fashion. The cheaper he could be boarded,
the longer the money would last, and the longer the
school-term continue. A well-to-do farmer, with an
abundance of food, and children who might have some
extra assistance in their lessons, would be glad to
board the master for a very trifling consideration. I
have known one to be sumptuously entertained for
less than three shillings a week. ;
But even this amount was often saved to the dis. :
trict by the master or mistress boarding round-l|
taking turns of a week or two at the houses of his or
her pupils. This gave a pleasing variety to the life off

The Universal Stimulus. 61
the teacher, and enabled the people of the district to
vie with each other in their hospitalities. I think
that this was the most popular system. It gave all the
young misses a fair chance at a possible admirer, and
though the teacher might have long walks when
boarding at the extremities of his district, he was
treated everywhere with the attentions due to a
transient and honoured guest. The best room in the
house and the best fare that could be provided were
ready for the schoolmaster.
The one perpetual incentive to hard study in our
schools was ambition. Every boy knew that he might
be the governor of the State, or a member of Con
gress. There was nothing to hinder him from being
President ; all he had to do was to learn. No posi
tion was beyond his reach if he chose to work for it.
Franklin was a printer's boy ; General Putnam was a
farmer, and left his plough in the furrow to take
command of the troops that were so gloriously beaten
at Bunker Hill ; Roger Sherman was a shoemaker,
and Andrew Jackson a poor boy who worked his way
up from the humblest position. What was Patrick
Henry, whose eloquence thrilled us as we spouted his
famous speech in the Virginia Assembly ? A country
tavern-keeper. Our history was full of men who had
risen from the ranks, and what in other countries
would be called the lowest ranks of life. We knew
that where there was a will there was a way, and our
teachers constantly stimulated us by the glittering
prizes pf wealth, honours, offices, and distinctions
which were certainly within our reach.

62 Education and the Lecture System. /
This constant stimulation of hope, emulation, and
ambition, produced its natural result of feverish effort
and discontent. Few were content' to live at home
and cultivate the niggard soil of New Hampshire.,'
If we wished to be farmers, there were the fertile
bottom lands and broad prairies of the West. But we
could be doctors, lawyers, preachers, merchants ; there
were a hundred avenues to wealth and fame opening
fair before us, if we only chose to learn our lessons. Of
course we learnt them.
The education we got was solid enough in some
respects, and very superficial in others. In arithmetic, \
geometry, surveying, mechanics, and such solid and
practical matters, we were earnest students ; but our
geography was chiefly American, and the United
States was larger than all the universe beside. In
the same way our history was American history, brief
but glorious. We despised monarchical countries and
governments too thoroughly to care much about their
histories-; and if we studied them, it was that we
might contrast their despotisms with our own free and
happy institutions. We were taught every day and
in every way that ours was the freest, the happiest,;
and soon to be the greatest and most powerful countrjj
in the world. This is the religious faith of every
American. He learns it in his infancy, and he can
never forget it. For all other countries he entertains
sentiments varying from pity to hatred ; they are the
down-trodden despotisms of the old world. There is a
certain admiration for France, and that respect for'
Russia which one great and growing power gives to!

Self- Glorification. 6 3
another. But a genuine American does not think
much of Europe anyhow.
How should we ? Great Britain was the most
powerful country of Europe, and had we not beaten
her twice ? One of our great lakes would drown the
whole United Kingdom. And what could we think
of a people who submitted to be governed by a here
ditary aristocracy, — who did not own the land they
worked on, and were not allowed to vote, — who had
not even guns, a great many of them ?
;-^v3ur education was adapted to intensify our self-
esteem, and to make us believe that we were the most
intelligent, the most enlightened, the freest, most Chris
tian, and greatest people the sun ever shone upon.
Ours was the model Government of the world ; our
institutions were the model institutions, our country
the model Republic. I do not in the least exaggerate.
We read it in our books and newspapers, heard it in
sermons, speeches, and orations, thanked God for it
in our prayers, and devoutly believed it always.
We thanked God, when we remembered to be
thankful for anything, that we were not as other
men, and especially that we were not hke the ignorant
down-trodden victims of European despotisms. It
has sometimes appeared to me that American self-
glorification in these matters is an intensification of
a similar feeling which may be sometimes detected in
English books, newspapers, and speeches, only that
Americans habitually place themselves as far in ad
vance of England as England considers herself in
advance of all other nations.

64 Education and the Lecture System.
Some influence — what, I never knew, or do not
now remember — led the American people, commencing!
in New England about thirty years ago, to form
lyceums, debating clubs, library associations, societies
for mutual improvement. The fashion may have come
across the ocean, and it spread over the whole country.
Every town, every village had its literary society. In
the larger towns handsome halls were built, and
large libraries collected. The New Tork Mercantile
Association has a fine building, a library of fifty
thousand volumes, and a large reading-room and lec
ture-room. A thousand miles westward, in St. Louis,
a similar society has a noble edifice, a splendid lecture-
room that seats twelve hundred persons, a large li
brary, and works of art.
The mutual improvement and debating societies
had their day. People tired of them, but courses of
lectures in the winter became a national and pervading
institution. Never, probably, had the lecturing sys
tem such a development; nowhere has the platform';
such a powerful influence.
Many circumstances contributed to favour the
growth of this institution. In America, every town ';
of five or six thousand people is likely to have five or
six different religious societies, called churches. The
distinction of church and chapel is unknown. Formerly,
those who are called Dissenters in England, talked of
their meeting-houses. Now, every place of worship!1
except those of the Friends, or Quakers, is called a
church. A village of five thousand inhabitants may
have an Episcopal church, belonging to the American

Arrangements for Lectures. 65
daughter of the Church of England, a Roman Catholic
church, and Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Uni
tarian, and Universalist churches. All the so-called
Evangelical denominations discourage public amuse
ments ; and the one resource of the people, in which
they can all join, is the course of public lectures, which
are therefore attended by old and young, and all who
wish to be considered intelligent and respectable.
A literary society, or a committee raised for the
purpose, makes the necessary arrangements. A public
hall, or commonly one of the churches, is engaged.
Tickets are issued .for twelve lectures— one a week,
during the winter. These season tickets are sold for,
say, eight shillings for the twelve lectures, the price
of single tickets being a shilling.
There is no distinction of prices or places, no
fauteuils, no stalls, no reserved seats. "First come,
first served." The one who comes earliest takes the
best seat. The only exception to this is, that in many
cases, either by regulation or custom, the front seats
are reserved for ladies. They pay the same price, or
often a less price, but, being ladies, they are entitled
to the first and best place. This rule prevails on the
steamboat, in the railroad-cars, at the theatres — every
where. An American habitually yields his seat to a
lady when only one can sit, and gives her the best
seat when there is any preference.
Next to the sale of the tickets in importance is the
engagement of the lecturers. There are in Ameri6a
two or three hundred who are ready to be engaged
every winter — clergymen, lawyers, physicians, editors,
v L. i. 5

66 Education and the Lecture System.
men of letters, scientific professors, philanthropists,
reformers, politicians. Of course, some of these are
more popular, more attractive, draw larger audiences,
and command higher prices than others. There are
stars in this profession as in every other. A political,
or religious, or literary notoriety is always a star.
Mr. Thackeray drew well. Mr. Dickens, in spite of
his American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit, would
attract crowded houses. Henry Ward Beecher,
Horace Greeley, Wendell Phillips, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, are among the most attractive.
The ordinary price paid to a lecturer for his hour's
discourse is ten guineas (fifty dollars), and his ex
penses. He may have to travel a thousand miles to
give the lecture, but lecturers seldom make single
engagements. They arrange with lecture-committees
so as to fill up nearly every night for a month or
more. The most attractive or popular lecturers com
mand twenty, or even forty, pounds for a lecture, and
can easily clear one or two thousand pounds during
the season of three or four months. Mr. Beecher,
who is one of the best as well as one of the most
popular of public lecturers, has a salary of some twelve
hundred pounds as a preacher, and probably receives
twice as much as lecturer and writer. One must give
him credit for great industry and powers of endurance,
The character of the lecturers and lectures depends,
of course, upon that of the community. It is deter
mined by the law of supply and demand. In litera
ture, in preaching, and in lecturing, people get, not'

Elements of Popularity. 67
what they need, but what they wish for. They
exercise the right of private judgment, not only in
religion, but in politics, literature, and philosophy,
under the modifying influences of general opinion and
the government of majorities. There are towns where
a lecture-committee would not dare to invite Beecher
or Phillips to lecture. There are others, where
Frederic Douglas, a dark mulatto, and once a slave in
Maryland, would be an acceptable speaker. Notoriety,
of almost any kind, is a passport to favour. Bayard
Taylor has travelled over a large part of the world, to
no great profit, that I could ever see, either to himself
or the readers of his travels ; but the mere fact that
he had been so far and seen so much made peo.ple
eager to see him, and secured him as many engage
ments to lecture, at twenty pounds an evening, as he
cared to fill. Let a man write a popular book or a
popular serial in a widely-circulated newspaper, and
the curiosity to see him makes him a good card for
lecture-committees. A reflected notoriety has a certain
value. Crowds flocked to see an old negress, palmed
off by Barnum as the nurse of Washington. This
reminds me that Barnum himself, from the mere fact
that his name has been so much in the papers, and
because he has dealt so successfully in humbug, is an
attractive lecturer ; and, to do him justice, he is rather
a clever one. He was a preacher and editor before he
became the great showman.
Besides the regular courses of lectures in hundreds
of cities and villages, there are independent lecturers,
who go from place to place, giving courses of lectures
5 — a

68 Education and the Lecture System.
on scientific or reformatory subjects. Some of these
are employed by temperance or abolition societies.
Some are spiritualists or speaking mediums, professing
to give their discourses in a state of trance, or by
direct influence or inspiration of departed spirits.
These lecturers, or spirit-speakers, are of both sexes,
and some of them speak with great fluency, and in
verse as well as prose. There are also ladies who
lecture upon Slavery, Woman's Rights, and other popu
lar subjects.
Spurzheim, one of the founders of Phrenology, led
the wray for a host of Lecturers on that subject, which,
ably expounded, with skilful public examinations of
the heads of well-known persons, is an attractive
theme. Sylvester Graham, an eloquent expounder of
human physiology and the vegetarian system of
dietetics, gave hundreds of lectures, and made thou
sands of converts ; and many have followed in his
footsteps, denouncing physical sins, and illustrating,
more or less truly, the laws of health.
Many years ago, Robert Owen lectured in America
on his System of Communism. He had a more elo
quent and attractive advocate of his doctrines, social
and religious, in Fanny Wright, who gave courses of
lectures in all the principal cities of the Northern
States. Then came the disciples of Charles Fourier,
and set the excitable and novelty -loving Americans to
building phylansteries, into which the crotchety, idle,
and restless gathered, soon to come to grief. A scheme
that required the best of human discipline, character,
and ability, and conditions to succeed, if success was

Confusion and Chaos. 69
possible, was very sure to fail when it only found the
worst. How could one expect to build a new and
improved social edifice out of the rejected or worst
materials of the old?
Then came the lectures on Woman's Rights,
Bloomerism, Free-love, and Heaven knows what of
revolutionary doctrines, tending to abolish all dis
tinctions of vice and virtue, and turn the world,
already confused and chaotic enough, quite topsy
turvy.

70

CHAPTER VII.
OF RELIGION IN AMERICA.
The New England Puritans. — Multifarious denominations. —
Religious liberty. — Calvinism. — Church membership. — A
camp-meeting. — Revivals.
The religious character and institutions of the
American people are deserving of consideration.
The early settlers of the New England States were
English Puritans, equally given to godliness and
gain, and equally determined to have rehgious free
dom for themselves and to deny it to all others.
Escaped from persecution in England, they remorse
lessly persecuted all who differed from themselves.
They hanged Quakers, and whipped heterodox women
at the cart's tail from town to town through Massa
chusetts — the women carted from village to village,
and stripped and whipped at each, to the delight of
pious crowds and Puritan ministers. Episcopalians,
or members of the Church of England, were banished,
and Roman Catholics would certainly have been hung
had they ventured among them in search of that
"freedom to worship God" which they so sturdily
defended and fanatically denied.
While adopting the Bible as their code of laws :
robbing and murdering the Indians on the plea that

The Pilgrim Fathers. 71
the earth was the heritage of the saints ; compelling
men to go to meeting on Sundays under pain of
fine and imprisonment ; permitting none but Church
members to vote for magistrates ; driving Baptists
out of the colony; hanging witches by dozens, ac
cording to the laws of Moses ; enslaving the Indians,
or importing negroes from Jamaica, and doing very
much as their brethren were doing on the opposite
side of the Atlantic — the Tankee colonists were
laying the foundations of that group of free, pros
perous, and happy Republics which Mr. Bright
expects to spread over the Western hemisphere.
Of the settlers of New England — those grim Pil
grim Fathers — Mrs. Hemans sings : —
" What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war 1
They sought a Faith's pure shrine.
" Ay ! call it holy ground —
The spot where first they trod.
They have left unstained what there they found —
Freedom to worship God."
Really, I think they sought several things. They
had a suitable regard to the " wealth of seas" in a
productive and profitable cod-fishery. The " spoils
of war" were vast and fertile provinces wrested from
the Indian. "Freedom to worship God," was their
own freedom, resolutely and savagely denied to Epis
copalians, Baptists, Quakers, and Roman Catholics.
They were Calvinists of the sternest and most un
compromising sort. Of all gloomy, fanatical, and
horrible creeds, this seems to me the worst. Men

72 Of Religion in America.
revolt against it, and run into strange extremes ; they
become Universalists, Deists, Atheists — America is
full of protestants against Calvinistic theology. Prove
that Calvinism is the doctrine of the Bible, and they
deny and denounce the Bible. Those who are less
logical take one portion of the Scriptures to combat
doctrines drawn from another.
The Protestant doctrine of the right of private
judgment in matters of faith had little recognition in
early New England theology. The man who did not
worship at the Puritanical Church by law established,
was sent to prison, and the man or woman who pre
sumed to worship in some other fashion was whipped,
or hanged, or, at the mildest, banished. But the
right of private judgment, demanded by the reformers.
as against the Pope and Councils of the Church, came,
after a time, to be claimed by the people against their
own little popes and pulpits. Deism took the mild
form of Unitarian Christianity, merging gradually
into the Rationalism of Theodore Parker. The
Unitarians became powerful enough to Seize upon
the oldest and best endowed of American colleges —
Harvard College, of Cambridge.
This form of theology, Deism — under the name
and with the forms of Christianity — has not had
much success in America out of New England.
There are two churches called Unitarian in the great
city of New Tork, to fifty, perhaps, in Boston. In
the South they are scarcely known. The reason I
take to be this. It was respectable and fashionable
in New England for people to go to some church—

Tlie Spread of Denominations. 73
to be members of some religious organization. There
Infidels or Deists called themselves Unitarians, and
kept up the forms of religious worship. But in New
Tork and the more southern States, there is more
of social freedom, and people make less pretences.
The southern people, moreover, are of a more simple
and religious character than the northern, and have
adhered much more to what is called the orthodox
theology. The great bulk of the southern people
are Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists,
and Roman Catholics. The great bulk of the northern
people at this day are none of these. They are
Rationalists and Spiritualists.
While the Puritans were governing New England
in their own happy fashion, the Dutchmen planted
their variety of Calvinism in New Tork, the Quakers
and Lutherans settled in Pennsylvania, English and
Irish Catholics made a colony, under the leadership of
Lord Baltimore, in Maryland, Church of England
Cavaliers founded the State of Virginia, and French
Huguenots settled in South Carolina. Later, English
Episcopalians settled in all the colonies, and especially
in the large towns, where the Established Church
flourished under the influence of the Royal governors
and officers of the Crown, and became, as it remains
to this day, the most aristocratic religious organiza
tion. The Scotch introduced Presbyterianism, which
has become one of the most extended denominations ;
the Baptists have increased from the days of Roger
Williams, and are probably the most numerous of
the existing sects, but closely pushed by the Metho-

74 Of Religion in America.
dists, planted by the preaching of Whitfield. The
Roman Catholics of Maryland spread westward
through Kentucky and Missouri; the purchase of
Louisiana brought in a large Catholic population of
French Creoles, while the great immigration from
Germany and Ireland has spread Roman Catholic
churches, convents, and colleges over the country.
Besides these, there soon sprang up Lutherans, Uni
tarians, Universalists, Shakers, Swedenborgians — so
many sects, that religious liberty became a political
necessity. No sect could command a majority when
the others combined against it. It was necessary,
therefore, to treat them all alike, and to sever them
all from any connexion with the Government.
Finally, when the colonies became independent
States, and the Federal Union was formed, the leading
men of the period were of no religion. Benjamin
Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas
Paine, and nearly all the ruling spirits of the American
Revolution, were Free-thinkers in religion as well as in
politics, and there were among them more disciples of
Voltaire and Rousseau than of Luther and Calvin.
Congress is prohibited by the Constitution of the United
States from making anylaw respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
There is nothing in the Constitution or laws to
prevent a Mormon being elected President, and there
are Mormon delegates in Congress. The American
Constitutions generally ignore religion, or provide for
its entire freedom. All denominations are supported
upon the voluntary principle. Still, there is a not

American Chaplains. 75
altogether consistent recognition of religion in the
appointment of chaplains in the army and navy, and
in the Houses of Congress and the State Legislatures,
whose daily sessions are regularly opened with prayer.
But these chaplains may be of any religious faith
that the members may choose. In the army and
navy, most of the chaplains are of the American branch
of the Church of England. In Congress and the
State Legislatures, as it may happen. Any popular
minister, who has influential friends among the
members, may be elected. Sometimes the several
clergymen of the town officiate in turn, and the
prayers are made successively by Episcopalian, Roman
Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, and so on. Mr. Clay,
of Kentucky — Henry Clay — not his patriotic name
sake Cassius Marcellus — once got a clerical friend of
his elected Chaplain to the House of Representatives
at Washington by telling the members he had a
fellow who would preach them all to h — 11 and back
again in fifteen minutes. As they could not expect
to find a faster preacher, he was elected.
In my boyhood, New Hampshire was Puritan, or
Congregational, with some Scotch Presbyterians,
Baptists and Methodists. In a few of the large
towns there were Episcopal Churches, but few or no
Roman Catholics. Calvinism of a very blue order
was the prevailing type, but not without a strong
universalist and infidel reaction. The Calvinistic
Congregationalists were called the orthodox, and had
the best educated ministers, from Tale College or
Andover. The Methodists were ardent, but illiterate,

76 Of Religion in America.
and adapted to the rough and exciting work of camp
meetings,, and the wilder country districts. The
Baptists ranked between the two extremes. The
Puritanic lines were drawn so close that they broke
and let a great many out of the fold. So many
pleasant things were denounced as sinful that many
people felt that " Jordan was a hard road to travel."
The community was divided into professors of religion
and non professors. The professors were communi
cants of some orthodox or evangelical Church. AU
the rest, however moral their lives or regular their
attendance upon religious services, were considered
unconverted. Here was plenty of ground for spiritual
pride, and some, it is to be feared, for hypocrisy.
In the estimation of the pious, most of the pleasures,
amusements, and recreations of life were sinful. It
was a sin to dance, or even to play a dancing tune,
but right enough to play marches. A quick step
would pass muster, but not a hornpipe or jig. It
was wicked to play at cards, even where there was no
gaming ; but one might have a game of drafts or fox
and geese, but not billiards or nine-pins. In my
childhood everybody drank rum or brandy and cider ;
ale or beer was but little known. But drunkenness
becoming common, the temperance reform sprang up,
and was carried out so unsparingly that spirits were
banished, the apple orchards cut down to prevent the
making of cider, " Maine Laws " were finally passed,
and drinking any intoxicating beverage, ever so tem
perately, was thought a sin of such a magnitude as
to justify excommunication. Sunday was kept in the

Religion and Amusements. 77
fashion of the Scottish Presbyterians. No travelling
was allowed. Attempts were made to stop the
Government mails on Sunday. No music but church
music, no recreations of any kind. All was solemn
and drear. Laughter was considered irreverent.
There was a ban upon everything like mirth, plea
sure, festivity on all days, but especially on Sunday.
Life was too earnest and solemn a thing, and eternity
too terrible, according to the Calvinistic theology, to
allow of jollity, or any but the most serious happiness.
All this was softened among the Methodists, and still
more among Episcopalians, Unitarians, Universalists,
and Catholics. These, and the more independent of the
unconverted or non-professors, indulged in dancing
and other profane amusements. I have not mentioned
the theatres, for there were none nearer than Boston,
more than a hundred miles away, but the stage was
held in holy horror. Tet pious people, who would
have thought it sinful to go to the theatre to see a
play of Shakespeare, would crowd the circus, just as
I saw, some years later, Puritanical people flocking to
Niblo's to see vaudevilles and the ballet, because the
theatre was called a garden. Even clergymen went,
with pious ladies, to see the most objectionable per
formances of the modern stage, so long as the place
where they were given was not called a theatre.
In the European Churches, Greek, Lutheran,
Roman, or Enghsh, children, baptized in infancy, are
afterwards confirmed, considered members of the
church, and receive its sacraments. In America,
among what are called the Evangelical denominations,

78 Of Religion in America.
there must be, at some period, what is called a con
version, getting religion, a change of heart, followed
by a public relation of religious experience, a profes
sion of faith, and formal reception into the church.
The non-professor becomes a professor, and a church
member. But this change is commonly the result of
periodical and epidemic religious excitements, termed
revivals. These sometimes appear to come spontane
ously, or, as supposed, by the special outpouring of
the Divine Spirit, but they are more often induced by
peculiarly earnest and excited preaching, camp meet
ings, protracted meetings, and systematic efforts to
excite the community to religious feeling. Certain
energetic and magnetic preachers are called revival
preachers, and are engaged to preach day and night
in one place until there is a revival, and then go to
another. Some of these receive considerable sums for
their services, and cause revivals wherever they appear.'
The camp meetings are mostly held by the Metho
dists. They gather from a wide district, with tents,
provisions, and cooking utensils ; form a regular camp
in some picturesque forest, by some lake or running
stream ; a preacher's stand is erected, seats are made
of plank, straw laid in a space railed off in front of
the preachers for those who are struck with conviction
or who wish to be prayed for to kneel upon, and then
operations commence.
Ten or twelve preachers have collected, under the
leadership of some old presiding elder or bishop, who
directs the proceedings.. Early in the morning, the
blowing of a horn wakes the camp to prayers, singing,

A Methodist Camp-meeting. 79
and a bountiful breakfast : then the day's work be
gins. The people flock in from the surrounding
country. Sonorous hymns, often set to popular song-
tunes, are sung by the whole congregation, pealing
through the forest aisles. Sermon follows sermon,
preached with the lungs of Stentors and the fervour of
an earnest zeal. Prayer follows prayer. The people
shout, " Amen !" " Bless the Lord !" " Glory to God !"
" Glory! Hallelujah !" They clap their hands, and shout
with the excitement. Nervous and hysterical women
are struck down senseless, and roll upon the ground.
" Mourners" crowd to the anxious seats, to be prayed
for. There is groaning, weeping, shouting, praying,
singing. Some are converted, and make the woods
ring with joyful shouts of " Glory," and these exhort
others to come and get religion. After three or four
hours of this exciting and exhausting work, a benedic
tion is given, and all hands go to work to get dinner.
Fires are burning behind each tent, great pots are
smoking with savoury food, and, while spiritual affairs
are the main business,* the physical interests are not
neglected. After dinner comes a brief season of gossip
and repose. Then there are prayer-meetings in the
different tents, and the scenes of the morning are re
peated at the same time in a dozen or twenty places,
and the visitor who takes a place in the centre of the
camp may hear exhortations, prayers, and singing
going on all together and on every side, while at times
half a dozen will be praying and exhorting at once in
a single group, making " confusion worse confounded."
More are converted and the shouts increase.

80 Of Religion in America.
Then the horn blows again, and all gather before
the preacher's stand, where the scenes of the morning
are repeated with increased fervour and effect. A
dozen persons may be taken with " the power" — of
the Holy Ghost as believed — falling -into a state re
sembling catalepsy. More and more are brought into
the sphere of the excitement. It is very difficult for
the calmest and most reasonable person to avoid its
influence. At night, after an interval for supper, the camp is
lighted up by lanterns upon the trees and blazing
fires of pine-knots. The scene is now wild and
beautiful. The lights shine in the tents and gleam
in the forest ; the rude but melodious Methodist
hymns ring through the woods ; the ground is glit
tering with the phosphoric gleam of certain roots
which trampling feet have denuded of their bark; the
moon shines in the blue vault above the tree tops, and
the melancholy scream of the loon, a large waterfowl,
comes across the lake on the sighing breeze of night.
In this wild and solemn night-scene, the voice of the
preacher has a double power, and the harvest of con
verts is increased. A procession is formed of men and
women, who march round the camp singing an invita
tion to the unconverted. They march and sing —
" Sinners, will you scorn the Saviour ?
Will you drive Him from your arms 1
Once He died for your behaviour,
Now he calls you to his charms."
Or they fill the dim primeval forest with that tumul
tuous chorus —

Religious Revivals. 81
" I am bound for the Kingdom !
Will you go to Glory with me ?
0 Hallelujah ! 0 Halle-hallelujah !
I am bound for the Kingdom !
Will you go to Glory with me?
O Hallelujah ! 0 praise ye the Lord !"
The recruits fall in — the procession increases. When
all are gathered up who can be induced to come, they
bring them to the anxious-seats, where they are ex
horted and prayed for; with tears, groans, and shout
ing, and cries of " Glory !"
Then there are prayer meetings in the tents again,
with the accumulated excitement of the whole day
and evening. At ten o'clock the long, wild note of
the horn is heard from the preacher's stand: the
night watch is set. Each tent is divided into two
compartments, one for men, the other for women ;
straw is littered down, and all lie down in close rows
upon the ground to sleep, and silence reigns in the
camp, broken only by the mournful note of the water
fowl and the neighing of horses, fastened, with their
forage, under the trees. These meetings last a week
or longer.
In the protracted meetings of other denominations,
and revivals accompanied by daily religious services
held in the meeting-houses, the same phenomena, but
of a milder type, are exhibited. The phenomena of
trances, or the power, are less frequent. A revival
begins with an increased seriousness ; then there are
one or two cases of hopeful conversion ; from them it
spreads to others. It is, in effect, whatever may be
the cause, a spiritual epidemic, appearing with known
VOL. i. 6

82 Of Religion in America.
or unknown exciting causes, spreading, reaching its
height, and then subsiding and passing away. It is
sometimes of a mild character, affecting only a few of
¦ the most susceptible ; at others there is an excitement
that seems to swallow up every one within its reach,
and nearly every person yields, for the time at least,
to its influence.
In a village where there are several churches of
different denominations, a mild revival may be confined
to one ; but a powerful one takes in all. Sometimes
the ministers work together, making as many converts
as they can, and dividing them afterwards. After
conversion comes instruction in doctrines ; and each
sect gathers what it can of the common crop. Some
are sprinkled by the Presbyterians, some dipped by
the Baptists. The Methodists are obliging enough
to use either method, at the choice of the recipient.
Most are gathered into some Church, where they can
be watched over and kept in the right way. They
are committed before the whole community. With
the Calvinists they are hopefully reckoned among the
elect : with the Methodists they are under watch and
care. In spite of all this, there are many backsliders. A
few are converted again. Among the Methodists, who
believe in falling from grace and in being brought
back again, there are numerous re-awakenings — every
camp-meeting gives the hard cases a new start : but
among the Calvinists a man who falls, after an appa
rent conversion, is liable to be excommunicated as a
reprobate, and driven into the world, or among Uni-

Effects of Revivals. 83
tarians or Universalists, who have no special faith in
the phenomena of conversion.
It must be admitted that many of those who are
converted in these revivals lead, ever after, sober, con
sistent, Christian lives, and give good evidence that
there was a real change in their feelings and conduct,
and one of a permanent character. It may also be
remarked that they had been educated to believe in
such a change, and to expect it at some time; and
that, having become " professors," they naturally
wished to live up to their professions.

6—2

84

CHAPTER VIII.
AMERICAN MORALS.
Morals and religion. — Lack of temptation. — Drunkenness. — The
temperance reform. — Teetotalism. — The Maine Law. —
Breaches of trust and defalcations. — Failures and repudiations.
— The social evil. — Infanticide.
Why is it convenient to treat of rehgion and morals
in separate chapters ? Because the separation exists.
I may be sorry that it is so, but I cannot make it
otherwise. A strong religious faith and an earnest
zeal are not sure guarantees against dishonesty.
There is a Tankee anecdote — possibly it is an English
one — which runs something in this way : " John !"
calls the shop-keeper to his assistant; "have you
watered the rum ?" " Tes, sir." " Have you sanded
the sugar ?" " Tes, sir." " Have you wet the cod
fish and tobacco ?" " Tes, sir." " Then come to
prayers !"
I am not, I hope, an irreligious man. I am not
an infidel ; but it is a sad truth that while some of
the most reliable, honest, honourable, and benevolent
men I have ever known had no belief in God or
immortality, some of the greatest knaves have been
" professors of religion" and " members of the Church."
The reason may be that some men are naturally good

Plenty prevents Tlteft. 85
— that is, kind and honest ; while those who are natu
rally bad, when it is for their interest, add hypocrisy
to their other vices.
The New England people whom I knew were
generally religious, but they made hard bargains. To
cheat in swapping horses, or in trade generally,
was considered a kind of game, not prohibited, at
which the winner was merely a cute fellow. Barnum's
autobiography was no severe shock to the conscience
of New England ; and Barnum himself is only a
rather strong specimen of a speculating Tankee.
But it is also true that theft is so rare that I can
scarcely remember an instance in my early knowledge.
The axe was left in the log, and other tools about.
Granaries were unlocked, and not a house for miles
would ever be fastened at night. Orchards of fruit were
safe ; and if melon patches in the neighbourhood of
some college or academy were liable to robbery, it was
because the boys had established a custom of indulg
ing in this kind of plunder, and considered it a sort of
practical joke. The rule about orchards was that
every one had a right to all the fruit they could eat
or carry away in their pockets ; and I considered it a
very good joke, when a boy of seven or eight years, to
tie strings round the bottoms of my trousers, and,
by means of a hole in the pocket, fill them full of
apples, and- then, with a big hat full, waddle off in
sight of the owner, who only laughed at the manner
in which I had extended the permission.
There was, in fact, no temptation to steal, for every
one had, or might easily have, plenty. The common

86 American Morals.
price of potatoes was sixpence a bushel. Other articles
were in proportion. It was very difficult to find an
object of charity, or to give away provisions. I re
member a family debate on the subject when we had a
spare turkey one Thanksgiving day. The question was
whom we could send it to, who was not provided, or
who would not be likely to feel hurt at the offer.
The result was, that in a district of two or three miles'
distance not a family could be thought of to whom it
would do to send it, and we were compeUed to eat it
ourselves. The greatest vice I knew was drunkenness. The
hospitality of the people induced them to offer every
neighbour who caUed in something to drink. The
rum-bottle stood upon the sideboard, and rows of
cider-barrels were always on tap in the ceUar. Who
ever called, if only the next neighbour to borrow a
hoe or a shovel, was offered a bowl of apples and a
mug of cider, if not something stronger.
Then liquors were very cheap. There were duties
on foreign wines and spirits, but no excise on those of
native growth. Cider was free as water. As I have
no remembrance of any being sold, except the new
cider, at trainings or town meetings, at a halfpenny a
glass, I cannot teU the price ; but the ordinary spirits,
New England rum, whisky, and cider-brandy, cost
from sixpence to a shilling a gallon. Every farmer
who chose to do so could erect a still, and convert his
potatoes, corn, rye, cider or peaches into spirits for his
own use, or to sell to his neighbours.
While the means of intoxication were so abundant,

Causes of Drunkenness. 87
the gregarious and social habits of the people tended
to foster drunkenness. Everybody asked everybody
to drink. To drink alone was unsocial and a kind of
meanness. The man who went up to a bar to buy a
drink, asked his acquaintance to drink with him :
often he invited all present, whether he knew them or
not, if he wished to be considered a good fellow, to be
popular, or to run for an office.
The cheapness of the liquors prevented them from
being measured. A decanter and tumbler were set
before the customer, and he poured out a glass, a gill,
or half a pint, if the tumbler held as much. Davy
Crockett said General Jackson was the politest man
he ever saw, because, when he asked him to drink he
made some excuse to turn away, so as not to see how
much he took.
Treating, drinking in company and in crowds, and
this free dealing with cheap liquors, led great num
bers of people into habits of drunkenness, many of
them, men of the highest ability and promise. There
were drunken lawyers, drunken doctors, drunken
members of Congress, drunken ministers, drunkards
of all classes — if one may classify a people who claim
to be " free and equal." A reaction came ; the good
and pious were alarmed, and the temperance move
ment began. A drunkard of our own neighbourhood,
a man of education and property, whom I had often
.seen staggering along the streets, one night stag
gered into the river. My father went to his funeral,
and from that day all liquors were banished from his
dweUing. He became a teetotaller, and remained one

88 American Morals.
to the end of his days. A drunken lawyer of the
name of Kittridge became a prominent reformer.
When people, in order to be temperate, refused to
drink even a glass of cider, the farmers cut down their
great, beautiful orchards, and ploughed them up for
corn-fields. They would not taste a drop of the
purest or lightest wine, forgetful of the fact that where
wine is most plentiful drunkenness is scarcely known ;
they even went in some cases to the extent of banish
ing wine from the religious ordinance of the Lord's
Supper, making use of some unfermented substitute,
as if they were too holy to drink what our Lord and
his Apostles drank, and what He even performed a
miracle to supply at the wedding-feast of Gallilee.
Total abstinence became a fanaticism, and when
moral suasion failed to make it universal, the tee
totallers procured the passage of the' Maine Law, which
failed of its intended effect because it went utterly
beyond the bounds of constitutional legislation. It
not only failed to answer the end proposed — it un
doubtedly increased the evil of drinking and drunken
ness. When the retaUing of liquor was prohibited,
men bought by wholesale ; the express companies
were loaded down with orders for kegs of liquor
brought from other States. A thousand devices of
smuggling were resorted to ; people had no respect
for a law which they looked upon as an unconstitu
tional violation of personal rights. They openly defied
or secretly nullified it. In a few months it became
a huge joke and a dead letter. The temperance re
form, by moral suasion, did great good everywhere,

Progress of Dishonesty. 89
and especially in the small villages and rural districts.
The Maine Law increased the consumption of liquor
and hurt the cause of temperance.
I shall have occasion in a later chapter to say some
thing of the immorality and corruption which has
gradually found its way into American politics ; but
this has not come alone. It was preceded, perhaps,
and certainly aided, by a laxity in what may be called
financial morality. In my boyhood, I believe that
dishonesty in places of trust was very rare. For many
years it has been very common ; the store-keepers —
traders — of large towns found checks so ineffectual
that they calculated on a certain percentage of losses
from the dishonesty of their assistants, and discharged
them only when they found them too extravagant.
The omnibus-drivers were expected to "knock down"
a certain proportion of the receipts, and could not be
watched closely enough to prevent it. The railroad
conductors, who formerly collected fare of the passen
gers who neglected to buy tickets, grew rich on the
money they could not be made to account for, until
the companies were forced to make the purchase of
tickets at the offices compulsory on every passenger.
A place under Government was said to be worth a
certain amount, including "pickings and stealings."
The Government was plundered remorselessly in con
tracts, in smuggling, in every possible way. There
was a loose idea that a man was only taking his own,
or taking money out of one pocket to put it in the
other. Cases of conscience, in which men returned
money of which they had defrauded the revenue, were

90 American Morals.
very rare. Peculations were very common; some
times there were immense defalcations, as that of
Sam. Swartwout, the collector of New Tork, who
robbed the Government of miUions. I saw him one
day at a hotel dinner-table, after his removal. There
was no law to punish him, but a very stringent one
was passed by Congress afterwards. It is not five
years since the post-master of New Tork, a leading
politician and lawyer, was a defaulter to a large
amount. His friends helped him away to Cuba, and
he went to Mexico, where he found employment as
financier of a mining company. He was " a good
fellow," and more pitied than blamed.
It has been said that ninety per cent, of American
merchants fail. A boundless credit system, active
competition, and the frequent occurrence of financial
crises, are sufficient causes for commercial faUures;
but dishonest bankruptcies — bankruptcies deliberately
planned to make money, are far too common. True,
Americans are sanguine, and hope to succeed in the
wildest speculations ; but if they do not, they have
little scruple about repudiation. A man cares little
for being ruined, and as little about ruining others.
True, ruin there is not like ruin in older countries.
Where a man can fail a dozen times, and stiU go
ahead and get credit again, ruin does not amount to
much. Englishmen wonder at the apathy displayed by
the people of the Northern States, while the Federal
Government, by its extravagant expenditures, and by
playing into the hands of rapacious and swindling

Repudiation. • 91
contractors, is piling up an immense weight of debt ;
but it is not at all clear to me that the people ever
expect to pay this indebtedness. It is a common
opinion that in some way it will be repudiated or got
rid of. Hitherto there has been very little of actual
repudiation by State Governments. Michigan and
Mississippi declared certain bonds, of no very large
amount, fraudulent or unconstitutional. Pennsylvania
brought upon herself the ire of the witty Dean of St.
Paul's by neglecting for a time to provide for the
regular payment of interest, which has since been
paid. Whether the Federal Government will have
the power to meet its engagements with the holders
of its promises to pay, depends upon its power to
maintain itself, and to tax thirty millions of people
who have scarcely known, hitherto, the meaning of the
word taxation. If they knew more they would fear
more. In regard to morality of another character at an
early period, I can g"ive only a good report. There
was the greatest possible freedom in the social inter
course of young people ; absolutely no espionage and
no restraint. Manners were as free in America as in
Scotland or Wales, without the bad consequences
which sometimes result from such freedom. A young
woman needed no protector, chaperon, or duenna ; she
could walk or ride with a gentleman, travel alone,
keep whatever company she pleased, and was the
guardian of her own honour. The instances of an
abuse of this freedom were so exceedingly rare that I
can scarcely recall one to memory. I believe the

92 American Morals.
number of illegitimate children born in New England
at that period to have been as smaU as in any country
in the world.
In later years, and in the larger towns, the " social
evil " has had a large development. New Tork, Phi
ladelphia, and Boston may not equal London, Liver
pool, and Dublin in this respect. I think they do
not ; stiU the number of the victims of civilization of
this kind is very large. The floating populations of
American cities are larger than those of Europe. In
New Tork are congregated many thousands of saUors,
emigrants, travellers from all parts of the world, and
merchants or traders from the interior within an area
of more than a thousand miles. Such a congregation
of men makes a demand which, as usual, does not fail
of a corresponding supply. America, in her laws and
municipal institutions has copied England, and great
vices are tolerated without being regulated. On the
Continent, Governments, I think wisely, regulate and
moderate what they cannot wholly prevent or sup
press. In England and America it appears to be held that
to regulate anything, or place it under the direction
of the police, is to sanction and encourage it. I do not
so view it. A Government should do the best it can
under the circumstances,' and ameliorate what the ex
perience of thirty centuries has shown it cannot cure.
The occasional and spasmodic efforts made by the
police of American cities to suppress certain vices
common to aU large towns in all civUized countries,
have had no beneficial effect. The system pursued

Foundling Hospitals. 93
on the Continent would give to both English and
American towns at least a greater external decency.
America has also followed the English fashion of
denouncing foundling hospitals, on the supposition
that they encourage vice, while the lack of them pro
duces an amount of infanticide utterly disgraceful and
hideous to contemplate. It is my solemn belief that
the establishment of a foundling hospital, or the re
storation of perverted foundations once piously made
for such hospitals, would not only be a work of
Christian charity, but would diminish murder to a far
greater extent than it would increase licentiousness.
Infanticide is less common in America than in Eng
land. Procuring abortions by the use of drugs, or
by mechanical means, is probably more frequent in
America. In New Tork, from the want of a foundling
asylum, infants are exposed in the street, found by
policemen, and taken to the station-houses. They are
then sent to the nurseries on an island in the East
River, are well car§d for, and educated until old
enough to bind out as apprentices. This is one of
the city institutions exhibited to strangers by the
municipal authorities of New Tork with a justifiable
pride. This institution answers, in an imperfect way,
the purposes of a foundling hospital; but it may
be doubted if the children are any the better for
having been exposed on door-steps, or in ash-barrels,
and picked up by policemen, rather than taken com
fortably to the gate of an asylum prepared to receive
them. " It is better to save life than to kill."

94 American Morals.
If I were put in the witness-box, and obliged to
give my opinion as an expert (ordinary witnesses
being only required to give evidence) on the morals
of America compared with those of other nations, I
should say that they were less strict than the English
in respect to money and trusts ; while there were less
of the ordinary crimes against property. There is
less poverty, and less of the vices of poverty. Intem
perance is more common than in the southern countries
of Europe, aud less so than in the northern ; whUe
virtue — in the sense in which it is applied to women
— exists in a higher degree than in most civilized
countries. The stranger who becomes really ac
quainted with the American people will see much in
their private character to disapprove and regret, but
still more, I hope, to approve, admire, and love.

95

CHAPTER IX.
BOSTON, AND A MOB I SAW THERE.
City sights. — Wharves and shipping. — Honest customs. — Boston
society. — A merchant's story. — George Thompson and William
Lloyd Garrison. — Opposition to abolition. — A mob in broad
cloth. — The peril and the rescue.
The first city (as we call our large towns in America)
I ever saw, was Boston. It had then a population of
some 60,000 inhabitants. It was the commercial
capital of New England ; the political capital of its
most important State, Massachusetts. I was nine
years old, and everything was wonderful. It was the
birth-place of my mother, the residence of my uncles ;
full of riches and splendour. There was the great
domed State-house, up to the cupola of which I
climbed alone before we had been an hour in town,
and took my first view of the sea and shipping. What
an outlook was that to a little boy, who had only
read of them ! Then my father led me down to the
wharves, and pointed out the ships and flags of dif
ferent countries across the sea; he took a boat, and
rowed down the harbour, and close beside a great
black man-of-war. We walked reverently around
Fanueil Hall, the " Cradle of Liberty," which once
rang with the speeches and cheers of congregated

96 Boston, and a Mob I saw there.
rebels. There were the portraits of George Washing
ton, and of John Hancock, the gentleman whose
handwriting I so greatly admired, as it appears in the
first bold signature to the Declaration of Indepen
dence ; and we saw also the battle-ground of Bunker-
hUl, and the grass-grown marks bf the redoubts upon
the heights of Dorchester, by the occupation of which
General Washington compelled the British army to
evacuate Boston ; and their ships sullenly sailed out
of the noble harbour, glittering there in the summer
sunshine, carrying with them hundreds of Tory
families, who left all they knew and loved behind, and
went to settle in bleak Nova Scotia. The generous
Government of George III. did what it could — paying
miUions in recompence of the losses incurred by their
loyalty. There were curious things to me about the Boston
of those days. Miles away there was the smell of the
salt water ; nearer, there was the pungent odour of
bituminous coal imported from Liverpool. Wood
was yet the common fuel, for there were vast forests
unconsumed. All Maine almost was a forest, and
hundreds of small vessels brought the wood down her
bays and rivers, and to the Boston market. There
was anthracite smokeless coal in Pennsylvania, but
it had not yet come much into use. The coal from
Liverpool was brought as baUast.
It is hard to tell whether the windows of the book
and print-sellers, and the stands of second-hand books,
were more attractive to me than the long ranges of
molasses casks, with their bungs out, on Central

Boston Honesty. 97
Wharf, by the West India traders. Every boy who
came along had the unquestioned privilege of putting
his pine-stick into the bunghole of these casks, and
licking off the molasses or treacle and sugar that
adhered to it. Some was thin, sour, and fermenting ;
some thick, sweet, and, to the unsophisticated taste of
childhood, delicious. It was easy to teU the best
casks ; they were covered with the drippings of our
predecessors. The juveniles heeded not the stories of
negroes' toes, said to be sometimes barrelled up by
accident in Jamaica, or even young negroes entire,
who had the misfortune to faU into the vats, and were
found wooUy and grim when all the molasses had
been drawn off and sold to sweeten our beloved
pumpkin-pies and gingerbread. Taste was stronger
than imagination, and we licked the molasses and
smeared our clothes and faces.
The people of Boston, so far as I could see, were as
honest in those days as the residents of the rural
districts. When I wandered out in the early morn
ing, losing no time to see as much as possible of the
town before our brief visit was over, I saw on almost
every door-sill loaves of bread, vessels of milk, and the
morning papers. Bakers, milkmen, and newsmen
left their treasures on the door-step. There was
smoking brown bread of rye and Indian corn, hot
rolls, and loaves of wheaten bread waiting for the
dilatory housemaids.
How long, I wonder, would piles of bread and
newspapers lie upon London street-door steps in the
early morning, over all its quiet streets? There
vol. i. 7

98 Boston, and a Mob I saw there.
were no policemen then in Boston that I ever heard
of. Two or three constables kept order in a town of
sixty thousand people. There were watchmen, for I
heard them in the night crying the hours : " Twelve
o'clock, and a cloudy night ; all's well !" And they
shouted " Fire !" and sprung their terrible rattles
sometimes ; and the volunteer fire-engine companies,
with torches, speaking-trumpet bellowings, and shout
ings of " Fire !" thundered over the cobble-stone
pavements. I went up through the skylight upon the
flat roof of the house, and saw the smoke and flame,
and heard the roar, with the clamour of fifty bells all
ringing their alarum, and torch-lit engines dashing in
from distant suburbs.
Boston is the city of America that Englishmen like
most, because it is, they say, most like England. Its
streets are narrow and crooked, and its people cold,.
shy, stiff, and exclusive, but genial enough at home,
and very likeable when the ice is broken and you get
acquainted with them. It is for the same reasons,
probably, that Boston is the city which Americans
out of New England love the least.
No Northern city of anything like its size has so
solid, and what may be called aristocratic, a popu
lation as Boston. There are richer people in New
Tork ; there are people who live in more splendour of
display ; there are also old Knickerbocker families of
mingled Dutch and Enghsh descent, who would be
noble if there were a hereditary nobility; but there
-are not so many rich, old,. and thoroughly respectable
families, in proportion to the population, as in Boston.

A Merchants Story. 99
Their fine old mansions cover Beacon Hill, cluster
around the Common, or fill the beautiful suburbs
across the water and aU around the peninsular city
and harbour.
I remember a story told me by a Boston merchant
in my boyhood. His son and I were schoolmates in
an academy in the country, and I went to pay him a
visit when I went to town. His father was a very
handsome man; he had elegant manners, and a
prosperous business had made him rich. This was
his story: —
" I was born in a little country town in Massa
chusetts," he said, " and my father, who was a poor
farmer with a large family, used to come to Boston
to market. One day, when I was twelve years old, I
came with him, hoping to find some work to do, to
earn my living. We got in early in the morning, by
driving nearly all night; and while we were in the
street, waiting for somebody to buy our load, I took
a newspaper off a door-step and began to read it.
Almost the first thing I saw was an advertisement of
' Boy wanted.' When father had sold his load we
went to look for the place. It was a large house, on
a handsome street, belonging to a merchant ; and the
boy was wanted to work in the kitchen, help the
cook, clean knives, black boots, and wait at table.
The work seemed easy enough, and the pay good, so
I stayed. The merchant was pleased with me, and
after awhile took me into the store to do errands and
such light work. Then I became a clerk, then a
partner. The merchant's daughter was as partial to
7—3

100 Boston, and a Mob I saw there.
me as her father always had been, and I got married •
and here I am — and all from looking into a news
paper one frosty morning in the streets of Boston !"
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of men in
America who could tell similar stories. And such
men, as a rule, fill worthdy the positions to which
they rise. They have no rusticity of manners, no
peculiarity of speech to mark their origin. Their
poverty was an accident, and they befit wealth as if
they were born to it.
Baltimore has been called the City of Mobs. I
never chanced to see one in that beautiful city of
" my Maryland," but I once " assisted " at a mob in
Boston, of a somewhat remarkable character.
It was, I think, in 1834. George Thompson had
been sent to America to preach Abolition. He had
given lectures in and around Boston, and the news
papers of the South were beginning to protest against
an agitation which was increased by the addresses of
this emissary of a foreign society. The merchants of
Boston were aroused to the dangers which might arise
from such an agitation, and which it was then believed
by many would eventually produce a dissolution of the
Union. Mr. Garrison, who published the Liberator in an
office in the lower end of Washington-street, did not
care much for that. He said, in his mild way, that
" the Constitution was an agreement with Death, and
a covenant with Hell," and that all slave-holders were
thieves, robbers, murderers, and many other disrepu
table things, too numerous to mention. He wished to

Anti-Abolition Excitement. 101
abolish slavery ; and failing that, to turn the Southern
States out of the Union.
The merchants of Boston, whose fathers had, like
the merchants of Liverpool and Bristol, made for
tunes by the slave-trade — the merchants who were
then making fortunes by Southern trade and the
manufactures of cotton, in which they were begin
ning to embark — were opposed to the agitation. They
were indignant that the English, who had planted
slavery in America ; who had forced negroes on the
colonies in spite of their protests against them ; who
had fostered and extended slavery since the War of
Independence, by becoming the greatest consumer of
the products of slave-labour in the world — that these
English, who had been partners with the South in
the profits of slavery, should send emissaries to stir
up sectional strife, perhaps civil war, between the
States of the Union.
At that day, Abolitionists in Boston and in New
England were few and far between. Garrison's most
earnest supporters were a few women — Mrs. Child,
Mrs. Chapman, and others — good pious souls, who
formed a female Anti-Slavery Society, and held prayer-
meetings for the slave.
The merchants and bankers of Boston, assembled
on 'Change in State-street, got into a great excitement
one day about Mr. George Thompson — since M.P. for
the Tower Hamlets, agent for various Indian princes,
temperance orator, &c, — and believing him to be at
the office of Garrison's Liberator, they gathered
tumultuously, and came round from State-street into

102 Boston, and a Mob I saw there.
Washington-street, determined to put a stop to the
eloquence of the English Abolitionist.
I do not remember how it happened, but I was in
the editorial office of Mr. Garrison when the crowd
began to gather in the street below. It was a won
derful spectacle. There were hundreds — then thou
sands. It was a mob of people dressed in black
broadcloth; a mob of gentlemen — capitalists, mer
chants, bankers ; a mob of the Stock Exchange, and
of the first people of Boston, which then, as now, con
sidered itself as the nicest of cities, and inteUectually
the " hub of the universe."
I looked down upon this mob from the front
window of the second floor, whUe the street became
black with a dense crowd of people, shouting,
" Thompson ! Thompson !" and very evidently in
tending mischief to that gentleman had they found
him. Mr. Garrison was writing at his desk. He
was very calm about it ; he had been in a state of
chronic martyrdom for several years, and did not
seem to mind a slight exacerbation. He came to the
window, however, poked his shining bald head out
for a moment, and looked down on the howling mob
below ; and then advised me not to expose myself to
observation, as the crowd at that distance might mis
take me for the object of their search.
It happened that some of the ladies I have men
tioned were holding a meeting in a room of the
building that afternoon. They were interrupted and
ordered out. They passed through the crowd, which

A Formidable Riot. 103
opened for them. There were some jeers and scoffs,
but no personal molestation.
Meantime the authorities began to bestir them
selves. The city marshal made a speech, begging
his fellow citizens to quietly disperse, and not disgrace
their great and noble city. They informed him, with
such politeness as a mob usually exercises, that the
man they wished to see was George Thompson. He
told them he would ascertain if he was in the build
ing. The official went to Mr. Garrison, who assured
him that Mr. Thompson was not in town; he had
fortunately left in the morning to visit a friend in the
country. The officer reported to the mob, and was
answered by a howl of disappointed rage, and then a
cry for Garrison ! The whole fury of the crowd — of
all Boston there concentrated and represented —
seemed in one instant to turn upon the editor of the
Liberator. Had they aU been constant readers of his
paper, they could not have been more violent.
The marshal interposed in vain. A more powerful
municipal officer now made his appearance — the
mayor. He was a Boston merchant — a merchant
prince. How well I remember his tall, handsome
form, his noble features, his silvery voice, and graceful
elocution. I have always thought him a man of men.
True, he did not read the Riot Act ; he did not bring
up the police — there were none to bring. The watch
men were at home asleep, and the constables were
serving writs on unwilling debtors. He did not
order out the military. There was no time to call

104 Boston, and a Mob I saw there.
put the militia, and I have a strong suspicion that
the flower of them were on the spot and foremost in
the mischief.
The eloquence of the mayor, Theodore Lyman, jun.,
was of no avail. At best he only gained a little
time. At every pause in his speech the cry rose
louder and fiercer for Garrison. The mob would have
searched the building, or torn it down, had not the
mayor given his pledge, that if Garrison was in it he
should be forthcoming; but he had the moment
before sent the marshal to get him out by a back-
way, and, if possible, secure his escape ; and when
Garrison had unwillingly consented to escape the
threatened martyrdom, the mayor announced that he
was not in the building.
There was a howl of rage ; but, a moment after, it
became a yell of triumph. Garrison had been seen to
go from the building into a narrow lane behind it.
Pursued, he took refuge in a carpenter's shop, only to
be dragged out and carried into the midst of the mob,
where it seemed for a moment that he would be torn
in pieces. I saw him, his hat off, his bald head
shining, his scanty locks flying, his face very pale,
his clothes torn and dusty, and a rope round his
neck. " To the Common !" shouted the mob ; " to the
Common !" The first thought of the whole vast
crowd — all maddened as one man is mad — was to
drag the poor man to Boston Common — a beautiful
park in front of the State House — there to hang him
upon the great elm, the " Tree of Liberty," on which

A Gallant Rescue. 105
Quakers had been hanged in the early Puritan days,
and under which Tories had been tarred and feathered
before the Revolution — to hang him upon the sacred
tree, or at least give him the traditional coat of tar
and feathers. So the whole mob, as by common
impulse, moved toward the Common.
But to get there they had to pass by the City Hall,
in which was the mayor's office, at the head of State-
street. . At the moment Garrison was brought oppo
site that point, the mayor, with a dozen or so of strong
fellows to back him, dashed into the crowd, opened it
like a wedge, striking right and left, gallantly seized
Garrison, and carried him triumphantly into the
mayor's office. The mob surged round the building
with cries of rage. The mayor came out upon a bal
cony, looking nobler and handsomer than ever after
his exploit, and told his respected fellow-citizens, when
they demanded Garrison, that he would shed the last
drop of his blood before a hair of his head should be
injured : not that he cared for him or his cause — they
knew well that he sympathized with neither — but for
the honour of Boston, and the office he held. Then
two coaches drove up to the doors of the building.
The crowd was divided. A cry was raised to draw
the crowd on one side, while Garrison was taken out
the other, shoved into the carriage, and a strong
coachman lashed his horses into the crowd. They
seized the wheels to turn it over ; but as they seized
both sides at a time they only lifted it from the ground.
They took out knives to cut the traces. The driver,
who was in the pay of the mayor felled them with

106 Boston,, and a Mob I saw there.
the loaded handle of his whip. The spirited horses
dashed forward, the mob opened, and then ran howl
ing after it. It was too fast for them. Up Court-
street, down Leverett-street. Ponderous gates swung
open — the carriage dashed in. The gates closed with
a bang, and Garrison was safe — in Leverett-street jail,
where he could only hear the howling of the pack of
human wolves that had pursued him.
Very early next morning, to prevent another and
a more dangerous riot, he was sent out of Boston, to
a place of concealment and safety.
This was Boston less than thirty years ago — Boston,
where PhiUips has lectured and Parker preached, and
which sends Charles Sumner a senator to Washing
ton — Sumner, whose father was sheriff and governor
of the prison, that was at that day the only safe place
in Boston for WiUiam Lloyd Garrison.
And the men who twenty-five years ago were ready
to lynch Thompson and hang Garrison, as abolition
agitators and fanatics, are now urging on a war of
extermination against the South.

107

CHAPTER X.
LOWELL.
" The Manchester of America." — Factory girls. — Petticoat govern
ment. — Visit of General Jackson. — A Yankee family. —
Massachusetts abolitionists on Louisiana plantations. — Merri
mack river.
About the year 1835 I resided in Lowell, Massachu
setts, a manufacturing town some twenty -five miles
north of Boston. It was the first important manu
facturing town in America, and is stiU the largest.
The falls of the Merrimack river furnish abundant
water-power. There is a dam across the river above
the falls, and the water from this basin is brought to
the factories, machine-shops, &c, by a canal sixty feet
wide. These works are owned by an incorporated com
pany, and each of the ten manufacturing companies
pays this company for its site and water-power.
At the time of my residence in Lowell, the popula
tion did not exceed ten thousand. Two-thirds of the
whole were operatives, and a large proportion of these
young women, not residents, but daughters of farmers,
&c, from the country a hundred miles around, who
had come to the factories to work a few months or
years, and lay up money for their marriage-portions.

108 Lowell.
Great covered waggons — such as are called vans in
England — went about the country collecting the rosy
maidens from viUages and rural districts, and convey
ing them to the factories.
Among these girls were many of exceeding beauty
— that delicate beauty nowhere else found in greater
perfection — too delicate often to last. It is too often
the delicacy of the scrofulous diathesis and incipient
consumption. Many were well educated. Some of
them were contributors to a monthly magazine, caUed
the Lowell Offering, from which a small volume
has been published in England, entitled, Mind
among the Spindles. Some of these young ladies —
factory operatives — cultivated music in their leisure
hours, and had pianofortes in their private parlours.
Many of them no doubt read French and Latin, pos
sibly a few had a smattering of Greek, and tended
their looms none the worse for it. It is certain that
while the greater part came to earn money for their
own setting-out in life, many came to relieve a father
from debt, to help a widowed mother and younger
orphan children ; and there were instances of brave
girls who earned in the cotton-mill the money which
supported a brother in college — the brother who after
wards became a senator, perhaps.
The Lowell of that day was a very curious place.
The girls aU boarded in blocks of regularly built
boarding-houses, owned by the manufacturing cor
porations, and managed by persons in their employ,
and under very strict rules of their making. No girl
was aUowed to be out after a certain hour. Up tp

Congregations of Factory-Girls. 109
that time the briUiantly lighted shopping streets would
be full of girls ; then the bells rang, they hasted home,
the shops closed, and the streets were desolate. The
boarding-house regulations were as strict as those of
a fashionable boarding-school.
The churches on Sunday had a very singular aspect.
There would be a thousand girls from fifteen to twenty-
five — rarely one older — aU dressed with neatness and
even a degree of elegance, and, scattered about, a
hundred men perhaps, who seemed quite lost and
unprotected, as forlorn as one man with eleven women
in an omnibus. On a warm Sunday, what a whirr it
was, with the flutter of a thousand fans ! And how
the Methodist hymns rang out with a thousand soprano
and contralto voices, and the almost inaudible under
tones of bass and tenor !
In the congregational churches the girls, being in
such an overwhelming majority, asserted their right
to vote ; and as the few men were of no account against
them, they deposed disagreeable ministers, and invited
those they liked better, at their own sweet wills ; and
as they paid their salaries, why not ? They paid their
money, and they took their choice ; and if they pre
ferred a young, handsome, and agreeable preacher, to
an old, ugly, and sour one, who shall blame them ?
The Methodist girls were obliged to take those who
were sent them ; but the bishops and presiding elders
had enough of the wisdom of serpents not to appoint
those who would thin the seats, or drive these lambs
of the flock to other and more gentle shepherds.
Not in the churches only did these self-reliant

110 Lowell.
Tankee girls act for themselves. It was at their peril
that the factory corporations added half an hour to
their time of work, or took sixpence from their weekly
wages. The girls would turn out in a procession,
hold a public meeting, make speeches and pass reso
lutions, and hold the whole manufacturing interest
at their mercy. Every mill was stopped; there were
no other hands to be had; there was not a girl in New
England would come to take their places. The officers
had nothing to do but quietly knock under. The
men took no part in these emeutes, except as sympa
thizing spectators. And what could be done? I
should like to see the magistrate who would read the
Riot Act to four or five thousand Tankee girls, or the
military that would charge upon them. So they had
their own way in these matters, while they submitted
without a murmur to the regulations which were
made for their benefit and protection.
When General Jackson visited New England
during his presidency, the Lowell factory-girls, all
dressed in white, with wreaths of flowers, went out to
meet him. They walked out two and two, under
their own marshals ; the tallest and lovehest girls
from the white hiUs of New Hampshire, the green
mountains of Vermont, and the lovely vaUeys of Mas
sachusetts, with bands of music and songs of welcome
for the old chieftain. When they met him, their
leader made a patriotic speech. The gallant old man
thanked her, and kissed her for all the rest; and
then, with his head bare to the mountain breezes and
the sun shining on his silvery hair, the old veteran rode

A New England Family. Ill
between two files of white-robed girls for miles, all
the way to the City of Spindles, whose mUls were
closed for a great holiday.
The population of Lowell, aside from the factory-
operatives, was small. There were the families of the
agents, engineers, clerks, &c. ; tradesmen, professional
men, editors of newspapers, &c. ; and the mechanics
and labourers of a fast-growing city. After this lapse
of nearly thirty years, there is but one famUy that I
can vividly remember. It was that of a retired Me
thodist preacher, who lived in a pretty white cottage
on the banks of a small river, in what was then a
suburb of the town. He was a gentleman of cha
racter and intelligence, and had a family of four
children — two sons and two daughters, of fifteen to
twenty-five. The young ladies — whom I saw the most
of, and greatly admired — were two of the most beau
tiful, inteUectual, and amiable girls I ever knew. The
young men were tall, handsome, energetic, enterpris
ing, and destined, I believed, to make their way in the
world. The fortunes of these four young people were
those of thousands of Americans, and curiously iUus
trate the character of the country.
The eldest son studied law, removed to New Orleans,
married a lady who owned large plantations on the
Red River, was elected to Congress", and is now a
leading statesman of the Confederate States. The
second son became an engineer, invented machinery
and firearms; and the last I heard of him was at
Washington, a strong Union man, contracting to
supply an improved rifle. The two girls — who went

112 Lowell.
to visit their elder brother in Louisiana — both married
rich planters there. Just as the war broke out in
1S61, and before the maUs were stopped, I received a
letter from the elder sister. I knew her handwriting,
though she signed a strange Creole name. I had not
seen or heard directly from her for twenty-five years,
and now, just as the bloody, horrible war was begin
ning, she wrote to me with the fervour of our old
sweet friendship of early days.
She had been married, and was a widow. Her
eldest son had just gone to coUege. The country all
round her was flying to arms. There was, she averred,
but one feehng with men and women, old and young
— the determination to repel invasion and be indepen
dent of the hated North. I could form no idea, she
said, of the unanimity or intensity of this feeling. As
she wrote, a steamer passed down the Red River to the
Mississippi with a regiment en route for the seat of war
— one of those Southern regiments, not made up of
foreigners, mercenaries, or outcasts, but in which
fathers, sons, and brothers are banded to fight and die
for country and home. On the steamer were twenty-
five women — mothers, wives, and sisters of the regi
ment — at work, with seven sewing-machines to help
them, making up uniforms on the passage, that those
they loved might lose no time in meeting the invader-.
" Can such people as these," she asked, " ever be con
quered?" She has lived, if she still lives, to see the capital of
her own adopted State burned and plundered ; to see
New Orleans under the rule of a Butler, a lawyer from

Northerners in the South. 113
this very town of LoweU, where she formerly resided.
She has seen the southern portion of Louisiana ravaged
by Banks, formerly a Massachusetts shoemaker. Ere
this her own plantation may have been plundered, her
servants scattered, and her dweUing given to the
flames ; and she has the terrible bitterness of knowing
that one of her brothers is a Northern partizan, sup
plying, perhaps, the very arms that may slay her
dearest friends. Such is this war. There are thou
sands of such cases. Northern men, and still more,
Northern women married to Southern husbands, are
spread over the whole South. I have never heard, of
a case in which they were not true as steel to their
adopted land.
There is another feature of the case I have described
above. This lady, my correspondent, when we were
friends in her Northern home, was an ardent Aboli
tionist. She was, and is, noble, pure minded, and
earnestly religious ; but she became, notwithstanding,
mistress and owner of many slaves, and her conscience
would now revolt as urgently against the cruelty of
turning them out to take care of themselves, as it
once would have done against holding a feUow crea
ture in bondage. This is one of thousands of cases
which prove that the most thorough Abohtionists
generaUy change their opinions when they come into
actual contact with slavery and the enslaved race.
I have not visited LoweU for many years. Those
who - have teU me it has greatly changed. The
population has increased to over thirty-six thousand.
It is so largely Irish that there are four Roman
vol. I. 8

114 Lowell.
Catholic churches.. There is a large resident popu
lation of operatives, who must be quite a different
class from the rosy country girls who used to come
in their white sun-bonnets, packed into those long
waggons. Many other large manufacturing towns
have grown up, fostered by high protective tariffs,
that give a virtual monopoly of many kinds of fabrics,
and which enabled the American mill-owners to buy
cotton at Liverpool, while half a million of operatives
in Lancashire were reduced to pauperism for the want
of it.
Lowell has now ten manufacturing corporations,
having an aggregate capital of about 3,000,000/.,
12,234 looms, 400,000 spindles, 12,500 operatives,
and makes two and a half miUion yards of fabrics
a-week. There are twenty churches, an abundance
of schools, and four or five newspapers.
I must say a word of this beautiful Merrimack
river. The name is Indian, and "was also given to
the United States steam-frigate, converted by the
Confederates into an iron-clad, which did such terrible
execution in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The Merri
mack is formed by the union of two roaring mountain
streams, at the southern base of the White Mountains
in New Hampshire ; then it runs, with a clear swift
current, through beautiful vaUeys, down a series of
rapids to the Atlantic Ocean, running south some
eighty mnes to Lowell, and then east thirty-five miles,
and at its debouchment making a harbour for the
pretty town of Newburyport. Besides hundreds of
miUs and factories, the Merrimack supphes water-

The Merrimack River. 115
power to four large towns, Nashua and Manchester in
New Hampshire, and Lowell and Lawrence in Massa
chusetts, doing the work of more steam-engines, or
horses, or men than I have time to calculate, or the
reader would be likely to remember.

116

CHAPTER XI.

BUFFALO.

A frontier town. — The canal-packet. — The ups and downs of life.
— Deep cuts and Irish labourers. — A hospitable reception. —
A taste of war. — Lake-steamers. — Lake Erie. — Bed-tape and
fresh-water sailors. — Steamboat captains and pilots. — A night
in Buffalo.
I went to the little frontier city of Buffalo, in Western
New Tork, at the outlet of Lake Erie into the Niagara
river, about twenty miles south of the great cataract,
in 1837. Railways had not at that time stretched
across the Empire State. There were two modes of
reaching Buffalo — the maU-coaches and the canal-
packets. I chose the latter mode as the cheaper and
pleasanter. The canal-packet is out of date, and would be con
sidered very slow in these days ; but it was not a bad
way of getting through the world to one who had his
whole hfe before him, who was fond of beautiful
scenery, and was in no hurry. Our sharp, narrow,
gaily painted boat was drawn by three fine horses,
each ridden by a smart boy, and we glided along at
the regular pace of five miles an hour. A greater
speed washed the embankments, and was not per
mitted. But when opposition boats were running

Life on a Canal-packet. 117
they sometimes doubled this pace, and the boats would
run on the swell wave they had first created, as fast
as the horses could travel.
We wound through a varied, fertile, and beautiful
country, through romantic valleys, and by the side of
silvery streams. In level countries canals are straight
and uninteresting ; but a canal which must keep its
level in a broken country, winds around the hiUs,
crosses the streams, and becomes a very picturesque
object. We passed through great farms and pretty
villages, aU bright with new, white cottages with green
blinds, gardens and shrubbery.
All rose early, and after ablutions in the wash
room, which was not very large, went on deck for
fresh air and a promenade. Our luggage was ranged
along the centre, but there was a space to walk on each
side. If inclined to take a run, the steersman would
lay up to the tow-path, and with a spring on shore
we trotted after the horses.
Then breakfast was announced by a very noisy
hand-beU, rung as obstreperously by the demonstra
tive negro steward as if his boarders were a mile away.
The long narrow table through the centre of the cabin
is covered with Tankee luxuries — hot Indian-corn
bread, mUk-toast, hot roUs, beef-steaks, veal-cutlets,
fricaseed chickens, fried potatoes, ham and eggs, apple
sauce, and aU the rest, washed down with many cups
of hot coffee. The " captain" sits at the head of the
table, and his lady passengers are to the right and
the left of him, whom he converses with affably, and
helps politely to the dainties around him. This

118 Buffalo.
captain of a canal-boat, be it observed, is a character.
He dresses a little too much for a gentleman, perhaps.
His diamonds are too large, and his waistcoats of too
loud a pattern. But, as he rises in the world, com
mands a steam-boat, keeps an hotel, and then goes to
Congress, or runs for governor, he wiU tone down to
the proper standard; and, if he gets rich enough, may
become, in his old age, as shabby as a miUionaire.
After breakfast, a turn on deck, while the waiters
and boat-hands breakfast and the tables are cleared.
We walk, or sit on the trunks, talk politics or busi
ness, get up a flirtation at short notice with a pretty
girl going to Wisconsin, having and needing no pro
tector, or read, or look upon the ever-changing scenery
through which we are so noiselessly gliding.
In either case, we are liable to interruptions.
Every farmer-proprietor who owns land on both sides
of the canal has a right to a bridge across it. These
bridges, for the sake of economy, were built just high
enough to let the boats pass under them with two
feet or eighteen inches to spare. The luggage is
ranged on the deck so as just to clear the beams of
the lowest bridges. So, as we glide along, in the
midst of an animated discussion, or a delightful chat,
or an absorbing passage in the last novel, when the
pursuing post-chaise is just about to overtake the
trembling runaways flying for Gretna Green, the
steersman shouts, with startling emphasis, " Bridge !"
Down we all go upon our marrow-bones, crouching
low, until the boat shoots out again into the daylight,
and we gaUantly assist the ladies to their feet and

Perils of Canal Navigation. 119
resume our occupations. In ten minutes, more there
comes another cry, sharper and sterner, from the
watchful steersman, but for whose care we might aU
be crushed to jelly on our portmanteaus. This time
the cry is, "Low bridge!" and this time it is not
enough to kneel and crouch, but down we go, flat and
sprawling on the deck. Happily, crinoline had not
been invented. The danger passed, we scramble up
again, laughing at our ridiculous positions, and get
ting better acquainted with every bridge we pass
under. Luckily, the "raging canal" makes few
persons sea-sick, and our ups and downs give us good
appetites for our dinner.
The dinner is plentiful and good. Roast turkey,
chickens, beef, ham, vegetables, pies, and puddings
make an ample meal ; and we wonder how it was ever
cooked in the little closet aft, devoted to culinary
operations. The dinner is a mid-day meal, not later
than one o'clock. The Americans have kept to the
fashions which prevailed in England when their fore
fathers emigrated. Only of late years, in the larger
towns, and among the more fashionable classes, have
people dined as late as five or six o'clock.
On the packet-boat we had a substantial tea at six
o'clock, and then watched, perhaps, a glorious sunset
fading into twilight. In those deep blue skies the
great mirrors of the Western lakes make such gor
geous sunsets as I have never seen elsewhere. I wish
that Turner could have seen them. He alone of
painters could have done them some faint justice on
his canvas, with such poor colours as our earthly

120 Buffalo.
minerals give, and such dim hght as they are able to
reflect. When it was dark we found the long cabin lighted.
Some read, some played at cards ; gaming was not
out of fashion then, and the steward knew the secret of
mint-juleps. We glide on with soft-washing and
gurgling sounds. At ten o'clock a heavy curtain is
drawn across the cabin, separating the ladies' portion
from the rest ; berths are put up along the sides of
the cabin, the lights are diminished, and the wash
and gurgle lull us to sleep.
True, it takes us twenty hours to go a hundred
miles. We are three days from Albany to Buffalo ;
but what a nice journey it is ! We never forget it.
A thousand landscapes fill the gaUery of our memory.
We have passed over dizzy viaducts, and through mUes
of deep-cut ravines, where hundreds of hves were lost
in making them ; we have ascended steep hUls, through
a succession of locks. At Lockport we are gently
lifted up the very precipice over which Niagara rolls,
fifty miles away, and are on the level of Lake Erie,
whose waters have floated us up, up, up, to their own
level. But to keep that level there are mUes of a
deep, dark cutting through the hard, blue limestone,
where tons of gunpowder were burnt, and the Irish
labourers grew so reckless of life that at the signal for
blasting, instead of running to the shelter provided for
them, they would just hold their shovels over their
heads to keep off the shower of smaU stones, and be
crushed every now and then by a big one.
And so gliding along the Tonewanda Creek, and by

A Frontier Town. 121
the great rushing Niagara river, which seemed hurry
ing down to the foaming rapids and the tremendous
faU below, we glided into Buffalo.
A gay and hospitable city, I thought, as we swept
slowly into a suburb, where young ladies, dressed in
pink and blue, with plenty of rouge and ringlets, wel
comed us from their open windows and balconies. I
soon found, however, that this portion of Buffalo was
about as fair a representation of the city as the
stranger who lands at the London Docks finds in
Ratcliff Highway.
Still, it was a curious, interesting, and piquant
town, this Buffalo. Why they called it so I never knew.
The American bison, commonly caUed the buffalo,
vast herds of which — miUions and myriads — used
to cover the western prairies, could scarcely have been
known so far east as the Niagara river, in a country
covered with dense forests. So far east, I say, com
pared with the great interior of the continent beyond
the Mississippi. But how well I remember when New
England people were emigrating to the Genessee
country, which was then called going west, though a
hundred miles east of Buffalo.
At the period of the war of 1812, Buffalo was a
little frontier village of lake -sailors, trappers, whisky-
seUers to the Indians, smugglers, and outlaws. Op
posite, on the British side of the Niagara, was Fort Erie.
Lower down, on the heights near the falls, was some
of the hardest fighting in the war, at Chippewa and
Lundy's Lane ; and at Queenstown Heights, where
General Brock was killed, after he had driven the

1^2 Buffalo.
American invaders into the Niagara, whUe the Ame
rican general was vainly imploring the volunteers
on the opposite bank, and in fuU sight of the combat,
to cross over to the assistance of their countrymen.
There was brave fighting on both sides. Here the
veteran General Scott earned his first laurels, and was
wounded and taken a prisoner. Fort Erie was taken
by assault, and then abandoned. A Canadian vU-
lage was burnt by the invaders, and in retaliation
Buffalo was laid in ashes ; only three houses escaped
the flames. Indian allies on both sides added to the
horrors of a merciless frontier warfare.
But Buffalo was too good a site for a town not to
be buUt up again. It was the eastern harbour for
twelve hundred miles of lake-navigation, and when
the Erie canal connected the lakes with the ocean it
grew with great rapidity. Steamboats covered the
lakes, and canal-boats thronged Governor Clinton's
big ditch. The vast emigration of the north-west
flowed through Buffalo, and it was not long before
the inexhaustible harvests of the rich prairie-lands
also poured down, a steady and ever-increasing tor
rent. When I arrived in Buffalo, in the autumn of 1837,
there was a population of from fifteen to twenty
thousand inhabitants. There were broad streets, hand
some squares, fine buildings, a nice theatre, spacious
hotels, and a harbour full of steamboats. Each boat
had its band of music playing on deck to attract the
passengers as they came in on the maU-coaches or
canal-boats. The beUs rang, the music played, the

Lake Erie. 123
steam roared from the escape-pipes, the runners or
touters lied and swore, praised up their boats to the
seventh heaven of speed and safety, and run down the
others as being at once too slow ever to get to their
destinations, and sure to burst their boUers.
When this contest of noise, music, and lying had
gone on all day, the boats would bank their fires and lay
over until the next, and so on until they had a full
complement of freight and passengers. These had
little care ; they were " found " — that is, fed abun
dantly, from the hour they came on board ; and the
longer they stayed, before starting or on the way, the
more certainly they got the worth of their money.
Lake Erie is some two hundred and fifty miles
long, by sixty miles wide in the widest place, dimi
nishing toward either end hke a French roU or a
weaver's shuttle. It is generaUy less than a hundred
feet in depth. Its northern shore is the southern
boundary of Canada West, a great and fertile province
not sufficiently appreciated in England. On its
southerly shore are a part of New Tork, a few miles
of Pennsylvania, and the great State of Ohio. At the
western extremity lies Michigan ; its waters are sweet
and pure ; there is just hmestone enough in solution
to give them a deep, rich tinge of blue. Lake Huron,
above, occupying a region of granite or metamorphic
rocks, is clear as crystal. The blue of Lake Erie be
comes vivid as a dye of ultramarine, when it has
passed over Niagara, and is seen in the foam of the
rapids below.
The Buffalonians teU a good story of English red-

124 Buffalo.
tape routine connected with these waters. They say
that when the materials were sent out for the fleets
which were to defend these inland seas — two of which
fleets were beaten— the Admiralty sent out a fuU
supply of water-caski?, when a bucket over the side
would have answered every purpose. There is another
story of a boat's crew of old salts who returned to their
ship, after a long puU under a burning sun, almost
perishing with thirst, because they had never thought
of tasting of the cool, pure water which their oars were
every moment flashing into the sunshine.
There is no inland town like Buffalo for cool sum
mer breezes. It lies at the lower point of the lake,
which opens out hke the nose of a beUows ; and as the
western winds are the prevaUing ones, they are cooled
by the water, and sweep up through the streets of the
town with an indescribably invigorating freshness.
The sea-breezes in the narrows at Staten Island, or
on the battery at New Tork, are scarcely more de
lightful. Buffalo in summer was a lively as weU as a cool
and lovely place. We had a clever little company at
the theatre, with aU the stars that came from Europe
and made the grand American tour. We had delightful
quadriUe parties, with ice-creams and champagne in a
pretty public garden, our VauxhaU or Cremorne. And
then we had steamboat excursions. Every new steam
boat that came out, larger, faster, and more magni
ficent than its predecessors, gave a grand excursion.
Sometimes we went fifty miles up the lake and back.
If the weather was too rough outside for dancing, we

Steamboat Excursions. 125
went twenty miles down the Niagara, making the
circuit of Grand Island, and boldly steaming across
the river, on the very edge of the rapids, where one
minute's stoppage of the engine would have sent boat
and passengers over the great cataract. The boats had
their ground-tackle, but before an anchor could, have
been cast off, she would have been in the rapids,
where, as I imagine, the hmestone stratum is like
polished marble, and no anchor would hold for an
instant. But our steamboat men, in those days, were
as reckless of life as mUitary commanders and poli
ticians have shown themselves in more recent periods.
The broad upper decks of our steamers afforded
ample space for dancing on these excursions, and
everybody danced. There are good bands of music
everywhere. Sometimes our excursions were longer,
and we danced from Buffalo to Mackinaw, MUwaukie,
Chicago, and then home again, landing with our band
at every pretty city on the lakes for an afternoon pro
menade or a moonlight serenade. They were gay old
times. The captains, pilots, engineers, clerks, and runners
of these steamboats, were characters — generous, impul
sive, reckless, extravagant, they formed a very curious
society. The captains and clerks, in constant contact
with aU kinds of people, were obliged to be gentlemen.
They sat at the head of the table ; they made them
selves agreeable to the ladies; they were bound to
support the credit of the boat. A spare state-room
and a bottle of wine were always ready for a friend.
They danced, sang, flirted, raced — theh steamboats I

126 Buffalo. A
mean ; and it is hard to teU what they did not do.
The pilots, like those on the Mississippi, were men of
responsibility. It was their business to control
engines and helm, to navigate the boat, in fact. The
engineers had better salaries than the governors of
some of the States ; and I should like to see the man
who would dare to offer one of them a gratuity or
gratification. There is no need to put up notices in
America forbidding the servants of the company to
receive gratuities, or requesting traveUers not to offer
them. An American employe is too proud to accept
a gift. He wiU drink with you, but only on equal
terms, and with the understanding that you wiU drink
with him in return.
And they were brave feUows, too. I remember the
runner or agent of a boat, who in a terrific gale, when
she was working off a lee-shore, sat on the safety-valve
of the straining boUer to increase the pressure of
steam. And I remember a pilot, too, when his boat
was on fire, who stuck to his wheel when the flames
were raging round him, and ran the boat on shore to
save the lives of the passengers, while he was burnt
to death in the wheel-house. He was not a saint,
perhaps, but he was a hero and a martyr.
Lake Erie generally freezes over in winter. I have
known it to close up early in December, and present
only a vast plain of ice until the 1st of May. This,
however, is longer than usual, and there are winters
when there is scarcely ice enough to hinder navigation.
In summer the weather is generaUy delightful, but
there are occasional storms worthy of old Ocean, and

A Gale and a Celebration. 127
the waves rise quicker and higher in fresh water than
in salt.
There are south-westerly autumnal gales that sweep
the lake from end to end, two hundred miles and
more, with the force of a tornado. In these gales,
which last two or three days, the whole body of the
lake, in some places sixty miles broad, seems swept
before the tempest, and the water rises several feet in
the harbour of Buffalo, and faUs as much in that of
Maumee or Toledo at the other extremity. It is like
a tide. The vessels at Buffalo are carried ,into the
streets ; at Toledo they lay in the mud, in the bed of
the river.
WeU I remember such a storm. It was coincident
with a political event which fastened it in my memory.
WiUiam H. Seward, then a rising lawyer of Western
New Tork, had been elected governor of the State. It
was the first triumph in that State of the party which
has since made him senator, and but for Mr. Greeley,
of the Tribune, would have made him president, and
which he serves as secretary of state to his rival, Mr.
Lincoln. As this political triumph had been won by
a great exertion of the right of suffrage, and a great
expense in giving this right a proper direction, it was
celebrated with remarkable enthusiasm. On an ap
pointed day, over the whole State, cannon thundered,
speeches were made, and at night a hundred towns
were iUuminated. " BUI Seward," or " Little Billy
Seward," was elected governor of New Tork. It
happened to be worth a miUion of doUars to a few men
in Buffalo that he should be governor. He could give

128 Buffalo.
them power and wealth — he could save them from
ruin and disgrace. But this is not my present story.
However, no city of the Empire State celebrated
the great event with so much enthusiasm. On the
day appointed I heard the roar of artiUery — at night
I saw the Ulumination. The broad streets were in a
blaze of light. But aU day an autumnal gale had been
blowing on the lake. As far as the eye could see
there were huge foam-crested waves, that broke upon
the beach with a noise hke thunder, and dashed in
great masses of foam upon the lighthouse-pier that
protected a portion of the harbour. On the low
sandy shore, between the harbour and lake, was a
smaU viUage inhabited by fishermen, sailors, and the
poorer class of labouring people.
AU day the storm had increased, blowing steadily
down the lake. The steamers up for Detroit and
Chicago dared not leave. Those which came down
were in great peril. Schooner after schooner came
driving down before the gale under bare poles or a
bit of storm staysaU. The most of them rounded
the lighthouse, went over upon their beam-ends,
righted again, and were safe in harbour. Some failed
to answer their helms, and were dashed on shore.
The more prudent ran down the Niagara river, and
found safe harbour there.
As the night feU, and the city burst into light, the
gale increased. I could scarcely walk in the streets.
The water rose rapidly ; it flowed up into the lower
part of the town. The crowded shipping was no
longer safe in the harbour. The waters stUl rose and

An Inundated Village. 129
the gale increased, until the waves made a clean breach
across the low land outside the harbour. The village
was in danger. The people shrieked for help ; it was
too late; the steamers were powerless, boats were
swept away as in the torrent of Niagara.
And now, while the lights of the joyous illumina
tion were still burning, throwing a strange glare upon
the scene, we, helpless spectators, heard the crash of
he houses over the creek, and the wild shrieks of
their drowning inhabitants. Some came safely over
on the wreck of their houses ; some were rescued by
the saUors and firemen ; others were crushed by the
faUing buUdings, or jammed between vessels and
wrecks, or thrown drowned upon the shore. I have
never seen a sight more terrible than this mingling
of the horrors of a shipwreck with the rejoicings of
a festive city. At last the shouts for rescue ceased.
AU were saved or lost. Men slowly gathered the
dead as they were washed on shore, and carried them
to a haU of the market-house. I saw them there, laid
out in long rows of almost naked corpses, waiting
for recognition.
In the first light of the morning I went down to
the harbour. The storm was over — the inundation
had subsided. Large vessels were high up the streets,
and there were a thousand marks of wreck and ruin.
The harbour was covered with the timbers, roofs, and
broken furniture of the destroyed village, and the
bodies of pigs, poultry, and other domestic animals.
People were anxiously searching for the bodies of
vol. i. 9

130 Buffalo.
their friends ; and I have seldom seen a sadder sight
than was presented by an old man, feeble, chilled,
almost senseless with exposure and grief, searching in
the floating ruins of what had been his home, in the
hope of finding the bodies of his two children.

131

CHAPTER XII.
buffalonians and the navy island war.
A Texan colonel. — The hero of San Jacinto. — Christy's minstrels.
Benjamin Bathbun. — Winter in Buffalo. — Mackenzie's re
bellion. — Occupation of Navy Island. — Burning of the
Caroline. — Neutrality at Washington. — Hunters' lodges. —
Defeat of Mr. Van Buren.
Singular characters gather in these frontier American
towns. One of my most intimate friends was an
ex-Texan colonel of cavahy, who had fought in the
famous battle of San Jacinto, when the Mexican
army was massacred, rather than beaten, by a force
of only seven hundred Texans, under General Sam
Houston. This little army had just retreated three
hundred miles in such a panic that they destroyed
their baggage. Houston, my friend the colonel declared,
would have gone on retreating, had not his men forced
him to fight. And he described the half hour's con
flict, or rather butchery, as the keenest dehght which
humanity is capable of enjoying; and yet this man
was as gentle, as sensitive, as modest as a girl.
Sam Houston, hero of San Jacinto, conqueror of
Santa Anna, who called himself the Napoleon of the
West, first President of the Independent Republic of
Texas, and after the annexation of the United States,
9— a

132 Buffalonians and the Navy Island War.
governor, senator, and candidate for the presidency,
was, according to my friend the colonel and other
confirmatory accounts, an extraordinary character. A
few months after his marriage with the daughter of an
ex-governor of Tennessee, he abandoned her without
giving a reason, and went to live among the Cherokees
beyond the Mississippi, by whom he was adopted as
a chief. In Texas he was known as an inveterate
gambler, a drunkard, a liar, whose word could never
be trusted, and, as my friend asserted, as great a coward
as he was a rascal. His adopted Indian feUow-citizens
gave him the name of " Big Drunk." But he was
taU, handsome, plausible, eloquent in the highest
degree, and swore with equal profanity and sublimity
— swore as a Homer or a MUton might. This man,
who was often seen dirty, drunken, living with
debased Indians and squaws, borrowing half a doUar
of any stranger who would lend it, and losing it the
next moment at the gaming-table — this man, so utterly
debased and so utterly cowardly and dishonest, had
yet that gift. of eloquence that he could control the
people as he willed, and induce them to elect bim to
the highest offices in their gift.
Is this a correct representation of the character of
that extraordinary man ? Making due allowance for
partizan feeling on the part of my informant, I believe
it is. I made inquiries, when in Texas a few years
ago, and received sufficient confirmation of the story.
But there is something to be added. General
Houston, some years ago, married a young and
beautiful wife, who is said to have had influence

Origin of the Christy Minstrels. 133
enough to change his character. He became a tem
perance man ; he abandoned gambling ; he joined the
church — that is, some rehgious denomination. That
he became an honest politician, would be, perhaps,
going too far. A writer must not too heavUy tax the
credulity of his readers.
During my first summer at Buffalo I saw, every
afternoon, riding up the main street on a nice iron-
grey saddle-horse, with a cigar in his mouth and a
little overdressed, a tall, dark, and handsome young
man, whose constant appearance excited my curiosity.
" Who is he ?" I asked of one of my friends.
" Who ? That ? Why, that is Ned Christy."
" And who, pray, is Ned Christy ?" said I.
" If you wiU go with me this evening I wiU show
you," said he.
In the evening we walked down across the canal
into the Wapping of Buffalo, which had given me and
my fellow-passengers so cordial a welcome on the
arrival of the packet-boat. The houses were much
alike in their appearance. There was a bar-room in
front and a dancing-room in the rear ; with steamboat
men, sailors, canaUers, not to say canaille, mingled
with some of the wUder young clerks from the for
warding houses and " stores." The ladies, who
dressed low and rouged high, drank and danced with
equal abandon. And there, conspicuous by his almost
ApoUo-like beauty of form and feature, was the horse
man of Maine-street, playing the tambourine. There
,was a buxom lady, said to be his wife, with several
children in a private parlour. This man, playing the

134 Buffalonians and the Navy Island War.
tambourine so skUfuUy, not long afterwards organized
the first make-believe negro band of singers and
musicians, and the most successful one — Christy's
Minstrels. He bravely gave his first public enter
tainments in Buffalo, where every one knew him and
his antecedents. A few months afterwards his min
strels were aU the rage in New Tork, where they
attracted . overflowing houses for years, and made a
handsome fortune for Ned Christy. He hved hke a
prince, it was said, with the woman who had befriended
him, and whose chUdren he carefuUy educated ; and I
was sorry to read, a few months ago, that he had
become insane — with that strange insanity of men
who have risen from poverty to wealth — the insane
terror of coming to want.
But the most notable person in Buffalo in those
days was the man who had done more than any other
to buUd up the place and lay the foundations of its
prosperity. His first achievement made him a model
American — a man that could keep an hotel. This is
the standard of executive ability. A man who can
keep an hotel can do anything. No other qualifica
tion is needed for the highest office or the most im
portant trust.
Rathbun's Hotel at Buffalo was for years quoted
by aU American traveUers as the ne plus ultra of hos-
telries. Clean, orderly, elegant, with the best table
and the most perfect attendance, it was a miracle
of administrative skiU. Mr. Rathbun was a quiet,
gentlemanly man, seldom seen or heard by his guests,
but seeing everything.

Case of Benjamin Rathbun. 135
The maU-coach service in Western New Tork was
not organized according to his ideas of order and
efficiency, and he took it in hand, and soon had
coaches by the score and horses by the hundred.
The growing town needed a master hand to give it
shape, and he became engineer and contractor on an
immense scale. He bought land, built streets and
squares, and carried out pubhc improvements with a
Napoleonic energy. As aU these operations rather
encroached upon his time, he employed his brother in
the financial department, owning two or three banks,
and raising large loans in New Tork. His paper,
to the amount of several hundred thousands of pounds,
was readily discounted, as, besides his own credit, it
bore the endorsements of Buffalo capitahsts who had
been benefited by his operations. These notes were so
often renewed that a clever young clerk, who was an
adept in imitating signatures, to save himself trouble
began to endorse the notes which were required to
renew others. By some means it became known.
Rathbun went to the endorsers, told them what had
been done, placed in their hands an assignment of his
property to the amount of some millions of doUars, to
secure them against loss, and went to work to take up
the forged paper.
He was treacherously arrested, on the complaint of
the men who had promised him theh aid. The
temptation of the immense estate he had assigned to
them was too strong for them to resist. He was
committed to jail. After two years, and on the third
trial, held in a distant county, and, as I then beheved

136 Buffalonians and the Navy Island War.
and stiU believe, by bribery and corruption, he was
convicted. His brother and the two clerks were safe
in Texas. I was in the court-house when he was
convicted, and sentenced to five years' penal servitude.
W. H. Seward happened to be present, and also
happened, chiefly through the influence of the assignees
of Rathbun, to be made governor, in which capacity
he refused to pardon the criminal, though his pardon
was solicited by thousands of the most respectable
people in the state. His creditors were defrauded, and
the whole property divided among the men who sent
him to prison. It is a curious fact that the attorney
of these assignees became vice-president, and after
wards, by the death of General Taylor, president of
the United States.
Buffalo in the summer time was a very lively place,
but what shaU I say of Buffalo in the winter ? Only
that the whole army of industry went into winter
quarters. Before the raUways had penetrated through
this region, the roads in winter were almost impass
able for mud, and the sleighing, not to be depended
upon. The canal was closed to navigation — the water
being drawn off. The lake was frozen over from end
to end, the ice forming two feet in thickness around
the ships and steamers in the harbour. Navigation
was ended ; and there was nothing for the steamboat
men and canaUers, and the mercantUe interests
generaUy, to do, but to have a good time, spend their
money, get up any possible excitement, and wait for
the opening of navigation, which might be early in
March or late in May, according to the season.

Mackenzie's Rebellion. 137
The winter of 1837 brought with it an unusual and
welcome excitement — the outbreak of the Canadian
RebeUion. Mackenzie, having escaped from his
defeat at Toronto, came to Buffalo, and the whole
frontier was aroused to sympathy with the Patriots,
who had at last thrown off the gaUing yoke of British
tyranny. Meetings were held in Buffalo and aU the
frontier towns. Money was subscribed, supplies were
furnished, and arms taken from the State arsenals.
Mackenzie issued stock of a provisional government.
Van Rensselaer, grandson of the American general de
feated by General Brock at Queenstown, volunteered,
and was appointed commander-in-chief of the Patriot
forces, which were, however, stiU upon the soil of
New Tork, and consisted almost entirely of Ame
ricans. I doubt if there were fifty Canadians among
them. It became necessary, however, that they should take
up a position on British ground. This was done by
taking possession of a smaU, uninhabited, densely
wooded island in the Niagara river, just above the
cataract, which happened to be west of the line in
the centre of the channel which divides the two coun
tries. Here Mackenzie raised the flag of the Provi
sional Patriot Government, and here General Van
Rensselaer established his head-quarters, in one of two
abandoned log-huts on the island. Hither flocked
the recruits to the Patriot army ; the restless and ex
citable winter idlers of Buffalo and other towns of the
frontier. One captain of a volunteer company in
Rochester marched with his whole company, with the

138 Buffalonians and the Navy Island War.
arms of the State of New Tork in theh hands, and
entered the Patriot service. Cannon and ammunition
were boldly taken from the arsenals ; and an American,
educated at the Westpoint Mihtary Academy, planned
the construction of the defences of the island. His
reason for doing so was that a large force was gather
ing on the Canadian shore, intending to dislodge them,
and he wished to give " the boys " some chance to de
fend themselves and make a decent fight of it.
Navy Island was, in fact, a perilous place either to
attack or hold. The river aU around it was deep and
rapid ; a disabled vessel or boat was sure to go over
the FaUs, and carry aU on board to destruction.
Colonel M'Nab, an energetic Scottish Canadian, aided
by several half- pay British mUitary and naval officers,
planted batteries along the river-bank, opposite Navy
Island. The Buffalo steamboat-men cut a small
steamer, the Caroline, out of the ice at Buffalo, and
ran down the open river to a landing on the American
shore opposite Navy Island, where she plied as a ferry
boat, carrying men and supplies to the island. A
British naval officer took three armed boats one night,
crossed the river, took the boat, cut her loose, towed
her out into the stream, set her on fire, and sent her
blazing down the rapids and over the great cataract.
It appears, from the accounts on both sides, that two
or three men were kiUed in the assault and confusion.
There was no opposition worth mentioning; but it
was an invasion of American soil by an armed British
force, acting under authority, and the whole frontier
was aroused to a state of the highest excitement. The

Affair of the Caroline. 139
militia of the surrounding country poured into Buf
falo. General Scott, commander-in-chief of the Ame
rican army, was. sent from Washington to preserve the
neutrality of the frontier and protect it from invasion.
A smaU mUitia force was sent to occupy the lower
point of Grand Island. Everybody believed, and almost
everybody hoped, there would be immediate war with
England, when the frontier States would have poured
two or three hundred thousand men, more or less — as
many, at all events, as were necessary — into Canada,
and settled the question of its future relations. The
outrage on the Caroline stirred the anti-British feeling
to its depths.
It happened, however, that the Government at
Washington was not controUed by Northern feeling.
Mr. Van Buren was president — the successor of Ge
neral Jackson. The leading statesmen of his cabinet
were Southerners. It was not for the interest of the
South to have a war with England, and it never has
been ; for two reasons, the one political, the other
commercial. The acquisition of Canada would in
crease the growing preponderance of the North, and
England was the largest purchaser of their great
staples. Southern pohticians may sometimes have
" talked for Buncombe," when it suited them, about
war with England. If they did so, it was to get
Northern votes. Since the war of 1812 it has been
their interest to be at peace. Mr. Van Buren acted
with energy in preserving the neutrality of the
frontier. General Scott, while he resolutely protected
the American territory, prudently cut off the supplies

140 Buffalonians and the Navy Island War.
of the Patriots. While shot and sheU and Congreve
rockets rained upon Navy Island from the Canadian
batteries, they found it impracticable tp get a sufficient
supply of pork and beans from the American shore.
They could not cross over to Canada ; they had no
adequate means of crossing the river, and a superior
force confronted them on its banks. Worse than all,
the Canadians themselves, so far as the Upper Pro
vince was concerned, took no part in the rebeUion,
but were gathered in large numbers to put it
down. Under these circumstances the Patriot army on
Navy Island evacuated that position, crossed over to
Grand Island, where they formaUy surrendered to
General Seott, laid down theh arms, and went about
theh business.
The first resort of Americans, in any emergency, is
to secret societies. While the Government at Wash
ington was doing its utmost to pacify the frontier and
keep a decent neutrality, the people were forming
" Hunter's lodges," the members of which were sworn
to secrecy, and took an oath to aid in the spread of
Republican institutions everywhere, and especiaUy over
the American continent. These lodges were formed
in aU the frontier States, from Maine to Wisconsin,
and were estimated to have not less than eighty thou
sand members.
The rebeUion in Canada was first suppressed by
force, and, in the Lower Province, as I thought then,
and stiU think, with barbarous and needless cruelties.
The simple-hearted French Canadians had theh vii-

The Rebellion Suppressed. 141
lages burnt in the depth of winter, and were driven
into the forests to perish, or find refuge in the neigh
bouring States.
If Mr. Van Buren put down the rebeUion, or rather
the war of the frontier States on Canada, he was in
turn defeated by these ardent patriots, who, in 1840,
voted for General Harrison, whose only claim was that
he had fought against the British in the war of 1812.

142

CHAPTER XIII.
AN EXCURSION ON THE LAKES.
The steamboat Erie. — A nice party. — Cleveland. — 'Detroit. —
Perry's victory. — Lake Huron. — Mackinaw. — Indians. —
Green Bay. — An aboriginal dandy. — Milwaukie. — A party
and a pow-wow. — Chicago. — Twenty years after. — A thunder
storm on Lake Michigan.
My first steamboat excursion round the great American
lakes which lie between the United States and Canada,
and which are amicably, though not equaUy, shared
between them — Lake Michigan lying enthely within
the great Repubhc — was in the summer of 1839. A
new and beautiful steamboat, the Erie, Captain
Titus, made her first trip, and I was invited to be of
the party. A very nice party it was. We had a
band of music, and danced every pleasant afternoon
and moonlit evening. Every day was a festival. We
chatted, played, sang, ate exceUent dinners, drank the
captain's wines, enjoyed beautiful scenery, visited aU
the flourishing cities springing up around the lakes,
enjoyed a profuse and hearty hospitality everywhere,
and had, as Americans say, " a good time generaUy."
When I think of it aU, I cannot get rid of the
constantly obtruding fact that this fast and beautiful
steamer, two or three years later, loaded with passen-

Perry's Victory. 143
gers, was burnt near Buffalo, and that the captain and
a large number of his crew and passengers perished.
Leaving Buffalo, we touched at Erie, stopped a few
hours at Cleveland, then a pretty viUage of five
thousand, now a city of thirty- six thousand inhabi
tants. We ran into the picturesque bay of Sandusky,
passed the scene of Perry's victory over the British
flotilla on Lake Erie, and steamed past the low,
densely wooded banks of the Detroit river to the old
French city of Detroit, in Michigan, where the
American General HuU surrendered his entire force
to the British commander. It is a curious fact that
in the war of 1812 the Americans were generaUy
beaten by the British on land, while they won numerous
victories on the lakes and ocean. It was aUeged in
excuse that the American ships of war were more
than half manned by English sailors. This was true,
and no particular credit to England or Englishmen ;
but, as WiUiam Cobbett asked at the time, how ac
count for the American ships, with half English crews,
beating the English ships with aU English crews?
Probably the sailors fighting against their country
were better paid than those who were fighting for it.
Possibly volunteers fought better than the victims of
the press-gangs.
The ugly consequences that might have ensued had
the American ships been beaten, may have stimulated
these unpatriotic and disloyal Britons to extraordinary
exertions. FinaUy, size of ships and guns may have
had something to do with it.
When we left Detroit, we steamed northward

144 An Excursion on the Lakes.
through Lake St. Clair into the wUd region of Lake
Huron. One can imagine what that great inland sea
wiU be 'a hundred years hence, but then it was sur
rounded by an almost unbroken wUderness. A century
hence a hundred cities wiU gem its shores or crown
its islands. They are covered now with shaggy firs,
pines, and hemlocks, the picturesque evergreens of
this northern clime.
The change from Lake Erie to Lake Huron is very
striking. The waters of Erie are "deeply, darkly,
beautifully blue ;" those of Huron are clear as crystal
and black as the darkness in theh depths; In a calm
day I have dropped pieces of white earthenware or
sheUs from the steamer, and watched them sink a
hundred feet, perhaps. This perfect transparency of
the water is very striking at Mackinaw. As I stood
on the shore, the keel of the steamer, laying off at
anchor, was almost as distinctly seen as her gunwale ;
so was the cable which held her, and the anchor
hooking into the sand. I could even see the large
fish swimming about beneath her. The steamer, and
the canoes of the Indians who were fishing for' the
Mackinaw trout and white fish, seemed to be floating
in the ah.
Mackinaw is an old French trading port and mis
sionary-station, estabhshed more than two hundred
years ago, an antique portion of a new world. When
I was there the beach was covered with the smoking
wigwams and bark canoes of the Indians, who had
come down from theh wUd hunting grounds to receive
theh Government annuities of powder, lead, and

Tlie Indian Aristocracy. 145
blankets, and to buy also and drink "too much
whisky." Soft, smiling squaws came round us to seU
strings of wampum and beaded mocasins. Their
voices were low and musical, and theh language fuU
of open vowels.
We ran down to Green Bay, Wisconsin, then a
smaU military post, with Indian traders and a large
gathering of Indians. There were some taU, stately,
dignified warriors, in their paint and feathers — splendid
savages, not quite spoiled by the pale faces and their
fire-water — warriors not unworthy of the romances of
Cooper or the poems of CampbeU. There were also
two or three chiefs' daughters, who, with the slight
additions of pearl-powder and crinoline, would not do
discredit, with theh stately figures and aquiline noses,
to the drawing-rooms of Belgravia : not that I know
much about these, but I have caught glimpses here
and there of those I imagine may be their occupants.
The repose of the savage differs very little from the
nonchalance of fashionable life ; and a young Indian
dandy I saw at Green Bay, in the brightest of paint,
his face streaked red and blue, and the daintiest of
leggings, flashing with beads and wampum, his head a
glory of feathers and tinsel, had manners that would
have done honour to the front stalls at the Opera.
We went ashore at MUwaukie. There was no
harbour, but a smaU steamer came off and took us and
what freight we had on shore. There was a store
house on the creek, and five or six cottages on the
bluff. That was Milwaukie in 1839. Just twenty
years afterwards I found on the same spot an excellent
vol. I. 10

146 An Excursion on the Lakes.
harbour, miles of warehouses, a city of forty-five thou
sand inhabitants, and one of the most beautiful towns
in the western hemisphere.
When I first landed, a saUow Indian trader, named
Juneau, came off in his little steamer to welcome us.
Twenty years had passed ; Juneau was in ' his grave
in the cemetery of the cathedral, in the centre of the
city; but I read his name on streets, squares, ahd banks.
The past decades seemed but a day, and the city to
have risen around me by magic while I had slept.
I was invited — at my last visit, I mean — to a
fashionable party, given by one of the early settlers,
who had grown rich, if in no other way, by having
bought a few acres of land when it cost a few shU-
lings, and kept it until worth many thousands of
pounds an acre. Where the war-dance had been
the fashion a few years before we danced cotiUons,
polkas, and schottisches, which are certainly more
graceful and more agreeable. There were no freshly
taken scalps displayed, but I think there were three
or four wigs, possibly the property of dead men, and
certainly accompanied with dyed whiskers. The paint,
no longer daubed on in vivid streaks, now only gave
to beauty its heightened flush or its " dim alabaster
gleam." I went down late to a supper of oysters, salads, ices,
and champagne, and found the master of the house at
the head of a table weU strewn with empty bottles,
with some of his old Indian trading friends around
him, making them a speech in Indian, and they cheer
ing in the Indian fashion with a succession of whoops

Chicago. 147
not so dissimUar as one might suppose to the " hears"
and "cheers" of the House of -Commons.
Chicago, the extreme point of our voyage, was in
1839 a viUage of a few hundred inhabitants. I re
member its one brick hotel, at which some of us slept.
I found the same building quite overshadowed and
almost lost, twenty years later, in*an obscure quarter
of a splendid city of more than a hundred thousand
inhabitants, the great entrepot of the garden of the
West — that garden whose surplus produce in a few
years wiU be sufficient to feed aU Europe.
Twenty years had made Chicago a noble city — the
mart of a magnificent commerce. The shores of the
lake that I had seen so solitary were lined with
palaces. The prairie, spreading off towards the south
west, the first I had ever seen, was covered with broad
streets and stately edifices ; raUways stretched away
south, west, and north, hundreds of miles. Twenty
years more may see here a city of weU nigh a miUion
of inhabitants.
In those twenty years what had become of the
companions of my pleasure excursion ? The graceful
steamer was burnt ; the black-eyed spirituel girl, who
enjoyed so much the romance of the voyage, married
an officer of the United States army, who feU in 1845,
bravely fighting in Mexico. The fair blue-eyed young
wife, who charmed us with her sweet voice, must be a
staid and stately matron now. How few I remember
of aU our gay company !
We had a grand thunder-storm on Lake Michigan
returning, with real western lightning. It is said that
10— a

148 An Excursion on the Lakes.
an English traveller in America was enlarging, as
Enghshmen sometimes wUl, on the superiority of every
possible thing in the old country. The bread, and
beef, and beer, and horses ; everything, in short, was
better in England, as most Enghshmen devoutly and
happily beheve, than in any country in'the world.
There came up a thunder-storm, and a taU pine-tree
by the roadside was shivered into toothpicks, with a
crash that shook the earth and the heavens. " There !
Gaul darn it !" exclaimed an irritated Tankee, who had
listened to him, " do you pretend that your Enghsh
lightning beats that ah ?"
I have seen many wild, magnificent, and terrible
thunder-storms in America ; I have never seen one in
England that compared with them; and yet the
statistics of mortality show a considerable number of
deaths by lightning. It is just possible that I may be
partial to my native land, and imagine that because it
is a great country, with great natural features, the
elements act with proportionable vigour. It is, how
ever, natural to suppose that where the thermometer
goes up to ninety or a hundred degrees in the shade,
electric action wiU be in some proportion.
Let me say a word more of these great inland seas
of pure fresh water. There is nothing like them in
the world. Here I steamed twelve hundred mUes on
three out of the five. The Great Superior had not then
been opened to steam by the ship-canal around the
Sault Ste. Marie. But take this Lake Michigan,
which lies entirely within the United States. It is
three hundred and twenty miles in length, seventy

/ Lake Michigan. 149
miles in average breadth, and contains an area of more
than twenty-two thousand square miles. It is a thou
sand feet in average depth, and five hundred and
seventy-eight feet above the level of the sea. This
great i lake has its tides — very smaU ones indeed, but
real lunar tides of three inches. A canal connects its
waters with the Mississippi, through one of its
branches ; and this canal is fed from the lake, the
water being pumped up a few feet for that purpose.
When the rivers of Wisconsin are high, the waters
which flow into Lake Michigan connect with those
which sweU the Mississippi. Some think the lakes
once had an outlet through the Mississippi valley into
the Gulf of Mexico. Four great States border on Lake
Michigan— Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wiscon
sin. These four States contain an area of nearly two
hundred thousand square miles. The sun does not
shine upon a more fertile and magnificent country. It
is capable of sustaining a population of fifty millions.
It wiU contain half that number during the present
century, which wiU stiU be a comparatively sparse
population. Two hundred to a square mUe would
give a population of four hundred miUions.
Americans are considered sanguine and exaggerative ;.
but their past increase of population in newr and fer
tile regions affords the best possible indications of the
future. The actual present is beyond the hopes of the
past. With peace and freedom, we might look with
confidence to the future. What civU wars and mili
tary despotisms may bring, it is of course not easy to
calculate.

150

CHAPTER XIV.
CINCINNATI.
A working men's city. — Mrs. Trollope. — Dinner costume. — Growth
and progress. — Staples of trade. — Too much corn. — Hogs. —
Whisky. — Catawba wine and Nicholas Longworth. — Tobacco.
— A land of plenty.
My first visit to Cincinnati, which has been named
the Queen City of the West, as Buffalo was called the
Queen City of the Lakes, was in 1845, when it was a
thriving town of some fifty thousand inhabitants. It
seemed to me a city of working men. Its capitahsts
were master mechanics who had grown rich, but had
not had time to put on theh Sunday clothes or study
manners, I do not wonder at the scandahzation of
poor Mrs. TroUope, who took up her residence in this
infant metropohs of the great West, a self-appointed
missionary of manners and civilization. She came
home to England in despair, and wrote her Domestic
Manners of the Americans ; doing at once for the
whole American people what she had vainly tried
through discouraging years, trials, and losses, to do
for Cincinnati alone. We were dreadfuUy angry at
Mrs. TroUope, but we read her book aU the same, or
aU the more, and profited in no smaU degree by its
lessons. Many a time when some one in the boxes of

Western Customs. 151
the theatre has thoughtlessly turned his back upon the
pit, or placed his boots upon the cushioned front, have
I heard the warning and reproving cry go up of " Trol
lope ! TroUope !" until the offender was brought to a
sense of the enormity of his transgression. I fear that
Americans wUl never be as thankful as they ought to
theh amusing monitress.
' The Broadway Hotel was at that day the best in
Cincinnati. It is stiU a very good one, but quite
overshadowed in size by its neighbours. The weather
was warm, and I think hah the male guests, many of
them regular boarders — solid business men of Cincin
nati — dined comfortably in their shirt-sleeves.
And, now that I think of it, was it after aU so bad
a fashion ? What principle requires a man to swelter
in broadcloth over a hot dinner, with the thermometer
at ninety degrees Fahrenheit? StiU, the shirt-sleeves
made these worthy gentlemen look hke a party of
butchers. When I visited Cincinnati again, it had expanded
to a city of one hundred and sixty thousand — a sohd,
handsome place, fuU of wealth and industry. The town
is densely buUt ; many of the streets are wide, but
there are no squares or open spaces. It was a great
oversight. The bold, grand hiUs around are covered
with viUas, gardens, and vineyards. The city has
thrown itself across the Ohio, and spread out on the
Kentucky shore. Add the populations of these Ken
tucky extensions to the great Ohio mart, and the
population is over two hundred thousand. Five or six
raUways diverge from Cincinnati, and a hundred steam-

152 Cincinnati.
boats along the river-bank connect her with the Mis
sissippi and its branches ; that is to say, with twenty
thousand mUes of steamboat navigation.
It is one of the most industrious places in the world.
No trouble there about the nobihty of labour. I never
saw a place where so many were workers. There are
great hon foundries and machine shops, immense
manufactories of furniture and agricultural imple
ments, waggons and carriages, stoves and tinned ware
— of almost everything, in fact, required by the vast
expanse of new country around and beyond.
Then there are the great staples of trade besides.
Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana send hogs to Cincinnati
by the hundred thousand. There they are killed,
packed, and converted into bacon, hams, lard, lard-
oU, candles, brushes, Prussian blue, and I know not
what beside.
The next great staple is whisky. It is a country
where corn — and corn in America means maize —
grows in the greatest abundance. Tou pass through
single corn-fields mUes in extent. In these rich
bottom lands upon the rivers crops of corn have been
raised for fifty, and in some places for a hundred suc
cessive years, without an ounce of manure or a sign of
exhaustion. The stalks grow from fifteen to twenty
feet high. I have seen corn-fields in which a tall man
could not reach the ears, which grow below the middle
of the stalk, without a ^step-ladder. It wiU seem
strange to English farmers, but it is true, that vast
quantities of barn-yard manure in this region have
been " dumped" into the rivers to get it out of the way.

Indian Corn and its Transformations. 1 53
And much of the land is too rich for wheat, making
it run to straw. The Indian corn has no such diffi
culty. What to do with this enormous quantity of corn ?
It is eaten everywhere in America as human food, and
considered sweeter and more nourishing than wheat,
but men cannot begin to consume it. It can often be
bought for sixpence a bushel. When coal and wood
are scarce upon the prahies, it is sometimes burnt
upon the cobs, as the cheapest and most convenient
fuel. The demand for it is limited — the production
universal. It is necessary to convert it into other
articles — to transform or condense it.
Accordingly, a vast quantity is converted into hogs.
The rich oil of the corn becomes lard, and its farina
bacon. An Ohio farmer wUl have a thousand hogs.
They run in the woods in vast droves. They browse,
root, and devour rattlesnakes. In the faU the woods are
full of nuts — beech-nuts, hickory-nuts, walnuts. Mast
is theh generic designation. On these the hogs revel
and fatten. Then they are turned into the corn-fields.
They foUow the cattle. The corn is not gathered;
that would be too much work ; it is broken down and
eaten by the cattle, and what they leave is gathered
by the hogs, untU cattle and hogs are fat enough to
send to market. The corn, as beef and pork, is in a
marketable condition. It can be barreUed up and
sent over the world.
But this does not use up aU the enormous quan
tity which the amazing fertility of the Western lands
produces. The rest is made into wdiisky. Cattle

1 54 Cincinnati.
and hogs are also fed upon the refuse of the stiU:
This whisky comes to Cincinnati in large quantities,
where it is worth from eight to tenpence a gaUon.
Here it is rectified — freed from its impurities — chiefly
by being filtered through animal charcoal, and sent to
the eastern cities or to New Orleans. Whisky used
to make up a large portion of the down freight of the
Ohio and Mississippi steamers. When there is a bad
grape season in France, great quantities of whisky
go there, which, after being coloured and infused with
a grape flavour, is exported as Cognac or Otard, premiere
qualite ; and the brandy drank in the bar-rooms of
Cincinnati is its own whisky after two sea- voyages
and sundry manipulations — if, indeed, it have not
undergone a less troublesome and less costly trans
formation. Next to whisky — not in quantity or importance
indeed, but as a potable stimulant of a mUder sort —
wine is a staple; and I mention wine, as compli
mentary toast-givers at pubhc dinners say, in con
nexion with the name of Nicholas Longworth, the
most widely known of the pioneers in the vine culture
in America, who died in 1862, at a good old age, the
richest man in Western America — a httle, crooked old
man, an inteUigent agriculturist, a Uberal patron of
the arts — surrounded by a genial famUy, " rich beyond
the dreams of avarice," and yet haunted at times with
the fear of poverty and the dread of dying in the
poor-house, when he " was worth" nearly two miUions
of pounds sterUng in productive real estate and other
solid investments.

A Western Millionaire. 155
Nicholas Longworth was not a bad type of Tankee
possibilities. He was a New Jersey shoemaker. When
a young man he emigrated to Cincinnati, then a little
viUage — a mere landing on the Ohio river. At or
about that time, the whole land on which the city is
now built could have been bought for sixty pounds.
Longworth had not the money to buy it ; but he had
an ambition above heel-taps, and studied the law. I
do not know how long he studied this great science.
Six weeks used to be considered a pretty fair term in
the West in those days. A man who had read
Blackstone and the local statutes had no difficulty
in being admitted to the bar. But there are no
Benchers, no Middle Temple, and no horse-hair
wigs. One of Longworth's first cases was the defence of
a man for some petty misdemeanor, who had no
money to pay his fee. Instead of money he offered
the young Crispin advocate an old stiU which had
been employed in making whisky for the settlers
and Indians. He took the old coppers, as they were
aU he could get, and soon after exchanged them for a
hundred acres of land, which he kept, and which are
now covered by some of the best rent-paying property
in Cincinnati. It is in this way that some men make
fortunes, or have fortunes thrust upon them. Such was
the luck of Astor and Girard, and the mad miUionaire
of Newburyport, Massachusetts, who was nicknamed
Lord Timothy Dexter, in whose hands everything
turned to gold ; so that when a practical joker advised
him to send a cargo of warming-pans to the West

156 Cincinnati.
Indies, and he foUowed the advice, they were sold at
an immense profit — the pans, with their long handles,
for ladles to dip out syrup in the, process of making
sugar, and the covers for strainers. With men of
such luck, sending a cargo of fans to Nova Zembla
would somehow prove a good investment.
Mr. Longworth buUt him a handsome mansion,
with gardens and greenhouses, to which strangers and
citizens were freely admitted. He was the earliest
patron of the American sculptor, Powers, and many
other artists. Perhaps I ought not to say the first
patron of Powers, for before he worked in marble, he
made wax figures for the Cincinnati Museum, in
cluding a picturesque and mechanical representation
of the infernal regions that would have astonished
the soul of Dante.
But Mr. Longworth's most important work was
the introduction of the vine culture, and the manu
facture of wine on the banks of the Ohio. The
grape chiefly grown is a native variety, caUed the
Catawba. The European grapes generaUy require a
longer season than the American summer. American
plants must bear great heat and intense cold. The
Catawba grape has a peculiar flavour, and the wine is
similar to hock, and is either still or sparkling. Much
of it is harsh and sour ; but much, also, is of exceUent
quality and dehcious flavour. The produce of the
vineyards is so great that, as a large grower near
Cincinnati assured me, if it brought only sixpence a
gallon no crop was so profitable. But the consump
tion of wine is so large in America, compared with

Tobacco. 157
the production, that the French and German imported
wines rule the market, and Mr. Longworth's wines in
bottle sold for two to three pounds a dozen; the
sparkling Catawba bearing the same retaU price as
champagne — eight shiUings a bottle.
There was no lack of competent vine-dressers and
wine-makers in Cincinnati, for one-third of the popu
lation is German ; and German speech, institutions, and
festivals may be studied as weU on the Ohio as on
the Rhine. The time is not distant when America
wiU be a great wine-producing country, especiaUy in
the States of Maryland, Virginia, the regions on the
Ohio and Missouri, and, more than aU, perhaps Cali
fornia, which, besides its gold, bids fair to be the
garden of the world as a country of fruits and wine.
Another great staple of Cincinnati, ranking next to
pork and whisky, is tobacco. Kentucky and Southern
Ohio and Indiana produce an immense quantity of
this wonderful narcotic, which the New World has
given to the Old, and which in three centuries has
spread over the eastern hemisphere much faster than
any Gospel ever did. What is the magic of the nasty
weed, that it should be chewed, and smoked, and
snuffed over two hemispheres, and alike in the most
civilized and most savage regions ? Ladies pro
nounce it a filthy weed ; physicians class it with the
most virulent of poisons ; kings denounce ; legislators
prohibit; councUs condemn. It is of no avail. A
Virginian Indian chieftain teaches Sir Walter Raleigh
to smoke, and he teaches England's Vhgin Queen —
dauntless Elizabeth. There is an Anti-tobacco So-

158 Cincinnati.
ciety in London, but it cannot prevent smoking even
in raUway carriages, with the aid of parliamentary
bye-laws, and fines, and penalties.
The tobacco warehouses of Cincinnati, where the
cured article may be worth sixpence a pound, would
gladden the heart of an EngUsh or French ChanceUor
of the Exchequer, or any man who proposed to tax
and govern nations by means of their — vices, shaU we
say, or luxuries? — by tobacco, beer, and whisky. What
is the demand in humanity which these supply ? Phy
siologists do not inform us. Is the world the better
for tobacco ? Is it an element of progress ? Did
tobacco have anything to do with the Reformation ? —
or with what the Times caUs the fighting, hanging,
and burning part of it, which lasted for one or two
generations ? What has tobacco reaUy done of good
or iU for Germany or Turkey, for France or England,
besides helping to raise a sufficient revenue ?
It is a very sohd means of wealth to Cincinnati, at
aU events, and is sent forward to New Tork, or down
stream to New Orleans, in vast abundance.
There are certain things in which an American
town like Cincinnati differs from an Enghsh pro
vincial town of a similar size. It is less provincial.
The shops are as spacious and weU stocked as those of
New Tork or London. The hotels are on the grandest
scale. There are two or three theatres, four daUy
newspapers, several large publishing houses, libraries,
picture-gaUeries, coUeges — a city, in short, with a
character of its own, and very httle dependent upon
any other.

A City of Plenty. 159
The markets of Cincinnati were something won
derful to me. They extended a mile along the streets,
and the abundance and cheapness of food would
astonish a denizen of the great metropolis. Chickens,
sixpence a pair ; eggs, threepence a dozen ; beef, four-
pence a pound ; pork, twopence. Apples, peaches, and
pears in much the same proportion. Spare-ribs of
pork were given away at the great packing establish
ments to aU who chose to apply for them. Fish is
brought mostly from Lake Erie, some two hundred and
fifty miles, by raU. Oysters come from Baltimore ;
game from the prahies. Cincinnati, when I knew it,
combined the advantages of plenty of work, good
wages, moderate rents, and cheap provisions, lager beer
and whisky — of the latter, more than was needful.

160

CHAPTER XV.
FROM NEW YORK TO NEW ORLEANS.
A Navy Island Patriot. — A fight for life. — A long journey. — On
the Monongahela. — Convenient coal-mines. — Flat boat navi
gation. — Low water on the Ohio. — Fever and ague. — Cairo.
Gambling on the Mississippi. — The father of waters. — Sugar
plantations. — Negroes. — Cotton and cane culture. — Facts and
figures.
It was in the autumn of 1845 that I made my first
visit to New Orleans. The reader may remember that
in some account of the Canadian rebeUion, and what
we caUed the " Patriot War" of 1837-8, I spoke of an
enthusiastic young captain of volunteers in the city of
Rochester, who marched with his enthe company, and
invaded Canada at Navy Island. I met him one day,
when I dined with the Patriot governor and the
general commanding — Mackenzie and Van Rensselaer
— at theh head- quarters on Navy Island. We had
pork and beans for dinner, eaten from tin dishes, with
the whizz of an occasional shot, or the bursting of a
shell, for music.
In the autumn of 1840 I was in Rochester, engaged
in editing a political journal, and making speeches in
opposition to the Log Cabin and Hard Cider candidate
for president. I found my young Navy Island cap
tain practising as a lawyer in Rochester. We lived

Across the Alleghanies. 161
at the same hotel, and became very intimate. Five
years after, when living in New Tork, I received a
letter from him, begging me to come and see him at
the Howard Hotel. I went, and found the ghost of
his former self. He was dying of consumption —
making a strong courageous fight, but sure to be
beaten. As usual, he had been sent off to die in a
warmer climate. His physicians must have seen that
he could not live, unless his resolute wiU deceived
them. But he was fuU of that kind of hope which is
One of the surest symptoms of a fatal issue, at least iri
this disease ; for there are others which confidence and
resolution cure.
He asked me to go with him to Washington, and
thence to the West Indies or to Florida. I could not
refuse him. It would be a hard journey, and, so far
as his recovery was concerned, a useless one, but he
was resolved to go. He would not aUow his wife to
go with him. If he must die, he said, his wife and
chUdren should remember him as he was before he left
them. I started with him at a day's notice.
We went leisurely, stopping to rest at Philadelphia
and Baltimore, and several days at Washington ; and
then began our toilsome route over the AUeghanies.
The railway took us up the Potomac, through Harper's
Ferry, and as far as Cumberland. It had not then
gone over and through the mountains. We hhed a
carriage and went over the National road by easy
stages, as befitted an invalid, to BrownsviUe, on the
Monongahela river, one of the two mountain streams
that unite at Pittsburg to form the Ohio.
vol. i. 11

162 From New York to New Orleans.
Here we embarked on a little steamboat which drew
twelve inches of water, and whose single wide paddle-
wheel was at the stern, and extended the whole width
of the hull. A succession of dams made the river
navigable at that season of low water., and at each dam
we were let down by a lock to a lower level. At the
high stage of water, dams and locks are aU buried
deep beneath the surface, and larger steamboats go
careering over them.
What I best remember, in crossing the AUeghanies
and descending this river, was the beds of coal. It
seemed to be everywhere just below the surface. We
saw it along the route, where people dug the fuel for
their fires out of a hole in the yard, ten feet from the
door. Along the high perpendicular banks of the
river there were strata of coal ten or twelve feet thick.
Men were digging it down with picks, and sliding it
into flat boats, which, when the river rose, would
float down with the current to Cincinnati, LouisviUe,.
Memphis, and New Orleans. These fraU flat boats —
long boxes made of deal boards nailed together, and
loaded within a few inches of the top — would many of
them be lost. The sweU of a passing steamboat, or a
snag or sawyer in the river, would sink them. They
would ground on sand-bars. A sudden hurricane
sometimes sinks a hundred of them. Perhaps a third
of the whole number are lost, but the coal costs almost
nothing — three-halfpence a bushel — and brings a
price proportional to the distance to which it floats in
safety. At Pittsburg, a city of coal and iron, smoky and

On the Ohio. 163
grimy as Newcastle or Birmingham, we took a larger
boat, but still a smaU one, for Cincinnati. The Ohio
was very low. We passed slowly down, getting
pleasant glimpses of the towns upon its banks, and
especiaUy of the flourishing cities of Cincinnati and
LouisviUe. I wrote at the time a series of letters
descriptive of this my first Southern journey, which
were published in a New Tork paper, and from these
I copy the record of my first impressions.
I was disappointed with the Ohio for a few hundred
mUes from its source, most unreasonable tourist that
I was. I recaU whatever I may have said to its dis
paragement. The Ohio, charming in all its course of
a thousand miles, becomes grandly beautiful below
LouisviUe for the lower half of its course. Were it
but deep as weU as broad and splendid in its great
reaches, and graceful curves, and picturesque banks,
nothing would be wanting to its pleasing souvenirs.
But I have tried its current at an unfortunate period.
The river is at its lowest point. At its highest it
would be fifty feet deeper — a great torrent pouring
onward toward the sea.
We were aU of us in high spirits on the Fort
Wayne. The crew was firing up, and singing merrily
below ; and in the cabin, we were sitting round our
good coal fire, chatting, reading, and some playing
poker, calculating the next morning but one to wake
upon the Mississippi. So passed we down merrily,
until, sunk upon a bar, we saw the wreck of the
steamboat Plymouth which two nights before had
been run into by another boat, which sunk her in-
11— a

164 From New York to New Orleans.
stantly, and her deck-passengers woke up under the
waters of the Ohio. Twenty unfortunates were
drowned ; and our passengers, accustomed to the river,
spoke of it with perfect indifference, as a very common
affair. We passed this bar safely, touching bottom indeed,
as we often did; but in passing over the next we
grounded firm and fast. The engines were worked at
theh greatest power, but in vain. Efforts were made
aU day to get the boat off, but without moving her ;
and older voyagers began to teU pleasant storits of
boats lying for three weeks on a sand-bar, and getting
out of provisions and wood. For us passengers there
was but patience, but for captain and crew there was
a hard night's work in a cold November rain. They
went at it heartily, and when we woke up in the
morning the steamboat was afloat, and as soon as she
had got in a fresh supply of wood we went merrily
down the Ohio again, putting off by a day our
arrival at the Father of Waters. So we went, talking
on morals and politics, reading the Wandering Jew,
and playing poker, untU dinner came ; and just after
dinner, we came to another bar, on which we ran as
before, giving our crew a second night of hardship
and toil, and us a more thorough disgust of low-water
navigation. We got off by morning as before, by
great exertion and the steady use of effective machi
nery, the boat being hoisted over the bar inch by inch,
by the aid of great spars, blocks, and windlass.
There was stiU, but a short distance below this
spot, the worst bar of aU to pass. If you wiU look

On a Sand Bar. 165
upon the map you wiU see that the Ohio, near her
mouth, receives two large rivers from the south, which
empty within twelve miles of each other, and for a
long distance are not more than twenty mUes apart.
These are the Cumberland and the Tennessee. At
the mouth of the Cumberland is a little straggling,
wild, half-civihzed river-town caUed Smithland, and
at the mouth of the Tennessee is a more important
village caUed Paducah, both of course in Kentucky.
Between these are the most difficult shoals in the
lower Ohio. The river is broad, the sands are shifting,
and the river changes its channel at every rise of
water. Having been twice aground and lost nearly
two days, our captain determined to take every pre
caution. He hired a flat boat, into which were dis
charged many tons of whisky and butter, and which
was lashed alongside. A boat was sent down to
sound the channel and lay buoys. This done, just as
breakfast was ready, aU the male passengers were
summoned to go on board the flat boat, fastened
alongside, with the butter and whisky, so as to
lighten the steamer as much as possible, and when
we were aU aboard we started down. As luck would
have it, the current carried the boat a few feet out of
her proper course, and she stuck fast again. The
wheels could not move her, and we jumped on board
again to eat our breakfast, now grown cold from
waiting. This dispatched, we went out on the promenade
deck, and to our chagrin saw the Louis Philippe
which left LouisviUe one day behind us, coming down,

166 From New York to New Orleans.
looking hght and lofty, with a flat boat alongside,
She came down rapidly, and passed close by us, her
passengers laughing in triumph at our predicament.
The Louis Philippe had not got her length below
us before she too stuck fast and swung round into a
more difficult position, lying broadside upon the bar
with the strong current fuU against her. The laugh
was now on our side, and the Louis Philippe gave
rise to the more jokes, because her hurricane deck was
entirely covered with cabbages, with theh stumps
sticking up, giving her a droU appearance ; while our
hurricane deck was filled with chicken coops. It was
time now to go to work in earnest. More freight was
discharged into our lighter, and aU the passengers,
except the women and chUdren, were sent on board
her. We thickly covered the barrels of whisky and
kegs of butter, and the captain, to keep us off the
steamer, cast us loose, and we floated off with the
current, and were safely blown ashore on the Kentucky
side about a mUe below, leaving the two steamers
above to get off as soon as they were able.
When our flat boat touched the Kentucky bank of
the river, her ninety passengers jumped joyfully
ashore, and with noisy hilarity scattered along the
beach. The morning was beautiful. The clear sun
light ghttered upon the river, and hghted up the
forests with a golden radiance. The sky was blue,
and the ah cool and bracing. The land was high,
weU wooded, and fertile. Seeing a substantial-looking
double log house a short distance from the river, about
a dozen of us went up to warm our fingers at its fire.

\
Tlie "Scourge of the West. 167
The door stood open, and we entered a comfortable
apartment ; but what a terrible scene of wretchedness
was presented to our view ! Two human beings,
neither apparently more than twenty-five years old,
sat at either corner of the chimney fire. Pale, wan,
emaciated, they were bent up and shivering, and
seemed so forlorn, wretched and despairing, that I
shuddered to look at them. Both were young, and
the wife had been strikingly beautiful. The man
held something in his lap ; I looked down and saw
the most frightful little baby I ever beheld. Its blue
arm was no bigger than my thumb — the little wan,
pale thing looked more like a baby of rags than one
of flesh and blood, and weighed no more than seven
or eight pounds, though more than four months old.
Tes — for four months, ever since its birth, father,
mother, and this their only chUd, had been suffering
from the chiUs and fever. I could not have imagined
and I never can forget this picture of despairing misery.
A terrible miasma broods over these streams. On
theh upper branches are these intermittent fevers,
with their living death — below is the frightful pesti
lence, the yeUow fever.
In a few moments our lucky boat swung round
and came down for us, leaving the less fortunate
Louis Philippe to get off as she could, and her
passengers to learn not to haUoo before they got
out of the wood. And now — now, by the first
hght of the morning for this grand, this terrible
Mississippi !
It was a misty, moonlight night when we came to

/
168 From New York to Newt Orleans.
the confluence of the Ohio with the Mississippi. We
had come down a tedious, and in some degree perilous,
course of one thousand miles — we had stiU a thousand
mUes to go before arriving at New Orleans, which is
the next stage of our Southern journey.
The Mississippi and Ohio come together at an acute
angle, and theh waters flow down in unmingled cur
rents, differing in colour, for a long distance. Even
at night we could distinguish the line which divides
them. The Ohio water is fiUed with fine sand and
loam — the Mississippi is discoloured with clay besides,
and the water looks like a tub of soap-suds after a hard
day's washing.
Whoever looks upon the map with an utilitarian
eye, sees at the confluence of these great rivers a
favourable point for a great city. A few years since
an Enghsh company took possession of or purchased
this site, and, with a capital of nearly a miUion of
pounds sterling, commenced operations. They litho
graphed plans of the city and views of the public
buUdings. There were domes, spires, and cupolas,
hotels, warehouses, and lines of steamboats along both
rivers. How fair — how magnificent it aU looked on
the India paper ! Tou should see the result as I saw
it in the misty miasma, by the pale moonlight. Cairo
is a swamp, overflowed by every rise of either river.
The large hotel, one of the two buUdings erected, is
slowly sinking below the surface. The heaps of raU-
road iron sent out from England for the great central
road to Chicago, of which this was to be the depot, are
many feet beneath the surface.^ PUes wUl not stand

On the Mississippi. 169
up — and, however deep they are driven, sink stUl
deeper. The present business of the place, consisting
of seUing supphes to steamboats, and transferring
passengers from the down to the up-river boats, is
done on floating store boats, made fast to the shore.
Cairo has since been built into a considerable town by
dyking out the rivers, and has been an important
naval and miUtary port during the civU war.
Were I to build a town, at almost any point on
the Mississippi, every house should be afloat ; they
would rise and faU with the river, and be at all times
equaUy easy of access. They would not cave in and
be washed away, as whole vUlages sometimes are, and
as some we have passed bid fair to be before next
spring. If I got tired of my location I could cut
loose, get towed up the river, or float down untU I
found a point to suit me, and with a navigation ex
tending a thousand mUes in almost every direction, I
should be hard to please if I could not be satisfied. In
this way a town, as large as any I have yet seen on
this river, might aU go off together. There are no
churches, but the tavern would take the lead, and aU
the httle stores and negro huts could foUow in its
wake. This is my thirteenth day of steamboating — the
usual time across the Atlantic — and I have four days
more at least. Tou may well suppose that a hundred
passengers are put to theh trumps for amusement.
The Wandering Jew did very weU as long as it
lasted. Some keep on reading novels, having laid in
a stock or exchanged with other passengers, but cards

170 From New York to New Orleans.
are the resource of the majority. The centre tables^
as soon as breakfast is over, are occupied with parties
playing poker or loo, and are covered with bank-notes
and sUver. Many who do not play look on to see the
frolics of fortune. Several of these players are profes
sional gamesters, and quite cool, as men who hope to
win by chance or skiU ought to be. Others, in theh
flushing cheeks and trembhng hands and voices, show
how the passion is fastening upon them. These are
driven by weariness, and tempted by the smaUness of
the game, to commence playing. The passion increases
day by day, and so do the stakes, until, before reaching
New Orleans, the verdant ones have lost aU their
money, and with it theh self-respect and theh confi
dence in the future. Depressed by shame, disheartened
at being in a strange city without money, they are in
a miserable condition, and ready to throw themselves
away. They become dependent upon the blacklegs who
have led them on, are instructed in theh evU courses,
made theh tools and catspaws, and perhaps induced to
enter upon courses of crime of a more dangerous cha
racter. AU this comes of playing cards to kill time
on the Mississippi.
While those who need the excitement of betting
play at games of bluff and poker, some amuse them
selves with whist, and old-fashioned feUows get into a
corner and have a bout at old sledge; and now, at
eleven o'clock, the great cabin of our boat presents a
curious appearance. Playing around the tables, with
noisy, joyous laughter, are half a dozen merry httle
boys and girls. These have aU got weU acquainted

A Perilous Navigation. 171
with each other, and seem to enjoy themselves tho
roughly. I can give you little idea of this portion of the
Mississippi. The river is very low, and does not seem
large enough to be the outlet of the thousand streams
above ; for the waters on which we float come not only
from the melting snows of the Rocky Mountains, but
there are mingled with them the bright springs of
Western New Tork, a large part of Pennsylvania, part
of Maryland, Virginia, North Carohna, and a large
portion of the Western States. Tet, with aU the waters
of this vast area, our boat can sometimes scarcely keep
the channel. Last night, running at her full speed,
she went crashing into a snag, with a concussion and
scraping which woke us aU up, and made the timid
ones spring out of theh berths. Our safety was in our
going down stream instead of up — the difference of
rubbing the back of a hedgehog the right and the
wrong way. These snags are great trees which cave
off and are washed down the current ; the roots be
come imbedded in the bottom, and the stem and
branches pointing down stream and half or whoUy
covered with water, form a terrible steamboat de frise,
which tears an ascending steamer to pieces, but
generaUy aUows those going with the current to pass
over or through them with safety.
The river is fuU of islands, so that you often see but
a smaU portion of its waters ; it winds along in so
many convolutions that you must steam a hundred
miles often to make twenty in a straight line. Many
of these bends may be avoided at high water, by taking

172 From New York to New Orleans.
the cross cuts, caUed "running a chute," when the-
whole country for twenty miles on each side is
submerged. UsuaUy, on one side or the other, there is a perpen
dicular bank of clay and loam, some thirty feet high,
and here and there are smaU plantations. The river
graduaUy wears them off, carrying down whole acres
in a season. From this bank the land descends back
to the swamps which skirt nearly the whole length of
the river. These in very low water are comparatively
dry, but as the river rises they fill up, and the whole
country is like a great lake, filled with a dense growth
of timber. These curving banks, the rude and solitary
huts of the woodcutters, the vast bars of sand, covered
gradually with canebrake, and the range of impene
trable forest for hundreds of mUes, comprise a vast
gloomy landscape, which must be seen to be realized.
On the map you wUl find towns scattered along the
banks of the river. I wish you could see some of these.
One of the first we came to was Randolph, in Ten
nessee. I was looking for a busy, busthng village—
but what an indescribably wretched-looking place did
I find it ! There is here, along the river, a bluff about
two hundred feet high. The river, washing into a quick
sand stratum, has undermined it, so that the bluff has
sunk so as to form great steps — acres in extent, and
twenty or thirty feet above each other ; down these
the rains and torrents have washed great guUies and
impassable ravines. On such a spot, on the different
steps of this caving bluff, is built a coUection of black-
looking houses and stores. It is frightfuUy destitute

Helena, Arkansas. 173
of shrubbery or vegetation, and the buildings seem to
stand awry, as if the ground was sinking, caving
downwards, breaking under them. It would not be
at all strange to see the whole place go crashing into
the river at the next great rise.
One hundred mUes below, on the Arkansas side, is
the town of Helena (appropriately accented on the first
syUable). There is a tavern and three or four small
stores — a wretched-looking place. One of our pas
sengers landed here. He was a German Jew, with a
large mouth, a large nose, soaplocks that would have
astonished the Bowery in the palmiest days of soap-
lockism, and he played a ferocious hand at poker. He
came on board at Caho, gambled aU the way down,
and left to take care of his clothing store, at the door
of which I saw some Indian blankets, and coats worn
commonly here, made of the same material.
This town of Helena is said to be the resort of a wild
population of horse-thieves and counterfeiters. The
river washes under the bank, and there is aheady a
huge crack opened, just back of the principal buUd
ings which skirt the shore. At the last rise a
stranger, who had come here on horseback from the
interior, was so apprehensive that the whole place
would wash off that he took his horse into a flat boat,
and there waited, night and day, for the arrival of a
steamer. While the scene is fresh in my memory, let me
describe to you my last morning upon the Missis
sippi ; but why do I speak thus of a scene which can
never fade from my remembrance, but in aU future

174 From New York to New Orleans.
years wiU glow the brightest picture which nature*
and civihzation have daguerreotyped upon my heart ?
I rose before the sun, whUe aU the East was glow
ing with his refracted light. The steamboat had
made exceUent progress aU night, not being obliged
to stop by fog, and was only detained a short time by
running plump into the mud on the river's bank — but
she soon backed out of that scrape.
We had here, fifty miles above New Orleans, an
almost tropical sunrise. The Mississippi, as if thed
of its irregularities, flowed on an even current between
its low banks, along which on each side are raised
embankments of earth from four to ten feet in height
— the levee, which extends for hundreds of miles
along the river, defending the plantations from being
overflowed at high water.
As I gained the hurricane deck the scene was
enchanting, and, alas ! I fear, indescribable. On each
side, as far as the eye could reach, were scattered the
beautiful houses of the planters, flanked on each side
by the huts of their negroes, with trees, shrubbery, and
gardens. For mUes away, up and down the river,
extended the bright green fields of sugar-cane, looking
more like great fields of Indian corn than any crop to
which a Northern eye is familiar, but surpassing that
in the vividness of the tints and density of growth —
the cane growing ten feet high, and the leaves at the
top covering the whole surface. Back of these
immense fields of bright green were seen the darker
shades of the cypress swamp ; and to give the most
picturesque effect to the landscape, on every side, in

Sugar Plantations. 175
the midst of each great plantation, rose the taU white
towers of the sugar-miUs, throwing up graceful
columns of smoke and clouds of steam. The sugar-
making process was in full operation.
After the wUd desolation of the Mississippi, for
more than half its course below the Ohio, you wiU
not wonder that I gazed upon this scene of wealth
and beauty in a sort of ecstacy. Oh ! how unlike our
November in the far, bleak North was this scene .of
life in Louisiana ! The earth seemed a paradise of
fertility and loveliness. The sun rose and lighted up
with a brighter radiance a landscape of which I had
not imagined half the beauty.
The steamer stopped to wood, and I sprang on
shore. WeU, the air was as soft and delicious as
our last days in June — the gardens were fiUed with
flowers ; yes, bushels of roses were blooming for those
who chose to pluck them, whUe oranges were turning
their green to gold, and figs were ripening in the sun.
It was a Creole plantation — French the only language
heard. A procession of carts, each drawn by a pair
of mules and driven by a fat and happy negro, who
seemed to joke with every motion and laugh aU over
from head to foot, came from the sugar-house to get
wood, of which an immense quantity was lying upon
the banks of the river, saved from the vast mass of
forest trees washed down at every freshet.
I cannot describe the appropriateness of everything
on these plantations. These Creole planters look as
if nature had formed them for good masters ; in any
other sphere they are out of their element — here most

176 From New York to New Orleans.
decidedly at home. The negroes, male and female,
seem made on purpose for their masters, and the
mules were certainly made on purpose for the negroes.
Any imaginable change would destroy this harmo
nious relation. Do they not aU enjoy alike this
paradise — this scene of plenty and enchantment?
The negroes work, and are aU the better for such
beneficial exercise, as they would be aU the worse
without it. They have theh feasts, theh holidays —
more liberty than thousands of New Tork mechanics
enjoy in their life-times — and a freedom from care and
anxiety which a poor white man never knows. I
begin to think that paradise is on the banks of the
Mississippi, and that the nearest approach to the
realization of the schemes of Fourier is on our
Southern plantations. However this may be, I am
satisfied, from what I have seen and heard thus far,
that Northern sympathy for the slave is much worse
than wasted, and that it can find more appropriate
objects nearer home.
For the fifty mUes which I saw, and for the
hundred more passed in the night, the shores of this
mighty river present a continuous hne of rich planta
tions and palace-hke residences, each surrounded by
the neat and apparently comfortable cabins of the
negroes. On some estates these huts, each standing
in a httle garden, and neatly whitewashed, form a
long row paraUel to the shore. On others they form
a large square running back from the mansion of the
planter. In aU cases there appears to be a beautiful
relation between them ; and if one can divest himself

Slavery. 177
of aU prejudice, I can conceive of no pleasanter sight
likely to be seen in the present state of humanity. . .
These negroes are slaves — they are liable to be
transferred from one estate to another — they may be
flogged — they move to the crack of the whip. True !
Did it ever occur to a philanthropist, that a soldier in
our army, or a saUor in our navy, is also a slave during
the term of his enlistment ? that he may be ordered
from Maine to Texas, or from one side of the earth to
the other — that he is also liable to be flogged, and
very often is, for the slightest fault or for none at aU
— and that he is often subject to hardships, privations,
and sufferings, compared with which a sugar or cotton
plantation is a heaven ? Scenes have occurred on our
men-of-war at which the worst overseer in Louisiana
would blush. The mind of the reader wUl revert to
cases without any specification.
When did the English Government, so humane
where slaves are concerned, ever hesitate to kidnap
and impress her own citizens, exporting them to
distant and unhealthy climates, and confining them
in her ships of war, when she wanted men to fight
her battles ? But you wiU scarcely thank me for this
declamation ; yet it came up so naturaUy, that I
should not feel quite honest if it were suppressed.
A few words on cotton and sugar, and I have done ;
as stump speakers say when theh ideas are pretty
much expended.
Cotton is raised in great quantities in nearly aU the
Southern States, and especiaUy in Mississippi and
Alabama. Sugar is almost whoUy confined to
vol. i. 12

178 From New York to New Orleans.
Louisiana, and there is cultivated chiefly on a narrow
strip of land on the river, and among the lakes and
bayous of the south-west portion of the State.
The cotton lands are ploughed into beds in March
— the seed is sown in drills, and the plant, when it
first comes up, is as tender as the bean, which it
slightly resembles in its early growth. It soon
becomes hardy, grows very fast, acquires a strong
stalk, with widely spreading branches. In May it
begins to flower on the lower branches, the blossoms
opening white, and in one night turning to a beautiful
red. A baU, shaped like a hickory-nut, displaces the
flower, and this, as it ripens, opens in four or five
compartments, showing the white cotton which en
velopes the seeds. The cotton on the lower parts of
the shrubs is fit to pick whUe the upper part is in
blossom, so that the picking commences in August
and continues until Christmas. As fast as it is
picked in the field it is separated — the fibre from the
seed, by the gin, a coUection of saws acting between
the bars of a grate, and the cotton is pressed in bales,
ready for the market. Good land produces two bales
an acre, weighing four hundred pounds each, and
worth, at present rates, about thirty doUars a bale.
Planters raise from ten to a thousand bales.
The sugar-cane is planted in cuttings, each joint
being planted in a hiU, and throwing off several
stalks — these resemble Indian corn, but grow much
larger and stronger, and have a more solid pith, fuU
of very sweet juice. In November, when the cane
is found to yield most juice, it is cut up, taken to the

The Mississippi. 179
steam miU, and the juice is expressed by passing the
stalks between rollers. This is boUed down to mo
lasses, syrup, and sugar.
Give me credit for a few paragraphs of useful infor
mation. There is something very impressive about the Mis
sissippi river. It rises in Minnesota, 47° 10' north
latitude, where its sources are mingled with those of
the great Red River of the North, which flows into
Hudson's Bay, and the rivers that empty into Lake
Superior, and reach the Atlantic Ocean through the
Gulf of St. Lawrence. Here in the centre of the
continent, at the height of 1680 feet above the sea,
in a coUection of smaU lakes within a few mUes of
each other, rise three great water-courses, which flow
north, east, and south, and drain a continent. The
Mississippi is nearly three thousand miles in length ;
or if we measure from its mouth to the source of its
branch, the Missouri, larger than itself, we have a
length of more than four thousand five hundred mUes.
This river and its tributaries drain an area of
1,226,600 square miles. It has 1500 navigable
branches. The great alluvial plain of the lower Missis
sippi is 500 miles long and from 30 to 50 mUes wide.
Only the levees or embankments prevent aU this surface
of 31,200 square miles from being submerged, except
ing a few bluffs, at every flood which pours down from
the melting snows of the AUeghanies and Rocky
Mountains. The channel of the river through this
whole vaUey is about 3000 feet wide, and from 75 to
120 feet deep. It winds like a huge serpent, and
12— %

180 From New York to New Orleans.
pours its great flood through this immense vaUey,
its surface, at its flood, being higher than the whole
country through which it runs, so that forty per cent.
of its waters are drained off into the swamps and
bayous, and either lost by evaporation or g'iven back
at lower stages. It is certain that the floods do not
run past New Orleans. Even that magnificent torrent
cannot contain them. A glance at the map shows
that the lower part of the State of Louisiana has been
made from the gulf by the deposits brought down by
the river. Mr. LyeU calculates that this process has
been going on 75,000 years; but it may be doubted
if he have aU the data necessary for such a calculation.
There are those who think that Lake Michigan at one
time found an outlet into the Gulf of Mexico. A
depression of a few feet, a very slight convulsion, would
turn its waters in that direction.

181

CHAPTER XVI.
NEW ORLEANS.
The town from the river.— Floating prairies. — Buildings without
foundations. — Hotels. — Trade and population. — A gay city.
— A Sunday in New Orleans. — The cathedral. — French and
Americans. — New Orleans revisited. — A French cemetery. —
High water. — Northern men of Southern principles. — A
charming city. — Generous customs. — Slave auctions. — Trade
and prosperity.^Yellow fever. — Its propagation and mor
tality. — Albert Pike and his " Fine Arkansas Gentleman."
The view of the magnificent plantations, on the banks
of the river, prepared me for the city of New Orleans.
The distant prospect of the city is confined to the
brilliant dome and cupola of the St. Charles Hotel, the
square tower of a cathedral,, and two church spires.
Next are seen the masts of the, shipping, the black
pipes of a long line of steamboats, and the taU chim
neys of the numerous steam cottonrpr esses. The
Mississippi is here a noble river, of great depth, sweep
ing along the wooden wharves, and forming the inner
curve of the crescent form in which the city expands
around it.
The ships, which count by hundreds and measure
by miles, are moored with beautiful regularity, in pahs,
with theh heads aU in the same direction, and are found
on the upper and lower portion of the levee, the

182 New Orleans.
steamboats, ranging with their bows to the bank,
forming the centre. Tou step upon a very dusty
landing, and the city is before you, the streets running
back from the river, at a gentle, downward inclination,
which brings the pavements of the back streets to the
low-water level of the river, which, should it break
through its banks at high water, would fiU the first
stories of aU the stores and houses.
The whole city is thus upon almost a dead level,
the slight inclination being like that of aU the planta
tions above, downward from the river, and toward the
swamp. It was no easy matter, one would think, to
build a town in such a situation. No attempt has
been made at filling up, for there was nothing to fill
with. There is no such thing as a ceUar or a weU, or
any sort of excavation — not even a grave, as I can
learn, in aU New Orleans. One foot below the surface,
and the mud is full of water. The gutters of aU the
streets are always draining the soU, and when the
river is up they fiU to the surface. I do not know
what is beneath — quicksands perhaps, possibly pure
water — for there is, west of the river, in this State, a
prairie, on which you can drive out with a horse and
buggy, where you have only to dig a hole two or three
feet deep to come to water of immense and unknown
depth, where large fish are sometimes caught with a
hook and line. These may be the " waters under the
earth," spoken of in the Scriptures.
However this may be in New Orleans, it is certain
that the city rests upon a plain of soft loam, saturated
with water, increasing in moisture as you descend. It

Buildings without Foundations. 183
is certain that there is no such thing as digging for
foundations, for the deeper they dig the less there is
to sustain a weight of waUs. In HoUand, the public
buUdings are set on piles, but these are of no use in
New Orleans ; for the further they are driven, the more
easUy they descend, and I beheve that if forced down
far enough, they would sink down altogether, and very
possibly float off in the Mississippi.
Knowing aU this, one is the more astonished at the
massive and magnificent buildings in New Orleans.
Resting upon the dead surface of this swamp are blocks
of immense warehouses, of brick and granite ; hotels
covering whole squares, like the Astor House, but
built in a much more showy and striking style ; cathe
drals, pubhc buildings, churches and palaces, buUt of
the most durable materials, and lasting for centuries.
It is the singular elasticity of the soU, and that alone,
which sustains them. If the first brick or stone wiU
stay where it is placed, the buUding is carried up
fearlessly to its fifth story ; and if the ground is too
soft for that, aU they do is to lay down a plank or the
bottom of a flat boat, and aU is secure as possible. In
paving some of the principal streets, the only way in
which the stones could be hiid was to first cover the
soft mud with a layer of brush and weeds. With aU
this, the streets are weU paved, and in dry weather
much too dusty. The side walks are washed clean,
and the warehouses, stores, and dwellings wiU compare
with those of any city I have visited.
One thing that strikes a stranger, on entering the
city, is the number of the hotels, with theh extent

184 New Orleans.
and magnificence. The St. Charles, chief hotel of the
American quarter, covers the front of an entire square,
and is buUt in a more showy style than any buUding
in New Tork. It is of a composite order of architec
ture, with a profusion of lofty fluted columns with
Corinthian capitals, and the buUding is surmounted
with a high, gracefuUy shaped dome, and a pretty
cupola. The whole surface is of stucco, brilliantly
white, and it can be seen to a great distance around.
On the next square, diagonaUy from the St. Charles,
is another great hotel, the Verandah, a splendid
establishment; and a few blocks' distance, in the
French part of the city, is a more extensive and
more splendid estabUshment than either, the great
Hotel St. Louis. The Orleans Hotel, Hewlett's Ex
change, and a dozen more, are indications of the great
commercial importance, the immense business, and the
abounding wealth of the Southern emporium.
I have said before, or might have said, that the
population of Southern cities is no indication, of theh
commercial importance. This is especiaUy the case in
New Orleans. No manufactures but those of necessity
are carried on here — the work is that which belongs
to commerce. There are extensive cotton^presses,
requiring a great many hands, powerful steam-engines,
and severe labour — there are, of course, and especiaUy
among the Creoles, taUors, shoemakers, milliners, &c,
but stUl the North supphes much the greater portion
of all the articles of Southern wear, ready made. The
indications of commercial importance are to be found
in these magnificent hotels, in three theatres, in the

A Gay City. 185
numerous pubhc resorts, where merchants congregate,
in the long lines of steamboats and shipping, in the
great banking houses, chartered and private, in the
commercial daUy newspapers, filled with advertise
ments, and in the immense masses of cotton, sugar,
tobacco, iron, lead, flour — in short, the staples of the
South and West, and the manufactured products of
every quarter of the globe.
But I shaU have a thousand things to write of
New Orleans, as I intend to study the city thoroughly.
I arrive at a most propitious season. Business is just
about to assume its greatest activity. Cotton and
sugar are now pouring in by floods. The hotels are
filling up with merchants and planters. To-night the
St. Charles Theatre opens, with Booth for the first
rising star, and the promise of the Keans, Mr. Anderson,
Mrs. Mowatt, Chippindale, Dan Marble, and others.
The Orleans opens in a few days with opera by the
French company. The divine Pico, with Maj occa,
ValteUina, and Antonini, announce a series of con
certs at the St. Louis. The councUs of the first muni
cipality last night passed an ordinance authorizing and
regulating the masquerades for the winter ; so you see
that New Orleans is to be. as gay as the happiest-
humoured man could wish. I have been here three
days, and we have had one duel, a very private affair,
which, as it resulted in no injury, caused no excite
ment ; and last night, in the most magnificent public
saloon in the city, the pubhc bar-room of the St.
Louis; Mr. Wadsworth, in a quarrel with Captain
Carson, drew a pistol and shot him through the heart,

1S6 New Orleans.
and this surrounded by a crowd of people. He sur
rendered himself to the sheriff, who it appears was
present, and was taken to prison ; and in the morning
papers is the usual notice, inviting the friends of the
deceased to attend his funeral. So opens to me life in
New Orleans.
A Sunday in New Orleans is a novelty to a
Northerner. I do not intend to assume that it is
kept better or worse than with us — with you, I should
say — in the commercial emporium, where it is not
observed with any puritanical strictness. During the
summer, some thousands of New Torkers go to Ho-
boken, ride in the cars to Harlem, take a trip to the
fishing banks, steam down to Coney Island ; in short,
a large portion of the New Torkers spend Sunday as
a holiday. I rose early on the morning of my first Sunday in
New Orleans, which habit, acquired in travelling, had
made easy to me. The breakfast arrangements at the
St. Charles are worthy of imitation. Tou sit at the
table empty of viands, and order from a biU of fare,
when everything is brought you hot and fresh, from
Creole eggs to oysters ; and with breakfast you may
have those admirable papers, the Picayune and the
Delta, each pubhshed on Sunday morning rather than
Monday, that editors and compositors may enjoy the
day of rest, and here, at least, of recreation. Is not
this better than making them work on Sunday, when
toil seems harder than on any other day ?
I walked out into the bright sunshine : the stores were
open, it is true, but not the great warehouses. Labour

Sunday. 187
was suspended, but not enjoyment. Carriages were in
he streets, but carts and drays were -banished, and
people were dressed in their holiday clothes.
I walked to the Place d' Armes, where the music of
a mihtary band met my ear, and an artiUery company,
just returned from Texas, was going through some
evolutions, attended by the crowd of spectators which
is everywhere attracted by the "pomp and circumstance
of glorious war." The company marched out of
town for target practice, and so spent theh Sunday
in learning to defend their country when caUed
upon. As Sunday is a favourite day for fighting
battles, there is some appropriateness in these Sunday
parades. Returning from the parade, I heard a beU ringing
violently, as if for an alarm of fire or riot. I looked
around and saw before me the towers of the old
cathedral, towards which the hasty steps of many pas
sengers were tending. Entering with them, I found
myself in a church of a singularly plain and antiquated
appearance. In the porch was seated a group of ancient, grey-
haired negroes, waiting for alms, which pretty and
pious ladies stopped to give them. As I entered, I
saw the glitter of the candles burning on the altar, and
on each side a row of old paintings, representing scenes
in the life of Christ. Near the door, on either side,
were three confessionals, with a curtained place for
the priest in the centre, and on each side a nook for
the kneeling penitent. A choir composed of five or
six male voices, aU singing the same part, was chaunt-

188 New Orleans.
ing the service, an indifferent organ furnishing the
harmonies. In aU this there was nothing of the pomp and mag
nificence which one might have expected in a Catholic
city — a city as rich as New Orleans — among a people
as proud as the Creoles. But, if there was little
grandeur in the services of the church, there was
something very interesting in the appearance of the
worshippers. Never did I see such a curious mixture
of persons and colours. A radiant Creole beauty, with
coal-black eyes, long silken lashes, a complexion of the
lily, scarcely tinged with the rose, and a form of match
less elegance, dressed in black, with a gold-clasped
missal and bouquet of roses, knelt before me. On the
other side was a venerable descendant of Africa, with
devotion marked on every feature. White children
and black, with every shade between, knelt side by
side upon the pavement. In the house of prayer they
recognised no distinction of rank or colour. The
maddest abolitionist could not wish for an exhibition
of greater equality or a more perfect amalgamation,
than is to be found in New Orleans, where, as in aU
the South, the negro is treated more like " a man and
a brother" than in the North.
Three-fourths of this worshipping congregation were
females : a large proportion were of African blood ;
and here, as everywhere, the negroes are most ardent
in their piety. The females, with theh clean, stiffly
starched Sunday gowns, and handkerchiefs of red and
yeUow, not only appeared to attend to the services
with great devotion, but their children, little boys and

Creole Characteristics. 189
girls, nine or ten years old, showed a docility which, I
fear, not many of our Northern children exhibit in
religious services.
There was a horse-race, just out of town ; but I did
not go, preferring for this day to look about the city.
The coffee-houses were filled with visitors. Ladies,
dressed in gay costumes, were chatting in their balco
nies, and making theh observations on the passers-by.
Men were visiting their friends, meeting together in
groups, and talking with each other, enjoying the
pleasant air and sunshine. Strange groups every
where, and everywhere a foreign language met the ear,
for many of the Creoles wUl not learn English, and
there are thousands here who do not speak or under
stand a word of it — " natives," too ; so much natives
that they caU us Anglo-Americans " foreigners," and
are not a little jealous of our coming among them.
Indeed, the rich Creoles here are quite aristocratic and
exclusive, and refuse to mix in society with the
Americans at aU. They have their own theatre, their
own baUs, their own amusements of aU kinds — their
own city, in fact ; for except the distance, New Tork
and Paris are not more different than the French and
Tankee portions of New Orleans.
Sunday afternoon passes away in walking, riding,
social entertainments, and quiet enjoyments. The
shops are generaUy closed, excepting those which in
New Tork are kept open — those for cigars, confec
tionery, &c. But when evening comes, the town puts
on its gayest appearance. The theatres aU put forth
their best attractions. Concerts are given. The

190 New Orleans.
bUliard-rooms are in full employment, and in the
season of dancing, more baUs are given than on any
other night. It is the chosen time for every kind of
amusement, and the French theatre, one of the most
splendid in the United States, usuaUy opens the
season on Sunday night.
Sunday is kept in New Orleans — weU or UI —
according to opinions. People of the most rigid
notions soon grow accustomed to it, and learn to like
this Creole fashion. Those who feel devout can go to
church ; and New Orleans is weU supplied with places
of worship, not only CathoUc, but Episcopalian, Pres
byterian, Methodist, and Unitarian. There are those
who think that the Almighty is pleased with the
enjoyment of his creatures, and that gaiety may be
accompanied with gratitude to Him and benevolence
to theh feUow-man. But it is my duty to observe
facts, not to settle points of controversy.
But, whatever may be thought of the looseness of
Southern morals, as developed here, it is certain that,
for aU practical purposes, there is no better regulated
city in this country. Tou may walk over New Orleans
at midnight, from one end to the other, without
the slightest apprehension of danger or insult. A
lady may walk the streets alone in safety at any hour
of the evening. I have seen nothing of that display
of vice which is blazoned, by gaslight, every evening
in Broadway. I cannot learn that there are any
gambling houses, open and public, like those which
tempt every stranger who visits New Tork, and
against which the laws are never enfdrced. I have

New Orleans revisited. 191
not yet seen the first group of rowdies, like those
which have rendered the corners of some of our New
Tork streets almost impassable. From these things
New Orleans is free. If you want vicious associa
tions you must go in search of them — they are never
forced upon you ; and I am told that at the French
Theatre they who, in our Northern cities, are confined
to a particular part of the house, are entirely excluded.
There was a time, no doubt, when lawless adven
turers clustered around this city, and before the police
was organized, which they made necessary — when
New Orleans was not so weU regulated as now ; but
the Creole population is quiet, orderly, and possesses
some very interesting characteristics. Indeed, it is
notorious that the worst Southerners are Northerners.
They are the most immoral in their habits, and the
hardest masters to their slaves. Why this should be
so, let philosophers decide.
In the winter of 1859 I was again in New Orleans.
The Southern metropolis had increased in extent,
trade, and population, but in aU its essential features
it was stiU the same. The St. Charles Hotel had
been burnt, and rebuilt without its dome. Sherry-
cobblers and mint-juleps were stiU drunk in the
magnificent bar-room of the St. Louis, a circular-
domed room nearly as large as the reading-room of
the British Museum. The French side of the city
was as quiet and elegant as of old, and the American
side as bustling and noisy.
I made another visit to the old French cemetery,
where people are buried in ovens of masonry above

192 New Orleans.
ground; and every httle grave-plot is a garden of
flowers, where the relatives of.the beloved dead come
on Sundays and feast-days to hang wreaths of immor
telles upon the tombs, and pray for the souls of the
departed — " requiescant in pace /" Around the ceme
tery, forming a high thick waU, are the graves of the
poor ; each one has an opening large enough to- admit
a coffin shoved in endways. The opening is closed
with bricks and mortar. In a twelvemonth it can be
opened again to receive another corpse. AU that re
mains of the last one — corpse and coffin — is a handful
of dust, which is pushed back by the new comer. The
heat of the almost tropical sun dissipates, in one sum
mer, aU that can pass into the atmosphere, and dust and
ashes alone remain, the relics of our poor mortality.
The Mississippi was more than bank full. It was a
fearful sight to see the vast river, more than . a mile
wide, rising inch by inch until it reached the top of
the levee, and hundreds of ships and steamers were
floating many feet above the level of the streets— as
high, indeed, as the roofs of the houses in the back
streets of the town. What a deluge there would have
been if the dyke had given way ! The up country
was flooded. One of the railroads leading to the city
was submerged. One morning, when the river was
at the highest, I saw the water running across the
top of the levee in several places, and making a short
cut through the streets to Lake Ponchartrain and the
Gulf of Mexico.
New Orleans was fuU. Hotels, boarding-houses,
lodgings were crowded. The population was 170,000

Going to Extremes. 193
by census. The floating population of planters,
merchants, and visitors from the North and West,
raised it to nearly 300,000. The theatres, French
and English, concerts, baUs, exhibitions of aU kinds,
were crowded. Gold was plentiful, silver a drug.-
Having accumulated more half-dollars, the most
common coin, than I wished to carry, I was obliged
to pay two per cent, premium to get them converted
into bank-notes.
New Orleans — French and Catholic before it
was invaded by Protestant Americans — kept Sunday
in the Continental fashion, as a religious holiday.
The Creoles have not changed their ancient customs.
They go to mass, and also go to market, which, on
Sunday morning, is more crowded, more noisy, and
fuUer of Creole and negro gaiety than on any week
day. There are also mihtary parades on Sunday
morning, and the theatres are open in the evening as
at Paris. When the Tankees first went to New
Orleans, with theh Puritan ideas and habits, they
were shocked at this desecration of the Sabbath ; but
they did not fail to imitate and exceed it ; so. that the
American side of the city is now far noisier on Sunday
than the French. As the Tankees go to extremes in
everything, when they do break the Sabbath they
break it into very smaU pieces.
This tendency to extremes is shown in the fact
that Northerners, from New England or New Tork,
when they emigrate to the South, become the most
Southern, of the Southerners, and the most ultra of
pro-slavery men. As masters they are noted for theh
VOL. I. 13

194 New Orleans.
severity to theh slaves. As a rule, the Southerners
are easy and indulgent ; but Tankee adventurers, who
have made or married plantations in the South, are
hard and exacting masters. They make more bales
of cotton and more hogsheads of sugar to the acre
than others; and, of course, theh negroes must
perform more labour.
Not a few men of Northern birth have taken an
active part in the formation of the Southern Con
federacy. Mr. Tancey and Mr. ShdeU, for example,
were both from New Tork. A gentleman of New
Orleans whose hospitality I often enjoyed, and who
had a Creole wife and a lovely family of chUdren, was
a Tankee from Massachusetts, and is a brigadier-
general in the Confederate army. The Southern
cities are fuU of Northern men, and there are none
more earnestly devoted to the cause of Southern
independence. There is a charm in the Ufe and society of New
Orleans, difficult to understand and impossible to
describe. " No place like New Orleans," is the
verdict of aU who have lived there long enough to
know what it is ; and this in spite of the river that
threatens to drown you, and the swamp filled with
mosquitoes and alligators ; in spite of the yeUow fever
every three years, and months of every year with the
thermometer above ninety degrees. "I had rather
be a nigger in New Orleans, than own New Tork and
live there," would not be considered a very extrava
gant assertion in the former city. Whatever may he
the cause of the feeling, there is no doubt about the

Life in New Orleans. 195
fact. The people are eminently social, generous,
genial, and impulsive. The cUmate during eight
months of the year is also indescribably delicious.
Roses bloom, bananas ripen, and golden oranges cover
the trees in January.
There are httle traits of character which may give
a stranger some idea of the people. The smaUest coin
in circulation is the picayune, or five-cent piece.
Pennies, or cents, when brought from the North, are
used by the boys for pitch and toss, but are of no use
in making purchases. Ask a market man if his eggs
are fresh, and he wiU immediately break one to show
you, and then throw it into the gutter. A bar-room
in New Orleans wiU hold a thousand people. Men
drink a great deal — they say the climate makes it
necessary — but they also drink magnificently. In
such a bar-room there wiU be set out every day,
free to aU comers, a lunch composed of soups, fish,
roast joints, fowls and salads, with bread and cheese.
Tou eat as much as you desire, and the dime or the
picayune (fivepence or twopence-halfpenny), which
you give for the mint-julep or sherry-cobbler, pays for
aU. Liquors without measure, food free-gratis-for-
nothing, every man treating all his acquaintances,
flush times, high wages, high profits, and high
prices -. these were some of the peculiarities of New
Orleans. These great bar-rooms serve the purposes of com
mercial exchanges. They have news bulletins, and
the latest telegrams, as weU as the daUy newspapers.
Men meet here to do business, and cargoes of sugar
13—3

196 New Orleans.
and tobacco, corn and cotton, change owners over
glasses of " Old Bourbon," or " Monongahela." Here,
too, are held auctions for the sale of stocks, ships,
steamboats, real estate, and negroes. The people
think no more of the transfer of one than of the other,
as this legal transfer does not change the condition.
The negro was a slave before the sale, and he is a
slave after it. The laws of Louisiana prohibit the
separation of families, and the change is as hkely to
be for the better as for the worse. I have seen many
such sales, and never one in which the negroes sold
did not seem more interested in the price they brought,
as evidence of the good opinion formed of them, than
in any other consideration. That a man should be a
slave, may undoubtedly be a hardship ; but, being a
slave, the transfer of his service from one master to
another is no more, perhaps, than the transfer of a
tenantry when an English estate changes owners.
New Orleans, before the war, was the port of
transhipment for a vast and fertile country, larger than
aU Europe, with twenty thousand miles of river navi
gation. The Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ohio, the
Red River, the Arkansas, and theh hundred tributaries,
aU found theh outlet here. Ships went out loaded with
cotton, tobacco, sugar, corn, provisions — the hundred
products of the great vaUey. They brought the
manufactures of Europe, tea, coffee, wine, and a
thousand articles of use or luxury. Many thousands
of emigrants also came to New Orleans, and ascended
the Mississippi. There were thhty or forty thousand
Irish and Germans in New Orleans.

The Yellow Fever. 197
There was but one drawback upon its prosperity.
Once in three years on an average, for fifty years, the
yeUow fever — the dreaded vomito of the West Indies,
TeUow Jack of the saUors, the most fatal of tropical
epidemics — has visited New Orleans. It has often
appeared at Mobile, Savannah, and Charleston at the
same time as at New Orleans. It has desolated the
banks of the Mississippi at times as high as Memphis.
On the Atlantic seaboard it was terribly fatal a few
years ago, at Norfolk and Portsmouth in Virginia,
and it formerly paid occasional visits to PhUadelphia
and New Tork.
A Southern city, during the visitation of the yeUow
fever, presents a mournful spectacle. The persons
attacked are mostly strangers from the North, or
emigrants from Europe. Very few born in the South,
or acclimated by several years' residence, are its
victims. But no stranger is safe ; he may faU in the
street by day, or be waked by an attack in the night.
He is borne to the hospital, attended by the members
of a Humane Society, or the Sisters of Charity, and in
from three to five days, in a great number of cases, is
carried to a nameless grave. His coffin is thrust into
an " oven," and closed up with a few bricks and some
mortar. How fatal this disease may be among
strangers is shown in the returns of cases in the
hospitals of New Orleans : in the Tuoro Infirmary, the
deaths to the cases have been 40 '72 per cent. ; in the
Lunenberg Hospital, 52-66 per cent. ; and in the hos
pitals of the Board of Health, 33 to 47 per cent. In
one season, in which the deaths from yeUow fever in

198 New Orleans.
New Orleans were 7011, there were 3569 Irish victims
and 2339 Germans. Americans from the Northern
States, who are unacclimated, generaUy leave New
Orleans by the first of May. The Irish and German
immigrants who settle there do not leave the city at
aU, but a large percentage perish by yeUow fever and
other diseases incident to a hot and malarious climate.
From a careful study of its phenomena, I am satis
fied that yeUow fever is a contagious disease, carried
from place to place, like the smaU-pox or plague. It
cannot be shown that it arises spontaneously in any
part of the United States. It prevaUs at aU times on
portions of the tropical African coast. It exists every
summer at Vera Cruz, Mexico, and almost every
summer at Havana, Cuba. It is brought to New
Orleans from one of these places, and ordinarily
carried from Havana to Savannah and Charleston.
From New Orleans it spreads to MobUe, Galveston,
Vicksburg, and sometimes Memphis.
A rigid and effective quarantine would keep it out
of aU these places ; and it is by this means that New
Tork and Philadelphia have so long been protected
from its assaults. When these cities were attacked,
the disease began at the ship in which it was brought,
and spread from that point through the neighbour
hood. A cordon saniiaire was drawn around the in
fected district, and it did not spread beyond. A few
years ago a ship from the West Indies, having yeUow
fever on board, lay at quarantine at New Tork. One
day when the hatches were open, as the ship lay at
anchor in the Narrows, the wind blew a faint, sickly

Acclimation and Contagion. 199
odour into a Uttle viUage on the shore of Staten Island.
In a few days there was a large number of cases of
yeUow fever, and twenty-one persons died. The result
was a mob, which burned down the quarantine hos
pitals, and the removal of fever-ships to a safer
locality. When the yeUow fever has spread from New Orleans
to the villages of the interior, it has proved very fatal
to Southern residents, and even to negroes. For a
safe acclimation, people must have passed through
the contagion of the disease; they must have had
something like inoculation. It is not enough to Uve
where the disease has been or might be. A person,
too, who has passed the ordeal, and considers himself
safe, either from having had the disease, or from
having been exposed to the action of its mysterious
cause, may lose his invulnerability by living in a cool
northern chmate. This is at least the belief in New
Orleans, where Northern residents, having become
acclimated, prefer to remain rather than risk the
danger of a second exposure.
Physicians, as usual, have disputed upon the ques
tion of the contagiousness of the disease, and the
manner in which it is carried from place to place.
Commercial interests are opposed to quarantines;
people believe in such matters what it is their interest
to beheve ; but the facts are too strong for anti-conta-
gionist theorizing. The disease comes with vessels
from Vera Cruz or Havana, when the season is far
enough advanced to give it a reception — an atmosphere
in which to propagate itself. It is killed by the nrU

200 New Orleans.
hard frost. Some suppose the matter of contagion to
be of a vegetable character ; some, that it is anhnal-
cular. It is certain that, whatever it may be, the frost
kills it. As soon as the New Orleans papers announce
a black frost — for a mere hoar-frost is not sufficient —
the river steamers and raUways are crowded with pas
sengers, and in a week New Orleans puts on her winter
festivity. But there have been cases in which the
materies morbi have found protection even from Jack
Frost. In a house and room in which there had been
in the summer yeUow fever, stood a trunk which had
been opened during this period. It was closed ; frost
came ; TeUow Jack took his departure, and the house
was fiUed with people. After a httle time the trunk
was opened, the fever broke out again in the house,
and two or three persons died of it.
So death, which comes over the blue sea in ships,
and can be locked up in a trunk, may be carried about
in the pack of a pedlar. Thus, a Jew pedlar went
from New Orleans during the epidemic, when business
was duU, into the country vUlages. At the first house
in which he opened his pack the fever broke out. Its
next victims were some persons who had visited that
house and examined the pedlar's wares. The fever
graduaUy spread over the viUage, and carried off a
large portion of its population. The sanitary condi
tion of this village may have been good or bad — I
know nothing of the habits of its people — but there is
no reason to believe that they would have had the
yeUow fever, had it not been brought in the pack of
the Jew pedlar, stowed away among his silks and laces.

Mortality of Epidemics. 201
At any time and anywhere the yeUow fever is a
terrible disease. If you were to caU in, one after
another, six of the most eminent physicians in New
Orleans, or in any city in which it has prevaUed, it is
probable that they would prescribe six different modes
of treatment, and that the patient's chance of recovery
would not be improved by any. The nursing of a
Creole negress accustomed to the disease is considered
by many better than any of the usual modes of
medical treatment.
The mortality of yeUow fever is by no means uni
form : whUe it has risen in the New Orleans hospitals
to fifty-two per cent., in private practice, among the
better class of patients in the same city, it ranges
below twenty per cent. ; and I have known the mor
tality, under peculiarly favourable circumstances, to
faU as low as five per cent. If the food, the ah, and
the habits of men could be controUed, they might be
insured at a low premium against this as weU as aU
other epidemic diseases. Even the malarias of the
African coast or the rice-swamp may be met with
proper precautions. The short raUway across the
Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and
Pacific, cost the hves of five thousand men ; yet one
contractor on that work assured me that he had never
lost a man during its prosecution, because he had
insisted on certain sanitary conditions.
There was once a taU Tankee poet, named Albert
Pike, who wrote " Hymns to the Gods," in Blackwood,
I beUeve. Poetry did not pay, and he studied law,
and went to Arkansas. Here he became a thorough

202 New Orleans.
South-western Southerner. He got the confidence of
the Indian chiefs in the great Indian territory beyond
Arkansas, gained a tremendous lawsuit for them, and
when last heard of, had engaged them to join the
Southern Confederacy, . and was leading a contingent
of a few hundred warriors in one of those obscure
campaigns of the far West, of which, if he hves, he
may some day write a history.
On a visit to Washington a few years ago, at a
patriotic dinner, this poet chieftain sang the foUowing
song of his own composition, which, aside from its
other merits, may give some idea of New Orleans and
one class of its winter visitors, before the reigns and
robberies of Generals Banks and Butler : —
THE FINE ARKANSAS GENTLEMAN.
BT ALBERT PIKE.
Now, all good fellows, listen, and a story I will tell,
Of a mighty clever gentleman, who lives extremely well,
In the western part of Arkansas, close to the Indian line,
Where he gets drunk once a week on whisky, and immediately
sobers himself completely on the very best of wine ;
A fine Arkansas gentleman, close to the Choctaw line !
This fine Arkansas gentleman has a mighty fine estate
Of five or six thousand acres or more of land, that will be worth a
great deal some day or other, if he don't Trill himself too soon,
and will only condescend to wait;
And four or five difeen negroes that had rather work than not,
And such quantities of horses, and cattle, and pigs, and other poultry,
that he never pretends to know how many he has got ;
This fine Arkansas gentleman, close to the Choctaw line !
This fine Arkansas gentleman has built a splendid house,
On the edge of a big prairie, extremely well populated with deer,
and hares, and grouse ;

Tlie Fine Arkansas Gentleman. 203
And when he wants to feast his friends, he has nothing more to do
Than to leave the pot-lid off, and the decently-behaved birds fly
straight into the pot, knowing he'll shoot 'em if they don't, and
he has a splendid stew ;
This fine Arkansas gentleman, close to the Indian line !
This fine Arkansas gentleman makes several hundred bales, •
Unless from drought, or worm, a bad stand, or some other d  d
contingency, his crop is short, or fails ;
And when it's picked, and ginned, and baled, he puts it in a boat,
And gets aboard himself likewise, and charters the bar, and has a
devil of a spree, while down to New Orleans he and his cotton
float; This fine Arkansas gentleman, close to the Choctaw Hne !
And when he gets to New Orleans he sacks a clothing-store,
And puts up at the City Hotel, the St. Louis, the St. Charles, the
Verandah, and all the other hotels in the city, if he succeeds in
finding any more ;
Then he draws upon his merchant, and goes about and treats
Every man from Kentucky, and Arkansas, and Alabama, and Vir
ginia, and the Choctaw nation, and every other d  d vaga
bond he meets;
This fine Arkansas gentleman, close to the Choctaw line !
The last time he went down there, when he thought of going back,
After staying about fifteen days, or less, he discovered that by lend
ing, and by spending, and being a prey in general to gamblers,
hackmen, loafers, brokers, hosiers, tailors, servants, and many
other individuals, white and black,
He'd distributed his assets, and got rid of all his means,
And had nothing to show for them, barring two or three headaches,
an invincible thirst, and an extremely general and promiscuous
acquaintance in the aforesaid New Orleans ;
This fine Arkansas gentleman, close to the Choctaw hne !
Now how this gentleman got home, is neither here nor there,
But I've been credibly informed that he swore worse than forty-
seven pirates, and fiercely combed his hair;
And after he got safely home, they say he took an oath,
That he'd never bet a cent again at any game of cards; and
moreover, for want of decent advisers, he forswore whisky and
women both ;
This fine Arkansas gentleman, close to the Choctaw line 1

204 ' New Orleans.
This fine Arkansas gentleman went strong for Pierce and King,
And so came on to Washington to get a nice fat office, or some other
mighty comfortable thing ;
But like him from Jerusalem that went to Jericho,
He fell among the thieves again, and could not win a bet, whether
he coppered or not, so his cash was bound to go ;
This fine Arkansas gentleman, close to the Choctaw line !
So when his moneys all were gone, he took unto his bed,
And Dr. Reyburn* physicked him, and the chambermaid, who had
great affection for him, with her arm held up his head ;
And all his friends came weeping round, and bidding him adieu,
And two or three dozen preachers, whom he didn't know at all, and
didn't care a curse if he didn't, came praying for him, too ;
This fine Arkansas gentleman," close to the Choctaw line !
They closed his eyes, and spread him out, all ready for the tomb ;
And, merely to console themselves, they opened the biggest kind of a
game of faro right there in his own room ;
But when he heard the checks, he flung the linen off his face,
And sung out, just precisely as he used to do when he was alive :
" Prmdle,i" don't turn ! hold on ! I go twenty on the king, and
copper on tbe ace !"
This fine Arkansas gentleman, close to the Choctaw line !

* A famous Washington physician.
t The Crockford of Washington.

205

CHAPTER XVII.

GALVESTON.

Texas. — Routes from New Orleans. — A crevasse. — Semi-tropical
vegetation.. — On the Gulf of Mexico. — Uncomfortable
economy. — The coast. — Galveston Island. — A city on the
sands. — Grand sea-beach. — Mixed population. — " G. T. T." —
Yellow fever. — A land of promise. — Comanches. — Texan
society. — A French socialist and a frontier bishop. — Battle of
San Jacinto. — Sam Houston and Santa Anna. — A Slave
State. — Negro ball. — Perils of the Gulf- — Mouths of the
Mississippi
When you are as far South as New Orleans, it is a
pity not to get a ghmpse of Texas. It would require
a long and rough journey to see it aU, for this single
State extends over nearly twelve degrees of latitude
and longitude, and contains more than two hundred
thousand square miles (237,504) of territory ; a country
capable of sustaining the enthe population of the
United States, when aU the States were united, or
which could supply cotton to aU the manufactories of
Europe. Galveston is the principal seaport town of Texas.
Much of the trade of the Northern portion of the
State comes to New Orleans by the Red River and
Mississippi ; but Galveston is the entrepot of a great
central region, rich in sugar, cotton, grain, and

206 Galveston.
cattle. The dhect communication at the period of my
visit was by two lines of sea-steamers. One Une goes
down the Mississippi, and thence across the Gulf of
Mexico ; the other makes its point of departure at
Berwick Bay, which is reached by raUway from New
Orleans. It was a clear, bright January morning when I
crossed the Mississippi at New Orleans, and took the
train for Berwick Bay. The river, whose surface was
level with the roofs of many houses on both sides,
seemed ready to flow over its embankments. It had
done so a few months before. A crevasse opposite
New Orleans had deluged hundreds of square mUes,
and utterly destroyed for the time a great number of
plantations. A new and very strong levee had been
buUt, and the water was slowly draining off and drying
up from the swamps. The shrubbery by the roadside
was composed of the exotics of Northern conservato
ries. The most frequent was a dwarf palm, of whose
tough, glossy leaves fans and hats are made, and which
should be a good material for cloth and paper. Another
was the muskeet, of which there are scanty speci
mens in some Enghsh gardens, but which, in that
moist hot climate, grows twelve or fifteen feet high,
and is crowned by a tuft of showy crimson flowers.
This is a plant of such wonderful vitality, that when
cut down, and lying upon the grass, it wiU lift up its
head, grow with vigour, and throw out fibres from its
body for roots. There is a simUar energy of vegeta
tive Ufe in the climbing plants, as the Cherokee and
other roses, which seem to rush upon and overspread

A Gulf Steamer. 207
great trees, hke an assaulting army taking a fortress.
The tree is overpowered, and its vitality destroyed,
leaving only an immense heap of the conquering roses.
Arrived at Berwick Bay, we find the steamer lying
at her wooden pier. The station is close beside her,
and we have only to step on board. The sky is blue ;
the waters are blue ; guUs wheel about and foUow us
far out at sea, feeding on the remains of our sump
tuous dinner. It is mid-winter, but as warm as our
warmest summer day ; for we are gliding over the great
tropical cauldron that pours the warm Gulf-stream on
the Northern shores of Europe. The soft night fol
lows the bright day, and I rethe to the narrow berth
of my pretty state-room. Some Tankee economist of
space has buUt it. It is narrow — so am I. But it is
only &ve feet ten in length, and I am one inch longer.
Was ever anything so stupidly tiresome as the lack
of that one inch ? And what must it be to these taU
Kentuckians, these gaunt Tennesseans, these giants
of the Mississippi and the plains of Texas, where men
grow larger, one would think, just because they have
plenty of room for expansion ? No doubt they have
some way of folding themselves up like carpenters'
rules, or shutting up like jack-knives.
In the niorning we were in sight of land — a narrow
line of white sand along the horizon. Then came
spires and the masts of shipping. Galveston cathedral
is one of the chief landmarks for mariners. If you.
take the trouble to look at a good map of North
America, you wiU find the coast from Long Island
near New Tork to Vera Cruz in Mexico lined with

208 Galveston. '
long, narrow islands — banks of sand thrown up by the
surf, often with large bays behind them, full of fish
and sea-fowl, and giving to some portions of the coast
an extensive sheltered inland navigation. The rivers
empty into these inclosed bays ; and the inlets, when
deep enough, form the mouths of exceUent harbours.
Galveston Island, on the easterly point of which the
town is situated, is one of these sand-bars. It is forty
miles long, not more than two mUes across in the
widest place, nor twenty feet, in the highest, above
the Gulf. It is merely a long and almost perfectly
straight bank of sand, pebbles, and shells, thrown up
by the easterly gales of the Gulf of Mexico. Behind
this bar is a bay fifteen miles across, into which several
rivers empty. But for the shaUowness of the water
it would be a noble harbour. Steamboats bring cotton,
sugar, and cattle down the rivers and across this bay,
where they are transferred to ships and the New
Orleans steamers.
The pretty town of Galveston is buUt here on the
sands of the sea. The wide streets are sand, rounded
pebbles, and sheUs. The bricks and stones for build
ing are imported from the mainland. The lovely
tropical gardens, where the Pahna Christi, instead of
being an annual shrub, as at the North, grows to a
great spreading tree, where the orange-trees mingle
golden fruit and odorous flowers, and the banana was
drooping its rich clusters of delicious fruit, were made
with great trouble by scraping together the scanty
soU. Town, gardens, everything was bright and new.
Trade was brisk. Immigration poured into the country,

A Sea Beach. 209
and its great staples were flowing out. Here was the
germ of an empire.
The beach on the outer edge of Galveston Island
is one of the finest I have ever seen. It is an almost
perfectly straight line of forty mUes. It is smooth
and level, and the sand so hard that the foot of a horse
or the wheel of a carriage scarcely makes a mark upon
it. The sea-breeze is delicious, and the surf roUs up
in great waves that extend as far as the eye can reach.
In a gale the surf breaks with a sublime thunder ; and
at every shock the whole island trembles, while the
long banks of foam, bursting and breaking, have the
grandeur of a thousand Niagaras. Fancy a canter on
horseback along this line of foam, with every wave
washing your horse's feet, and the spray driving over
you in showers ! Or fancy a calmer carriage-ride by
moonhght, when the wind is off shore, or in a gentle
breeze. The young Galvestonians have fitted up car
riages with saUs to run along this beach, and in the
steady trade-wind breezes could run down to the other
end of the island and back at the rate of about fifteen
miles an hour. On a similar island, farther down the
coast, the beach, seventy miles long, is used as a post-
road, with a daily line of mail-coaches, and no thanks
to Mr. M'Adam, since the road was finished in the
time of Adam without the Mac.
At the opening of the civil war, Galveston had
increased to a population of over eight thousand inha
bitants, of such a mixture as a new town and the
entrep6t of a new and rich country was likely to
gather. There were people from every American
vol. t. 14

210 Galveston.
State, with Enghsh, French, Irish, Germans, and
Mexicans. Wherever, at one period, a smart Tankee
faUed in his business or expectations, he made himself
scarce in his ancient locality, leaving behind him only
the mystical letters " G. T. T.," gone to Texas. Such
materials make an enterprizing, go-ahead population,
where there is anything to work upon. Here were
Enghshmen ready to import goods, buy cotton, or
raise loans to buUd railroads, realizing ten per cent.
interest, with a trifling risk of repudiation; here were
Germans, keeping httle shops, or plying modest handi
crafts, careful of theh gains, and getting rich where an
Irishman would starve. And of these latter there
was no lack, deep in bricks and mortar, great with
pickaxe and spade, and doing, as elsewhere in the
South-west, work which men would not allow theh
negroes to do, because they cost money. The Irish
man gets his two doUars a day. Suppose he falls
sun-struck, as they do by scores, even in New Tork—
it is no loss ; no one misses him. But if anything
happens to the negro, his master loses a thousand or
fifteen hundred dollars, and he is sincerely regretted
and deeply lamented.
Galveston is subject to yeUow fever, when it is
brought there from New Orleans, the most likely
place, or from Vera Cruz or Havana ; and it is very
fatal. It matters not that there is only clean sand,
bright water, and pure breezes — as healthy a situation,
to aU appearance, as need be ; the vomito comes and
takes its victims. The acclimated escape, the newly-
arrived of Northern or European birth are more than

Texan Fertility and Salubrity. 211
decimated. A homoeopathic physician assured me that
his was by far the most successful mode of treatment.
Some would say that every physician in the place
would probably have told me the same, or the answer
might by possibUity be that this proved that the less
that was done in a medicinal way the better the chance
of the patients.
Since Texas seceded from Mexico and was annexed to
the United States, from which she has in turn seceded,
possibly to go back to Mexico, under the new regime,
she has been a land of promise. Her soU is of great
fertility, and the climate so soft that people can sleep
under the trees the year round. Consumptions and
rheumatisms are unheard of. Away from the low and
malarious region on the coast, no country in the world,
probably, is more healthful. Meat wUl scarcely pu-
trify in its pure atmosphere, and thousands of square
mUes were found by the explorers covered with parks
and prairies, with streams of soft water, and scarcely
requhing the hand of man to make a second Eden.
Flowers cover the earth, grapes and delicious fruits
grow spontaneously, whUe the whole country was
stocked with deer, wUd turkeys, horses and cattle.
Texas is at once one of the finest cotton, wheat, and
grazing countries in the world.
No doubt the country has its drawbacks. The
Comanches on the western borders are the most nu
merous, enterprizing, and terrible of the Indian tribes.
Mounted on theh trained mustangs, the fleet and un
tiring horses of the prairies, they swoop down upon
the settlements, kiU aU who oppose them, capture
14—3

212 Galveston.
women and chUdren, plunder the goods, stampede
the cattle, and are off hke a whirlwind, leaving de
solation and death behind. It is only by keeping
a large force of Texan rangers, who are a match for
the Comanches, upon the frontier that the settlements
are safe.
In the smaUest and most distant or out-of-the-way
American towns the society, though limited as to
numbers, is as good in other respects as in the largest
Atlantic cities. The clergymen, lawyers, physicians,
bankers, and merchants are likely to be among the
most devoted, ambitious, enterprizing, and inteUigent
of theh classes. At a dinner-table at Galveston I
met, among others, two remarkable men, who are
sufficiently public characters to warrant mention. One
was the Roman Catholic Bishop of Galveston, now
Archbishop of New Orleans ; the other, M. Victor
Considerant, a French sociahst of the school of Fourier.
Both conversed freely upon theh specialities. The
bishop had a flock scattered over a territory as large
as France, and he could preach to them and administer
spiritual consolations in EngUsh, German, French,
Spanish, and, if I mistake not, some Indian dialects.
His annual visitation of his diocese consumed several
months, and was made on horseback to stations hun
dreds of mUes apart. Now it was an old Spanish town;
now a new German settlement. One day he would
faU in with a party of poor Mexican Indians, driven
into Texas by civil war, or the raids of the Comanches.
They might be destitute and almost starving; the
bishop could do no less than distribute among them

Socialist Enterprises. 213
the provisions of his journey, and be himself obliged
to appeal to the hospitality of some wandering tribe
of Apaches. Thus, traveUing through those vast
regions, camping at night under a tree, or sharing the
wigwam of the savage, the shepherd fed his flock.
M. Considerant had hoped to found in Texas a French
Phalansterian colony, where, with a genial climate,
an ample and fertile domain, and the largest liberty,
he expected to see the triumph of attractive industry,
and a magnificent social reorganization. He bought
a tract of land large enough for a principality, and
brought together his colony, but had been compeUed
to modify his views as to the practicability of an early
realization of his plans of social reform, and was now
endeavouring to colonize his lands in the usual civilized
fashion, trusting to the future enlightenment of his
colonists for the foundation of a society from which
repulsive toU, degrading poverty, and aU other social
evils should be for ever banished. He was not the first
French sociahst who had looked to Texas as the scene
of a triumphant social experiment. Cabet had been
there before him, had faUed, and led his colony, or
such as consented to foUow him, to Nauvoo, purchased
of the Mormons, on the Upper Mississippi.
The Texan War of Independence was one of the
most remarkable on record. The recognized, if not
real, hero of the war — Sam Houston — defeated the
invading Mexican army, and took General Santa Anna
prisoner in the decisive battle of San Jacinto. That
battle, which decided the fate of a country larger than
Great Britain and Ireland, was fought between a

214 Galveston.
Mexican advance-guard of 1600 men, commanded by
Santa Anna, and the whole Texan army of 783 men,
including a cavahy force of 62, and a field-battery of
two six-pounders, under General Houston !
Contrasting these numbers with the great armies
now engaged in the civil war in America, it is curious
to observe the result of this battle. The whole
Mexican force was annihUated, scarcely a single
soldier escaping. Of nearly 1600 men who commenced
the action, 630 were kiUed, 208 were wounded, and
730 were made prisoners. Of the Texan force only
eight were killed, and seventeen wounded. Santa
Anna fled from the field of massacre, rather than
battle, and was taken a prisoner next day, whUe
wandering alone, unarmed, and disguised as a common
soldier. His captors did not know him. He asked
to be taken to General Houston, who was found
sleeping on his laurels and a blanket, under a
tree, with a saddle for his piUow. The hero of San
Jacinto received his captive with dignity, and offered
him a seat on a medicine-chest. When Santa Anna
had quieted his nerves with a dose of opium, he said
to General Houston — " Tou were born to no ordinary
destiny; you have conquered the Napoleon of the
West !" This speech, and others equaUy adroit, with
the most solemn promises of the acknowledgment of
Texan independence, saved his life, forfeited by the
cruel massacres of Fannin's men and the garrison of
the Alamo.
Fifty thousand men were kiUed and wounded in
the battles before Richmond, with less result than this

Texan Slavery. 215
action, in which the whole number engaged was less
than twenty-four hundred !
Though largely colonized from the Northern and
Eastern States, Texas is a thoroughly slave State. No
free negro can lawfully reside within its boundaries.
A short time before my visit to Galveston a law had
been passed, banishing every free negro or person
having a perceptible show of negro blood from the
State, under penalty of being reduced to slavery. I
inquired particularly the effect of this enactment, and
found that few negroes had left the State in conse
quence. They have strong local attachments. What
they did was to choose their masters, selecting per
sons in whom they had confidence, and becoming
nominaUy, and in fact legaUy, their property. They
were as free as ever, only that they paid over to these
masters a stipulated sum out of their wages, and the
masters became responsible for theh good behaviour,
care in sickness, and support in old age. Two negroes
in Galveston were excepted by common consent from
the operation of this law. One was the most fashion
able barber in the place, and the other a musician and
dancing-master, who had taught them all to dance,
and played the fiddle at every social party.
There were several fashionable assemblies given
during my stay in Galveston, but the one most talked
about, and beyond comparison the most gorgeous in
costume and extravagant in expenditure, was the
grand baU of the coloured aristocracy. The make-
believe negro minstrels are weU enough in theh way.
Negro life has been passably weU represented, under

216 Galveston.
the auspices of Mr. Dion Boucicault, on the stage ;
but a genuine negro baU in a Southern American city
must be seen. No description can do it justice, and
no counterfeit give more than a faint idea of the
reality. The dress, the manners, the ahs and graces
are all exaggerations of polite society, with the natural
insouciance and abandon of the negro character. The
law which reduced the whole coloured population
to the same condition was considered a wise one by
the whites, and I am not aware that it gave much
trouble to the coloured race. Mr. Lincoln has very
honestly expressed the common feeling, North and
South, that the two races cannot live together on
terms of equality. In other words, free negroes are a
nuisance. Mr. Lincoln's own State of IUinois has
forbidden the immigration of free men of colour, and
Mr. Lincoln, as President of the Free States, wishes
to banish them out of the country. He regrets the
necessity, but stiU he recognises it, and strangely
contemplates the deportation of four miUions of negroes
from the country he hopes to see united, free and
happy. Leaving Galveston for New Orleans, I did not forget
the short berth of the Berwick Bay steamer, and took
one of the larger vessels, and the route of the Missis
sippi. I watched the embarkation of a few hundred
bales of cotton and a large herd of Texan cattle,
going to supply the markets of New Orleans. Then
out once more on that bright blue sea, pursued by a
cloud of gulls that foUowed us ten hours on the wing,
flying fifteen miles an hour without reckoning theh

Wild Gulls and Geese. 217
wheelings and alightings in the water to gobble up
every particle of food thrown overboard from the
steamer. I lay in my berth and watched them through
a glass, flying just alongside, keeping up with the
steamer without apparent exertion, and wondered what
their pectoral and dorsal muscles were made of. But
do not the wild geese fly from Hudson Bay to Florida
in autumn, and back again in spring ? I am sure I
have seen millions of them in long regular lines,
careering across the sky from horizon to horizon ; seen
them aU day, flock after flock, and heard them in the
deep night, flying high with the drifting clouds, nor
caring for the tempest. How they find their way
and back again — how they know when to start, early
in early seasons, and late in later, telling us of long
cold winters, or bright early springs — how they form
their squadrons and are marshaUed by their old gander
leaders, who shaU teU? I do not know how the
salmon find theh way back to the streams in which
they were spawned and hatched. That they do so is
"enough for man to know," — enough, at aU events, for
Mr. Frank Buckland and the Piscicultural Society.
The Gulf was rolling with long, easy sweUs, and
waves scarcely white-capped by the soft and gentle
breeze. Nothing could be more beautiful and luxuri
ous than this little voyage ; but the Gulf is not always
in this quiet mood. I have seen it swept by tempests.
The steamers of this line, though strong, fleet boats,
have had theh losses. One was lost by coUision with
another of the same line ; one was burnt at sea ; a
thhd turned completely over in a hurricane, and went

218 Galveston.
down with aU on board except one old negro, who
was picked up eight days after, just ahve, floating on
a bale of cotton. But for him she must have been
added to the long catalogue of ships that have saUed
gaUy out upon the great sea, and " were never heard of
more." It was deep in the evening when we arrived off one
of the passes of the Mississippi, fired a gun, and
blew our steam- whistle for a phot. As often happens,
a dense yeUow fog hung over the river's mouth — a fog
worthy of the Thames. Heaving the lead, tolling
the beU, blowing the whistle, and guided by the horns
of the ships and pUot-boats, we slowly felt our way.
A pilot came at last, and took us over the bar and
into the river, where we cast anchor by the oosy
bank — playground of the aUigator — which separates
the river from the sea. Here we lay until the fog
lifted in the morning, then up anchor and up river.
What a river it is ! For thirty mUes there is only a
narrow embankment of mud between the river and the
gulf on either side ; for thirty mUes further the gulf
on the eastern side is close at hand, but the river is
above it. Higher up we come to more soUd land,
and the fringe of beautiful sugar-plantations begins.
At sunset we pass the famous battle-ground where
General Jackson " beat the British ;" and the sphes
and domes and great crescents of shipping and steamers
teU us that we are once more at New Orleans.

219

CHAPTER XVIII.
MOBILE.
A pleasant voyage. — Moonlight and music. — A fiery Southerner.
— Negro manners. — A glimpse at Mobile. — A Southern lady
and the Prince of Wales. — Four generations. — A live patri
mony.
The steamboat route from New Orleans to MobUe is
one of the most delightful on the Gulf of Mexico.
The distance is about a hundred and fifty mUes,
through Lake Ponchartrain and along the coast of
Mississippi ; whUe a chain of islands, extending the
whole distance, gives a wonderful variety to the
prospect, and makes a continuous harbour or safe
shelter from the Gulf typhoons.
We start from New Orleans by a short raihoad,
traversed in ten minutes, through a swamp. But this
swamp is picturesque and interesting. Long streamers
of moss hang from the gloomy cypress-trees. The
undergrowth is of stunted palms. Bhds of bright
plumage and unrivaUed song are seen and heard
among the flowering shrubs. We pass through a
fishing-village, out to the end of a long pier, and
walk on board the long, light, low-pressure steamer,
buUt strong enough for this sheltered sea navigation,

220 Mobile.
and fleet and powerful enough to run off eighteen or
twenty mUes an hour without perceptible exertion.
The negro porters, probably the property of the
company, place my luggage on board, and I step to
the clerk's office, pay my five doUars, and receive the
key of my state-room. In a few moments we are
careering across the blue waters of the lake, whose
low shores are scarcely visible. The sphes of New
Orleans are fading in the sunset.
Then comes a supper, set out for two hundred
people, with great elegance and a greater profusion.
The strange and delicious fish of these Southern
waters, and the wonderful oysters, are among the
choicest luxuries, but nothing is wanting necessary to
a substantial and elegant repast. The sun is down,
and up rises the yeUow moon. The blue southern
sky is fuU of stars, and the consteUations which are
here seen in the zenith are there low on the northern
horizon. The Pole-star rises but thirty degrees, and
then gently sinks into the northern wave. It is a
glorious night : the sea is like glass, only that long
sweUs come in from the Gulf, whUe the faint land-
breeze is loaded with the odours of the jessamine,
which now fills the forests with its blossoms, and
floods the whole ah with its fragrance.
How our fleet boat cuts through the water! I
walk forward to her stem, before which rises a slender
stream — a httle fountain, which falls in a sUver
shower in the moonlight, with halos of faint lunar
rainbows ; aft, we leave a long narrow line of ghtter-
ing foam. Our rapid arrow-flight scarcely more

Night Scene on the Gulf. 221
disturbs the sea than the flight of a bhd over its
waters. Music on the waves ! Music and moonlight, beauty
and fragrance on the star-gemmed southern sea. A
group of ladies and gentlemen has gathered around the
pianoforte in the great saloon. The fair Southerners
are showing their musical accomplishments. Hark !
it was " Ben Bolt" just now, and now it is " Casta
Diva ;" the next wiU be some negro melody, or " Old
Dog Tray." But this is not the only music. I hear
the mellow. twanging of the banjo forward, and the
pulsing beat of dancing feet keeping time to the rude
minstrelsy. Between decks are groups of negroes —
men, women, and children — who have come down the
river from Kentucky with emigrating masters, and are
bound to new plantations up the Alabama. Some are
asleep ; others are reclining in picturesque groups,
while a ring of whites and blacks is enjoying the
music and dance. The owners of the negroes are
making them comfortable for the night, or talking the
eternal pohtics and chewing the eternal tobacco.
I faU easUy into conversation with one of them.
He is a fiery Southerner, and there is no measure for
his contempt of Northern pohticians. Trust Douglas ?
Never ! The time has come when the South must
control her own destinies. The Northern democracy
must join with the South, and elect a Southern Pre
sident, or the Union is gone .for ever. They have
borne too much; they wiU bear no longer. There
was much more, but it is not needful to recite it. It
was the quiet and gentlemanly but determined ex-

222 Mobile.
pression of the spirit that has aheady covered the
gory battle-fields of that fair Southern land with
thousands of her devoted sons, that has carried
desolation and mourning into thousands of Southern
homes. When I questioned about slavery and the condition
of the negroes, he pointed significantly to the groups
lying around us.
" There they are," said he ; " look at them. We
have four millions of such ; and in some way we must
take care of them. If we can contrive any better
method for aU parties concerned, you may be mighty
sure we shaU adopt it. We claim that we, who live
among our negroes and were raised among them,
understand their condition and necessities better than
people thousands of miles away. We are aU in the
same boat, and we must sink or swim together."
It was clear that his mind was full of the sense of
injury and injustice — clear that he, hke aU Southerners
I ever met, beheved that he understood the whole
subject of his own domestic institutions better, and
could manage it more wisely, than his near or distant
neighbours. I took one more look at the soft bright scene
through which we were gliding, and rethed to my
state-room. At dawn we were passing up MobUe
Bay. The great cotton ships were lying at anchor
outside the bar, some nhles below the city, and the
steamers were bringing down theh loads of cotton.
If MobUe had but a channel of twenty-five feet of
water over her bar, she would be the great cotton city

Negro Manners. 223
of the South. The bay closes in, and we ghde up to
the wharves. It is early ; few are stirring, and the
city is almost sUent ; but the view up the long, shaded
garden streets, hned with white villas, with their
green blinds, is enchanting.
It is too early for breakfast, but the steward has his
smoking coffee-urn on a table set out with small cups,
and he offers us a cup of cafe noir and a biscuit before
we go on shore. The passage-fee has paid for every
thing, but I pass a dime to the negro steward with
my empty cup. It is worth it to see the grace and
dignity of his salutation of thanks. I reaUy think
there cannot be found anywhere a more perfect
manner than among the better class of Southern
negroes ; but why the manners of the Southern slaves
should be superior to those of the free negroes of the
North, I wUl leave it to others to determine. The
fact is unquestionable. I have not been to Liberia or
Jamaica, and cannot teU how it may be where negroes,
with the advantages of civilization, are masters of the
situation, and have no antipathies or rude repulsions
of race to contend against. There may be great
refinement of manners in Hayti. It is certain that
the habitual deference of the negro to the white, and
the corresponding condescension of the white gentle
man or lady to the negro, produces a kind of courtli
ness of behaviour which is not seen in the free com
munities of the Northern States.
MobUe is one of the oldest cities of the Southern
States. Lemoine d'Iberville, a brave French officer,
planted a colony at Biloxi, on the coast west of

224 Mobile.
MobUe, in 1699. In 1701 he removed his colony to
the site of the present city of MobUe. The Spanish
had, a few years before, buUt a fort at Pensacola.
Mobile is older than New Orleans; but I wUl not
write its history. It has now a population of thirty
thousand, a large commerce, and as it Ues at the
mouth of two rivers, navigable for hundreds of mUes
through the richest cotton regions of the South, it is,
with respect to this trade, one of the most important
of American cities. The streets are broad and finely
buUt, with a profusion of shade-trees and shrubbery.
The drives around are exceedingly fine, as the land
rises graduaUy from the sea. The hedges are of the
Cherokee rose, which chmbs over everything and
covers the trees with its rich foliage and flowers.
There are, as in aU American cities, immense hotels,
accommodating hundreds of guests, and an abundance
of churches, the principal one here being the Roman
Catholic Cathedral. The Catholics, descended from the
oldest French and Spanish families, are numerous and
influential. They have a fine hospital, orphan asylums,
a Jesuit coUege near the city, where the young men
are educated, and a spacious Convent of the Visitation,
with its boarding-school for young ladies.
It is not easy to write of the social character of a
city without seeming to betray social confidences. I
shaU try not to give offence. One of my first visits
was to a lady, who, though quite at home, not only
in New Orleans and New Tork, but in half the capitals
of Europe, is a thorough Southerner, and takes special
pride in MobUe. She is a hvely writer, but stiU more

A Southern Lady. 225
hvely in conversation. She speaks all necessary lan
guages, and knows everybody in the world worth
knowing. In her drawing-room, surrounded by the
souvenhs of her travels and acquaintances, and listen
ing to her hvely anecdotes, you are sure to meet, under
the most favourable circumstances, just the people you
most wish to see. And the Uttle lady, who has made
for herself a position quite regal, is not obhged to be
exclusive. Tou are as hkely to see with her and be
introduced to an actress, a singer, an artist, or a man
of letters, as a mere person of fashion, titled or other
wise. Indeed, if her manner was warmer to one than
another, her voice kinder, and her smile more cheer
ing, it was to the struggling genius, who needed just
such encouragement and just such influence as she
could give.
When His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales
was in New Tork, this lady chanced to be there, and
was invited to a seat in the private box set apart for
His Royal Highness, who was observed conversing
with her with singular animation. Some one said to
her, afterwards, "How was it that the Prince, so
sUent with others, talked so much with you ?"
" For a very good reason," she answered. " Tou
asked him how he hked the country and what he
thought of us? — questions which embarrassed him.
I asked him about his mother — to whom I had been
presented — and his brothers and sisters. Of whom
should a young man talk with animation, if not of
those he loves ?"
It was this delicate tact that made her one of the
VOL. I. 15

226 Mobile.
pleasantest women I have ever met ; and this, with
her warm Southern manners and hospitahty, made
her a universal favourite. She has written a clever
book of foreign travels ; but a briUiant woman finds
her best sphere in society.
In the suburbs of MobUe I remember, and shaU
never forget, a group of white cottages, shaded by
•immense hve oaks, stretching out theh giant arms a
hundred feet. It was a cluster of gardens. The
proprietors could sit under theh own vines and fig-
trees, for there were plenty of both. Here hved one
of my hospitable entertainers, in this patriarchal
suburban Eden, surrounded by his chUdren and grand
children ; and in one of the cottages hved his mother,
a woman of eighty, whom this son of sixty kissed
with the tenderness of a lover as often as they met.
It was a pleasant thing to see this famUy of four
generations gathered at dinner, or aU kneeling together
at church. The gentlemanly young negro who
waited upon me seemed a humble member of the
famUy. The cook was an artist in her department
of the Franco- American school, with some African
modifications. It would require a painter's pencU,
with a palette plentifully charged with ivory-black, to
do justice to the boy of eight who waited upon the
table, or the younger apprentice of six, whose impor
tant business it was to wield a long whisk, and make
war on every fly that dared to ahght in that vicinity.
One day we made up a nice party to go on a smaU
steamer down the bay. It was a charming voyage.
The princess of the fUe was a Httle girl nine years

A Yankee Overseer. 227
old, an orphan granddaughter of my host. He was
taking her to see a score of negroes, who were part of
the property left her by her father,' and of whom he had
the care. " I did not hke to hire them out," said he.
" Hired negroes are liable to be worked too hard, and
badly treated. A man does not take so good care
even of a hired horse as of one he owns. So, as I had an
island down here, with plenty of clay on it, and bricks
were in good demand, I hired a Tankee overseer, and
set the boys to making bricks. The women cook and
take care of them, and I go down every week or two
to see how they get on, and carry them some little
comforts, tea, coffee, and tobacco."
" And how does the Tankee overseer ?" I asked.
" Very weU, now. He wanted to drive too hard at
first, and thought the negroes ought to work as hard
as he did. He pushed them so hard, and kept them
on such a short aUowance, that two of the boys stole
a boat one night, and came up to town to complain
of Lhim. They said they couldn't stand it. But I
promised to make it aU right, and went down with
them. I told him he must not expect negroes to
work as hard as white people ; and he has done very
weU since. These Tankees are great workers them
selves, and hard masters to other people."
The little lady was joyfully received by the whole
coloured population. She distributed her presents of
tea, tobacco, and gay kerchiefs among her property,
•listened to theh stories, heard a long impromptu song
composed in her honour, with a banjo and breakdown.
accompaniment, and we left in the golden sunset,
15— a

228 Mobile.
her kind, graceful, and even . affectionate good-byes
answered by showers of thanks and blessings.
The whole scene and the events of my visit were
vividly recaUed to my mind by a letter I lately
received from the gentleman whose hospitaUty I so
greatly enjoyed. " We are in the midst of a long, I
fear, and terrible war," he wrote ; " but we are united
and determined. My sons and sons-in-law are with
the army, and when there is a caU for more soldiers
I am ready to buy me a pah of revolvers, and foUow
them. We may be defeated — we never can be
conquered." Beautiful MobUe, ere this many of thy hospitable
homes are shrouded in mourning, and many of thy
genial hearths are desolate !

229

CHAPTER XIX.
UP THE ALABAMA.
A steam organ. — The rivers. — An Irish steamboat captain, and
how he came so. — A crooked river. — Planters and negroes. —
Selma. — Montgomery. — African negroes. — Plantation Life. —
A cemetery.
It was a soft, bright, warm evening in March (which
corresponds to the June of this colder clime) when I
took my way down the broad streets of Mobile, bound
up the Mobile and Alabama rivers to Montgomery,
the beautiful capital of the state, and, for a time, of
the Southern Confederacy.
As I approached the pier, the ah was fiUed with
the music of a steam organ on one of the boats, which
was played by a German musical artist, engaged by
the year, at a handsome salary. It is a strange music
that fills the air with a vast body of harmony, carry
ing with it the impression of the power that gives it
birth — in the range of long cylindrical boUers — of
which the organ is the melodious coUection of escape
pipes and safety valves." Some are played by machi
nery, like street barrel-organs. This had a finger
board and organist.
The Mobile river, which is but an extension of the
deep bay into which flow the Tombigbee and the

230 Tip the Alabama.
Alabama, is broad and deep, and was now bank full.
There were scarcely any visible shores. We steamed
through a vast forest, which opened before us in pic
turesque reaches of the richest semi-tropical foliage,
and the ah was thick with the odour of the orange-
blossom and the jessamine. The two fine rivers which
unite to form the Mobile, have, like it, preserved theh
Indian names, but how the tribe that found for two
of them such musical designations as Mobile and
Alabama ever came to name a river the Tombigbee, I
shall leave to some Choctaw or Cherokee to find a
satisfactory explanation. Perhaps I do the aboriginal
savages injustice. The Americans are not slow at
corrupting names when they can make them sound
more familiar. This very word, Tombigbee, if I
mistake not, is a corruption of an Indian word, which
it resembles in sound ; the word signifying a blow-gun.
The Southern steamer, " Bueneta," was known by the
steamboat men as " the Bone-eater ;" just as asparagus
is popularly known as " sparrow-grass." In the early
times aU names had meanings.
The captain of our steamer was an Irishman — taU,
handsome, eloquent, and thoroughly and enthusiasti
cally Southern American in his views and feelings.
For twenty years he had steamed up and down the
Alabama, and he could not have been more devoted
to his adopted country, or the section to which he
belonged, had he been born upon the banks of the
river. As we sat forward of the pilot-house, on the pro
menade deck, enjoying the soft and perfume-laden

The Captains Story. ¦ 231
evening breeze, he told me his story. When a boy
of nineteen, he found himself, a raw immigrant, with
five doUars in his pocket, on the banks of this river,
looking for work ; and the first, hardest, and roughest
he could find was that of a deck-hand on a steamboat.
He became one of a gang of white and black, who
stood ready to land and receive freight, take in wood,
and feed the furnaces. This hard and rapid work
came at aU hours of day or night, and the fare was as
hard as the work. I have seen the men, a group of
negroes on. one side of the boat, and of the white
hands, mostly Irish or Germans, on the other, eating
theh bread and bacon, and drinking black coffee from
an iron pan, seated on piles of wood or bales of cotton.
But the wages, to a poor Irish boy, were a strong
inducement. They gave him eight pounds a month,
and found, in a rough fashion ; bacon for food, and for
his bed a dry goods-box or cotton-bale. He went to
work, and was so sober, active, and intelligent, that
the mate had no excuse to knock him into the river
with a biUet of wood, as was the custom with some of
them. He had been a week on the boat, when, one dark
night, a fire was seen, and a shout heard, on the bank
of the river. The mate would not land at the incon
venient place, but sent Patrick ashore in the yawl.
Standing by the signal fire at 'the river-side, attended
by two or three grinning negroes, was a planter, who
handed him a package, and said, " Here is thirty-four
thousand doUars. Give it to the captain or clerk, and
ask him to deposit it for note in the Planters' bank, as

232 Up the Alabama.
soon as you get in. TeU them not to forget it, as it
is to pay a note that falls due day after to-morrow."
Patrick put the money into his bosom, and pushed
off into the dark and lonely river. Doubtless he might
have got ashore, and away ; and doubtless he thought
of it, as he felt the fortune in his bosom ; but he pulled
straight for the boat, as she lay, blowing off steam in
mid channel. And whUe he rowed he thought of
what he must do when he should get on board.
"What was it aU about?" asked the mate, as he
sprang on the low deck.
" A message for the captain, sir," said Patrick.
" Then go into the cabin and give it to him, and be
quick about it," said the not over-polite officer.
Patrick went up the companion way to the cabin,
on the second deck, where he found the joUy captain,
with a group of planters and merchants, busy at a
game of poker, and more busy with the punch. He
turned to the clerk, who was deeper in both punch
and poker than the captain.
" Faith, an' this wUl never do," said Patrick. " If
I give them the money to-night, they wUl lose it at
poker, and never remember it in the morning." So
he went forward on deck again, and stowed the
package of bank-notes at the bottom of his clothes-
bag in the forecastle, if so smaU a hole can be dig
nified by such an appeUation.
In the morning, when the officers were awake and
sober, Patrick handed over his money and message.
" What is aU this ?" said the captain ; " where did
you get this money ?"

The Alabama River. 233
" I went ashore in the yawl for it last night, sir."
" And why did you not bring it to the office at
once r
" I did, sh ; but you and the clerk were both very
busy." The passengers, who had been engaged in the same
hne of business, had a hearty laugh.
" Toung man," said the captain, " how long have
you been on this boat ?"
" A week, sh."
" And how much money have you got ?"
" Five doUars, sh."
" Very weU — go to your work."
In three weeks Patrick was second mate ; in a year,
first mate ; and not long after, captain ; and now, as
we sat talking on the Alabama, he had a wife, chil
dren, a plantation, and two or three steamboats ; and
thought Alabama the greatest state, and MobUe the
most promising city in the world.
The Alabama flows through one of the richest cotton
countries in America. It winds about as if it had
taken a contract to water or drain as much of the
State as possible, and give a good steamboat landing
to every plantation. Our general course from MobUe
to Montgomery was north-east, but we were often
steaming for hours south-west, and in every other
direction. The distance, as the crow flies, is a hundred
and sixty mUes ; by the river it is httle less than four
hundred. The banks of the river are low in some
places ; in others high and precipitous, and every
where covered with the richest and most luxuriant

234 Up the Alabama.
vegetation. There were a thousand landscapes in
which a painter would revel.
The passengers were a curious study for the tra-
veUer. Here was a swarthy planter, taking his
newly-purchased gang of hands up to his newly-
bought plantation. He had purchased a thousand
acres of wUd land for twenty-five thousand doUars —
five thousand down. He had bought four or five
families of negroes at New Orleans, twenty-five
thousand more — half cash. And now he was ready
to clear away the forest, and raise cotton; to buy
more negroes, to raise more cotton, to buy more
negroes, to raise more cotton ; and so on, untU thed
of the monotonous accumulation.
There were Virginians, also, who had been spending
the winter in New Orleans, and were now returning
before the hot season should commence. They were
attended by their body servants ; and nicer, better
behaved, more inteUigent, gentlemanly and ladyhke
people of colour it would be difficult to find anywhere.
If there is such a thing as genius for service or ser
vitude, it is developed in these " hereditary bondsmen,"
who care so httle to "be free," that they wUl not
"strike the blow," even when urgently invited to
do so.
We had pohticians and preachers, and three Sisters
of Charity from the hospitals of New Orleans, going
home to recruit, a thousand mUes to theh mother
house in Maryland. AU over the South these Sisters
travel free. Where there is yeUow fever they have
friends, and no Southerner would touch theh money.

Montgomery. 235
We stopped at Selma long enough for a ramble
through its broad and shaded streets. It is built in
too grand and ambitious a style, but its export of
cotton is so large, that the money must be spent in
some way, so they build great blocks of six-storey
houses. The town is watered by artesian wells of
great depth, which throw up an abundant supply.
At last we are at Montgomery. It is a beautiful
Uttle town, of ten thousand inhabitants, buUt upon
more hUls than Rome, with deeper vaUeys between
them. It is a city of palaces and gardens; not
crowded into a narrow space, but spread out broadly
over the hills and vaUeys, with wide streets, handsome
villas, elegant shops, and such gardens as only the
South, with its glorious wealth of foliage and flowers,
can give. A large and handsome domed state-house
crowns one of the finest eminences.
Montgomery impresses the traveUer with its beauty
and riches. It is the centre of one of the finest cotton
regions, in the finest cotton state — a state of sixty
thousand square miles— r-and the plantations, which
stretch away on every side, were in the highest state
of cultivation. Every negro could make five or six
hales of cotton, besides raising his own corn and
bacon. A hundred negroes, therefore, besides their
own support, made five or six hundred bales of cotton,
worth twenty-five or thirty thousand doUars, which
represents the clear profit of a weU- conducted planta
tion. The yearly export of the single town of Mont
gomery was 106,000 bales, amounting to 5,300,000
doUars a-year. WeU might it be prosperous and rich.

236 Up the Alabama.
There may have been poor people, but I saw none.
In a thousand mUes of that country one never sees a
hand held out for charity. On every side is abounding
wealth. The population of such a city is Uke nothing
in Europe. The middle class is smaU — the lower class
is wanting. There is more wealth, style, and fashion
in a town like Montgomery, of ten thousand inhabi
tants, than in a European town of eighty or a hundred
thousand. When I arrived in Montgomery, the good citizens
had a new sensation. Since the abohtion of the slave
trade, no negroes had ever been imported from Africa,
untU the owner of the yacht Wanderer took a fancy
to buy a smaU cargo at Dahomy, and distribute them
as an experiment among the planters of Alabama.
They did not seU for much ; as there was risk in the
purchase, few cared to try them. There was one
native African boy at Montgomery; a bright httle
feUow enough, a pet with his master, of whom he
had become very fond, and the httle savage was
learning the language, manners, and customs very
rapidly. There was no need to punish him. It was
only necessary to threaten to send him back to
Dahomy. He would fall on his knees in great dis
tress, and earnestly beg to be saved from so terrible
a misfortune. It is sometimes represented in Enghsh papers that
negroes have been smuggled into the Southern States,
since the African slave trade was abohshed in 1808.
The small cargo of the yacht Wanderer was the only
one I ever heard of. The planters, I beUeve, do not

The Cotton Fields. 237
wish to depreciate the money valuation of theh negroes
by importation from Africa, and they do not want the
trouble of training savages, when they have a race
aheady weU advanced in its enforced pupUage to civi
lization. The slave traders of New Tork and Boston
seU theh negroes in Cuba or BrazU, when they have
the luck to seU them. When the negroes have the
good fortune to be rescued from slavery by British
cruisers, they are taken to the West Indies or British
Guiana, and parceUed out to the planters as apprentices,
to become, it is hoped, in due time, free citizens and
loyal British subjects, who can have apprentices of
theh own in the same fashion.
During my visit to Montgomery I made several
excursions into the surrounding country and among
the plantations. It was in the early spring, and the
fields were being ploughed for the cotton planting.
The ploughing was mostly done by the mules and
women. They took it very easy. I could not see
that they hurried to the fields or in the fields. The
overseer planned and directed the work. He rode
from field to field, when it was going on, and saw, no
doubt, that the men with their hoes, and the women,
driving the mules, or guiding the ploughs, did their
work properly. He had a whip, useful, no doubt,
for man or beast, but I never chanced to see him use it
on either. I have no doubt that negroes are whipped
like white people — soldiers, saUors, wives, and chUdren
— boys at school, and apprentices under hard masters,
but I never saw it. I do not doubt that there are
Degrees in the Southern States. How can I, after

238 Up the Alabama.
six months reading of London pohce reports? But
if I wished to paint a picture of fat and careless enjoy
ment, it would be a portrait of a young negress I saw
riding afield on her mule, on a plantation in Alabama.
Her figure, attitude, expression — aU told volumes of
a care-free Ufe of easy, saucy, animal enjoyment.
Montgomery, hke most of the considerable towns
in America, has its cemetery laid out hke a park or
pleasure-ground, and is becoming filled with ambitious
marble monuments. A portion of the ground is set
apart for negroes, and they, too, have theh grave
stones, which record theh humble virtues. I was
struck by the original form of a marble monument
which an honest German had raised to an adopted
son who had been drowned in the river. The epitaph
was so peculiar that I copied it : —
Stop as you pass by my grave. Here I, John Schockler, rest
my remains. I was born in New Orleans, the 22nd of Nov., 1841 ;
was brought up by good friends; not taking their advice, was
drowned in this city in the Alabama river, the 27th of May, 1855.
Now I warn all young and old to beware of the dangers of this
river. See how I am fixed in this watery grave ; I have got but
two friends to mourn.
What Montgomery now is, or may be in the future,
I know not, but I shaU always remember it as a bright,
beautiful, elegant, and hospitable city, and worthy, from
its refinement and hospitality, of a prosperous and noble
destiny.

239

CHAPTER XX.
FROM CLEVELAND TO MEMPHIS.
American names. — Railway cars. — A Chinese party. — A New
York belle and a Mexican general. — Monotonous scenery. —
Cairo. — A model steamboat. — Life on the Mississippi. —
Memphis. — Ice. — Negroes out for a holiday. — Theatre and
floating circus. — Negro enjoyments. — Vile habits. — Churches
and convents. — Slavery couleur de rose. — Conquest and con
fiscation.
As I write, this beautiful little city of the South may
be given to the flames by its own people, or by the
sheUs of its Northern invaders. When I think of its
probable fate, it rises before me hke a picture, and I
see again the sweeping torrent of its great river, the
shore Uned with busy steamers loading with cotton,
the precipitous bluffs, or aUuvial banks, rising a
hundred feet from the river brink, the streets, the
sphes, the viUas and gardens of a lovely town, and a
fertile and beautiful land.
Memphis — the name carries us back thirty cen
turies to Egypt and the Nile. Our Memphis is of
to-day, and carries us across the ocean to America and
the Mississippi. When the old world peopled the
new, the emigrants took with them the names of
the places they discovered or peopled. The Spaniards

240 From Cleveland to Memphis.
and French drew heavUy upon the calendar. In the
West Indies and Spanish America we have San
Salvador, San Domingo, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe. The
French, in Louisiana and Canada, gave the names of
saints and European cities, or adopted Indian desig
nations. Thus we have St. Lawrence, St. Louis, New
Orleans, Montreal, Ontario, Niagara. The Enghsh
settlers of the American colonies at first took English
names, and the oldest towns are caUed Jamestown,
Torktown, Richmond, Charleston, Portsmouth, Ply
mouth, Boston, Exeter, Cambridge, Hartford, Albany,
Baltimore, Hanover, Orford, and a hundred others.
These are repeated over and over. The names of
several of the States evince their EngUsh origin, as
New Hampshhe, New Tork, New Jersey, Maryland,
Virginia, so named in honour of Queen Elizabeth, the
Carolinas, and Georgia. The Dutch, German, and
French settlers also gave theh -own famUiar names to
theh settlements. But as the number of towns and
viUages increased, it was necessary to have more
names, and people adopted those of every famous city
in the world, from Babylon, Nineveh, Thebes, Mem
phis, Troy, Athens, Rome, Antioch, Carthage, Jeru
salem, to Lisbon, Madrid, Lyons, Genoa, Florence,
Smyrna, Moscow, and so on to Pekin and Canton.
A few hours' ride on a New Tork raUway wUl carry
you through the famous cities of Troy, Utica, Rome,
Syracuse, Amsterdam, and Geneva. As the proper
names of the eastern hemisphere became exhausted,
and the Washingtons, Jeffersons, Jacksons, and other
popular American names had been repeated in every

Origin of Names. 241
State, another rich supply was found in the often
musical designations of the aboriginal languages.
These were sometimes resorted to even in the early
history of the country. Four of the great lakes
retain theh ancient names of Ontario, Erie, Huron,
and Michigan. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Dela
ware, Ohio, Kentucky, IUinois, Wisconsin, Tennessee,
Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa,
Kansas, Minnesota, and Oregon are Indian names of
States. Indian chiefs and tribes have given names
to hundreds of towns and rivers. Writers have
animadverted upon the bad taste of some of these
designations, but the Cantons and Cairos, Romes and
Londons, are certainly as good names as the Smith-
towns, JonesviUes, and Pittsburgs, by which the early
settlers of hundreds of obscure viUages made their
names immortal.
Let us return, or rather proceed, to Memphis. It
was a long journey there. I was in the pretty town
of Cleveland, on the south bank of Lake Erie, in Ohio,
when the summons came. The distance is about
eight hundred mUes, and I had my choice of many
routes. I could go for a hundred miles to the head
of the Ohio, and the rest of the way by steamer ; I
could take a steamer at Cincinnati. , I could go west,
by Chicago, to the Mississippi, and so down that
river ; or I could take the most rapid route, by rail
across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to Caho, and
thence on the Mississippi.
The cars, as the Americans designate their raUway
carriages, on the road from Cleveland to Cincinnati,
vol. i. 16

242 From Cleveland to Memphis.
are among the nicest I have ever seen. They are not
only brightly painted, gUded, and upholstered, and
furnished with retiring-rooms, but are warmed in
winter, cooled in summer, and thoroughly ventilated
always, in a manner that could scarcely faU to satisfy
a limes correspondent. In the warmest days of an
American summer, with the thermometer at a hun
dred and the train enveloped in clouds of dust, these
cars are clean, airy, and cool. By ingenious
machinery a constant current of ah is cooled and
washed clean from dust by being made to pass through
showers of water. In winter these cars are warmed
and VentUated with hot ah, suppUed in great abun
dance by a suitable apparatus.
These cars, it is true, are not very exclusive. They
seat fifty or sixty passengers. The "gentlemanly"
conductor walks through the entire train to examine
tickets, when it is in rapid motion ; so the boy who
seUs newspapers, books, and sugar-plums has free
access, and the coloured gentleman who supphes the
passengers with water, where that luxury is not kept
in weU-iced reservohs in every car. But the lack of
exclusiveness is compensated to the traveUer who
wishes to see the people of the country he is passing
through. In the car in which I was seated there
were near me, as I gathered from the conversation, a
judge, a member of congress, and an ex-govemor of
some State. They were talking politics very freely.
On the seats before me were a middle-aged Chinese
woman, who could speak a Uttle EngUsh, and two
chUdren, a bright boy and girl some ten or twelve

Fellow Travellers. 243
years old, who spoke nothing but Chinese, though
their father was an American. They had been sent
from China to Kentucky under the sole charge of their
Chinese nurse, who was a queerly-dressed but most
estimable and trusty-seeming personage, where they
were to be educated under the care of their antipodal
grandparents. The enterprising Kentuckian had made
a fortune in China and married a Chinese wife. She
could speak no English, and the chUdren had learnt
only their mother tongue. It was curious to study in
the faces and actions of these two bright chUdren the
intermingled characteristics of the two races.
Two persons on the seat behind me* were of scarcely
less interest. One was a New Tork lady, young and
pretty to the last degree, of the most delicate type of
American beauty, with its pearly complexion, exquisite
features, and httle hands and feet. She was dressed
for a long journey, and in a fashion that was singu
larly perfect. Her face was thoughtful as well as
beautiful, her manner perfectly self-possessed, and a
Uttle that of a spoiled child, and she had a wonderful
faculty of wrapping her pretty person in a fuU supply
of shawls and making herself comfortable. Her
travelling companion puzzled me, both in himself and
in his relation to the fair lady. He caUed her " Mees
Fannee," and treated her with a mingled poUteness
and famUiarity. She kept him to EngUsh as much as
possible, but he shied like a restive horse into French
and Spanish. He turned out to be a Mexical general,
whose name I had often seen in the newspapers, on
his way from New Tork to take part in a civU war.
16— a

244 From Cleveland to Memphis.
then in progress, and his somehow cousin, Mees
Fannee, was going to New Orleans under his escort to
join her married sister.
Arrived at Cincinnati, we took the western road for
Caho. Forests dark and drear, newly-cleared farms,
and newly-buUt vUlages, are the monotonous accom
paniments of a Western American journey. The
prairies have a monotony of theh own. Tour eye
searches aU round the horizon for the joyous blue
peak of a far-off mountain. Tou cannot even see a
tree. The raUway itself is tiresome in its straight-
lined and dead-level uniformity. A deep cut, a high
embankment, a -heavy grade, or a sharp curve, would
be a rehef. The only variety we had was that of the
violent motion caused by the displacement of the ties
by frost. This was so great at times as to set aU the
cars dancing, and almost to throw the passengers from
theh seats.
After six hundred mUes of raU — and some of it of
the roughest — we arrive at that httle, forlorn, sunken
fragment of a city, Caho. It is buUt upon a point of
land recovered by huge embankments from the floods.
of the Ohio and Mississippi, which here form theh
junction, and it is important besides, as the Southern
terminus of the Illinois Central raihoad. Here lay the
steamers from Cincinnati and St. Louis, waiting for
the arrival of the trains with Southern passengers. I
chose the finest and fastest from St. Louis. What a
luxury to the tired and dusty traveUer was that great
palace-like boat, with her saloon two hundred feet
long, light, lofty, and elegantly furnished ; rich carpets,

A Mississippi Steamer. 245
soft lounges, huge mirrors, cut-glass chandeliers,
pictured panels, marble tables, vases of flowers, piano
forte — everything to give repose or promote enjoyment.
I was shown to a large and thoroughly-furnished state
room, as comfortable as any bed-chamber need be.
The tables were set for breakfast from eight to ten
o'clock, and every one ordered what he required from
a printed bUl of fare, containing a great variety of
dishes. It was a Southern boat, and the negro
waiters were perfectly trained to their duties. They
spring to anticipate your wishes, they gently suggest
some favourite dish, they seem dehghted to make
your meal agreeable.
After breakfast there is the promenade on deck,
with the ever-changing panorama of river scenery;
the lounge on the balconies, with the new friend or
novel; a game of chess or cards in the saloon, or
music. So we glide along tiU the early dinner at
three o'clock. This sumptuous meal is served up
with aU the formaUties. Oval tables are set across
the saloon, each table for twelve persons. Every
name is written upon a card, and placed beside his
plate. A careful clerk has assorted the whole com
pany with the nicest care. Each table has its own
party of persons suitable to each other. The courses
come on in due order, with aU the luxuries of fish,
flesh, and fowl, and an admhable dessert. Tea and
supper are served at seven o'clock, and after the tables
are cleared the waiters, who are aU musicians, play an
hour of quadrilles, waltzes, &c, and the passengers
dance if they are so inclined. Then music and con-

246 From Cleveland to Memphis.
versation grow Uvely aft, and cards stiU livelier for
ward. One passage fee pays aU expenses. No waiter
expects a fee. The only extras are boots and porter.
At the end of a long trip, ladies usuaUy give a smaU
gratuity to the chambermaid.
On a high, bold bluff, we descry two mUes of hand
some buUdings, and our boat rounds to, so as to bring
her head up stream, and in a few moments we land at
Memphis. The shore is thronged with hacks and
porters. The hotels are not half a mUe away, and the
fare demanded is the modest sum of ten shillings.
The Southerners are devoted to free trade. I have
known New Orleans cabmen to ask and get five
pounds for taking a load of passengers a few rods.
It was late at night, and in rather a heavy shower :
in fact, the rain amounted to an inundation, and the
water in the streets was two feet deep. The excuse
for high fares at Memphis was, that it was muddy.
There was no mistake about that. The streets
are broad, the side walks weU laid, the buUdings fine,
but the streets had never been paved, and the stumps
of the forest trees were in some of the pubhc squares.
Paving was a difficulty. In the aUuvial valley of the
Mississippi stone is rare. Flag-stones for the side
walks are imported from Liverpool as baUast to the
cotton ships. The clay loam of the finest streets of
Memphis was cut into ruts, two feet deep, by the
mule teams and waggons which brought the cotton
from the raUways to the river.
How beautiful the city was, how lovely the country,
with its viUas, gardens, and flowering and fragrant

A Summer Luxury. 247
forests around it, I cannot describe. The soU is rich ;
the chmate bright and genial. Roses bloom aU the
winter in the gardens, and the cotton and maize grow
abundantly in their season. Money is plentiful;
Wages are high ; there is work for aU in that land of
plenty: so it was before the war. Criminals and
paupers are almost unknown. The former earn more
than theh expenses, and the latter are scarcely a
burthen. In the long and almost perpetual summers of the
South, ice is a luxury of the first order. Every morn
ing the ice-cart comes round as regularly as milkman
or baker : it is seen on every table. Stored in great
warehouses, buUt with double waUs, fiUed in with
spent tanbark or sawdust, it is made to last from year
to year, even in a chmate where the thermometer
ranges for weeks at nearly a hundred degrees. But
whence comes the ice? A thousand miles up the
river the winters are long and cold. The ice, two
feet in thickness, is cut out in blocks, and stored up
for the opening of navigation. Loaded in • immense
flat-boats or rafts of boards, it floats down with the
current to Memphis. Two men, on each flat-boat,
keep the frail craft in mid-channel, signal the steam
boats that might run them down, and lazily whUe
away the weeks of this slow and tedious voyage.
Mr. Lincoln, the present President of the United
States, is said to have been engaged at one time in
navigating in this manner the very river down which
he is now sending his victorious gun-boats.
If Memphis needs ice to cool her Uquids, she needs

248 From Cleveland to Memphis.
also fuel to roast and boU. The steamboats and
locomotives have burnt off the forests, but there is an
abundance of coal around the sources of the Ohio.
Tou see it in seams, ten feet in thickness, cropping
out of the high banks of the Monongahela, needing
only to be picked out and sent down a broad trough
to the flat-boat by the shore. The coal floats down
with the current Uke the ice, a thousand or two
thousand mUes, and lights the grates and furnaces of
Memphis and New Orleans.
The first Sunday spent in a gay Southern city is a
curious social revelation. Tou walk out toward even
ing, the sky is blue, the ah is balm, but a thousand
rainbows of gay and flashing colours have broken loose ;
aU negrodom has put on its wonderful attire of finery,
and come out to take the ah. Slavery has its fascina
tions, and one of these is to see the whole negro
population of a rich city like Memphis out on a
Sunday afternoon. The negroes not only outdo the
whites in dress, but they caricature theh manners;
and sabla beUes and sooty exquisites appropriate the
finest walks, and interpret the comedy of life in their
own fashion.
There is a handsome theatre at Memphis, very
fashionably attended when there are attractive stars.
The coloured population, of course, is suitably pro--
vided for, and takes an intense satisfaction in the
drama. The negroes are, perhaps, even more fond of
the circus ; and I have seen a full gallery noisUy
enjoying the make-beheve negro minstrels. But the
chcus, with its trained . horses, spangled finery, and

A Floating Circus. 249
clownish antics is, perhaps, theh strongest attraction.
One came up the river from New Orleans whUe I was
at Memphis. It was a complete circus, with ring,
boxes, pit, and gaUery, a full stud and company, aU
propeUed by steam. It steamed from town to town
along the thousands of mUes of the Mississippi and
its branches, staying a day or two at one place, and
weeks at another. When its great steam organ,
which could be heard three mUes, announced its
arrival at Memphis, the whole juvenUe and negro
population was on the qui vive. I was visiting at the
residence of a gentleman, two mUes in the country.
In came Harry, a handsome black boy, fat and lazy,
who would go to sleep currying his horse or over his
rake in the garden, with his — " Please, massa, de chcus
am come."
" WeU, Harry, suppose it has come, what then ?"
" Please, massa, give me a pass to go and see it."
" A pass ! Ay, but who is to pay ?"
" Oh ! I'se got two bits for de ticket."
So the good-natured massa filled, up a blank pass,
which would aUow Harry to be abroad after nine
o'clock at night without being taken up by the
pohce. Harry was hardly out of the Ubrary before there
came another visitor, a black little nursery-maid, some
twelve or fourteen years old.
" Please, massa," said she, in the familiar, wheedling
way of chUdren and slaves, "Harry's goin' to de
circus." " And you want to go, too ?"

250 From Cleveland lo Memphis.
"Tes, please, massa."
" I'm afraid you wiU get into trouble. It's a good
way, and you wiU be out late.'
" Oh ! no, massa ; I wont get into no trouble, I
wont, indeed : I'U keep by Harry, please, massa !"
" Have you got any money ?"
" No, massa ; you please give me two bit, massa."
Of course, the two bits came, and with them another
pass for the circus.
The wealth and importance of the cities of Southern
America are not to be estimated by their population.
Menrphis, in its palmiest day, had only twenty-two
thousand population, but the wealth and business were
immense. There were five daily papers, and many
other periodicals. The stocks of goods were large,
the commercial buildings spacious, the style of Uving
fast and luxurious.
A European traveUer is astonished to see so weU-
dressed, and in many respects so weU-bred, a people
given over to such a vile habit as the constant and
profuse chewing of tobacco, with its disgusting ac
companiments. The floors of raU-cars are deluged,
the parlours of hotels and cabins of steamboats are
covered with huge spittoons. The floor of the court
house in Memphis was covered more than an inch deep
in sawdust, and when the audience at the theatre ap
plauded with stamping'of feet and canes, the dust that
rose from the floor was an impalpable tobacco-powder,
which set the whole house sneezing. The nastiness
of this horrid American custom could scarcely have a
stronger illustration. I remember another instance,

A Horrid Custom. 251
however, of a more ludicrous character. A crowded
Western audience was Ustening in breathless silence to
a popular speaker, and the only sound that could be
heard in the pauses of his declamation was a rapid,
heavy, and continuous shower of tobacco-juice that
feU upon the floor, aU over the. haU, and soon ren
dered it a broad lake. In the hush of a deep tragedy,
in a New Tork theatre, there comes up the crackling
sound of hundreds of persons eating pea-nuts — a sound
like that of a great drove of hogs eating acorns in a
Western forest ; but the pattering shower of tobacco-
juice is a stranger noise, as weU as a more disgust
ing one. But the traveUer must learn to overlook
national pecuharities, and not to condemn a people for
one or two singularities.
Memphis was, and I hope stiU is, a beautiful city.
As usual in America, there are churches in abundance.
The finest were the Episcopalian and Roman Cathohc,
standing near neighbours, with rector and priest on
the most friendly terms. Then came the Presbyterian,
Methodist, Baptist, &c. There is also a very hand
some Jews' synagogue, where I heard an eloquent
discourse, by a famous Rabbi from Cincinnati, and
some very fine music.
The planters, professional men, and merchants, whose
vUlas beautify the suburbs for miles, were fuU of lavish
Southern hospitaUty. No one could expect to find
in a new country so many beautiful and luxurious
houses. ' One of the most picturesque places near
the city was a Dominican convent and academy,
where I got a good view of a hundred or more

252 From Cleveland to Memphis.
young misses, mostly planters' daughters, sent here"
to be educated in this sylvan paradise by the white-
robed daughters of St. Dominic. Four-fifths of them
were Protestants : but a large portion of the youth of
the South are educated in Jesuit colleges and the
female convents of various religious orders.
Slavery, as seen by the traveUer in the South, pre
sents only its softest and most amiable aspects. There
is something fascinating in the respect with which
every white person is treated, and the obsequious
alacrity with which he is served. Every negro, to
whomsoever he may belong, must be respectful and
obedient to any white person. The superiority of
race is asserted and acknowledged. If there are hard
ships and cruelties in this servitude, they are rarely
seen by a stranger. The negroes are careless and
happy, or stolid and stupid. Some are trusted with
untold gold — some, I am sure, rule theh masters and
mistresses, and have things pretty much theh own way.
The servants of old famUies, where generations of
black men have served generations of whites, have aU
the pride of famUy and ancestry, and look down with
aristocratic contempt upon the common niggers of the
nouveaux riches. That slavery has either a strong
fascination, or some redeeming features, may be judged
from the fact that English, Irish, and the Northern
American emigrants to the South, whatever theh
former opinions, generaUy foUow the customs of the
country, and become the owners of slaves.
Short as was my stay, I looked back from the deck
of the steamer that carried me to New Orleans not

Federal Occupation. 253
without a sigh for the beauties of Memphis, as they
glowed in the radiance of the setting sun, and, all
golden-hued and splendid, slowly faded from my view,
tUl darkness feU upon the woods and waters, and sUence,
broken only by the roar of steam and the rush of our
sharp prow down the rapid river.
Since the above was written, a change has come
over the scene. When the Federal supremacy on the
sea was extended to the great rivers of the West,
Memphis feU before the fleet of gun and mortar-boats
that descended from Caho. When Island No. 10
and Fort Pillow had been evacuated by the Confede
rates, Memphis was at the mercy of the mortar fleet.
The whole river would have been opened to the
Federal steamers but for the successful defence' of
Vicksburg. Memphis was occupied by ' a Federal
garrison. Some Union men were found, but the
greater portion of the male population was with the
Confederate army, whose scouting parties are often in
sight of the city. The clergy who dared still to pray
for the success of the Southern cause were sUenced.
The property of rebels has been confiscated, and the
city is held under the threat of destruction if an at
tempt is made to retake it.

254

CHAPTER XXI.

WASHINGTON.

James K. Polk. — A sad capital. — The President's levies. — Houses
of Congress. — Strangers' galleries here and there. — Senators
and representatives. — Congressional customs. — Lobby agents
and contractors. — North and South. — Monuments.
I made my first visit to Washington during the Pre
sidency of James K. Polk, in whose behalf I had
written campaign papers, made innumerable speeches,
got up torchlight processions, and done good service
in the usual American fashion of pohtical partisanship.
As President Polk was chosen by a rather close vote,
I might have claimed the honour of having secured
his election ; but, as a thousand others worked as hard,
and perhaps did as much as I, it was hardly worth
whUe to presume much upon my services.
Certainly, I did not go to Washington to get an
office. The crowd that rushed to the Federal capital
for that purpose had nearly aU gone home again — one
in a hundred satisfied, ninety-nine disappointed.
There were a few left, too hopeful to give it up, or
too poor to get away.
Washington to my mind is the saddest place on the
American continent. It is a mockery of the great

The President's Levees. 255
city it was intended to be by its founder — an un
finished ruin, which has no past, and is not hkely to
have any future. The public buUdings are generaUy
weU planned, and of magnificent proportions. The
site of the Capitol, where the two Houses of Congress
assemble, is one of the finest I have ever seen. I hke
the architecture of the General Post-Office and the
Patent Office. Its collection of models, and the curi
osities brought home by WUkes' Exploring Expedi
tion, wUl repay a careful examination.
Every stranger in Washington, and every resident
who chose to do so, attended in those days the weekly
receptions, caUed levees, of the President. Mr. Lin
coln, who has a life-guard to attend him, may have
introduced different customs. There was no ceremony,
and no introduction was required. ¦ If you are an
American, you are the political equal, or rather the
master, of the President. The White House, his
palace, is your property ; he is your tenant, and you
have a right to caU and see him. If you are a
foreigner, it is his business to extend to you the hospi
talities of the country.
So, when the hour arrived I walked or drove, I
forget which, to the presidential mansion. Jim, the
Irish porter, who had been there since the days of
General Jackson, probably, asked my name, and
announced me. The President — the veritable Toung
Hickory, sixty years old, I think, about whom I had
written so many briUiant leading articles and made so
many eloquent speeches — received me with dignified
pohteness, and shook me warmly by the hand, as he

256 Washington.
did everybody, according to the American custom. I
cannot remember what he said, but he was an emi
nently gentlemanly man, and it must have been some
thing eminently proper for the occasion. It is likely
that he said it was a warm day. Then I was intro
duced, and bowed to Mrs. Polk, a taU, stately-looking
lady in a turban. I talked a few moments with
ex-Governor Marcy of New Tork, then Secretary of
War, and made myself agreeable to a lady who was
turning over some engravings on the centre table.
Then I met a friend, and we adjourned from the White
House, which we agreed was rather slow, and had some
oysters, and discussed the probabUity of a war with
England or Mexico.
My last visit to Washington was during the Presi
dency of Mr. Buchanan, and just before the outbreak
of secession. Congress was in session, and I spent
nearly aU my time in the Senate or House of Repre
sentatives. There is no trouble about admission to
either. There are spacious gaUeries around both
haUs, from which every seat is visible. These gal
leries wUl hold, I judge, a thousand persons. About
one-third of the space in each is appropriated to ladies
and gentlemen attending them. They are not behind
a screen, as in the House of Commons, looking hke a
coUection of pretty bhds in a cage. No orders or
tickets of admission are requhed of any one. The
gaUeries are always open and free to the pubhc, ex
cepting when either House is in secret session.
The contrast of the arrangements for spectators in
the British House of Commons with aU this is striking,

The Senate Chamber. 257
and not agreeable. The strangers' gaUery of the
House holds eighty persons. Tou must get an order.
Tou must go an hour or two before the doors are
opened to make sure of a seat, waiting in a stuffy hole
in one corner, and then be smuggled through dark
narrow passages by attendant poUcemen — to be ordered
out, for no discoverable reason, every time the House
comes to a division.
In the Senate Chamber I saw the presiding officer,
John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, Vice-President of
the United States, afterwards candidate of the Southern
Democracy, and later a major-general of the army of
the Confederate States ; a taU, dark, and extremely
handsome man, of the heroic type of beauty and
chivalry. Addressing him on the floor of the Senate
was Andy Johnson of Tennessee, a man who began
life in the South- West as a journeyman tailor; who
never learned to read, until taught by his wife ; who
became governor and senator, and then, a traitor to
the South, was made MUitary Governor of Tennessee,
protected by the army of General Rosecranz.
There also was the late Hon. Stephen A. Douglas,
the "httle giant" of IUinois, with his short stout
figure, and good-natured, homely, Irish-looking face.
He was the advocate of squatter sovereignty, became
the candidate of the Northern Democracy for the Pre
sidency, and was kUled by his defeat, the election of
Lincoln, and the calamities he saw in the near future.
He appeared nervous and restless, but as free and
affectionate with his friends as a big, kind-hearted
schoolboy. vol. I. 17

258 Washington.
The senator who impressed me most favourably of
aU I heard speak was the Hon. James M. Mason,
senator of Virginia, and late Commissioner of the Con
federate States to England. His capture, with Mr.
ShdeU, on the Trent, made him a sufficiently costly
representative to be made much of. A large-headed,
broad-chested Virginian, descendant of the old Cava
liers, who looked hke an EngUsh country gentleman,
he was dressed hke aU the Virginia representatives
there, in grey home-spun. Coming events were cast
ing theh shadows before, and the Southerners were
preparing for the worst. Mr. Mason looked like the
man one would hke to have for a friend, and whose
hospitalities one would be sure to enjoy.
Mr. Seward, then a senator from New Tork, sat on
a sofa with Lord Lyons, the British Minister, seem
ingly in pleasant converse.
In the House of Representatives, strange as it may
seem, the two men I best remember, after the grey
headed chaplain, were Hon. Roger J. Pryor, of Vir
ginia, and Hon. Daniel E. Sickles, of New Tork.
They sat near each other, and voted on the same side
at Washington. One became a general in the Con
federate and the other in the Federal army. Pryor
was a taU, slender, saUow boy, with long, shining
black hah, as if he had the blood of Pocahontas in his
veins ; Sickles looked worn and blasted. The guilt of
murder was on his hands, and in his thoughts the con
sciousness of dishonour, and the hatred and contempt
of many— most, I think— of those among whom he
moved.

Customs of Congress. 259
The Republican ranks in the House were full ; but
they were destitute of character or talent. They
seemed to be either grim and ghastly fanatics, feUows
raving about Slavery, or mere corrupt and mercenary
poUticians, ready to seU theh votes or influence to the
highest bidder, ready to run the ship of State upon the
breakers, and then plunder the wreck ; to set the house
on fire, and run away with the spoons.
I Ustened to a fooUsh and furious speech from
Lovejoy, one of the most ultra of the Black Repub
hcans. I did not wonder that his brother had been
kUled by an anti- Abolition mob in Illinois. His
speech was probably more violent in manner than that
which brought vengeance on Charles Summer, of
Massachusetts ; but I cannot say that it was worse in
language. I wonder now that I hoped for the main
tenance of peace, or the preservation of the union.
The customs of the houses of Congress are some
what different from those of the British Parhament.
Each day's session opens with prayer. The members
sit quietly in theh seats, and do not wear theh hats.
Pages come at theh caU, and fetch and carry what
they require. They listen to each other's speeches in
silence, without any token of approval or otherwise.
There are no " hears" or " cheers," and if an excited
gaUery ever breaks into plaudits, the Speaker threatens
to clear it. As a speaker, I think I should prefer the
British custom of hears and cheers, to the colder
decorum of the haUs of Congress.
In the lobbies of the capital, in the hotels in Penn
sylvania avenue, were the cormorants who fatten on
17-a

260 Washington.
the public plunder. There were lobby agents, male
and female, ready to give the influence they boasted of
for a consideration. There were women who knew
every secret of the Government, and the weaknesses of
many a legislator. There were men and women who
could engineer private biUs through Congress, and
could teU to a doUar how much it would cost to pass
them through both houses. There were anxious and
hungry contractors ready to pay a hundred thousand
doUars for a chance to make a million. These are sad
things for an American who loves his country, and
beheves in his Government to know. And the
saddest of aU was that I could see no remedy. Politics
had become a vast game of corruption ; it was confined
to no party. As a rule, I beheve, the Southern men
were high-minded honest men. I doubt not there
were honest Northern men as weU; but the larger
number seemed to me to have got themselves elected
to Congress for the purpose of making the most of
the position for theh own emolument and advantage.
They had paid for theh nominations — paid for theh
elections, and meant to get the worth of theh money.
How could a man see his country in the power of such
mercenary wretches without trembhng for the conse
quences ?
The high tone taken by the Southern senators and
representatives these men "could not appreciate. They
judged them by theh own standard. The South
might have bought her independence, if she had
been wUling to trade with these men or to have
trusted them. They would seU theh country entire,

The Monument. 261
or any part of it, for a sufficient consideration. Wash
ington was a sink of corruption, and this alone was
a sufficient cause for secession.
The city of Washington, and the Washington
monument, were both types of the coming fate of the
Republic. The city, magnificently planned, was never
finished ; the monument stood there, and still stands,
a half-completed obehsk, buUt up of stones contributed
from various quarters — a monument of the foUy of its
projectors, fitly presiding over the disunion that
Washington foresaw.

262

CHAPTER XXn.
NEW tork.
Steaming through the ice. — Then and now. — Mr. Bennett of
the Herald. — Editing newspapers. — A clever compositor. —
Summer enjoyments. — Mint-juleps d la Virginia. — Ice-creams.
— American oysters. — Oyster cellars. — Oyster expresses. — A
hint to the Acclimatization Society. — Oysters on trees.
I think one might write an entertaining volume of
Life in New York ; entertaining and instructive. I wiU
try to give something of what I remember of it when
I first knew it.
It was late in the winter of 1836-7 that I came
from New Haven, through Long Island Sound, and
" put-up " at the Astor House, then the finest hotel in
New Tork, and still one of the best. It was my first
steam-boat trip, and I remember it better because the
weather had been so intensely cold that the Sound,
though a part of the great sea, and from ten to twenty
mUes wide was frozen over. AU through the night
the steamer went ploughing, crashing, and grinding
through the thin ice. I lay in a berth forward, in the
cabin below deck, with only a thin plank between me
and the breaking ice. Sometimes we came to an open
glade, and then the steamer shot forward with her

Growth of a City. 263
accustomed speed, but soon we went crashing into the
ice again, and her speed was again retarded.
The Astor House, near the City HaU, and opposite
the Park Theatre (since burnt, and not rebuUt), and
the American Museum (now Barnum's), was at that
time sufficiently central. There were few shops on
Broadway above Canal-street, and the fashionable
quarter had moved no farther north-west than to get
"above Bleecker," and cluster around the Washington
Parade-ground and Union-place. The city had less
than hah its present population, and its suburbs
scarcely existed. Brooklyn was a smaU viUage ; now
it has a population of 266,000. Jersey City had a few
cottages, it is now a city of 30,000 inhabitants ; and
Hoboken, then a verdant expanse of Elysian fields,
where we went to enjoy rural solitude, is now a com
pact town of 10,000 people.
Perhaps I cannot give a better idea of New Tork at
this time than by relating my own experience of it.
My life that summer was singularly full of work, and
fuU also of enjoyment. I was in my twenty -first year,
and a perfect stranger in the greatest city I had yet
seen. I knew little of the world, or, for that matter,
of anything; but I had, nevertheless — and aU the
more perhaps — an idea, very common to young Ame
ricans, that I could do anything I chose, to attempt. I
believe I would have undertaken, at a week's notice,
to take command of a fleet or an army, or engineer a
raihoad, or start on an African exploration. I was
full of health, vigour, hope, and self-confidence, and
on the look out for work.

264 New York.
One day I saw in the Herald, a notice of an
assistant editor wanted. I wrote a very frank letter
to Mr. Bennett, of whom, and of whose paper, I knew
almost nothing. He requested me to caU at the office.
We dined together, and he engaged me at a salary of
four pounds a week, which, at that day, was consi
dered very good pay for a newspaper writer. Mr.
Bennett had conceived the idea of issuing an Evening ,
Herald, with matter almost enthely different from that
of the morning paper. He gave me charge of this,
and, after a few days, gave himself no trouble about
it ; not even looking at the proofs, and only giving me
now and then a subject, or a hint for a leading article,
I must say that he treated me extremely weU.
I went to the office in Ann-street every morning a
little after seven o'clock. The compositors arrived at
about the same time, and I wrote with one or another
at my elbow every few minutes, taking the sUps as
they were thrown off — a thhd faster than I ever think
of writing now — untU I had completed my daUy morn
ing task of three newspaper minion columns, by which
time the proofs began to come down, and they were cor
rected, and the paper put to press by one o'clock, p.m.
Sad trash it must have been I fear. But it was
mostly on local and social matters, with short para
graphs in the American fashion, hght and Uvely. It
was, besides, so perfectly in Mr. Bennett's style, in
thought and expression, impudence and egotism, that
my articles were credited to him about as often as his
own ; and he had the credit, I believe, of writing every
day the entire editorial matter of two fair-sized daUy

James Gordon Bennett. 265
papers. " What a wonderful man that Bennett is !"
people said — and they said truly. He was really, in
those days, a man of wonderful energy, talent, wit,
and various abUity. He was as remarkable for re
search and an orderly arrangement of facts, as for
spirit and egotism. Few men understood America
and American politics and politicians so weU. He
had everything to gain, few fears and no scruples.
As Mr. Bennett's handwriting was of the most
hieroglyphical character, the compositors in the office
were seldom bothered by iUegible manuscript. One
"morning, when I had not arrived as early as usual, one
of the printers came down with a slip on which he
had got stuck when about half way down. He had
made it aU out to that point. I found it to be a
sheet of memoranda of the most heterogeneous cha
racter, without any sort of connexion, out of which
he had set up a portion of a leading article. There
are type-setting machines ; and it is possible that
there might be attached to them mechanical editors,
like the barrels and clock-work machinery which play
church organs and belfry chimes. The papers got up
in this way might read a little monotonously — but do
not our party newspapers, as weU as our novels and
plays, give us the same themes over and over with
the slightest variations ?
When my daUy morning's work was done, I enjoyed
whatever there was of novelty or pleasure in our
New Tork life. Sometimes I lounged on the battery,
under the elms and wiUows, inhaling the sea-breeze,
and watching the stately ships, the graceful yachts,

266 New York.
and the noble steamers, as they swept round on theh
way up the north or east rivers, or down the bay.
Sometimes I sat on the waUs of the old fort, which
we persisted in calling Castle Garden, because it had
neither shrub nor flower, only vanUla ice-creams and
fragrant mint-juleps. Sometimes alone, or with a
friend, I took a saU-boat, and saUed out upon the
sparkling waves, and met the sweU that came with
the sea-breeze up the Narrows.
In the evenings we had music, moonlight, and
beauty. Dodworth's band played at the Atlantic
Garden, close by the Bowling-Green, where the leaden
statue of George III. had been dragged down by the
mob at the beginning of the Revolution and melted
into bullets. The hon railing is stiU there from
which the crown- shaped ornaments were broken off.
Many warm afternoons, when the thermometer ranged
near ninety degrees, I found cool walks and pleasant
breezes across the Hudson at Hoboken. Then there
were moonhght steamboat excursions, with music and
dancing. The theatres were aU open to me, and we
had a French pantomime and baUet company at Niblo's
Gardens, then quite out of town, but now in the
centre of business Broadway. There was the great
Gabriel Ravel, and there I first saw the now stUl
more famous Blondin.
There are two elements of New Tork and American
life which Enghsh tourists can never appreciate, nor
EngUsh readers comprehend. They are ice-creams and
oysters. It is impossible, in a cool climate hke that
of England, to imagine the luxury of ice, iced drinks,

A Virginia Mint -Julep. 267
and frozen food and sweetmeats, in a hot one. For
four months in a year Americans eat ices and drink
iced drinks. Ice is everywhere. The first thing in
the summer morning in Vhginia is an immense mint
julep sparkling with ice. It is passed from hand to
hand, and Up to Up. I remember weU the first time
I was offered this social glass. It was by President
Tyler. It had been brought to him early in the
morning. He drank a Uttle, smacked his lips, and
handed it to me. I had never been initiated into the
Vhginia custom. I had no objection to a mint-julep,
— rather the contrary — but had been accustomed to
have a moderately sized tumbler aU to myself, and
never to share in one of whatever Brobdignagian pro
portions. So I pohtely declined; but the handsome
daughter of one of the cabinet ministers, coming in
at that moment, took the glass, drank the president's
good health, and passed it on, untU it made the round
of the presidential party.
But the ice-creams are the most universal luxury.
They are served in pubhc gardens, in saloons that
hold a thousand people, at the large confectioners,
and on the steamboats, at the uniform price of six
pence, and generaUy of exceUent quality and flavour.
I wish I were " posted" in ice-cream statistics enough
to give an idea of the daUy consumption of New Tork
alone ; but I have no doubt that it exceeds that of aU
Europe. But far less than ice-creams can benighted Europe
understand the American luxury of oysters. The
American oyster is an enthely different bivalve from

268 New York.
its English namesake. They do not look alike ; still
less do they taste alike. Those who hke one cannot
like the other. Captain Marryatt never learned to
eat the American oyster. Dr. Mackay, under better
auspices, came to be so fond of them, that he eagerly
accepted the offer to become the Times New Tork
correspondent. Dr. Mackay is a poet, and has some
idea of a "Good Time coming, Boys." I know
nothing droUer than the disgust of Americans when
they first land in England and make a rush at an
oyster-shop. They are disgusted at the looks of the
absurd, little, round, flat jokers, and stiU more dis
gusted at the salt, harsh, coppery, acrid, and alto
gether, to theh tastes, un-oyster-Uke flavour.
The American oyster, from New Tork to New
Orleans, is large, bland, sweet, luscious, capable of
being fed and fattened, and cooked in many styles,
and is eaten for breakfast, dinner, supper, and at all
intermediate hours. Oysters are eaten raw, pure and
simple, or with salt, pepper, oU, mustard, lemon-juice,
or vinegar. At breakfast they are stewed, broUed, or
fried. At dinner you have oyster-soup, oyster-sauce
for the fish, fried oysters, scolloped oysters, oyster
pies, and when the boUed turkey is cut into, it is
found stuffed with oysters. Some of these oysters
are so large that they require to be cut into three
pieces before eating. Four or six of them, broUed and.
served with toast, reaUy make a respectable meal ; and
the larger they are the better the flavour. They are
also, in comparison with Enghsh oysters, cheap. The
regular price of a stew, containing equal to three dozen

Oyster- Cellars. 269
of natives, cooked with butter, milk, biscuit, and the
proper condiments, and served with bread and butter
and a salad, is sixpence. In New Tork we used to have
a cheap class of oyster-ceUars, where they were served
on what was caUed the " Canal-street plan," named
from a wide street which crosses Broadway, in which
such ceUars abounded; and this plan was to give a
customer as many raw oysters as he could eat for
sixpence. He paid his sixpence — Tork shUling, or
Spanish eighth of a doUar — and swaUowed the
bivalves as they were opened, until he cried
" enough !" There is a tradition that the dealers
sometimes hurried this exclamation from an unrea
sonably greedy person, by giving him an unsavoury
oyster. CeUars, or underground basements for business pur
poses, are very rare in London, and very common in
New Tork. The sandy soU aUows that buildings
which are six or seven storeys above the surface
should be two or three below. The oyster cellars, to
which you descend from the side-walk of Broadway,
are twenty-five feet in width, by a hundred or more
in length, and many of them are fitted up with great
luxury — plate-glass, curtains, gUding, pictures, &c.
Here you may have oysters in every style, and in
great perfection, as well as aU the delicacies of the
season, and aU the drinks which American ingenuity
has invented. The fashionable saloons upon the
ground floor — some of which are as large as the great
music haUs in London, and are frequented day and
night by ladies as weU as gentlemen — deal as largely

270 New York.
in oysters during the months which have an R, as in
ice-creams during June, July, and August.
But oysters in New Tork are never reaUy out of
season. As they are brought from the shores of Vh
ginia, and planted to grow and fatten, so that every
quahty and flavour can be produced by the varying
situation of the banks, so the time of planting and
the depth of water regulates the season of the oyster,
and keeps the market in constant supply.
Gentlemen living upon the rivers, sounds, and
inlets in the vicinity of New Tork, have theh oyster-
plantations as regularly as theh gardens, peach-
orchards, or graperies. Making a visit to a gentleman
whose mansion was on the bank of a New Jersey
river, I found upon his table a daUy supply from the
beds which extended along the domain and to the
centre of the river.
It is not only in seaport towns in America that
oysters are eaten in enormous quantities, but towns a
thousand miles from salt water have an abundant
supply, -and an oyster supper is as regular a thing in
Cincinnati or St. Louis as in New Tork or Baltimore.
Even before the raUways annihilated time and space
and made oyster-lovers happy, there were oyster ex
presses organized from Baltimore across the AUegha
nies, which beat the Government maUs in speed, and
supplied the most distant settlements. At Buffalo
and the lake towns the supply was managed simply
enough. They were brought by* the canal, and the
winter's stock put down in ceUars, and fed on salt
water and Indian corn-meal ; growing week by week,

Oysters on Trees. 271
as I beg to assure aU pisciculturists and the Acclima
tization Society, more fat and dehcious.
It is worth trying whether the American oyster
wiU flourish in British waters. If it would attain to
the same size, and retain its delicate flavour, and
Englishmen could forget their prejudices in favour
of their little, sharp, coppery natives, a great addition
might be made to the stock of healthy food in Eng
land. I hope the Acclimatization Society wiU act
upon the suggestion, and elect me an honorary
member, or at the very least, invite me to the next
annual dinner.
The oysters in the Gulf of Mexico are larger and
more delicious, if possible, than in the sheltered bays
of the Atlantic. They are also more abundant. On
the Florida coast they attach themselves by millions
to branches of trees which droop into the water. Tou
have only to pull up these branches and pick them off.
The traveUer's story, that oysters grow on trees in
Florida, is thus a perfectly true one. I found them
exceUent at MobUe and New Orleans, where the fish-
markets also have beautiful and deUcious varieties of
the finny tribes, quite unknown to these northern
regions. I do not say that they are better than Eng
hsh salmon and turbot, but the New Orleans and
Mobile fishermen could send two or three kinds that
would be welcome on the board, as weU as very
beautiful additions to the aquarium.
It may seem absurd enough to write so much about
a sheU-fish ; but how could I remember the city in
which I have passed so many happy days without also

272 New York.
remembering so important a part of its good cheer as
the oyster ? ReaUy, I cannot help thinking that a few
ship-loads of American oysters and clams strewn along
the coasts of England and Ireland might be one of the
best investments ever made by a paternal Government,
some of whose chUdren and subjects do not always
get enough to eat.

273

CHAPTER XXIII.
NEW YORK INSTITUTIONS.
Central Park. — The Croton Waterworks. — The Astor Library. —
Reading-room of the British Museum. — Cooper Institute. —
Squares without locks. — Newsboys. — Festivals. — Fourth of
July. — Declaration of Independence. — Patriotism and gun
powder. — Military procession and fireworks. — Dancing. —
Balls and assemblies. — American beauty.
New Tork has some institutions which I humbly
think may be worthy of imitation even in the me
tropolis of the world. The Central Park, though
commenced only a few years ago, and wanting that
grandeur of ancient trees which only time can give, com
bines the finest features of Hyde Park, Regent's Park,
and the gardens at Kew, with some points of bold
and striking scenery, which belong to none of these.
The Croton Waterworks would do honour to any
city in the world. A mountain stream of soft pure
water, forty miles north of New Tork, is turned into
an aqueduct, and led through hiUs, over vaUeys, and
across an arm of the sea, into great reservohs in the
centre of New Tork, from which it is distributed to
every house in New Tork; not once a day into a
water-butt, but into every storey of the taUest houses,
in a.fuU, free current, running aU day, if you please,
vol. i. 18

274 New York Institutions.
and giving such facUities for bathing and cleanliness
to poor as weU as rich, as exist, I beheve, in few
European capitals.
The Astor Library in New Tork, founded by the
bequest of its richest merchant, John Jacob Astor, is
not so extensive as that of the British Museum, but
it is large, weU selected, magnificently endowed, and
open and free, without restriction, to aU who choose to
enter. At the British Museum the reader must have
a ticket, given on a formal apphcation, with the en
dorsement of a respectable householder. In New
Tork you have only to walk into the hbrary.
I must " beg to observe," however, in respect to the
British. Museum reading-room, that the management
is admhable. In many months I have never faUed
to find a seat, or to get the books I required with aU
reasonable celerity. The complaints which have some
times appeared in the papers appeared to me enthely
unfounded. A few young men go there doubtless to
read novels, or to consult class-books ; but for whom
are these books intended, if not for those who make
use of them ? As for the story about ladies going
there to flirt — look at them, that is aU. They are not
at aU the style of women, so far as my observation and
experience go, who are given to flirtation. I have
never seen — not even at a Woman's Rights' Conven
tion — ladies less open to the suspicion of any such
weak-minded proceedings.
Near the Astor Library, the munificence of Peter
Cooper, another New Tork merchant, has provided
such a free reading-room as I have not been able to

Newsboys. 275
discover in this country — a room which wUl accommo
date some hundreds of readers, and is supplied with
files of daUy and weekly papers, magazines, &c, in
several languages. A free library is connected with
the reading-room, and a picture-gaUery and school of
art. The squares of New Tork, like RusseU-square and
Lincoln's-inn-fields, are aU, with a single exception,
open and free to the public ; which I certainly think
is a striking improvement upon the London fashion of
laying out a handsome square with shady trees,
pleasant walks, shrubbery and flowers, and carefuUy
locking it up against all comers.
The institution of newsboys in New Tork is a very
noisy one, but I do not well see how it can be dis
pensed with. Americans buy papers ; they never
hhe, and seldom borrow them ; they cannot wait for
news with the stolid patience of Englishmen. If any
thing happens out of the common, the papers issue
extras at any hour of the day, and at any time before
midnight. These are distributed by hundreds of
vociferous newsboys, who cry murders or battles, fires
or shipwrecks, over the city. American life is a series
of sensations, and the want of them wUl be an obstacle
in the way of making peace. When it was feared and
beheved that General Lee might take Washington,
Philadelphia, and even New York, there was no panic
in those cities, nothing beyond a new sensation, which
I beheve they enjoyed much as the spectators of
Blondin and Leotard did theh feats of daring and
danger. 18— a

276 New York Institutions.
Every great city has its festivals. London, I think,
has two— Christmas and the Derby. New Tork, and
aU the towns west of New Tork which foUow its
fashions, have three — Christmas, New-year's, and the
Fourth of July. New England retains too .many
Puritan traditions to make much of Christmas ;
thanksgiving takes its place. New Tork, which was
at first Dutch, then English, and now largely Roman
Catholic, cares httle for the annuaUy proclaimed
thanksgiving day, but makes a real festival of
Christmas ; but as it is kept much as in London or
Paris, I need not describe it.
New-year's, however, is a pecuhar festival. I think
we got it from HoUand. AU business is suspended,
more than on Sunday or any other day in the year.
From highest to lowest, from Fifth- Avenue to the
most obscure street in the suburbs, the ladies are
dressed to receive visitors from 10 o'clock, a.m., to
midnight, and every gentleman is expected to caU on
that day, if on no other, on every lady of his acquaint
ance. The streets are full of men walking or in
carriages, or sleighs, if there is snow, making caUs ;
the beUs are jingling in every house, for knockers are
obsolete ; the servants are busy attending the door ;
the ladies are surrounded with visitors, who stay five
or ten minutes, taste a glass of wine, eat a piece of
cake, or chicken, or lobster salad, or a few pickled
oysters, and then go to make more caUs. Some make
a dozen, some a hundred. The young ladies keep
books, and put down every caUer. It is the hst from
which to make out invitations for the coming year.

Fourth of July. 277
For the whole day, after the early mass in the CathoUc
churches, it is very rare to see a woman in the streets.
As night comes on, a good many gentlemen are, of
course, found to have tasted refreshments too often. The
" compliments of the season " are not so glibly given.
These mistakes are charitably excused ; and aU New
Tork, for one day, has been friendly and sociable. If
a stranger in New Tork on New-year's happens to
have a friend with a large circle of acquaintance, he
cannot do better than to accompany him in making
his caUs. He wUl never see American life to better
advantage. Fourth of July is another affair. Great numbers of
people get out of town to avoid the noise, but their
place is more than fiUed by the country people, who
flock in to enjoy what the others wish to avoid. It
is the celebration of the Declaration of Independence
when the thirteen American colonies declared them
selves " Sovereign and Independent States " — declared
that "AU government derives its just powers from
the consent of the governed " — asserted the supreme
right of revolution — the right to alter, abrogate, and
abolish any Government which failed to secure the
interest, safety, and happiness of a people.
The annual iteration of these principles commences
on the thhd of July at sunset, by the firing of Chinese
crackers, squibs, Roman-candles, rockets, pistols, guns,
and cannon of every cahbre, and the making of a
furious din and iUumination. This, however, is only
a rehearsal or preparatory service. The celebration
begins in earnest on the fourth at sunrise, when aU

278 New York Institutions.
the beUs ring for an hour, and salutes are fired from
the forts, ships of war, and by volunteer batteries.
These beU-ringings and salutes are repeated at noon,
and again at set of sun. In the meantime Chinese
crackers are fired by millions and by tons. Singly, in
packets, and in whole boxes they keep up theh
patriotic din ; whUe thousands of boys, with pistols
and pockets full of gunpowder, load and fire as rapidly
as possible, and keep up a rattling feu-de-joie, or, as
nervous people who have not escaped think, a feu-
d'enfer, in every street and square of the city. The
ah is as full of the sulphurous smoke as that of a
battle-field. The pavements are UteraUy covered with
the debris of exploded fire-crackers.
At ten o'clock the volunteer regiments, to the
number of eight or ten thousand men, parade on the
battery, and march up Broadway. The display on
this reaUy briUiant street, which runs straight as a
line for nearly three miles, is imposing. Some of the
regimental bands number seventy performers, and a
motley throng of spectators is swept along with the
torrent of sound. There are orations, speeches, dinners,
amid the din ; but it is when the last evening salutes
have been fired, and the evening beUs rung out theh
peals, that the beauty of the celebration culminates.
Exhibitions of fireworks are given in five or six of the
principal squares, at the expense of the city, each
attended with a band of music ; but aU New Tork,
and its envhons for nhles around, is one exhibition of
pyrotechnics. The whole sky is hghted with fire
balls and rockets ; they are sent up from thousands of

Dancing. 279
places. The spectacle from the roofs of the houses, or
any commanding position, is one of singular beauty ;
and this scene, it must be remembered, is not confined
to one or to twenty cities. It is repeated in every
town, village, or hamlet across the continent, and the
glorious " fourth " is celebrated with as much enthu
siasm on the Oregon and Sacramento, as on the
Hudson and the Kennebec.
H there is anything New Torkers are more given
to than making money it is dancing. In my younger
days I was fond of this recreation. During the season,
that is from November to March, there are baUs five
nights a week, in perhaps twenty public ball-rooms,
besides a multitude of private parties, where dancing
is the chief amusement. The whole city is made up
of clubs and societies, each of which has its baUs.
When Enghshmen have dinners, Americans have
baUs. Englishmen support theh charities by eating,
Americans by dancing.
There are in New Tork fifty or sixty companies of
volunteer firemen, with from fifty to a hundred mem
bers ; and each company every winter gives one or
more baUs, in which their friends are expected to take
part. There are twenty or thirty regiments or bat
tahons of mUitary volunteers, and each one has its
baU. There are hundreds of societies and lodges of
Freemasons, Odd FeUows, Sons of Temperance, Druids,
and various Irish, German, trade, and benevolent
societies, which must have at least their annual dance
in winter, and excursion or pic-nic in summer. Then
there are assembly-clubs of young men who unite for

280 New York Institutions.
the sole purpose of dancing, subscribe for a dozen
cotUUon parties, and are as exclusive, if not as select
as were once the lady patronesses of Almacks. Be
sides aU these, are the great baUs, held at the Aca
demy of Music or largest theatres — as the General
Firemen's baU, the baU of the Irish Benevolent So
ciety, &c.
The price of tickets for the greater number of these
baUs is one or two doUars — four or eight shillings ; to
the largest, five doUars, or a guinea. A ticket admits
a gentleman and two ladies. Single gentlemen's
tickets are not sold, though extra ladies' tickets may
be had by any gentleman who wishes to take more
than two. At the society parties I have spoken of,
where the lovers of dancing club for the pleasure of
dancing, and where even the names of the ladies must
be submitted to a committee of managers, tickets
cannot be bought ; but invitations are sometimes
given. I have been to such baUs where aU theh
arrangements were as exquisite as possible ; where
every gentleman was a good dancer, and every lady
was young and beautiful, and each vied with the
other in grace and elegance of costume — where the
music was as carefuUy selected as the ladies, and the
supper and wines were deUcious; where, moreover,
the most perfect respectability was as necessary to
obtain the entree as grace or beauty.
Of that grace and beauty it is a matter of some deb>
cacy to speak. Every country has its own standards
of lovehness. The American ladies, of the class of
which I am writing, have small hands and feet, exqui-

American Beauty. 281
sitely delicate and lovely forms, and are brilliant and
graceful beyond my power to describe. They are not
as robust as the EngUsh ladies ; it is impossible that
they can wear as well ; but from fifteen to twenty-five
they are inexpressibly beautiful.
This gift of beauty is by no means equaUy distri
buted over the American States ; it is as rare in the
country west of the AUeghanies as in North Western
Europe. But along the whole coast of the Atlantic
and the Gulf, and in all the country settled for more
than a century, it is common ; and in the oldest towns
and rural districts, settled for two hundred years or
more, beautiful women, or at least beautiful girls, are
so numerous as to become almost the rule rather than
the exception. No person can visit Portland, Salem,
Providence, or Baltimore without being struck with
the vast number of exceedingly beautiful women ; and
there are regions of the rural districts as wonderfully
blessed as the towns I have mentioned.

282

CHAPTER XXIV.
AMERICAN EXCITEMENTS AND SENSATIONS.
Visit of Marquis de Lafayette. — A generous volunteer. — The
American and French revolutions. — Thomas Paine. — Pro
gress of General Jackson. — Erie Canal celebration. — Becep-
tion of Mr. Charles Dickens. — The copyright question. —
The " Boz ball." — General Scott and the volunteers in the
Mexican War. — Henry Clay's last visit to New York. — Be-
ception of Kossuth. — The Atlantic telegraph. — Japanese
embassy. — Visit of his .Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.
— The real feeling. — Irish disaffection. — An outburst of
Poetry. — "The Prince;" "Before him;" "Baron Benfrew's
ball;" "Brown's Light Brigade;" a bit of blarney; at the
tomb of Washington ; Yankee God save the Queen.
New Tork, with the other American cities which fol
low its fashions, as they mostly do, even down to the
town of ten thousand inhabitants, has its occasional
excitements, as weU as its stated holidays and seasons
of festivity. Of these I remember several of a more
or less striking character.
The first great popular excitement I can re
member in America, was that caused by the visit
of the Marquis de Lafayette. This distinguished
Frenchman, at the age of twenty, leaving his young
wife, chartered a ship, loaded her with mihtary sup
phes, and offered his sword and fortune to Wash
ington. The hero of the American Revolution was
not an impulsive man, but he took the generous French-

Lafayette. 283
man to his heart, and gave him an important position
in the republican army. Lafayette proved a good
officer. He fed and clothed his naked and suffering
soldiers. When the ladies of Baltimore wished to
give a baU to the gallant and generous foreigner, he
said, " I should be delighted to dance with you, dear
ladies, but my men have no shirts." The fair Balti-
morians, then as now the most beautiful ladies in
America, laid aside aU thoughts of dancing, took up
their scissors and needles, and went to making shirts
for the naked soldiery.
Such traits made the young marquis very popular
in America. He gave to the cause aU the money he
could get of his own, or borrow of his friends. His
influence, and that of his family, no doubt had some
thing to do with inducing Louis XVI. to recognise
American Independence, and send fleets and armies to
aid in securing it. The war was over at last, and
General Lafayette returned to France fuU of Wash
ington and the New Republic of the West.
It has been said that the French Revolution was
caused by the American. No ; revolutionary prin
ciples existed in France before they took effect in
America. I believe that England was the true source
of both revolutions. The actual leading spirit of the
American Revolution was Thomas Paine, an EngUsh
man. He had more to do with giving voice, form,
consistency, and purpose to the revolution than any
other man engaged in it. He was " the pen of the
war." Few men in England or America could have
written as he wrote — none reached so large a pubhc.

284 American Excitements and Sensations.
I have no sympathy with his rehgious opinions, and
less than would be expected in an American, with his
poUtical doctrines — but justice is justice. Had not
Thomas Paine written his Common Sense, Jefferson
might never have had the opportunity to write the
Declaration of Independence. It was a trumpet-peal
that awoke the colonies to the thought of independence.
But Paine was the disciple of Rousseau, and Rousseau
gave French vitality to the ideas of English phUoso-
phers. Republicanism, the principles of the revolu
tion, born in Europe, had their experimental trial in
America, and the success of the experiment no doubt
hastened the French Revolution of 1792. Not only
Lafayette, but hundreds of French officers who had
served in America, went home fuU of enthusiasm for
the new republic of Washington. i
Lafayette, had he been a strong, heroic man, instead
of a vain and weak one, might have been the Wash
ington of the French Revolution. FaUing a Wash
ington — having instead a Danton and a Robespierre —
there came the need of a Napoleon. Lafayette was,
in the course of events, immured in an Austrian prison,
and was set free at the request of the American Go
vernment. In 1824 he accepted an invitation to
revisit America. He was received with the honours
due to the guest of the nation. I was young, but I
remember the excitement in aU our cities and vU
lages. In his triumphal tour he came as far north
as Concord, the capital of New Hampshire, and my
father and mother, in a " one-horse-shay," went fifty
mUes to see and welcome him. Bells rang, cannon

General Jackson. 285
fired, bonfires blazed, thousands of pretty maidens
strewed his path with flowers, and the grey-haired
veteran was happy to see the great nation which he
had aided to establish. The chUdren and grand
children of his companions-in-arms gathered around
him, but there were also hundreds who had served
under him — old men Uke himself — who came to em
brace theh now aged but then young and gay com
mander. Congress voted him a township of land, and
some twenty thousand pounds in money, as a smaU
acknowledgment of his sacrifices and services. The
gift seemed larger at that day than it does now, when
money is voted and expended by the thousand mil
lions — and for no good.
The progress of General Jackson, when President,
was an occasion of as great, though not such general
excitement, as that which attended the welcome of
Lafayette. What it lost in unity it gained in
intensity, by being, to some extent, a partisan mani
festation; but the hero of New Orleans had been
successful and became popular. Even when the man
is despised the President is honoured. New England
cursed and scorned John Tyler of Vhginia, the traitor,
as they considered him, to the party that elected him ;
but New England turned out none the less to
welcome John Tyler the President. So it may have
been with Andrew Jackson; but he had stronger
claims. He had been twice elected President, which
Americans have no doubt at aU is the highest place,
and the most dignified office, on this planet, and he
was also the hero of New Orleans.

286 American Excitements and Sensations.
The completion of the Erie Canal was not a national
excitement, but New Tork, and the whole country
bordering on the lakes, celebrated it with extraordinary'
enthusiasm. Every town and vUlage from New Tork
to Buffalo, along a Une of five hundred mUes, joined
in the celebration. The beUs were rung, processions
marched, cannon, placed a mUe apart for the whole
five hundred miles, fired continuous salutes, orators
spouted, and at Albany, the State capital, where the
canal enters the Hudson river, Lake Erie was solemnly
married to the Atlantic Ocean with appropriate cere
monies ; the old connexion by the way of Niagara
FaUs and the River St. Lawrence being looked upon
as irregular and Ulegitimate. The canal, with its
numerous locks and strong embankments, appeared to
the orator of the day to be the more civihzed and
respectable arrangement.
I have always thought that the reception given to
Mr. Charles Dickens in New Tork, some twenty
years ago, was a good thing ; and though it had a
tinge of extravagance and a strong spice of pardonable
vanity, and not inhuman self-glorification about it,
I am stiU of opinion that it was, on the whole, an
ovation honourable to the givers as it was to the
receiver. True, the Americans had stolen his writings. They
had printed and sold millions of copies of his books,
and laughed and cried over them, and grown the
better, it is to be hoped, for reading them, without
giving him a penny for the privilege. They gave
him praise, gratitude, honour, everything but cash.

Charles Dickens. 287
The temptation to get aU the best, as weU as the
worst, books written in Europe for nothing was too
strong to be resisted. The interests of native authors
were sacrificed to this greed of cheap literature.
Manufactures of cotton, wooUen, and hon could get
plenty of protection whUe writers vd%re starved by a
competition which was a simple denial of justice and
a simple robbery of genius in both hemispheres. No
one felt this, and no one had a right to feel it,
more bitterly than Mr. Dickens. An international
copyright twenty years ago would have doubled the
rewards of his genius and industry. Of late, the
very greed of American publishers, theh deshe to
secure a virtual monopoly and a higher price, has
given him some remuneration.
But, en passant, has there been no blame except with
the American Government ? Has British diplomacy, in
aU these years, found no opportunity to secure the
rights of British authors and artists, the men of genius
who contribute so much to the strength, the influence,
the prestige, and power of the British nation? I
cannot but think that an equitable treaty of inter
national copyright might have been secured years ago,
had British ministers and diplomatists been aUve to
the interests of her men of letters, or had authors and
artists been in any fah proportion among her ministers
and diplomatists.
However this may be, it is certain that the great
body of the American people were anxious to do
honour to Mr. Dickens, when he made his famous
visit to America. I have said that Americans are

288 American Excitements and Sensations.
fonder of dancing than of eating; they eat to live,
and hardly that. They bolt a dinner of many courses
in fifteen minutes, that they may have time for matters
of more importance. Besides, a dinner requires more
space, and can scarcely be enjoyed by as many persone.
A pubhc dinner to Mr. Dickens would not probably
have assembled more than three or four hundred
persons. A baU would allow ten times that number
to see him and be seen by him, which was, perhaps,
almost as important a consideration.
So it was a ball at the Park Theatre — the Old
Drury of New Tork — where the Cookes, and Keans,
and Kembles had dehghted us, that was fixed upon.
There was a supper, I beheve, and there was a series
of tableaux vivans, representing some of the best scenes
in the Pickwick Papers, and the earher works of the
" immortal Boz." I remember the immense crowd of
the " beauty and fashion" of New Tork that filled the
theatre from its dancing-floor, laid over stage and pit,
to the gaUery. I remember the mixed committee,
official, fashionable, and Uterary, and some who aspired
to aU these distinctions. I think Irving and Cooper
were there — I am sure of HaUeck and Bryant. Willis
sported his ringlets there no doubt ; and can I ever
forget the beaming, rosy, persphing face of the
American Korner, General George P. Morris ?
There was a rush near the door, a flutter through
the crowded theatre, a hush of expectation, a burst of
" See the conquering hero comes," and the author of
Pickwick and the Uncommercial Traveller, with aU of
humour and pathos that he between, burst upon our

The Boz Ball. 289
astonished and dehghted vision. Then the cheers,
then the waving of handkerchiefs from floor to boxes,
and aU the tiers — and tears, no doubt, of joy and
happiness — and bouquets innumerable, gave what
expression was possible to the hrepressible enthusiasm
of the hour.
I remember Mr. Dickens as my eye caught him
there, with aU that throng around him, and he the
cynosure of ten thousand eyes, aUowing each person
present the usual number. His hah was in the
bright gloss of its youthful, sUken curls ; his face was
full, and ruddy with Enghsh health — not seamed, as
now, with the thought and work of aU these years.
His dress was, I thought, sufficiently pronounced ; but
he was, on the whole, eminently satisfactory and suffi
ciently imposing. It was hard to open a passage
where two or three thousand people were crowding to
see, and be near, and, if possible, shake hands with
him, but with tremendous efforts he was escorted
around the room.
We tried to dance. Mrs. General Morris honoured
the thrice-honoured author with her fah hand for a
quadrille, but the effort to dance was absurd. I
remember being in a set with two young army officers
who were afterwards heroes in Mexico, but even their
prowess could do httle toward carrying theh partners
through the galop in such a crush. HappUy it was
before the age of crinoline, and what room there was
we made the most of; but it was hke dancing in a
canebrake, the poor girls chnging to theh partners to
avoid being swept beyond theh power to protect them.
vol. i. 19

290 American Excitements and Sensations.
Mr. Dickens came home, and wrote American Notes
and Martin Chuzzlewit, and did not show himself
sufficiently grateful, some thought, for the enthusiasm
of his reception. I have no complaint to make.
With aU that was true and just in his representation
of American hfe and manners, Americans ought to be
satisfied. They did not wish to bribe the author and
artist with theh hospitahties to be false to his impres
sions. Mr. Dickens had to choose between writing
truly, according to his perception of truth, or not at
aU ; and if he had chosen to be sUent, I fear my too
thin-skinned countrymen would not have been satisfied.
What a man writes of a country or people is a picture
of himself, as weU as of what he writes about ; and in
Mr. Dickens's accounts of people and places we find
always a great deal of Dickens.
The reception of General Winfield Scott and the
returning New Tork Volunteers from the conquest of
Mexico, was one of the most genuine and impressive
spectacles I ever saw in a city so fond of public mani
festations. The Mexican War was a series of briUiant
victories to the American arms. The forces engaged
were smaU in numbers, it is true; but there was
hard fighting, at great odds, against strong positions,
and at times with heavy losses. General Scott
entered the city of Mexico at the head of scarcely
eight thousand soldiers, mostly volunteers. Peace
was made, with the transfer of California and New
Mexico to the United States. The New Tork Volun
teers came home — what were left of them. They
had gone to Mexico a thousand strong, and two

Return of the Volunteers. 291
hundred and forty saUow, ragged, crippled boys and
men, with their flags torn in pieces, returned to
New Tork.
Of course the whole city turned out to welcome
them. There was an escort of ten thousand gaily
dressed troops of the city regiments, aU sparkle and
glitter, on whose arms was no speck of rust, and
whose beautiful flags had never been soiled by the
smoke or torn by the shot of the battle-field. Then
came General Scott, looking worn and aged with a
hard campaign; and then, in thin and straggling
ranks, with arms in slings, with scarred faces and
worn-out uniforms, came the poor boys who had
marched through a series of battle-fields from Vera
Cruz to Mexico, had seen their flag waving in triumph
over the haUs of the Montezumas, and had left
three-fourths of theh companions to the vultures or
the worms.
As they came in sight of the vast crowd of men
and women that fiUed windows and streets and pressed
to see them, the excitement became overpowering.
They marched up Broadway through a storm of
hurrahs and a shower of tears. Ladies threw theh
bouquets into the streets, which were picked up and
placed on the muskets of the soldiers. They waved
their white handkerchiefs, then wiped theh eyes and
waved them again. Poor feUows, they had one day
of glory for all their hardships.
The last visit of Henry Clay to New Tork was the
occasion of an extraordinary pubhc ovation. He was
about to rethe for ever from pubhc hfe. His last chance
19—3

292 American Excitements and Sensations.
of reaching the long-sought goal of his ambition, the
presidency, had departed. Political animosity was
ended, and aU parties united to do him honour. The
governor's room in the City HaU was made his
audience-chamber, and there the Kentucky statesman
received aU who chose to caU upon him. Thousands
shook him by the hand. The women came as weU as
the men — came in immense crowds. Mr. Clay, now a
white-haired old man, had always been a favourite with
the ladies. He would have been President long before,
if women could have voted. They were not content
to shake hands with him — they began to kiss him.
When one had kissed him, the next of course foUowed
the example. Locks of his sUvery hah began to faU
to the chck of furtive scissors, and but for the inter
ference of attendant pohcemen, it seemed probable
that he would not only have been smothered in
kisses, but have lost aU his hah into the bargain.
The welcome to Kossuth was as enthusiastic as
any revolutionist could deshe. New Tork turned
out its miUion of spectators, and its twenty regi
ments or so of citizen soldiery, to honour the iUus
trious Magyar. He made a triumphal progress, with
briUiant processions, eloquent speeches, grand ban
quets. We had an immense dinner at the Astor
House, with abundance of mutual glorification; but
it did not last. Kossuth wanted money. The
Americans were ready to spend a million — they did
spend millions in a popular manifestation, of which
he was the centre and occasion; but they did not
beheve in or care enough for him or his cause to

Atlantic Telegraph Celebration. 293
give him a tenth part of the money they were ready to
expend in dinners and processions. Besides, Kossuth
traveUed en prince. He had a suite of nearly a hun
dred persons, who drank costly wines, smoked the
best of cigars, and hved hke fighting-cocks. The
hotel hiUs were enormous ; people got thed of paying
them; the Hungarian stock feU flat, and Kossuth
escaped in disguise from the country that had a few
weeks before received him in a frenzy of excitement.
The Atlantic Telegraph celebration was as charac
teristic an affair as I remember. My countrymen
beheve — firstly, that Dr. Franklin invented electri
city ; secondly, that Mr. Morse invented the electro
magnetic telegraph ; and thirdly, that Mr. Cyrus
Field laid down the Atlantic cable. They would
aUow, perhaps, that some Enghshmen, on a sharp
look-out for good investments, took a few shares of
the stock, and that, from motives of poUcy or pohte
ness, a British Government steamer was permitted to
assist in laying the wires ; but that the real glory of
the enterprise, and its triumph, for the short time that
it was a triumph, was American, we had no manner of
doubt. Franklin, Morse, and Field were Americans ;
the telegraph was American ; and to unite Europe to
America was the greatest favour that could be done
to that old, benighted, monarchical, and down-trodden
continent. The success having been achieved, was, of course,
to be celebrated. It was a national affair, and the
whole nation joined in it. On the night appointed,
at a signal given by telegraph, cannon were fired,

294 American Excitements and Sensations.
bonfires lighted, and cities illuminated. In New
Tork there was a procession, with Cyrus Field, the
hero, in an open chariot, drawn through tempests and
Niagaras of hurrahs. The fireworks were of such
unprecedented magnificence that they set the City
HaU on fire. I was in an Uluminated city on Lake
Erie. Towns were in a blaze beyond the Mississippi.
I have no doubt that, if the statistics were coUected,
it would be found that the cost of that telegraphic
celebration exceeded the sum subscribed in America
and Europe to lay down the wire-cable across the
Atlantic. The reception of the Japanese Ambassadors in the
American cities, from San Francisco to New Tork,
was what people in Europe can scarcely form an idea
of. In England, foreign ambassadors are received by
the Government. The people seldom know anything
of the matter untU they read an account of it in the
newspapers. In America it is the sovereign people
who give receptions in theh own fashion. There was
a novelty in the Japanese embassy that excited the
imagination. It was determined to astonish the barba
rians. There was a tumultuous, extravagant popular
manifestation, as remarkable in its way as the reception
of the Prince of Wales in America, or of the Princess
in London.
But what shaU I say of that great and wonderful
reception of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales
in America ? It was a compound of several elements.
There was great curiosity to see a hve prince, the
eldest son of Queen Victoria, and heir-apparent to the

Visit ofHR.H. the Prince of Wales. 295
British crown. There was a greater vanity and osten
tation in the wish to show him the most wonderful
country in the world, and to astonish him with such
a welcome as he never had before, and never would
have again.
" The poor boy has never hurt us," they said,
"and never can. Why should we bear him malice
because we licked his grandfather ? Come, let us be
generous. We wiU show him what he has lost. We
are powerful, and as he has come to see us, let us
patronize him." These were the actual thoughts and
feelings of nine-tenths of the American people.
I need not describe the processions, the baUs, the
immense displays, civic and mUitary, which amused or
amazed His Royal Highness. No young gentleman
in his teens, royal or otherwise, ever behaved, under
peculiar and often embarrassing chcumstances, better
than did the Prince of Wales on this American tour.
He " conversed affably," as the English reporters say
— how would they have him converse, I wonder ? —
with aU who approached him, and he danced inde-
fatigably. He danced at St. Louis, at Cincinnati, and
finaUy at New Tork. They gave him, sometimes,
more old women than he hked for partners — the wives
of civic dignitaries, &c. ; but he manfully put them
through theh antique paces, and then took his pick of
the pretty girls, only less beautiful and graceful than
the lovely princess whom England has so joyfully
welcomed to be the partner of his life.
I saw the reception in New Tork, and I knew his
entertainers. PersonaUy they had the various motives

296 American Excitements and Sensations.
which animate human beings on such occasions ; but
over aU was the feehng, "We'U show you what
Americans can do. Tou expect to be a sovereign—
we are the sovereign people." It scarcely occurred
to any one that His Royal Highness had honoured
America or New Tork by his visit, but there was Ho
sort of doubt that he was highly honoured by the
reception given him. Of aU New Tork, one Irish
regiment alone — the since famous 69th, commanded
by Colonel Michael Corcoran, since a prisoner of war
in South Carolina, taken in the fight or panic of Bull
Run, and later a major-general in the Federal army —
refused to join in welcoming the Prince of Wales.
They found httle sympathy. Why not welcome him
hke aU the rest, and take the opportunity to show
him what he had lost ? They were fools, it was said,
not to turn out and flaunt their green flag in his face,
and show bim that if Irishmen were not trusted to
bear arms in Ireland, they were the equals of the best
— feUow- citizens, feUow-soldiers, and feUow-sovereigns
— in America.
The Americans wished to treat the eldest son of
Queen Victoria as an honoured equal — neither more
nor less. America had no longer any reason to feel
envy or Ul-wUl to England. Bygones were bygones.
We had beaten her twice — we were her equals now,
and would soon be her superiors. She could not ex
pect to increase in population beyond thirty millions.
We should soon be a hundred millions We could
afford to forgive aU the injuries and insults of the
past, and to be generous to a power that could not

The Prince — A Poem. 297
hope to keep up with us in the great race of
empire. PersonaUy there was a cordial good feeUng to the
quiet, gentle, princely youth, whose mUd appearance
and unassuming manners were, apart from aU prestige
of rank and position, an open letter of recommenda
tion. A torrent of poetic welcomes poured into the
newspapers. They express, better than I am able to,
the feehng of the hour.
The first I copy is irregular in its measure, and not
the best in hterary merit ; but it confirms, I think,
what I have said of the popular feehng.
THE PRINCE.
BY AN AMERICAN.
I stood amid the throng —
But one among the million hearts which beat
Expectant of his coming.
The bells rang out a greeting song,
And the mute flags a silent welcome waved,
While from their brazen mouths the loud-voiced guns
Spoke out a salutation which the hills
Took up and answered from the far-off shores.
He came ! O, slender youth, and fair !
Around whose head the halo of a mother's love
Seemed lingering still, and as he passed
I sought to trace upon his youthful brow the stamp
Of something which we see not here — where all are kings.
A courtly, gentlemanly grace — " the grace of God,"
The tenure of his mother's throne, and great men's fame,
Sat hke a sparkling jewel on his brow ;
And from his boyish Ups unspoken breathed
The kindly heart which marks the Christian man.
His eyes, which but a moment swept me by,
Like mirrors, brought into my spirit's sight
The view of " that within which passeth show."

298 American Excitements and Sensations.
I read the consciousness of high behest,
The knowledge that a Power beyond himself
Had placed him in a path which, soon or late,
Might lead him to a trust, compared with which
All human ties are but as grains of sand.
I read the struggling of a high intent,
With something which the world may never know —
The inward battling of a youthful heart
Against itself; the firm resolve to live
Full up to all that Fate expects of him.
Ah, Albert Edward ! when you homeward sail,
Take back with you and treasure in your soul
A wholesome lesson which you here may learn.
You see a people happy and content,
Knowing no higher rank than simple worth,
Making their laws and rulers at their will ;
You see a nation which but yesterday
Wrote its first record on the world's great page — ¦
A giant Power, respected and beloved —
And yet we have no king.
We reason here — we who are equals all —
Upon the destiny which surely waits
But the fulfilment of a fitting time
On Europe's crumbling thrones.
We twice the Eastern hemisphere have seen,
From Baltic to the iEgean shores, convulsed
By the same spirit which, in old Borne born,
Once ruled the world ; till crushed by selfish aims,
And ground into the earth by iron heels,
By mitred hierarchs and sceptred kings,
It slept through centuries of wrong and dread,
Growing each year far down beneath the soil
Made rich by martyrs' blood.
Transplanted thence to fresh Columbia's shores,
Beneath her forests nurtured, on her plains
Wet with the blood of heroes, once again,
'Gainst despotism it made brave head,
And here, grown to a mightier power than man
Has ever elsewhere seen or known, it speaks
In voice of thunder to the listening world.

H.R.H. at Trinity. 299
Oh, Liberty ! thou art not all a dream !
But almost God-like must a people be
To own no other sceptre here than thine.
It well behoves the heir to England's throne
To study well into the hearts of men,
And learn that since the olden time
The name of kings has changed.
" The grace of God" speaks through a people now,
And by that grace a throne alone is held ;
A nation satisfied a monarchy
Through centuries to come may still remain;
A constitution liberal and just —
The bulwark of a people's liberties —
May shield alike a people and a throne.
*****
God speed you, noble youth ! may every gale
Which wafts you hence, unto your native shores,
Be filled with benedictions. May the proud flag
Which side by side with ours so lately waved,
Gather new glory in the years to come,
From deeds where Albert Edward's name shall stand,
In golden letters, on the deathless scroll
Of those whose memory a people love to keep
Enshrined within their hearts.
His Royal Highness, staying in New Tork over
Sunday, of course went to church, and very properly
to the oldest and best endowed offshoot of the Church
of England — Trinity Church in New Tork. The
foUowing description is written in an original American
style of poetry invented by Walt. Whitman, a New
Tork poetical loafer, not destitute of genius, and
patronized by Emerson.
The poem, by a pupil and imitator, has been thought
a trifle satirical, but wiU, perhaps, repay a cursory
perusal.

300 American Excitements and Sensations.
BEFOEE HIM.
A PICTURE  AFTER WALT. WHITMAN.
1 . — A dreary and desolate day !
The low hanging sky, leaden-coloured and lugubrious, drips con
tinually its chilling tears.
Wet, deserted streets, vistas of quiet gloom, doleful persons with
umbrellas flitting away here and there.
A cold, disconsolate wind, sighing loosely about.
Mournful morning of Tenth Month, the Lord's Day, the Nine
teenth Sunday after Trinity 
A solemn voice of bells.
It is time. i
" The Lord is in His Holy Temple : let all the earth keep silence
before Him !"
2. — A chariot with horses — other vehicles give place — the pro
gress of a royal person — the attendants mostly flunkies.
Eapid the trot to the sanctuary — duly muster the spectators —
the massive portals are opened, he enters, the flunkies fol
lowing —
It is accomplished — is there anything more ?
Patience. Let us see.
3. — This is the House of God — those having tickets may enter, may
approach the throne of grace, may behold the royal person.
The place is full. Hearts of contrition. Thoughts of humility.
Ticket-bearers in fine raiment. It is a sweet spectacle.
Draw nigh. Merge with the crowd. Let the heart overflow
with devotion. Bow down the head in reverence. Beware
of pickpockets.
Forty policemen and a superintendent. All is well 
4. — To think of the sanctities of the Holy Day.
Have you pleasure in seeing them well preserved ? Have you
joy in brazen buttons ? Have you comfort in prayer ?
Repose trustingly. Lo ! an Executive, single-eyed, a Cyclops,
a many-handed Briareus  Worship peacefully in the
Holy Temple.
5. — Do you enjoy excitements 1 Have you sensibihties that may be
lacerated? 

"Before Him." 301
Look ! they bear out a fainting woman — a man also — limp, livid,
lifeless creatures, ghastly amid the multitude.
Pious ardour ! — holy rehgious enthusiasm ! — how the vast crowd
thrills with devotion ! 
He comes 1 
6. — Are you a judge of pretty things ? — a dehcate, epicurean con
noisseur ? 
What circulates there among the people, passing from hand to
hand ? What murmurs of delight are those ?
Look 1 it is also for your pleasure and for mine ; press on, there
fore, and buzz with the rest 
To think what joy we shah have of it 1
7. — The Book of Common Prayer !
Diamond elegance, gloss of satin, red sparkle of morocco, glint of
gold, the clasp curiously fashioned, the cost two hundred and
fifty dollars.
Ich Dien ! Dollars ! What words are these, bearing the soul
heavenward ! What echoes, softly floating in the dim arches
overhead ! 
" The Lord is in His Holy Temple ; let all the earth keep silence
before Him !"
8. — A moment — a sudden flush — the strong descending shock of a
vital inspiration 
He comes ! 
9. — What is this spectacle — splendid, significant, stupendous? . . .
Pageant of the Church, reverend quartette of bishops, soldiers of
the Cross, followers of the Lamb,
Surpliced servants of the living God, thirty-six in number —
answer, and say what is this ?
10. — He comes ! 
Now indeed there is silence before Him.
11. — Bow down, white figures in yonder chancel ! Bow down,
bishops 1 Reverend clergymen, bow down before him 1
Advance, bearer of maces ! Flaunt in your liberal state !
Peal out, strong, sobbing organ 1 Break up, troubled and
struggling sea of music ! Burst forth, storm of sound !
And you, waves of melody, engulf all human hearts !

302 American Excitements and Sensations.
12. — It is finished; the words are spoken; the sound has died away;
he is gone.
Out from the dim chancel, reverend bishops and clergymen I
Disappear, white robes of priests and of singers 1 Pour
forth, pious worshippers, from the House of God !
Into the streets once more — the rain of Autumn — the chill,
sighing wind 
What tramp of steeds on the wet pavement ! What disappear
ing shape, there in the gathering shadow ! 
Pass on, saints and sinners ! You have worshipped well !
Rest under the peaceful night, slow moving from the East.
No longer before him, soldiers of the Cross ! No longer before
him. William Winter.
The magnificent, but much too-crowded, baU at the
Academy of Music, the New Tork Opera House, finds
a Uvely description in the foUowing stanzas. The
breaking through of the temporary floor laid down
over the parquette was a not uncharacteristic inci
dent.
BARON RENFREW'S BALL,
OR THE BELLES HE DANCED WITH.
'Twas a grand display was the Prince's ball,
A pageant or fete, or what you may caU
A briUiant coruscation ;
Where ladies and lords of noble worth
Enchanted a Prince of royal birth,
By a royal demonstration.
Like queens, arrayed in their regal guise,
They charmed the Prince with dazzling eyes,
Fair ladies of rank and station —
TUl the floor gave way, and down they sprawled
In a tableau style, which the artists called
A floor aU decoration.
At the Prince's feet hke flowers they laid,
In the brightest bouquet ever made,

Baron Renfrew's Ball. 303
For a Prince's choice to falter — ¦
Perplexed to find, where all were rare,
Which was the fairest of the fair
To cuU for' a queenly altar.
But soon the floor was set aright,
And Peter Cooper's face grew bright,
When, hke the sweU of an organ,
AU hearts beat time to the first quadrille,
And the Prince confessed to a joyous thriU
As he danced with Mrs. Morgan.
Then came the waltz — the Prince's own — •
And every bar and brilliant tone
Had music's sweetest grace on ;
But the Prince himself ne'er felt its charm
TUl he slightly clasped with circling arm
That lovely girl, Miss Mason.
But ah ! the work went bravely on,
And meek-eyed Peace a trophy won
By the magic art of the dancers;
For the daring Prince's next exploit
Was to league with Scott's CamUla Hoyt,
And overcome the Lancers !
Besides these three, he deigned to yield
His hand to Mrs. B. M. Field,
Miss Jay, and Miss Van Buren ;
Miss RusseU, too, was given a place —
AU beauties famous for their grace
From Texas to Lake Huron.
With Mrs. Kernochan he " lanced,"
With Mrs. Edward Cooper danced,
With Mrs. Belmont capered ;
With fair Miss Fish, in fairy rig,
He tripped a sort of royal jig,
And next Miss Butler favoured.
And 'thus, 'mid many hopes and fears,
By the brilliant light of the chandeliers,
Did they gaily quaff and revel ;
Well pleased to charm a royal Prince,
The only one from England since
George Washington was a rebel.

304 American Excitements and Sensations.
And so the fleeting hours went by,
And watches stopped — lest time should fly —
Or that they winding wanted !
Old matrons dozed and papas smiled,
And many a fair one was beguiled
As the Prince danced on, undaunted.
'Tis now a dream — the Prince's baU,
Its vanished glories, one and aU,
The scenes of the fairy tales ;
For Cinderella herself was there,
And Barnum keeps for trial fair
The beautiful slipper deposited there
By His Highness the Prince of Wales.

BROWN'S LIGHT BRIGADE.
THE CHARGE OF THE FIVE HUNDRED.
The committee that prepared for its private acquaintances the
recent baU for the Prince of Wales, discovered, gossip hints, that it
had not included a solitary dancing man among its choice invited ones.
In this dUemma it resorted to the immortal Brown, of Gracechurch
[fashionable undertaker of parties, weddings, and funerals], who sup
pUed with free tickets five hundred of his " Light Brigade," out of
which he fills up fashionable parties with eligible partners for " the
German." Round rushed the managers,
Seeking for dancing men,
Praying for prancing men,
Who in the Schottische shone,
Who for their speed were known,
Who would determine
To go through the German;
Frantic they caUed on Brown,
" Bring us some dancers down !"
Boldly Brown thundered —
" If you my young men lack,
Free tickets give me,

Brown's Light Brigade. 305
And I wUl bring you back —
Quick as a flash or crack —
Bring you five hundred."
Trembling they did the thing,
And Brown did the thing ;
Bird on a lightning wing
Never went faster.
Five hundred " nice young men,"
Each one a waltzer,
With free tickets rushed,
Into " Academy'' pushed,
As to a market.
Fearful to teU of then,
That extra weight of men
Smashed the whole par-ket,
And every dancing soul
Went down the yawning hole,
Whilst the Prince wondered,
And Miss M'Flimsey wept
Over the grave where slept
That dear five hundred.
Down Broadway, next day,
Every man hobbled,
So that his shoes, you'd say,
Were badly cobbled.
Ask any man you met,
" How he such hurt could get,
Why, on his limping toe,
He should go stumbling so,
Why he so blundered ?"
And he would teU — " Sir,
Last night I fell, sir,
When ' Brown's Light Brigade'
FeU through that dreadful hole,
And save myself, no soul
Came out aUve or whole,
Of the five hundred."
The Irish 69th would not parade to escort our
Royal guest, but an Irish poet improved the occasion.
vol. i. 20

306 American Excitements and Sensations.
to address him some poetical advice, 'of which the
foUowing is a sample : —
But thin, no doubt, ye'U ride about
Wid Boole and all the aldermen ;
They've Uttle sinse, but for expinse
There's not a set of boulder men.
Fernandy Wud has decent blood,
And iUigant moraUty ;
And ye may sware our mighty mayor
WiU show his horse pitahty.
The soldiers aU are at his caU,
Wid captains to parade 'em ;
And at the laste, ye'U get a taste
Of dimmocratic fraydem !
But plase to note, ye're not to vote —
A privilege, by Jabers,
Ye couldn't hope, were ye the Pope,
UntU ye've got the papers !
WeU, mighty Prince, accept these hints ;
Most frayly I indite 'em ;
'Tis luck indade, if ye can rade
As aisy as I can write 'em !
And when the throne is aU yer own,,
At which ye're daily steerin',
With aU the care that ye can spare,
Remember poor ould Erin !
The visit of His Royal Highness, in company with
the President, to the grave of Washington, was too
striking an incident not to find celebration in verse,
immortal or otherwise. From the many poems written
on the occasion, I select one of the briefest and best,
by R. H. Stoddard, who is, I think, a very genuine
poet.

Tlie Prince at Mount Vernon. 307

BEFORE THE GRAVE OF WASHINGTON.
The soft rays of the autumn sun
FeU goldenly on land and wave,
Touching with holy light the grave
That holds the dust of Washington.
A sacred Presence brooded round,
A halo of divinest flame ;
The memory of that mighty name
That makes Mount Vernon haUowed ground !
A stately, silent group was there —
The nation's Ruler, crowned with years,
And England's Prince amid his peers,
Uncovered in the reverent air !
Beneath the old ancestral trees
They walked together, side by side, •
In sun and shadow close aUied,
Linked in the happy bands of peace.
Two friendly nations met in them,
Two mighty nations, one of old,
Cast in the same gigantic mould,
Shoots from the sturdy Saxon stem.
They gathered round his holy dust,
The wisest of the many wise
That shaped our early destinies,
And fought our battles sternly just.
Like brothers at his grave they stood,
And gloried in his common name ;
Forgetting aU things but his fame,
Remembering only what was good !
'Twas gracefuUy and nobly done,
A royal tribute to the free,
Who, Prince, will long remember thee,
Before the grave of Washington !
FinaUy, Oliver WendeU Holmes, . the Boston poet
and humourist, contributed a Tankee version of the
20—3

308 American Excitements and Sensations.
British National Anthem, of which the foUowing is
the concluding stanza: —
Lord, let war's tempest cease,
Fold the whole earth in peace
Under Thy wings !
Make all Thy nations one,
AU hearts beneath the sun,
TUl Thou shalt reign alone,
Great King of Kings !
A prayer which the Boston poets, and other Boston
people, seem, for some time past, to have pretty much
forgotten.

309

CHAPTER XXV.
EXTENT AND RESOURCES 01" AMERICA.
America compared with England. — Progress of population. —
Rivers and railways.— Mines and minerals. — Agricultural
resources. — A land of plenty. — Fruits and wine, — Food for
Europe. — Public lands and squatters. — A country of magni
ficent distances. — A well-peopled country. — Natural extent
of countries and governments.
It is difficult to give a fah idea of the dimensions and
resources of the American States. The best way,
perhaps, is by comparison with countries with which
the reader is famiUar.
England and Wales have an area of 58,320 square
mUes ; population, 20,000,000. Ireland has an area
of 32,513 square miles ; population, 6,000,000.
To compare with these, I give the areas in square
miles of the foUowing States of America : —
Square miles. Population.
NewYork  47,000 4,000,000
Pennsylvania .... 46,000 3,000,000
Ohio  40,000 2,340,000
Michigan  56,000 749,000
Indiana  34,000 1,350,000
IUinois  55,000 1,700,000
Wisconsin  54,000 775,000
Iowa  51,000 675,000
Minnesota  95,000 172,000

310 Extent and Resources of America.
Here are nine Northern States, each larger than
Ireland, several nearly as large, and one larger than
England and Wales, and not one of them which is not
capable of sustaining by agricultural products a larger
population. Let us now glance at some of the Southern
States : — ¦ Square milea. Population.
Virginia  61,000 1,596,000
North Carolina .... 50,000 1,000,000
Georgia  58,000 1,057,000
Florida  59,000 140,000
Alabama  50,700 964,000
Mississippi  47,000 800,000
Louisiana  41,000 700,000
Texas  237,000 600,000
Arkansas  52,000 435,000
Here are nine of the Confederate States, each larger
than Ireland ; four larger than England and Wales ;
and one, Texas, more than twice as large as the
United Kingdom.
These, observe, are but eighteen out of the thirty-
four States of the late Federal Union ; whUe the terri
tories not yet formed into States cover about as
large an area. Cahfornia, on the Pacific coast, has an
area of 188,981 square mUes; and Oregon, north of
Cahfornia, has 102,606. I have not included the
great States of Tennessee, 45,000 ; Kentucky, 37,000 ;
Missouri, 67,000 ; and Kansas, 78,000 ; the first three
of which are Southern, or Border Slave States, each
having more than a miUion population.
Many of these States would support populations as
dense as that of Belgium, where there are nearly 400

Rapid increase in Population. 311
persons to a square mUe. Take half this density, and
these twenty-four States named above would have
from five to ten millions each of inhabitants.
The progressive population of this vast country has
been very rapid. It has quadrupled in forty-five years.
In 1815, the population was less than 8,000,000; in
1860, it was nearly 32,000,000. Some of this increase
has been by addition of territory, as of Texas, Cah
fornia, and New Mexico; but aU three contained,
probably, not more than 200,000 persons. There may
have been three millions of immigrants from Europe ;
the rest have been the natural increase.. How rapid,
how large this has been, can be seen from the increase
of slaves, which has been from less than a million in
1808, to 4,000,000 in 1860. Here there was no
increase from immigration, for the slave-trade ceased
in 1808, and the number of slaves has been diminished
by aU that have been emancipated, and aU that have
run away to the Northern States, Canada, or else
where. The proportion of arable land ' in the American
States, and the richness of a large portion of this land,
adapts the country to the support of immense popu
lations. The new States of the West have no mountains,
scarcely any broken country, and very httle land
unfit for cultivation. They are laid out in regular
sections of a mUe square, with roads at every mUe
running north and 'south, and east and west, crossing
each other at right angles, forming squares Uke a
chess-board. Each square mile contains four farms of

31 2 Extent and Resources of America.
160 acres each, with roads on two sides. These roads
run in a right Une, scarcely ever deflecting, for
hundreds of miles.
The rivers of the Mississippi VaUey, including this
great river and its branches, afford twenty thousand
mUes of steamboat navigation. Other rivers give, say,
ten thousand more. There are thhty thousand mUes
of raUway. The coasts of ocean, gulf, and lakes may
be set down at six or seven thousand mUes.
The resources of this country can scarcely be con
ceived. There are coal measures larger than the
whole area of the British islands ; there are mountains
of hon, and vast deposits lying in close contact with
the beds of coal. On Lake Superior is a region filled
with beds of native copper. On the Upper Mississippi
are immense deposits of lead. Cahfornia has moun
tains of gold. There are also rich gold-mines in
Georgia and the Carolinas. Petroleum is found in
unknown, but apparently inexhaustible quantities, in
weUs, and absorbed in rocky strata, or in the porous
slates of North Carohna, from which it is expeUed by
heat. The agricultural riches and resources of the United
States, north and south, may be indicated by one
year's production of a few articles, as given in the
census of 1860. I give the totals in round numbers :
Wheat (bushels)  170,000,000
Indian corn or maize  827,000,000
Rye  21,000,000
Oats  172,000,000
Rice (lbs.)  187,000,000
Barley and buckwheat (bushels) . . 33,000,000

A Land of Plenty. 313
Butter (lbs.)  459,000,000
Cheese  106,000,000
Potatoes, peas, beans (bushels) . . . 167,000,000
Sugar (lbs.)  340,000,000
Molasses (gallons)  25,500,000
Animals (slaughtered, value in doUars) 212,000,000
Tobacco (lbs.)  430,000,000
Cotton (bales of 400 lbs.) .... 5,197,000
Wool (lbs.)  60,000,000
Hemp (tons)  104,480
Flax (lbs.)  3,778,000
It appears from the above returns that every famUy
in the (lately) United States, black and white, had, on
an average, in 1860, 26 bushels of wheat; 128 of
Indian corn ; 40 of rye, oats, barley, and buckwheat ;
28 of potatoes, peas, &c. ; 31 lbs. of rice ; 71 lbs. of
butter; 17 lbs. of cheese; 56 lbs. of sugar; 4 gaUons
of molasses.; five pounds sterUng worth of butcher's-
meat, at American prices; 71 lbs. of tobacco; besides
game, fish, fruit, garden vegetables, wine, &c. &c. ;
and besides cotton, wool, hemp, flax, and other pro
ducts of the soU. I make no comparison with other
countries ; but it is very evident that Americans have
not been stinted for the necessaries of hfe.
Some of these articles are produced more abundantly
in the North, others in the South. There are more
cattle and swine in _ the South; more sheep in the
North. The horses, asses, and mules, are nearly
equal. The North produces most wheat ; the South,
most Indian corn. The South produces nearly aU the
cotton and rice, and much the larger portion of hemp,
tobacco, and sugar. It must be remembered, also,
that the population of the North is nearly double that

314 Extent and Resources of America.
of the South. The respurces of the latter are much
greater than those of the former, especiaUy in great
staples for exportation..
America, North and South, is rich in fruits. Apples
can be raised in any quantity, and of the finest quality,
for three-halfpence a bushel. Peaches make a crop
nearly as abundant. Melons, such as are seldom seen
in this country, grow everywhere, and thousands of
cartloads are given to hogs, or, as among the Shakers,
the juice is boUed down to syrup. Wine, over a vast
belt of country, could be sold at a handsome profit
for sixpence a gaUon. A few years ago potatoes brought
but sixpence a bushel. Wheat has been sold in the
West, within three years, for a shiUing a bushel.
Where land is unUmited, and can be bought for five-
shillings an acre, where there is no rent to pay, and
no manure is needed, and crops are gathered mostly
by machinery, even these prices pay the farmer a
fah profit ; but the price is, of course, regulated by the
demand. If a ship-canal across Canada, from Lake
Ontario to Lake Huron, would open to the West a
dhect trade with Liverpool, prices would rise on the
Upper Mississippi, and be ruled by the Enghsh and
continental markets.
The public lands of the United States, not appro
priated to purposes of education, internal improve
ments, &c, are surveyed and sold by the general
G-overnment. The proceeds help to pay its expenses
and diminish taxation. When at one period there
was, a surplus, it was returned to the States. The
extreme price of the best lands in America purchased

Government Lands. 315
of the Government, with, of course, an unquestionable
title, is one doUar and a quarter, or about five shillings
an acre. The less desirable lands which remain unsold
are then offered at lower prices ; and reaUy good tracts
of land have been sold in Illinois within ten years for
sevenpence an acre.
By the law of pre-emption, people are aUowed to
take possession of lands not yet brought into the
market, which they can cultivate for years without
rent or taxes. When this land is brought into market,
the occupants have a preference as purchasers, and
may pay for it out of, perhaps, a single year's produce.
It is no wonder, then, that every man almost is a
landed proprietor. Every soldier who has served, if
but for a few months, as a volunteer, in any war of
the United States, has received, in addition to his pay,
a warrant for a hundred and sixty acres of land, which
he could select from any that was unsold. These
mUitary warrants disposed of many millions of acres ;
and if the same system should be carried out with
respect to the men engaged in the war of secession,
nearly the whole remaining territory wUl be given to
the soldiery.
The cheapness of Government lands — the unoc
cupied territory belonging to aU the States — and the
encouragement to "squatters," or settlers on lands
which have not been offered for sale, keep down the
prices of land everywhefe. Good land near large
towns — on account of being convenient to market —
may bring twenty pounds an acre. Good wheat-lands,
with conveniences of transport, are worth ten pounds

316 Extent and Resources of America.
an acre. Rich cotton-lands in Alabama are worth
five pounds an acre.
America may be caUed a country, as Washington
has been a city, of magnificent distances. A man
goes fifteen hundred or two thousand mUes to make a
famUy visit. Some members of Congress travel seven
or eight thousand mUes, with an aUowance of so much
a mUe, to get to Washington. Theh mUeage comes
to more than theh pay — for American statesmen do
not travel and make laws for the dear people, without
being weU paid for it.
The usual provincial tour of theatrical and musical
stars in America, is between four and five thousand
mUes in extent, without including the much longer
trip to Cahfornia. It is possible to ascend one river
more than three thousand mUes by- steamboat, and
very easy to take a through-ticket and checks for one's
luggage a thousand or fifteen hundred miles by raU.
The appearance of the older and more thickly settled
country in America differs very much from that of
England. The country seems to be more peopled.
The population is scattered everywhere on farms of
one or two hundred acres ; each with its farm-house
and cluster of barns and outhouses. The people are
not gathered, as in England, into towns and vUlages.
To an American, the Enghsh country looks desolate
for lack of people and habitations. Nothing surprised
and disappointed me more, and in my first trip between
London and Liverpool, I said to a feUow passenger,
" It is a lovely country ; but where are the people ?'"'
The answer I received was not a pleasant one.

Conditions of Union. 317
Americans have beUeved that their Federal Re
pubhc, or congeries of sovereign and independent
States, united under a single Federal Government of
hmited powers and specific functions, might extend
over the whole continent, or the whole world. So long
as such a Federal union was equal in'its burthens and
advantages — so long as it was the evident interest of
every State to adhere to it — it might last. But it is
certain that no such union could be forced, or main
tained by force ; and it is only by guarding most
jealously the rights of every State composing such a
union that it could be maintained at aU. The moment
the Central, or Federal, Government invaded the rights
of the States, the union was in danger. When that
Government attempted to carry out sectional ideas, and
to serve sectional interests, the union was at an end.
I cannot doubt that there is a natural hmit to the
size, or rather the population, of a nation. Whatever
the form of government, men must compose and
administer it, and the powers of men are hmited.
They cannot be safely tasked beyond a certain point.
When the population of an empire has advanced
beyond a certain proportional relation to the power
of its government, it is in danger of faUing in pieces
by the relative weakness of the cohesive forces.
Repulsions grow stronger than attractions. The
centrifugal overcome the centripetal.
There is a natural Umit to the numbers of a hive of
bees, a hUl of ants, and herds of cattle. I suspect
that human societies have simUar natural or necessary
hmitations. We organize armies, and other efficient

318 Extent and Resources of America.
bodies of men, with vague notions of such a law, in
squads, gangs, companies, battahons, brigades, divi
sions, corps d'armee, &c. A certain general, we are
told, has not the abUity to handle more than fifty
thousand men. There is, then, a hmit to the size of
an army commandable by the highest military genius.
So I think there must be a limit to the number of
men which any sovereign or any congress or parha
ment is able to govern. When the body grows too
large, then comes weakness and disorganization. I
have no perfected theory to offer, but the subject is
worthy of the attention of phUosophical politicians.

319

CHAPTER XXVI.
THE PERIODICAL PRESS OF AMERICA.
American newspaper statistics. — Laws of newspaper circulation. —
Newspapers in the slave states. — Freedom of the press. —
The New York Herald and James Gordon Bennett.— The
New York Tribune and Horace Greeley. — The New York-
Times and Henry J. Baymond. — War and anti-war papers.
— Harper's Weekly and Monthly. — Home Jowrnal. — Bonner's
Ledger. — Sensation prices and sensation writers. — Comic
papers. — The Independent and Henry Ward Beecher. — Isms
and organs. — Position of editors.
In our days the hfe and thought of civilized countries
find expression in newspapers, and no person can form
a correct estimate of America without a knowledge of
its periodical Uterature. I have not at hand the
statistics of European nations, but I beUeve there are
more newspapers in America than in the whole world
beside. There are about fifty daUy newspapers in the
United Kingdom. In 1861 there were four hundred
and fifty in the United States. There were more than
four thousand weekly papers, and three hundred and
fifty-six monthlies and semi-monthlies. The whole
number of periodicals was five thousand two hundred
and thirty-three.
The State of New Tork, with a population of less
than four millions, a Uttle larger than that of Scotland,

320 Tlie Periodical Press of America.
or something more than half that of Ireland, has 851
periodicals, 72 of which are daUy papers. Imagine
one hundred and fifty daUy papers in Ireland. Illinois,
a new State on the Mississippi, with a population of
1,700,000, has 453 periodicals, of which number 28
are daUy newspapers. Even the new State of
California, on the Pacific, has 17 daUy papers, 87
weeklies, and 11 monthlies.
Nashville, Tennessee, with a population of 23,000
before the commencement of the civU war, had 21
periodicals, 4 of them dailies. A town in England,
with the same population, may have one or two
weeklies. Richmond, another Southern city, for some
time the capital of the Southern confederacy, with a
population of 38,000, had 26 periodical publications,
4 of which were daiUes. St. Louis, a city beyond the
Mississippi river, with a population of 162,000, has
55 periodicals, 11 of which are daiUes. New Orleans,
before the war, with a population of 170,000, had
48 periodicals, including 9 daUy papers. Chicago,
Illinois, a city of over 100,000 inhabitants, and which
I visited in 1839, when it had less than 5000, has
now 11 daUy papers and 53 periodicals.
Large as are the numbers of papers pubhshed in
the towns and cities, a much larger number is scat
tered over the country in smaU vUlages, two or three
weekly papers in each large county. Thus Wisconsin,
a north-western State, settled almost enthely within
twenty years, and admitted into the Union in 1848,
has 130 weekly newspapers; whUe Texas, which has
received the great bulk of its population more recently,

Weekly Newspapers. 321
has, or had in 1861, 119 weekUes. Indiana, an
almost enthely rural State, without one considerable
city, has 262 periodicals, of which 23 are daily and
230 weekly, and the adjoining State of Ohio has 32
daUies and 348 weeklies.
The circulation of a large proportion of these weekly
.newspapers is confined to the county in which they
are pubhshed. The State of Indiana has ninety-four
counties, among which a hundred or more of its
weekly papers are distributed. As many of these
counties have too smaU a population to support a
local newspaper, the larger counties wUl commonly
have two. One of these is the organ of the Federal
Whig-repubhcan party, the other of the Democratic.
If there is a third, it may be nativist, neutral, or the
organ of some rehgious sect.
These country papers, folios of four pages, printed
on cheap paper, and more than half filled with legal,
local, and medical advertisements, are published at a
yearly subscription price of six or eight shilUngs.
For reading matter they contain tales and poetry
copied from the English and American magazines ;
the news, political editorials, agricultural matter, and
communications on topics of local interest. The
printer is generaUy the editor, but some ambitious
village lawyer often writes the political leaders.
Scissors and paste, however, do most of the editing.
These papers, according to the population of the
district and the energy with which they are conducted,
chculate from five hundred to two thousand copies.
The daUy and weekly papers pubUshed in the large
vol. i. 21

322 The Periodical Press of America.
cities have, of course, a much larger circulation.
Those published in New Tork penetrate everywhere ;
a great portion of their editions is maUed to yearly
subscribers. Before the war, the shops of newsmen
in St. Louis, New Orleans, Mobile, and Galveston
were regularly suppUed with bundles of the leading
New Tork daihes. In this respect, New Tork is a
true metropohs ; it is, or was, the London of the
West — in comparison with it aU other cities are
provincial. For example, the daUy papers of Boston are seldom
seen except in editorial offices, or reading rooms, out
of the Eastern or New England States. The Boston
weeklies and monthhes, however, circulate more
widely. The PhUadelphia dailies have large circula
tions in Pennsylvania and the southern part of New
Jersey, but do not penetrate beyond a certain district.
But certain PhUadelphia weeklies vie with those of
New Tork, and its monthhes at one time had, if they
have not still, a larger circulation ; but one sees New
Tork papers in Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, San
Francisco, selling in the streets. There is, however,
no reciprocity. It is very rare that a daUy paper,
pubhshed East, South, or West, is sold in New Tork.
A curious law is also observed with respect to aU
periodicals. As the staple of both news and thought
goes to America from Europe — as New Tork is reaUy
as provincial to London, as Chicago is to New Tork,
aU papers go from east to west, with the sun, and
scarcely ever in the opposite direction. The best
magazine or weekly paper that could be pubhshed in

Southern Periodicals. 323
Cincinnati, in the Ohio vaUey, would never cross the
AUeghanies, while the west is covered with the pub-
Ucations of the Atlantic sea-board. The Cincinnati
periodicals find their circulation around and westward
of that city. So a paper in St. Louis, on the Missis
sippi, must find the greater part of its readers beyond
that river. New Orleans, for social and commercial
reasons, has sent its newspapers up the Mississippi
and its branches, over the great region of which it is
the natural seaport.
It -would scarcely be expected that the Slave States
would have as large a number of newspapers in pro
portion to theh population as the Free States, yet
such appears to be the fact. There are 1441 perio
dicals, mostly weekly newspapers, pubUshed in the
Slave States, with a white population of about eight
miUions. Making a fair deduction for the papers of
the large Northern cities which circulate over the
whole country, there wUl be left less than 3000
papers for the twenty millions of population in the
Free States and territories ; or we may get at the
facts by comparing particular States. Thus Connec
ticut, probably the best educated of the New England
States, with a population of 460,670, has 63 perio
dicals ; South Carolina, with its white population of less
than 300,000, has 60 periodicals; Georgia, with its
white population of about half a miUion, has 91
periodicals, while the Free State of Maine, with a
population of 619,000,. has 74; and Louisiana, with
less than two-thirds of the free population of Maine,
has no less than 117 periodicals. The Southern
21— a

324 The Periodical Press of America.
papers are generally higher in price, and probably
have smaUer circulations.
In America, where the press is free from aU restric
tions, any man can start a paper ; a very smaU
capital, or even a httle credit, is aU that is required.
Some of the most successful papers were commenced
with less than a hundred pounds of borrowed capital1.
The man who can do nothing else can start a paper,
and, with reasonable effort, get a support for it.
The press is free, in a certain sense; every man
is free to print and pubUsh ; but a hbel may subject
him to fine, imprisonment, and a civU action for
damages. In some States a writer or printer may be
prosecuted for blasphemy. There are laws against
immoral publications. A newspaper which goes
against pubhc opinion must expect to lose support.
This would be Ukely to happen anywhere; but in
America it is also liable to be mobbed. A few years
ago anti-slavery papers were mobbed in Northern
cities ; pro-slavery papers, or those which advocated
the right of the Southern States to independent
action, have been destroyed by mobs, and the editors
treated with personal outrage more recently. At the
outbreak of the War of Secession, editors were im
prisoned by order of the Washington Government,
papers were not permitted to be sent by post, and were
seized if sent by express.
I asked a democratic editor in New Tork, soon
after the taking of Fort Sumter, if he thought the
Government would put down his paper. " I think it
must," said he ; " for if it don't put us down, we

Editorial Independence. 325
shaU put down the Government." The Government
seemed to view the matter in the same Ught and, a
few days afterward, suppressed the journal.
Of the five thousand papers in America, four
thousand at least are only free to advocate the tenets
of the sects, or the platforms of the parties to which
they belong ; they are free, hke hand-organs, to play
the tunes upon theh barrels, when the crank is turned.
Party is more exacting in America, probably, than in
any country where parties exist. Every member of a
party or sect is expected to " toe the mark," and at
the least sign of independent action the cry is heard
— " Shoot the deserters !"
It foUows that the papers of any particular party
have a wonderful sameness of character. There are
certain leading organs, and aU the rest play the same
tune. A leading article in a leading journal wUl be
copied into a thousand papers, and in that way get
an enormous circulation. There are, perhaps, two
thousand Whig-repubhcan papers, aU pubhshing the
same matter from week to week — aU playing the same
tune with very shght variations.
The daUy newspapers of the large cities, even when
of a partizan character, have more individuality and
independence than the press in general, and there are
a few journals as independent as any paper can be
that must suit a sufficient number of readers to ensure
its support. " Stop my paper !" is the cry of terror to
an American editor, and there are very few beyond its
influence. It is said that a popular London magazine,
not very long ago, lost three thousand copies of its ch-

326 The Periodical Press of America.
culation by pubhshing a single article. There are facts
of pubhc interest which even Enghsh journals, with aU
theh independence, dare not publish, and very important
subjects they dare not discuss. Pubhc opinion is far
more sensitive in America than in England, because it
has more power for good or evU. In America every
man who has an opinion has also a vote at the back of
it. In England the opinions of nineteen-twentieths of
the people, so far as the Government of the country is
concerned, are of very httle consequence.
The best known and most widely circulated daUy
paper in America is the New York Herald. It was
estabhshed some twenty-five years ago, by James
Gordon Bennett, a shrewd, talented, and not too
scrupulous Scotchman — a man of remarkable cha
racter and abUities, and one of the ablest journahsts in
America. He was very poor — he had faUed in several
enterprises, and when he started the Herald as a half
penny daUy, afterwards raised to a penny, he was
determined, by any means, to succeed. He aUowed
no scruple, no modesty, no shame, no regard for the
rights or feehngs of others to stand in the way of the
one thing on which he had desperately determined —
success. He gave his paper the interest of local news,
and the piquancy of personahty. Pubhc baUs, private
parties, the affairs of famihes, the peccadilloes of poli-
ticians, scandal — everything that would make a paper
seU was fah game. The murder of a prostitute
charged upon a young clerk, worked up in skilful
reports and sensation extras, gave the Herald its first
considerable start in circulation. It became a sensa-

Tlie New York Herald. 327
tion paper, and has never lost this character. Mr.
Bennett abused pubhc men and private citizens without
stint, and sometimes suffered the penalty of personal
chastisement. But the paper sold more and more,
and its large circulation soon brought it a profitable
advertising custom. The editorials were often written
in the spirit of a Mephistopheles, and ridiculed the
most sacred matters of family and reUgion. There is
nothing hke it that I am aware of in the Enghsh
press ; though a hash of the Saturday Review,
Reynolds's Newspaper, and the defunct Satirist, would
give some idea of its former spirit.
It must not be supposed that a paper would go on
for twenty-five years, with an extraordinary and in
creasing success, without some striking merits. The
Herald was the first American paper to give daUy
articles on finance and trade. It was the first to use
extraordinary exertions to get the earliest news and
correspondence from all parts of the world. If Mr.
Bennett was determined to make money, and not too
careful how he sometimes procured it, he has also
spent it with a lavish hand when it would serve his
interests. He was the first New Tork editor to pub
lish full reports of congressional proceedings, and to
have important public meetings and speeches reported,
though held at hundreds of miles distance. He seized
upon the telegraph as soon as it was established, and
has sometimes incurred very heavy expenses in getting
exclusive or the earUest inteUigence. When His Royal
Highness the Prince of Wales was expected at Niagara
FaUs, Mr. Bennett instructed his reporter to secure

328 The Periodical Press of America.
the telegraph. This could only be done by keeping
it at work, on the principle of " first come first served ;"
but there was nothing to report. The reporter was at
the end of his story, and asked what he should do.
" Send on the Book of Proverbs," was Mr. Bennett's
answer. The Book of Proverbs concluded, the reporter
said, by way of postscript — " No sign of the prince
¦ — what next?" "Give us Ecclesiastes," was the
answer; and the operators were kept at theh long
and unusual scripture lesson, at a heavy price, until
the cannon thundered, and the long-expected heh of
England's throne came in sight of the great cataract.
In pohtics Mr. Bennett was a democrat. I speak
in the past tense, because he is said to have retired
from the Herald, succeeded by his son, James Gordon
Bennett, jun. This, however, did not hinder him
from opposing Mr. Van Buren, and advocating the
election of General Taylor, and also of General
Fremont, to whom his influence was not, and pro
bably was not intended to be, of much avaU. The
Herald has always been favourable to the South, and
opposed the election of Lincoln, and the war which
foUowed, until a mob compeUed it to hoist the " star-
spangled banner," and to give such support to the
Union cause as interest or fear could compel, while
it has apparently done everything in its power to
injure the cause it pretended to serve.
The circulation of the Herald for several years has
been from 70,000 to 80,000. Of this number one-
half may be distributed in New Tork and its suburbs ;
the rest are scattered everywhere.

The New York Tribune. 329
The next American daUy in notoriety is the New
York Tribune, estabhshed about 1840, by Horace
Greeley, who is stiU the leading or responsible editor,
and identified with its character and success. The
Tribune was built up on the basis of a weekly cam
paign paper, edited by Mr. Greeley to advocate the
election of General Harrison. This paper, caUed The
Log Cabin, printed at a very low price, had an immense
circulation. It published aU the songs and many
of the speeches of the poUtical campaign, and Mr.
Greeley became' known by its means over the whole
union as an energetic, earnest, out-and-out Whig.
An ardent protectionist, he was a not less ardent aboli
tionist, and has fought with equal zeal for duties
on foreign- imports and the freedom of the negro.
Singular in his personal appearance, eccentric in his
dress and manners, eloquent from simple earnestness,
benevolent, credulous, and sympathetic, Mr. Greeley is
one of the most popular and influential public men
in America ; no man did so much to elect Harrison,
or Taylor, or Lincoln. He secured the nomination
of the great raU-and-union-spUtter at the Chicago
convention, because he was determined that WUliam
H. Seward should not be President. Mr. Greeley
had desired to be postmaster of New Tork, senator,
governor, and hopes, no doubt, to be President ; but
Mr. Seward and his friend Thurlow Weed, editor of
the Albany Evening Journal, a powerful pohtical organ,
had defeated these ambitious asphations. The time
came when Mr. Seward wished to be President, and
might have been elected, could he have got the

330 Tlie Periodical Press of America.
nomination of his party, and then Mr. Greeley, who
had bided bis time, defeated him, and paid off his
long arrears.
In America nearly every paper of any importance
is identified with its leading editor. The Tribune may
have twenty writers, and several able editors, but its
views are stiU attributed to Mr. Greeley. In France,
every article must bear the signature of the writer, or
some one who takes the responsibility of the article.
In America, as a rule, the opinions of a paper are
attributed to the responsible editor.
The Tribune has been the organ of Sociahsm, espe
ciaUy in the form of Fourierism, of Free SoU, of the
Anti-Renters, of Woman's Rights, of Abohtion, of
Teetotalism to the extreme of Maine Law coercion,
of high duties on imports for the protection of
American industry, and has done much to disse
minate a belief in SpirituaUsm. It has been an
organ of Irish Nationalism, of Red Repubhcanism,
Black Repubhcanism, and the ultra-doctrines of
radical democracy. There is no such paper in
England, and I can therefore make no comparison.
At the beginning of secession, Mr. Greeley, in his
simplicity, and in his honest democracy, declared that,
according to the teachings of the Declaration of Inde
pendence, the Southern States had as good a right to
separate from the Northern as the colonies of Great
Britain had to separate from the mother country ; and
that, as " aU government derives its just powers from
the consent of the governed," there was no right to
coerce them to remain in the Union. But Mr. Greeley.

Tlie New York Daily Times. 331
is an ambitious pohtician, as weU as a repubUcan phi
lanthropist. Perhaps his associates had some power
of coercion over him ; at any rate, he took back his
words, and has been one of the most extreme and
remorseless advocates of the conquest, subjugation, or
extermination of the Southern people.
The Daily Tribune has a chculation, probably, of
30,000 to 40,000; but its weekly or semi-weekly
editions give it an aggregate of more than 150,000.
This chculation is extended over the Northern and
Western States among people who sympathise more or
less with Mr. Greeley. It is the favourite paper with
those who consider themselves the movement party,
or ultra-reformers- — the foUowers of Garrison, WendeU
Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore Parker,
Fourier, Owen, Proudhon, Ledru RoUin, or Victor
Hugo. The New York Daily Times has probably a larger
daUy chculation than the Daily Tribune, but does not
extend its influence so widely by its other editions.
It is conducted by Henry J. Raymond, who has been
Lieutenant-Governor of the State of New Tork,
Speaker of the House of Representatives, and who
asphes to be senator — probably to be President. Like
Mr. Greeley, he is a native of New England, but had
the advantage of a more regular education. He served
an editorial apprenticeship, first with Mr. Greeley,
afterwards with Mr. Webb, of the Courier and Enquirer,
once an important pohtical and commercial newspaper,
but merged in the World, when Mr. Webb, on the
accession of Mr. Lincoln, accepted the post of Minister

332 The Periodical Press of America.
to BrazU. The Times has the reputation of being'
the special organ of Mr. Seward, and Mr. Raymond
supported his claims to the presidency against
Mr. Greeley's candidate; but the Times is for Mr.
Raymond chiefly, and what he beheves to be the
winning side.
The Tribune, Times, Evening Post, and the Sun, a
halfpenny newspaper, are advocates of the Government
and the war. The Herald, the World, the Journal of
Commerce, the News, and the Express, are aU openly or
secretly opposed to both. At the beginning of the
war, there were, in the whole North, about two
hundred papers that took ground against the right
and policy of attempting to restore the Union by force.
Most of them were sUenced or suppressed. Many of
their editors were imprisoned, without process of law,
but by the act of the mUitary usurpation at Washing
ton. Never was the lack of inteUigence, or honesty,
or independence shown more glaringly than in the
course of the American press in relation to the war.
Three thousand Northern editors knew as weU as Mr.
Greeley that the Government had no constitutional
power, and, according to the principles of the constitu
tion, no right to compel the Southern States to remain
in the Union — no right to attempt theh conquest or
subjugation ; yet nine-tenths of them yielded to an
ignorant and fanatical pubhc opinion, and saw the
Federal and State Constitutions, and the principles of
free government they had always professed, trampled
under foot by a miUtary usurpation. Tet Americans
have held that a free press was a paUadium of Uberty {

Popular Periodicals. 333
Among the most successful and widely-circulated of
American periodicals are, Harper's Weekly and Harper s
Monthly, issued by the largest pubhshing house in
America, which has grown immensely rich, mainly by
reprinting the works of English authors. The maga
zine and weekly are both profusely Ulustrated, and
their most attractive matter consists of Enghsh serials,
for which they now pay something, not as copyright,
but to secure advanced sheets and a virtual monopoly.
¦A certain amount of original matter is published in
both these periodicals, and paid for at fah prices.
Before the war, the monthly had a sale of more than
a hundred thousand copies, the weekly some sixty
thousand. The Home Journal, edited by George P. Morris,
the popular American song-writer, and N. P. WUlis,
the poet, whose prose, works are perhaps best known
in England, is a tastefully- conducted, cleverly- written
weekly, too elegant and dilettante, however, to say
much of politics, and is read chiefly by that large class
in America which long since abandoned the country to
a vulgar and corrupt horde of office-seekers, gamblers,
and leeches on the pubhc purse.
A curious instance of success in periodical Uterature
was shown in the case of Bonner's Weekly Ledger. Mr.
Bonner, an industrious printer, with what smaU capital
he had saved of a journeyman's wages, commenced a
weekly paper, fashioned apparently after the English
models of the Family Herald and London Journal. For
a year or two it was vigorously advertised and puffed,
but had no marked success. It was then given out

334 Tlie Periodical Press of America.
that " Fanny Fern," an eccentric, strong-minded female
writer, had been engaged to write for the Ledger, for
which she was to receive the quite unprecedented, and
in America almost incredible, price of twenty pounds
a column. This chcumstance was copied and com
mented upon in three or four thousand newspapers,
and became known to all the milhons of newspaper
readers. Ten thousand pounds expended in advertising
would not have given so much pubhcity as this
starthng case of a writer's good-luck, and a publisher's
generosity or reckless extravagance. The result was,
that everybody wanted to see a paper whose pubhsher
could afford to pay such a price, and the articles that
could command it. Its success was made. The Ledger
went at once to a chculation of three hundred thousand,
and Mr. Bonner was able to keep his fast horses, and
employ fast authors, male and female, to write for him
at sensation prices.
This was, I may as weU mention, before a London
magazine paid Mr. Tennyson, with, we may presume,
a simUar object, ten pounds a hne for a poem — very
fine no doubt, but not worth, in any high sense of
worthfulness — each couplet more than the Paradise
Lost. Mr. Bonner foUowed up his success by paying
Hon. Edward Everett, a Massachusetts statesman and
orator, who had been Secretary of State and President
of Harvard University, two thousand pounds for a
series of articles — the money, however, being given and
received as a contribution for the purchase of the
Washington estate of Mount Vernon, for which,

Sensation Writers. 335
among other things, a miUion or two of men on both
sides have been fighting.
" Fanny Fern" — a sister of N. P. WUlis, author of
Pencillings by the Way, &c, has continued to write her
often sensible audacities in the Ledger. The Rev.
Henry Ward Beecher also wrote for it. In fact, there
were few Uterary notabilities who did not write for it.
But Mr. Bonner's real attractions were not these. He
used them as baits. He advertised and puffed with
them, but the two writers he chiefly reUed upon
were Mr. Sylvanus Cobb, jun., and Mrs. E. D. N.
Southworth. Theh romantic, intense, sensational
stories, full of incident, adventure, and sentiment, were
what Toung America required ; and nine-tenths of the
readers of all papers of this class are boys and girls,
between the ages of ten and twenty.
The success of the Ledger of course created a school
of imitators, aU worse than itself, and none of them so
successful. The outbreak of the war, with realities
more strange and terrible than fiction, deprived them
aU of a large part of their circulation.
Comic papers, like Punch or the Charivari, have
never prospered in America, not for want of humour
or its appreciation, but rather, I think, because the
demand is otherwise supplied. It is because aU the
papers are more or less of a comic character. Harper's
Magazine has in each number a few pages of comic
matter and engravings, partly original, partly stolen
from Punch. The weekly has one page, at least, of
comic engravings. Nearly every paper in the country,

336 The Periodical Press of America.
except the rehgious press, which is at times absurd
enough, has its department of fun. Short and spicy
paragraphs appear in the editorial columns. A j oke from
the New Orleans Picayune, or LouisviUe Journal, is
copied by the whole secular press. The humours of
" Major Jack Downing," " Artemas Ward, the Show
man," " Ezekiel Bigelow," or " Orpheus C. Kerr," crop
out in various Journals. It is this diffusion of the
comic element that hinders the success of a paper
devoted to this speciahty.
The rehgious press includes a great number of
weekly newspapers, and has an important influence.
Every sect, and every subdivision of a sect, has its
organs. Presbyterians, old school and new school,
North and South, have theh rehgious papers, which
fight theh battles. The Methodists have immense
printing establishments, and papers which circulate by
the hundred thousand; so of the Congregationalists,
Baptists, Unitarians, Universahsts, &c, for there are
too many to enumerate. There are Episcopalian
papers, High Church and Low Church, and ten or
twelve Roman CathoUc papers.
Among the most noted of the rehgious newspapers
is the Independent, edited by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher,
assisted by three or four clerical and lay writers of a
simUar character. Its chculation is in the neighbour
hood of one hundred thousand. It combines the
elements of news and commerce with religion and phi*
lanthropy. It has been one of the most earnest and
violent of the papers that caused secession, and then
urged on the war to restore the Union they had made

Party Organs.' 337
impossible. In his Brooklyn tabernacle, Mr. Beecher
could preach abolition, disunion, or subjugation to
three thousand persons. In the far-reaching pulpit of
the Independent he could speak every week to pos
sibly a mUlion of readers. In one case, his voice filled
the space within the four walls of the temple which
seemed to have been erected chiefly to the honour and
glory of Mr. Beecher ; in the other, his words were
read on the plains beyond the Mississippi and by the
shores of the far-off Oregon.
Not only every sect in religion, but every cause or
theory of reform has its organs. Some years ago, there
were violent No-popery papers, but they have died out,
because the great mass of Americans to-day, caring
very little for any religion, or thinking one kind about
as good as another, look without dread upon the rapid
spread of Roman Catholicism, which bids fairer than
any other to become, not many years hence, the domi
nant faith over the whole American continent. There
are Temperance papers, urging the passage of Maine
laws, and other coercive measures, not only against
drunkenness, but the manufacture or sale of any liquid
that intoxicates. There are Abolition papers, organs of
various anti-slavery societies. There have been, within
ten years, some fifty papers devoted to Spiritualism ;
and there are, or have been, periodicals devoted to
Phrenology, Homoeopathy, Hydropathy, Anti-rent,
Bloomerism, Woman's Rights, Odd FeUowship, and
more odd notions of various kinds than I can readUy
remember. English editors speak contemptuously of the Ameri-
vol. i. 22

338 77te Periodical Press of America.
can system of newspaper puffing, or inserting com
mendations of things and people in the editorial
columns, at from sixpence to four shiUings a line.
Whejjrthe practice is general and generally understood,.
hjp>es not mislead. It is but an extension and variety
of the advertising system. If I am not much mistaken,
I see, from week to week, no inconsiderable amount of
puffing of joint-stock speculations, books, and various
inventions and enterprises, in English papers, with or
without a consideration.
Mr. Anthony TroUope, and other English traveUers
in America, have declared that they saw no good
American papers. The Americans, on the other
hand, find the EngUsh papers duU, stilted, heavy, and
wanting in variety and vivacity.
If there is no country where the press is so universal
as in America, there is none, perhaps, in which more
consideration is given to the higher class of its con
ductors. There is scarcely a better profession than the
editorial, and no better road to influence and distinc
tion. In my younger days, Isaac HiU, an able editor
of a Democratic paper, who began as a practical
printer, rose to be governor of New Hampshire,
senator in Congress, I believe a Cabinet Minister, and
for twenty years he was regarded as the leader of the
dominant party, and the most powerful man in the
State. In the days of Jackson, Amos KendaU, editor
and postmaster-general, was said to be the power
behind the throne. Mr. Greene, editor of the Boston
Post, filled high offices in the State. In New Tork,
Thurlow Weed, editor of the Evening Journal, and

Editors in Office. 339
Edwin CrossweU, of the Albany Argus, both printers,
and then editors, wielded the power of the Empire
State, as their respective parties acquired majorities,
and made governors, senators, and presidents. They
did not seek offices, but kept, it was said, the slate on
which was written all the important appointments.
At this time three members of Congress from the city
of New Tork are editors of newspapers, while twenty
others hold diplomatic or other appointments under
the Federal Government. Very satisfactory, no doubt,
but it is my opinion that a press less intimately con
nected with government offices and appointments
would be more independent, useful and honourable.

22-3

340

CHAPTER XXVII.
AMERICAN BOOKS AND AUTHORS.
English reprints in America. — International copyright. — A Yankee
poetess. — Whittier, the Quaker poet. — Stephens' travels.^
Herman Melville and Typee. — Edgar A. Poe, and a whim
sical introduction. — J. Fenimore Cooper. — Fitz-Greene Hal
leck. — Mr. Bryant. — Mr. Bancroft, and his "ease in com
position." — English influence on American opinion. — Charlotte
Cushman. — Motives for literary piracy. — An English novelist
and the American copyright law. — American originality. — >
Government recognition of literary merit.
Three-fourths of aU the books printed in America are
reprints of Enghsh works. As there is no inter
national copyright law or treaty, these books cost
nothing to theh American pubUshers. The histories
of Alison and Macaulay, the novels of Scott, Bulwer,
Disraeh, Dickens, &c, have been reprinted in cheap
editions, and sold by hundreds of thousands, making
fortunes for paper-makers, printers, and pubhshers.
For example, a three volume novel, pubhshed in
London at a guinea and a half, and sold to the extent
of fifteen hundred copies, has been issued in New Tork
in twenty-four hours after its arrival in a sixpenny or
shilling pamphlet, and an edition of twenty thousand
copies. Within a few years, the authors of serial works
have been paid, not lor a copyright, which they could

Successful Authors. 341
not give, because there is no law to secure it, but for
advance sheets, which give the publisher the advan
tage of a practical monopoly. The most popular
Enghsh serial writers in this way derive, in an
irregular and surreptitious fashion, some profit from
American reprints.
What could American authors be expected to do
in the face of this powerful competition? Suppose
an American writer takes a manuscript novel to a
pubhsher, his ready answer is — " Why should I pay
you for a book, when I can get at least as good a one,
and one with the prestige of European success, for a
few shiUings ? "
Only books of a local interest or a very peculiar
character, such as cannot be found among Enghsh
pubhcations, could have any charm in America. A
history of the United States, fresh travels and voyages,
works hke those of Prescott — or novels racy of the
soU, Uke those of John Neal, J. Fenimore Cooper,
Hawthorne, or Holmes, could be expected to find a
market — or tales of the local, sensation, or humani
tarian school, Uke those of Mrs. Beecher Stowe.
The first person of the much venerated class of
authors I remember to have seen, was an old man
who Uved among the mountains of New Hampshire,
and made almanacks ; the second was the quaint and
sweet New England poetess, Miss Hannah F. Gould.
She Uved, and I hope stiU Uves, at Newburyport,
Massachusetts, and I went to see her, as visitors to
London used to go to the Tower to see the hons. I
had in my youthful imagination gifted her with aU

342 American Books and Authors.
the charms of youth, beauty and genius. I found
her in a plain old-fashioned house, herself a plain old-
fashioned old maid, sitting by the fire in a homely dress^
knitting grey wooUen stockings. They were not even
blue stockings. It was my first disenchantment, and
I think she knew it, and quietly enjoyed it. She was
very kind and chatty, but not in the least hke my
idea of a beautiful young poetess ; but she took the
place of the departed image, and became a pleasant
memory, for I saw her no more.
It must have been about this time, nearly thirty
years ago, that I saw the Quaker poet, Whittier, a.
writer whose strong, nervous, intense verses contrasted
strangely with his broad-brimmed hat, shad-bellied
coat, and the mUd and peaceful doctrines of the sect
of which he was an exemplary member. He was,
and ever since has been, a fervid AboUtionist, and this
man of peace has done as much, it may be, as any
other to deluge his country in a storm of war. He
would not fight, but he has urged others to fight
with words of fire — words that have carried desolation
and mourning to manya Northern and manya Southern
home. Men never make such fiends of themselves
as when they do it for God and humanity. The
American Quakers would never, I beUeve, have aban
doned theh peace principles for white men — they have
done it for negroes. As missionary zeal seeks its
objects in the Antipodes, overlooking the heathen aU
about us, so Quaker phUanthropy is ready to sacrifice
everything — even its most cherished principles— if the
objects of its sympathy are only black.

Stephens' Travels. 343
John L. Stephens, a clever and enterprising New
Tork lawyer, author of Travels in Russia, Greece, &c,
and of Central American Antiquities, and afterwards
President of the Panama Raihoad, made his entry
into the world of literature in a rather whimsical
fashion. He had been, many years ago, in Eastern
Europe, upon I know not what business. After his
return to New Tork, he happened one day to be in
the pubhshing house of Harper Brothers, when the
senior member of the firm, who has been Mayor of
New Tork, feU into conversation with him about
literature — that is, the sort of books he sold most of,
which was his special interest in the matter.
" Travels seU about the* best of anything we get
hold of," said he. " They don't always go off with a
rush, hke a novel by a celebrated author, but they seU
longer, and in the end, pay better. By the way,
you've been to Europe ; why not write us a book of
travels ?"
" Never thought of such a thing," said the lawyer.
" I traveUed in wUd out-of-the-way places, on business,
and went very fast. I made no notes, and should
have very httle to write about."
" That's no matter," said the publisher, who had
taken a fancy that he could get hold of something
racy from the fast New Torker ; " you went through,
and saw the signs. We have got plenty of books
about those countries. Tou just pick out as many as
you want, and I will send them home for you ; you can
dish us up something."
He did dish up three volumes of very amusing

344 American Books and Authors.
travels, and in due time three more, and the Harpers
paid him some five thousand pounds as his portion of
the profits of the enterprise — which was by no means
the hon's share. Encouraged by this success, Mr.
Stephens made his expedition to explore the ruins of
Palenque, in Central America. His work on those
mysterious antiquities may be more accurate than the
Oriental Travels, but it is not half so amusing, and as
it was an expensive illustrated work, I doubt if it paid
as weU.
One day in New Tork I went into a lawyer's office
in WaU-street — the office of a young and ardent
politician, whom I had met often on the stump in the
recent pohtical campaign,! and who had just received
the appointment of Secretary of Legation to the
American Embassy somewhere near the Court of St.
James's. I congratulated and condoled with him on
his appointment. It was a step upward and forward
in the public hfe to which he asphed ; but he was
poor, and the salary was two thousand doUars — scarcely
enough for his gloves and cab-hhe. The American
Minister in London must be a man of fortune — the
secretary is likely not to be, and gets through his four
years of service covered with debt, if not with glory.
WhUe in the office, as the American lawyer's
chambers are caUed, a younger brother and partner
told me they had a third brother, whom I had never
seen. He had been a httle wUd, and some years
before had run away to sea, first to Liverpool and
then in a whaler to the South Pacific. This was
nothing strange — what foUowed was.

Herman Melville. 345
" He got home a few months ago," said the young
lawyer, " and has been writing something about his
adventures among the cannibals. Would you hke to
look at it ?"
I had a couple of hours to spare, and took the
package of the sailor boy's writing. It was the
manuscript of " Typee," and the runaway brother of
my WaU-street friends was Herman MelvUle.
I read " Typee" at one sitting, and had, of course, no
doubt of its success ; but the better to assure it, I
advised the diplomatic brother to take a copy to
London, and have it issued there simultaneously with
its pubhcation in New Tork. I felt sure that the
reviews of the English press would make its American
success, and I was not at all sure that the process could
be reversed. It was accordingly brought out by Mr.
Murray, and made at once a brilliant reputation for the
author. It was one of the few instances of the first
work of an unknown literary adventurer making for him
avery desirable reputation. I met Herman MelviUe
often, after I read "Typee," both before and subsequent
to its publication. He was a simple-hearted, enthusi
astic, gentlemanly sailor, or sailorlike gentleman. His
subsequent works have been marked by certain
eccentricities, but have, on the whole, sustained the
promise of his maiden production. He married a
daughter of Chief Justice Shaw, and retired to a rural
residence among the hiUs of Western Massachusetts,
where he carried on his farm and wrote a book every
year until 1860, when, either getting short of materials
or tired of hfe on shore, he started off again on a

346 American Books and Authors.
whahng voyage round the world, of which we shah
doubtless hear something in due season.
My introduction to Edgar A. Poe was whimsical
enough. I was passing through that smaU patch of
triangular green, in the lower part of New Tork,
which bears the name of the " Park," to the Post-
office which then stood in one corner of that enclosure,
near the City HaU, when I was accosted by an original
character named George Washington Dixon. He was
born in Maryland ; had the suspicion of a drop of the
warm blood of Africa in his veins, but too httle for
identification; had a musical voice, and a talent for
mimicry ; and was at one time patronized by Mr. Clay
and the magnates at Washington. He was, I think,
the first to bring negro melodies upon the stage, and
sang " Old Zip Coon " at the theatres. He gave con
certs with songs, imitations, and ventriloquism ; but
the passion of his hfe was to be a journahst and man
of letters. There was a shght obstacle to the realiza
tion of this ambition, which was that he could not
write. I am not sure that he could write at aU, but
he certainly could not put together two grammatical
sentences with his pen, though not a bad talker.
In spite of his deficiencies, George was unwearied in
starting newspapers and pubhshing sensation extras.
He indulged in second and thhd editions ; he dehghted
in a crowd of noisy newsboys. On the other hand, as
he could not write, nor often pay for others to write,
and seldom had money to pay rent or printers, his
pubhcations soon came to grief. He started a paper
in Connecticut, and faUed, of course. Then he gave

An Eccentric Journalist. 347
concerts untU he got a little money, and started a
paper in LoweU, Massachusetts. The pretty factory-
girls bought a few copies of his dingy sheet ; but as
the same matter was printed over and over, they got
tired of it, and the paper failed.
* Then he went to Boston. Finding a vacant shop
in Washington-street, he got possession of the key on
a pretence of examining the premises; but he con
cluded to remain, and began to issue a newspaper. He
burnt gas day and night for lack of other fuel ; was
fed by a succession of trustful bakers and milkmen ;
suppUed a broken-down writer of some ability with
whisky in pay for editorials, and got his paper from
a burning warehouse, which he was strongly suspected
of setting on fire for the purpose. Never was a news
paper got out under the pressure of more numerous
difficulties. The printers bolted, but the indomitable
George Washington worked off new editions from the
old forms on a venerable Ramage press he had got hold
of under the pretence of wanting it for a museum.
But the landlord, bakers, milkmen, and poUce proved
in the end too strong for him, and George came to
New Tork, as fresh, handsome, and sanguine as ever,
and as determined as ever to be the greatest editor in
America. His next ambition was to be on familiar
terms with hterary men ; therefore, with an urbanity
aU his own, and an affabUity such as the reporters of
the London newspapers are in the habit of attributing
to royal highnesses at the sUghtest indication of
common sense or decent manners, Mr. Dixon saluted
the present writer, observing that the weather was

348 American Books and Authors.
pleasant and noticing that the day was warm, as we
went towards the Post-office.
On the steps stood a slender, taU, pale gentleman,
with a pear-shaped head, the broad part upwards, a
dehcate mouth and chin, beautiful grey eyes, and the
whitest of hands, with long tapering fingers. •
Seeing that we did not recognise each other, George
Washington rose equal to the occasion. With a
BrummeUian elegance of manner he introduced Edgar
Allen Poe and the present writer to each other, and
after the usual compliments went forth to achieve his
destiny, which was ultimately to die very miserably
of yeUow fever in New Orleans.
Poe was a Southerner, and a man of rare genius,
with some grave faults of character and one great mis
fortune — a temperament so sensitive that a single glass
of wine made him not merely intoxicated, but insane.
He had a beautiful wife, who died of poverty and
consumption. He was wayward, unworldly, and
strangely incapable of taking care of himself, or of
keeping the friendship of those who wished to serve
him. He was always sure to do something to mar
his fortunes. One day he sold an ingenious scientific
hoax to a newspaper publisher for ten pounds. The
publisher, as is the American custom, brought it out
as an extra ; and Poe, crazed by a glass of wine, stood
on the walk before the publisher's door, and told the
assembling crowd that the extra was a hoax, as he
personally knew, for he had written it himself. The
crowd scattered, the sales feU off, and the pubhsher,

J. Fenimore Cooper.' 349
on going to the door, saw his author making what he
conceived to be the necessary explanations.
Engaged to be married to a lady of wealth, position,
and a genius worthy of his own, he took the precious
opportunity to invoke his famihar demon the day
before the wedding was to have taken place, and to
make such an exhibition of himself in the street before
the lady's house as to show that he was much fitter
for a madhouse than for matrimony. The match was
broken off with such circumstances of mortification as
he did not long survive. Thus died the author of
" The Raven," and " Lenore," and some of the ablest
writings in American literature. Poor Poe, he was
much blamed, but those who knew him best felt
for him much more of pity. He hved a sad strange
life, and died a sadder death.
One of the sturdiest of American Republicans was
J. Fenimore Cooper, who is also one of the best
known of American authors. He was an old-fashioned
New Tork Democrat of the Conservative type, and
held the present leaders of the Northern (so-caUed)
Republican party in detestation. He was a Church
man of strong rehgious sentiments, and a politician of
very decided principles. No American writer has
defended what he considered to be the true doctrines
of Republicanism with more vigour, and no one has
more earnestly exposed the evils that he saw growing
up in practice and threatening the hfe of the Repubhc.
He was no believer in universal suffrage or an elective
judiciary, or the rule of the majority. He held that

350 American Books and Authors.
the constitutions of the States were compacts of the.
people of those States with each other, and a recogni
tion of the great principles and fundamental laws that
should govern society, and that they were made for
the protection of minorities. Majorities, he contended,
had no right to decide any but matters of minor im
portance ; and in practice, he believed, that the
minority, rather than the majority, managed to govern
by party intrigues and caucus nominations. The
advocate of religious liberty, he saw society' disor
ganized by sectarianism, for which he could find no
remedy. The church of which he was a member
claimed authority without pretending to infalhbUity \
and while it planted itself on the right of private
judgment in matters of faith, how could it blame a
score, or a hundred, of sects for the varied exercise of
this right ?
Mr. Cooper muddled himself in his efforts to
reconcUe opposing principles. But he was always
brave and honest. If he defended America and
Americans from what he considered the unjust criti
cisms of foreign writers, he did not spare the faults
of his countrymen. No writer has censured them
with more severity. He saw, with pain and mortifi
cation, the growth of poUtical and social corruption,
and predicted the consequences with great truth and
earnestness. Proud of the real achievements of his
country, he satirized its vainglorious spirit with an
unsparing hand. Attacked by the American press,
he determined to show its conductors that hberty was
not licence, and brought numerous libel suits, in which

Fitz- Greene Halleck. 351
he was so generaUy successful that editors who had
anything to lose were glad to let him alone. No
one, I think, can read the works of Mr. Cooper
without having a sincere respect for his character as
weU as for his genius.
One of the oldest and most esteemed of the poets
of America is Fitz-Greene HaUeck. When I knew
him for some years in New Tork, he was a kind of
confidential secretary to the richest man in America,
John Jacob Astor, who also, at one period, gave
employment to another distinguished and most genial
American writer, Washington Irving. Irving and
HaUeck began the world as Uterary Americans nearly
half a century ago, when New Tork was but a smaU
village compared with its present dimensions. Irving
pursued a Uterary career to the end of his Ufe :
HaUeck wrote but Uttle, but that Uttle was fuU of
fire, wit, and humour. I used to meet him almost every
day at a quiet little French cafe, in Warren-street,
opposite the City Hall. He came there to take his
demi tasse ani petit verre, and read the evening papers.
On the walls hung pictures of the barricades of Paris,
surmounted by the tricolour. In the rear were
billiards cUcking from morning tUl midnight. At
the marble-top tables Frenchmen, Germans, and a few
Enghsh and Americans who had got into continental
habits, played chess and dominoes, and sipped absinthe,
or, in the warmer weather, iced claret punch or orgeat.
It was the stUlest pubUc-house, I beheve, in New Tork,
Tou might sit for hours and hear nothing but the
click of the bUliard baUs, the rattle of dominoes, and

352 American Books and Authors.
the "check!" of the chess-players. The landlord
was sUence personified. He seldom got beyond a
grunt. His face beamed with good-nature, but it
never got further expression than some obscure
mutterings. But HaUeck was too thorough an
American not to talk, and was fuU of anecdote and
fun. He had stories of Napoleon and WeUington,
hp&h of whom were his favourites. He knew the
present emperor when he was in New Tork, and
thought bim " rather a dull feUow," as, in fact, he
seemed to many persons who did not know what he
was up to. HaUeck was a bachelor, living in modest
lodgings, and avoiding society, regular in his habits,
even, it was said, to the stated number of glasses of
brandy-and- water ; but I have met few men who
talked better, or who hghted up in conversation with
a finer enthusiasm. A wit, and a bon vivant, he was
also deeply rehgious, and though educated a Connec
ticut Puritan, was a zealous Roman Cathohc, and
maintained that every man who reaUy thought upon
the matter must come to the same conviction. " Tou
must aUow, then," I said, " that there are very few
men who really think about it."
"Of course," he rephed, "we know that. The
.great masses of the people of aU countries beUeve as
their fathers beUeved before them. Not one in a
thousand ever chooses his rehgious faith."
Mr. Bryant, who also began his Uterary life with
Irving, HaUeck, Drake, Cooper — the men of the last
generation of writers, contemporaries of Scott, Byron,
CampbeU, and Moore — stUl hves in New Tork, and

Bryant and Bancroft. 353
may be seen with his long white hah and beard, and
eyes that seem to look into the future but do not per
ceive the present. He seems cold, stern, fanatical.
He is the editor of the Evening Post, and for many
years was the able defender of the Democratic and
Free-trade party. A few years ago he became a very
black Republican, and has sustained the Government
of Mr. Lincoln and the war against the South with a
ferocity which would astonish me more if I had not
seen how phUanthropists can hate, how men of peace
can urge on the horrors of war, how Christians can
murder each other.
When this red leaf in the history of America is
turned over, there wiU begin a new era in American
Uterature — a better, brighter, nobler one than we can
point to in the past. It may be that the earnest,
true hfe of the nation, or the nations, of the future
across the Atlantic is now to begin. Let us hope so.
The American History of Mr. Bancroft is weU
known in England. An EngUsh M.P., who has
traveUed in America, and written a book upon his
travels, says of the American historian — " If Channing
be the Addison of America, Bancroft is the Hume.
His volumes bear evidence of diligent research, ease in
composition, and historical accuracy." I can give
Mr. Bancroft credit for abundant research, but his
history is too evidently written in the interests of a
party not to excite some suspicion of at least a partial
colouring. I smiled at "the ease in composition,"
for I happened to have had the opportunity of
inspecting some of the historian's manuscripts and
vol. i. 23

354 American Books and Authors.
proofs, and to know his method of procedure. And
this is the process which my parliamentary tourist
calls " ease in composition." Mr. Bancroft, after
studying his authorities and arranging his facts, writes
out his narrative. He then goes over it, erasing,
interlining, correcting untU the whole paper is covered
with blots and new matter. His secretary takes this
draft, and copies it out in a fair hand, with lines wide
apart. The historian goes over this, erasing, inter
lining, and polishing every sentence. Then it is set
up in type, and a clean proof sent to the author, who
makes his last corrections, which are often so
numerous that it is less work to set it aU up anew
than to correct it in the ordinary manner. The
result is what strikes the reader as " ease in compo
sition." It is surprising that the Americans, for ever boast
ing of their independence of England, and even of their
hatred of English institutions, should be so dependent
upon and so sensitive to English opinion. Well,
perhaps it is not so very surprising. There can be
but one real centre to English literature and Enghsh
thought. Even the Edinburgh publishers must have
their principal business houses in Paternoster-row.
English thought and English literature reach wherever
the language is spoken.
Mr. Irving was thought a clever man before he
went abroad, but it was when he went back to New
Tork, with the prestige of EngUsh success — only after
Mr. Murray had paid him two or three thousand
guineas for a book, that aU New Tork turned out to

Charlotte Cushman. 355
welcome him as a man who had conferred honour on
his country. So Mr. Cooper's American fame was the
echo of European success.
One would think that, of aU othe'rs, an actor was
most dependent upon the feeling of his audience, and
the least upon foreign opinion ; yet I have seen poor
Charlotte Cushman toiling year after year as a stock
actress at three pounds a week, playing all sorts of
parts at Bowery theatres, leading an army of Amazons
in the Naiad Queen, when she played actually better
than she did ten years afterward, at the height of her
success ; yet only the judicious few, who were judges
of good acting, gave her the credit she deserved. In a
bitter despair she came to England, became famous,
and when she returned to America, in a year or two,
no price was too great for her services — no theatre
could hold the crowds that went to see and applaud
her. She received as much for one night's perform
ance as had been paid her, two or three years before,
for the arduous labours of a whole season.
It is the old story. A prophet hath no honour in
his own city. Americans, as a rule, and in matters
not connected with their own local affairs, require
foreign, and especially English endorsement. A
paragraph of praise of an American writer from an
English review would go farther with the American
public than the puffs of the whole American press,
daUy, weekly, monthly, and quarterly, in all its five
thousand separate publications.
Great efforts have been made by both English and
American writers to induce Congress to pass an inter-
23-2

356 American Books and Authors.
national copyright law. It is for the interest of both.
The English author would get paid for his work, the
American would not have the disastrous competition
of stolen wares against him. The American author,
like the bothered maker of brooms, may steal his
stock of ideas ; but he cannot expect to seU his com
modities to a publisher who steals his wares ready-
made. " Free-trade," I believe, has nothing to do
with the question.
And why, it may be asked, is there not passed a
law, or made a treaty, so just and so much demanded
by authors on both sides of the Atlantic? Simply
because the American public wants cheap books, the
publishers prefer getting them for nothing to paying
for them, and Congress is controUed by those who
have money or votes. American pubUshers Uke the
Harpers and Appletons, have hundreds of thousands
of pounds invested in stereotype plates and stocks of
reprints of English books. It would very seriously
derange their business if they were obliged to acquire
a right to print them from the authors, and a law or
treaty of international copyright, to be just, must
include the works of last year as weU as those of this
or next.
Mr. Seward, on coming into power, might have
secured some popularity in England by proposing a
copyright treaty ; but he would probably have lost by
it in America. The readers of the works of Dickens
and Thackeray were very anxious to see these gentle
men when they visited America ; but I have never
heard of any anxiety to pay them in solid coin for

Law of Copyright. 357
the pleasure and profit they may have derived from
their writings.
Under these discouraging circumstances, it is, per
haps, a matter of wonder that America has done so
much in hterature, and produced so many authors
of whom she may be justly proud. Griswold and
Duyckink have embalmed their names and works in
goodly volumes, and the list of American works
in the' British Museum fills two good- sized octavos,
and might be further extended.
The American copyright law is less liberal to
foreigners than the English. An American author
residing in England may secure the benefit of a
copyright without renouncing his nationality. Not
so an Englishman in America. When a late dis
tinguished novelist was in New Tork, he proposed
to sell a manuscript novel to an American publisher.
" I should be happy to pay you a good price for the
book," said the American ; " but you, as an unna
turalized foreigner, cannot secure me a copyright.
The law requires that you should at least have
declared your intention of becoming a citizen."
" Is that aU ?" said the man of many romances ;
" that is soon settled :" and he walked over to the
City HaU and declared his intention of becoming in
due time an American citizen, with all the requisite
formalities. I cannot say that the gentleman had not at the
time a bona fide intention of renouncing his allegiance
to her Majesty Queen Victoria, but I am sure that
if he had, he must have changed his mind, as he

358 American Books and Authors.
afterwards accepted the post of her Majesty's consul
at a pleasant European city. He sold his book,
however. The powerful competition of English authors whose
works could be had at free cost, forced American
writers to be original, or not to be published. Under
the pressure of this necessity there has grown up a
local and something Uke a national literature. Emerson
has been caUed an imitator of Carlyle, but he is a
Tankee Carlyle, with many features of his own. I
confess I do not see much resemblance — not more
than one might find between a many-bladed knife
and a very ponderous piece of artiUery.
No English author could have written the Bigelow
Papers of Russell Lowell. They 'are not possible to
any one but a born Tankee ; and I do not weU see
how they can be thoroughly appreciated by any
other. LongfeUow, Hawthorne, and Whittier might
have written their works anywhere. Not so Dr.
Holmes, who can be as thorough a Tankee as
LoweU. Mrs. Khkland, Mrs. ChUd, and Mrs. Beecher
Stowe, who are among the three best known of
American female writers, have each of them a strong
local colouring. Willis, and his sister, " Fanny Fern,"
are also American peculiarities.
The Government in America has not done much
for Uterature. By its neglect of an international
copyright law, it has left publishers free to plunder
foreign authors and starve their own. AU this, how
ever, must soon change. The Confederate Govern
ment will make its law of copyright universal, and

Rewards of Genius. 359
the North wUl be shamed into foUowing its example.
Enghsh authors wiU find theh emphe extended over
another continent of unwearied and omnivorous readers,
whUe American writers wiU have the chance of fair
competition at home and a better recognition abroad,
when virtue's ways in hterature, as in other matters,
shaU be ways of pleasantness.
But if the American Government has not done
much in any direct way to advance the interests of
American Uterature, it cannot be said to have treated
its authors with neglect. Irving, Prescott, Bancroft,
Paulding, Hawthorne, WUlis, HUdreth, and others,
have held Government appointments, some of them of
the highest grade. Next to partizan services, the highest
claim to pohtical distinction in America is a literary re
putation. UntU now the pen has been mightier than
the sword. It remains to be seen how it wUl be when
the sword shall have cut its bloody way through the
present entanglements. In the absence of a here
ditary aristocracy, and in a country of great intel
lectual activity, if not of the highest culture or
attainments, the man of letters must always hold an
enviable position.

360

CHAPTER XXVIII.
LAW, PHYSIC, AND DIVINITY.
The learned professions. — No grades among lawyers. — A road to
political distinction. — America governed by lawyers. — No
wigs. — No monopoly. — Health of America. — Medical educa
tion. — Cheap diplomas. — No distinction of classes. — No
standard of medical science. — Triumphant quackery. — Hy
giene. — Causes of disease. — American cookery. — Medical
superstition. — American clergy. — Episcopalians. — Other de
nominations. — Changing professions. — Eccentric preachers.—
Maffit, Finney, and Beecher. — Political and sensation preachers.
— The shepherd and the flock.
The learned professions, so caUed — Law, Physic, and
Divinity — have not the same social consideration in
America as in Europe. In England the various
grades in the profession of law give a special dignitv
to its higher branches, as do the various professional
appointments. There are similar distinctions in the
medical profession. The clergy of the Church of
England are functionaries of the State, and the
highest rank, the bishops, have seats in the House
of Lords, and take precedence in the peerage.
There is nothing of all this in America. A lawyer
may practise every department of his profession. The
same man is an attorney, solicitor, counseUor, barrister.
He may draw up a deed or lease, defend a case of

A Government of Lawyers. 361
assault and battery, or argue a cause in the Supreme
Court of the United States. In many of the States
a man may be admitted to the Bar after a few weeks'
study. The tendency everywhere is to remove re
strictions and monopolies, and have free-trade at
home, if not with foreign nations.
Law is a money-making profession, however, and
money gives position. It is, moreover, the most direct
road to political distinction. Thirteen Presidents of
the United States out of sixteen have been lawyers.
Four-fifths of aU members of Congress and of the
State Legislatures have been of the same profession.
Lawyers have also filled a large proportion of aU
other offices which are filled either by election or
appointment. At the moment I write, for example,
the destinies of the Federal Government are in the
hands of lawyers. President Lincoln is a lawyer;
Secretary Seward, a lawyer ; Secretary Chase, a lawyer ;
Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War, is a lawyer ; General
Halleck, Commander-in-Chief, a lawyer; General
Butler, a lawyer ; General Banks, a lawyer ; General
Sickles, a lawyer — and so on. Probably half the
officers of the Federal army are lawyers.
It is not strange that great numbers of educated
young men should select this profession, and that it
should be held in the highest consideration. It is so
necessary in America that a man should be and do
something — the profession of a gentleman, or one
who lives idly on his income is so disreputable —
that thousands of young men who have no need to
practise law stUl enter the profession, either as a

362 Law, Physic, and Divinity.
pretence of doing something, or as the open road
to political distinction.
In certain respects I think the legal practice in
America preferable to that of England. There may
be wisdom in a wig, but I cannot see the benefit of
good-looking judges and barristers making such pre
cious guys of themselves as they persist in doing in
Enghsh courts of justice. That, however, is a matter
of taste, and comes under the rule " De gustibus," &c.
But why a barrister should not deal directly with his
client, civU or criminal, is not a matter of taste, and
the pretence of prosecuting or defending causes with
out payment is, of course, a mere hypocrisy. I think
also the American practice of appointing a prosecuting
law officer in every district, paid by the State, for
bringing offenders against the criminal laws to justice,
is better than to leave such prosecutions to the injured
parties. Notwithstanding the fact that lawyers in America
are so largely chosen as legislators, and for places
of the highest trust, they can hardly be said to be
popular. People consider them a necessary evil.
An honest lawyer is proverbiaUy a rara avis. " There
is no greater curse to any community than a poor and
unscrupulous lawyer," was the observation made to me
in my boyhood by a lawyer who had been poor, was
rich, and had not, it was said, been overburthened with
scruples. Some American lawyers and judges have acquired
an enviable reputation for abUity. Americans have a
saying of anything very difficult, that it would puzzle

Diseases and Physicians. 363
a PhUadelphia lawyer. The names of Storey, Kent,
Livingstone, Wheaton, Wht, Webster, &c, are known
wherever Enghsh law, which is everywhere the basis
of American law, is practised or understood.
The medical profession in America bears the evUs
of haste and irregularity incident to so many of its
institutions. It is a country of many and violent dis
eases. Large portions of the newly-settled country,
and some of the oldest as weU, around New Tork, are
full of the malaria which produces intermittent fever.
In the West and South- West there are, in the swamp and
bottom-lands, worse malaria, causing violent remittent
bilious fevers. The cities and viUages of the South,
unless guarded by a rigid quarantine, are also subject
to visitations of the yellow fever or terrible vomito of
the West Indies and coast of Mexico. The North-
Eastern States are, like England, subject to consump
tion. The North, with its cold winters, has multi
tudes of cases of rheumatism. Children die in great
numbers — in towns of cholera-infantum, and every
where of scarlatina and measles. Continued and
typhoid fevers are not uncommon. Dyspepsia and
female diseases are everywhere. Hard work, over
eating, bad cookery, pork and grease, strong coffee,
tea, tobacco, and whisky, poor and adulterated spiritu
ous liquors especiaUy, are among the many diseasing
influences. Here, among a population of more than thirty mil
lions, is work for a vast number of physicians. And
the Americans, who do everything in a hurry, educate
their doctors in their usual fashion. Nominally, it is

364 Law, Physic, and Divinity.
required that the student shall read three years, under
some regular physician, during which time he must
have attended two courses of medical lectures. If,
however, he pay his fees, exhibit a certificate as to the
time he has studied, or pretended to study, and pass a
hasty examination, made by professors who are very
anxious that he should pass, he gets a diploma of
Medicines Doctor. He has fuU authority to bleed and
bhster, set broken bones and cut off limbs. But in
most of the States there is no need of even this autho
rization. Any one may practise medicine who chooses
to set about it. No diploma is needed, and no licence
required. This is the American idea of " free trade
and no monopoly."
But where diplomas of the highest grade can be
procured at so little trouble, and at a cost not exceed
ing forty or fifty pounds, nearly aU physicians can
legally sign themselves " M.D." The dealer in quack
medicines gets a diploma. There are no medical men,
as distinguished from doctors. And also, as a rule,
there is no distinction between physicians and sur
geons. AU practise medicine, surgery, and midwifery.
This is necessary in a sparsely populated country ; and
though there are in the large towns physicians who
have adopted some speciality, and surgeons of noted
skill, the general practice is as I have stated it.
There are also physicians of every school. There
are aUopaths of every class in aUopathy ; homoeopaths
of high and low dUutions ; hydropaths mild and heroic ;
chrono-thermalists, Thompsonians, Mesmerists, her
balists, Indian doctors, clairvoyants, spiritualists with

Conflicting Theories. 365
healing gifts, and I know not what besides. What is
worse, perhaps, -is the fact that there is no standard —
no real science of medicine — no absolute or acknow
ledged authority. Every one may do what is right in
his own eyes. As each of the thirty-four sovereign
and independent States has power to charter as many
medical coUeges as its legislature may consider neces
sary, every school or sect in medicine may have its
coUege, professors, and diplomas. A few ambitious
physicians, holding any medical theory, or pursuing
any system of practice, can probably make interest
enough with the legislature to get a charter for a
medical coUege, and set up the manufacture of doctors.
There are two or three such coUeges which give
medical diplomas to women.
But even in some of the oldest, largest, and most
respectable medical colleges, there is no consistency of
medical teaching. I knew one in which the pro
fessor of physiology was a vitaUst, whUe the professor
of chemistry also lectured on physiology, and based
his explanations on chemical theories. The Professor
of Theory and Practice was at sword's or lancet's point
with the Professor of Materia Medica. One denounced
blood-letting, and was in favour of a mild, expectant
practice ; the other was a sanguinary Sangrado, who
held that the only way to get health into a man was
to let the blood out of him, and that violent diseases
were to be expeUed by more violent medicines.
The result of so many various systems and no-sys
tems is that thousands of young men are sent out to
doctor their unfortunate countrymen with unsettled

366 Law, Physic, and Divinity.
notions of disease and medicine, to kiU or cure, or per
haps it would be safer to say, to kiU or not kUl,
according to their prudence and good luck, rather than
theh science and skiU.
This want of any absolute science or established
practice in medicine, which leaves to every inexperi
enced doctor his right of private judgment in matters
of hfe and death, with a no-system and chaos of uni
versal empiricism, has the natural effect of under-,
mining the confidence of the pubhc in aU systems and
" pathies," and leaving them a prey to the most vulgar,
mercenary, and barefaced- quackeries. The conse
quence is that the shops of druggists and general
dealers are filled with quack or so-caUed patent medi
cines and nostrums. The newspapers are filled with
theh advertisements. Fortunes are made by the
manufacture of sarsaparUla, pUls, cathoUcons, bitters,
cough eUxirs, cures for consumption, &c. The box of
piUs that costs a penny is sold for a shilling. The
decoction which would be dear at threepence seUs for
a doUar. The consumptive are dosed with prepara
tions of opium ; the dyspeptic find present relief in
bitters, whose effects are chiefly attributable to the
stimulating operation of whisky. The temperance
reform, making it immoral and unfashionable to drink
liquors, except as a medicine, made the fortune of
the manufacturers of stomachic bitters and aromatic
Schiedam schnaaps, highly recommended by weU-feed
members of the faculty.
One can scarcely conceive of an honourable pro
fession reduced to a lower ebb than that of medicine

Sanitary Science. 367
in the United States. But it is very difficult to point
out a remedy. Anatomy is a solid, natural, demon
strable science, and surgery rests on a very solid basis.
But what can we say of physiology, or pathology, or
stiU more, of therapeutics ?
There is no agreement upon any system, or even
theory. Different medical colleges, even those known
by the general designation of allopathic, teach different
theories of disease and different modes of treatment,
and this is sometimes the case, as in the instance I
have mentioned, with the different professors of the
same institution.
WhUe medical science is in this chaotic condition
in America, hygienic or sanitary science is generaUy
neglected. The Government has other interests, and
of late years busies itself little with matters which
will not pay. Physicians, who are supposed to know
most about the conditions of health and the causes of
disease, cannot be expected to volunteer against their
own obvious interests. They are paid for curing, or
trying to cure, the sick. Prevention is doubtless
better than cure, but who will pay them for devising
means of preventing disease ? Suppose the physician
of a village could persuade the people to take such
sanitary measures as would prevent an epidemic, which,
by its prevalence, would put two or three hundred
pounds in his pocket, who will make up his loss ?
Physicians are as benevolent and disinterested as
men of any other profession ; but it is still the evident
fact that they do not devote themselves to the pre
vention of disease. It is not their business. And,

368 Law, Physic, and Divinity.
what is more, it never wiU be untU they are paid for
keeping the community in health.
It foUows that as few other persons know much
about the laws of health — as great numbers are in
terested in causing disease, or making it worse by
pretending to cure it — sanitary science is in a very un
satisfactory condition. Churches, theatres, and places
of pubhc resort are, as a rule, very imperfectly ven
tUated. Even school-houses, crowded with chUdren,
are so badly cared for in this most vital particular, as
to destroy the health of both teachers and pupUs. I
have listened to a coUege lecture on the vital uses of
oxygen, in a room so badly ventUated that its air was
pestiferous and disgusting. There was theory and
practice with a vengeance. Some of the raUway car
riages in America have admirable machinery for ven
tilation, but the greater number of them are execrable
in this particular. The cabins of steamboats on the
Northern waters are often nearly as bad. The use
of stoves and furnaces in dweUing-houses does away
with even the imperfect ventUation afforded by open
grates and fire-places. In the large towns the poor are
supplied with the milk of diseased cows, tied up,
without ah or exercise, and fed into scrofula on the
hot slops from the distiUeries and breweries. Pork
and lard, consumed in enormous quantities, and even
by the poorest people, to an extent quite unknown in
any country in Europe, cause much disease. Whisky
made from spurred rye — rye mixed with ergot — or
from Indian corn, and charged with fusU oil, or
doctored with strychnine, sulphuric acid, and other

Unhealthful Cookery. 369
noxious drugs, is also a serious cause of disease, aside
from its intoxicating influences.
A thoroughly educated, united, philanthropic
medical profession, aided by the State governments,
might do much for health in America. The climate,
apart from malaria in certain regions, is not neces
sarily unhealthy. In many parts the air is pure,
the water is soft, and the fruits and other healthful
productions of the earth are abundant. Nearly all
New England, and large portions of New Tork,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan,
Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, &c, are healthful re
gions. So is much of the South. Portions of
Texas, as well as California and Oregon, are of
wonderful salubrity.
The Americans, like the English, have a lack of
skill in cookery. They make dishes enough. A
common breakfast bUl of fare will comprise twenty
dishes. But butter and lard are so cheap that they
are used with great profusion, and the best viands and
vegetables are rendered indigestible. Hot bread, made
with lard and strong alkalies, and soaked with butter ;
hot griddle cakes, covered with butter and syrup ;
meats fried in fat or baked in it ; potatoes dripping
with grease; ham and eggs fried in grease into a
leathery indigestibility — aU washed down with many
cups of strong Brazil coffee— these are some of the nice
things which Americans eat for breakfast, and when
they faU ill — as of course they must — then come
loads of all the medicines advertised in theh news
papers or given by their doctors.
vol. i. 24

370 Law, Physic, and Divinity.
What seems as strange as any part of this matter
is a vague superstition remaining in the minds of
many people that the doctors are infallible, or at
least that, however absurd and contradictory to each
other they may be, they should be implicitly obeyed.
If ten doctors should prescribe ten different medi
cines, or courses of treatment, as they likely enough
would, in the actual state of medicine in America,
one of these fanatics would imagine himself obliged
to follow all their prescriptions. I can understand
law, founded on statutes, precedents* and decisions,
as entitled to respect. I can understand an impUcit
belief in the dogmas of an infallible church — and a
church that is faUible seems to have httle right to
propound creeds or promulgate dogmata — but I see
no possible sense in believing in or relying upon
a medical system, or no-system, which does not pre
tend to unity, much less to infallibUity.
What can I say of the American clergy? If they
were all of one sect, or if there were a national church
recognised as orthodox, though tolerating dissent, it
would be a different matter. One never hears the
term dissenter in America. As all are equal before
the law, we speak only of different denominations.
The Episcopal Church, daughter of the Church of
England, is in many parts of America the church of
the richest, most cultivated, and respectable portion of
the community. It is scarcely anywhere the church
of the poor. It has very little if any hold upon the
working-classes. Its clergy is highly educated, and
it has many eloquent preachers. It has retained the

• Education of the Clergy. 371
Book of Common Prayer and Thirty-nine Articles,
with slight modifications, and, though perhaps united
on all essential points, is divided into High Church
men, or Puseyites, Moderate Churchmen, and Low
Churchmen. The High Churchmen accuse their Low
brethren of being no better than Presbyterians ; the
Low aver that the High are on the high road to
Rome; and it is doubtless true that they have a
tenderness in that direction, and that not a few, both
clerics and lay, have gone entirely over, to the great
disgust of the more Protestant sections, who still
profess and believe what is said of the Pope in the
Thirty-nine Articles.
The Presbyterians and Orthodox Congregationalists
have a regularly educated clergy; and even the
/Methodists and Baptists, who within my remem
brance held book-learning in contempt, now have
colleges and theological institutions. The most dis
tinguished body for refinement of learning is the
Unitarian. Dr. Channing was of this sect, and
Edward Everett, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George
Ripley, and other distinguished men of letters are, or
have been, preachers of the same faith.
I need not speak of the Catholic clergy, who are
always educated to a certain degree and in a prescribed
system. Some of the American Catholic clergy have
been educated at Rome, some at the Sorbonne, many
at Maynooth, or in Germany or Belgium, and many,
also, at the various American Catholic institutions.
It is a common thing for an American priest to be
able to converse in four or five languages, and I have
24—2

372 Law, Physic, and Divinity.
known those who amused themselves with Hebrew
and Sanscrit.
American clergymen of aU denominations, excepting
the Episcopalian and Roman Cathohc — and I am not
sure about the former of these two — do not feel bound
to keep to theh caUing unless it suits theh inclina
tions. Some embrace other professions. It is common
to see a preacher turn lawyer, or a lawyer turn
preacher. Many take to poUtics, and get elected to
the State Legislatures, to Congress, or fill Government
offices. Some turn traders, auctioneers, photographers,
or showmen. Many become editors and authors.
There are, in fact, few professions in which you may
not find ex-preachers. Some have become anti-
slavery and infidel lecturers, and not a few lecture on
Spiritualism. I can remember many popular preachers famous for
eloquence and eccentricity. Lorenzo Dow, who tra-
veUed from place to place, wearing a long beard when
beards were seldom seen, and making appointments
years beforehand, which he always filled to the hour,
was before my day. The most striking celebrity of
my boyhood was a Methodist preacher, said to have
been a Dublin taUor, who created a great excitement,
was adored by the women, and made multitudes of
conversions. He wrote his life, as was the custom of
the noted preachers of that period, and I have never
forgotten the mellifluous sentences of its opening
chapter, the first of which ran thus : —
" From the romantic retreats of far-famed Erin,
borne on the fickle winds of an adverse fortune, a

Eccentric Preachers. 373
lonely stranger brings his mite of sorrow, and lays the
dew-starred treasure at Columbia's feet."
One can imagine the success of a handsome young
Irish preacher, with curling hair and rosy cheeks and
briUiant eyes, whose sermons were of this style of
oratory, and whose conversation was if possible more
delightful than his sermons. He was the Beau
Brummel of parsons, and wonderfully preserved his
good looks, which he did not fail to attribute to super-
abounding grace. Mr. Maffit died a few years ago, at
Mobile, and left a son who is a gaUant officer in the
Confederate navy.
The Rev. Mr. Finney, a New-School Presbyterian
Revival preacher, and founder of a religious college
for both sexes at Oberlin, Ohio, was a very striking
and impressive preacher. I remember how he startled
me, thirty years ago, by saying abruptly one day in
his sermon — " A thing is not right or good because
God commands it. The principles of right are as
eternal as God, and He is good because His being is
in accordance with them. God cannot make anything
right any more than He can make the three angles of
a triangle equal to two right angles."
This is aU simple enough ; but such statements
were not heard from the pulpit every day, and were
apt to strike those who heard them with the more
force for that reason. Mr. Finney's prayers were
quite as original as his sermons. One day he
astonished those who were uniting with him in
prayer, by saying, in a quiet familiar way —
" 0 Lord, I have been walking down Broadway to-

374 Law, Physic, and Divinity.
day, and I have seen a good many of my friends and
Thy friends, and I wondered, 0 Lord ! if they seemed
as poor, and vapid, and empty, and worldly to Thee
as they did to me/' &c.
The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher at the present day
has much the same popularity that attended Mr. Finney
twenty or thirty years ago-. He has more, perhaps, of
the element of humour. There is a great deal of
genuine waggery about him, and, out of the pulpit,
he has the droUery and animal spirits of a big, clever,
good-natured boy out for a hohday. He is fuU of
unusual, and unexpected, and sometimes not too reve
rent expressions. Of some difficulty with certain
members of his congregation, he said — "I told my
wife that God and I could lick them aU out." He is
what one might caU instinctively popular, feeling the
public sentiment, and always keeping just ahead of
his people, and on the top of the wave. No one could
make more of an excitement whUe it lasted, or quicker
scent a coming reaction. His tabernacle in Brooklyn
had to me no seeming of a church, and the appearance
of the people who crowded every foot of it gave me a
very decided impression that for every one who came
to worship God there were many who came to admire
Mr. Beecher. There is scarcely another church in
America where Sunday congregations indulge in
audible laughter, or give rounds of applause as at a
theatre. Mr. Beecher professes to be some sort of
an orthodox Congregationahst, but he 'preached for
Theodore Parker, and his creed, if he has one, must be

Popular Preachers. 375
an easy fit. Few men do more work, or work with
more ability and acceptance to a large class of hearers
and readers.
A great number of American preachers, among
Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians, Uni
versalists, have no hesitation in introducing political
or social topics into the pulpit. They are often can
didates for office, and not unfrequently take the stump
in presidential electioneering campaigns. They are
popularity-seekers, because popularity enlarges their
congregations, increases their pay, and promotes them
to more important fields of usefulness. A preacher
who distinguishes himself on a hundred pounds a year
gets a call to a congregation that can offer him a
hundred and fifty. As he goes on and gains in noto
riety he gets a louder call, to the amount of two or
three hundred. A Baptist clergyman in Boston be
came so attractive from the notoriety he acquired in
connexion with a case of crim. con. that his church
was thronged by people who wished to enjoy the sen
sation of seeing and hearing a clergyman preach and
pray who had been tried for adultery, and whom many
believed ought to have been convicted. A Methodist
Revival preacher certainly drew larger houses by the
scandal of his reputed amours.
The mingling of religion and politics has not been a
good to either. Politics have grown more and more cor
rupt, and religion has suffered by the association. It is
but just to say that the Episcopal Church is but little
liable to censure on this account, and politics are

376 Law, Physic, and Divinity.
seldom if ever heard of in a Roman CathoUc place of
worship in America, however it may be in other and
more Catholic countries. '
As religion in America is almost entirely discon
nected from the General and State governments, the
clergy depend upon the voluntary system for their
support. There are no tithes or rates, and few founda
tions. Methodist preachers are appointed by their
bishops, and the people must take such as are sent
them. The pay is also limited by the same authority.
The Roman Catholics have the same system, and no
clergy is harder worked or more poorly paid. In aU
the other denominations the Church or congregation
hires the pastor, discharges him at pleasure, and hires
another. It foUows that a minister must suit his
people if he wishes to keep his place, preach what they
wish rather than what they need to hear, and be the
slave rather than the leader and former of public
opinion, which is not my idea of shepherd and flock
— teacher and those who are taught.
But the people govern and judge. They select the
priest as well as the ruler — if a pubUc servant may be
called a ruler — by universal suffrage. A preacher
comes, Uke a cook, on trial. He preaches his finest
sermons, and prays his most elegant prayers, is can
vassed at a hundred tea-tables, and accepted or re
jected. Imagine St. Peter and St. Paul. subjected to
such an ordeal !

377

CHAPTER XXIX.
AMERICAN INDUSTRY AND INGENUITY.
The great want, labour. — Motive power. — VersatUity. — Automatic
machinery. — Hooks and eyes, pins, clocks and watches. —
Iron works. — Bapid labour-saving machinery. — Stone-dressing
and brick-making machines. — Curious looms. — Hoe's printing-
press. — Type-setting machines. — Morse's telegraph. — Eman
cipation of labour. — The Yankee millennium.
For two hundred years the Americans have been like
so many Robinson Crusoes, thrown upon theh own
resources and obliged to invent a thousand things
which their peculiar circumstances required. With
land unlimited, vast forests of timber, and minerals
in the greatest abundance, their chief want was
labour ; and they were obliged to supply its lack with
every kind of labour-saving machinery. Necessity
was the mother of Invention, and the Tankee learned
to turn his hand to anything, until it became the
habit of his race. He is for ever contriving, planning,
whittling, and using his head to save his muscles, o^
to enable one man to do the work of twenty. Every
torrent rushing down from the mountains to the sea
was valuable for its water-power. The Tankee's first
thought of Niagara is the number of water-wheels it
would turn, and his chief terror is the terrible waste

378 American Industry and Ingenuity.
of motive power. The brook by the side of the
farmer's cottage is made to churn and turn the grind
stone. A larger brook carries a saw-miU. The first
steamboat ever buUt was, I believe, in the harbour of
Barcelona, Spain ; but the Spaniards had no use for
it. It is not probable that the American inventor of
the steamboat ever heard of the Spanish experiment ;
but steamboats were needed on the American rivers,
and it was not long after the first experiments on the
Delaware and Hudson before rivers and lakes were
traversed by steam. The railway and locomotive are
English ; but America has more than thirty thousand
miles of raUway.
" Jack at all trades and good at none," is a proverb
that Americans have no belief in. The more things
a man can do, the better. A few years ago, in a
depressed condition of manufactures in England, some
emigrants went to New Tork. A woman from
Sheffield, being destitute, applied to the authorities
for help. The Mayor of New Tork, to whose office
in the City HaU she went, was wUling to find her
employment, and asked her if she could do this or
that, naming over various kinds of work commonly
done by women. No, she knew nothing of any of
them. What could she do ? She could pack files.
^This was the one work which she had learnt to do —
weU, no doubt; but, unfortunately, the Mayor had
no files to be packed.
The rivers of New England cannot fall ten feet at
any point in their progress to the sea without being
made to .propel some kind of machinery. Cities

Automatic Machinery. 379
cluster round the falls of every large river, with great
manufactories, as those of Lowell, Lawrence, Man
chester, Holyoke, &c. I visited the viUage of
Waterbury, in Connecticut, and spent a day among
its curious factories. There were many mills. Water
and steam power were at work, but very few human
operatives. In one large room, full of machinery in
rapid motion, there was but one man, whose business
was to watch the machines and supply them with
material. Each machine had a great coil of brass
wire on a reel beside it. The end of the wire
was placed in the machine, and from it flowed
hooks or eyes into a basket as fast as one could count.
These machines worked on, requiring only to be fed
with coils of wire as they were used. In another
room, automatic machines were eating up coils of
iron-wire and discharging finished hair pins. Brass-
wire went into other machines and came out common
pins, with heads and points all perfect, and only requir
ing to be tinned and papered. The papering also was
done by a machine which picked out the pins, laid
them in rows, and pushed each row into a paper fed
by a girl sitting beside it. One pin factory makes,
with these machines, three hundred thousand dozens
of pins a day. Another machine took wire from a
coil and bits of brass from a hopper, and turned out
buttons with the eyes made, set, and riveted. In
this way a thousand inventions have been made, to
save the labour of human hands, and to use only
skilled labour and brains rather than muscles.
Clocks are made in great factories, and so enthely

380 American Industry and Ingenuity.
by machinery, that almost the only hand-work is
in putting them together; and they are made so
cheap as to be brought to England in immense
quantities, and from England exported to every part
of the world. Watches are made in Massachusetts by
similar machinery, and with such accuracy that every
minutest part wUl fit every other, so that if a watch
is injured, the required part can be suppUed from the
factory. Here, too, the only human labour is to feed
and overlook the machines and put the parts together.
The reaping and sewing machines of American inven
tion are known everywhere. The same system apphes
to larger and coarser manufactures. There is a
manufactory in Pittsburgh in which a machine turns
out half-pound iron railroad spikes at the rate of fifty
a minute. Only seven men are employed in the
works, but the machines, with their attendance, make
five tons of spikes a day. Nails of all sizes are made
in self-feeding machines in enormous quantities.
Strips of hon go in on one side and nails pour out on
the other Uke meal from a mill. Rivets, neatly
headed, from the smallest size up to seven to the
pound, are made in the same manner ; and the largest
are turned out at the rate of eighty a minute from
each machine. Beautiful oval frames for photographs
are made and finished by machinery so rapidly that a
single workman can turn out two gross a day. Auto
matic machines make ten thousand wooden shingles,
for the roofs of houses, a day. Twenty men make
one hundred panneUed house-doors a day, by the aid
of machinery. A match-making machine cuts out

Labour Saving Machinery. 381
the wood for 4500 matches every minute. Shoe-lasts
and boot-trees are made by rapid machinery. With
similar aid seven men make the wooden parts of
thirty ploughs a day.
Labour-saving machinery is applied to stone and
brickwork as weU as iron and wood. Marble and
granite are hammered, planed, and polished by
machinery. A stone surface, four feet by two feet, is
dressed in seven minutes. Bricks are pressed from
dry clay, ready for the kiln, at the rate of thirty- six
a minute, or nearly two thousand an hour. At the
flour miUs nearly the whole work is done by
machinery, and the wheat is transferred from canal-
boats to the upper stories of the mUl at the rate of
four thousand bushels an hour.
House's telegraphic printing machine prints the
messages at the rate of twenty words a minute.
Grain and other bags are woven whole in American
looms, each loom making forty-five two-bushel bags
a, day. A similar machine makes hose for fire-
engines at the rate of a thousand feet a day. By the
use of type-casting machines a workman can cast
ninety brevier types a minute. In the dying houses
connected with large factories, one boy, with machi
nery, does the ordinary work of six men.
One of my earliest acquaintances in New Tork was
Robert Hoe, the inventor of the simple and effective
newspaper presses which bear his name, and which
he has suppUed to many of the largest printing esta
blishments in England. Type-setting machines, with
keyboards like pianofortes, are used in several New

382 American Industry and Ingenuity.
Tork printing offices. Steam stevedores may be seen
at the docks loading and unloading vessels, and steam
hod-carriers in the large buildings. A steam exca
vator digs canals and railway-cuttings, and a steam-
engine tunnels mountains. Morse, an American
artist, but a better chemist and mechanician than
painter, thought out the magnetic telegraph on a
Havre packet-ship, but met the common fate of
inventors. He struggled for years with poverty and
a thousand difficulties. He could not interest capi
talists. In England he could not even get a patent.
At last, when he was yielding to despair and meditated
suicide, on the last night of the Session of Congress,
at midnight, when the Appropriation BUl was being
rushed through, he got an appropriation of about six
thousand pounds for an experimental line between
Washington and Baltimore. Then success, rewards,
honours, titles of nobUity, gold medals, and an
immense fortune. The American inventor of the
sewing machine had simUar misfortunes and a similar
success. Would any one but an American have ever
invented a mUking machine ? or a machine to beat
eggs ? or machines to black boots, scour knives, pare
apples, ahd do a hundred things that all other
peoples have done with their ten fingers from time
immemorial ?
Skill and intelligence are required for the manage
ment of machinery. Every clhld under fifteen em
ployed in the factories of Massachusetts is secured
three months' schooling every year by law. The
American workman has no jealousy of machinery.

Tlie Yankee Millennium. 383
It carries out his idea of the emancipation of labour.
He welcomes every improvement that facilitates his
work. His miUennium is the time when machines
wiU do everything, and he will have only to see
them work and enjoy the fruits of their labour. His
most difficult problem wUl be the equitable division of
the productions of machinery among those who pro
fess the political doctrine that " aU men are created
equal," and have an inalienable right to " life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness."

384

CHAPTER XXX.
AMERICAN PECULIARITIES AND ECCENTRICITIES.
Yankees in books and on the stage. — Why Yankees talk through
their noses. — Yankee forms of speech. — The western vocabu
lary. — South-western characteristics. — Southern peculiarities.
— American humour. — Etymologies. — A steamboat explosion.
— Character and manners. — Lack of reverence. — Yankee
' sharpness and self-confidence. — A model Yankee.
Englishmen know the Tankee chiefly as he appears
in literature and on the stage. He is well drawn in
the novels of John Neal, Cooper, and Paulding, and
in the writings of the author of Sam Slick. Hackett
and Hill have given us truthful Tankees on the stage.
We imagine, sometimes, that Uterary and dramatic
portraitures are overdone. I do not think so. I
have never seen a stage Irishman, Cockney, Tankee,
or negro that came fully up to the genuine article.
The trouble is not in overdoing, but in doing falsely.
Many English writers habitually confuse the American
idioms and peculiarities of the East, West, and South.
It is as if one should mix up Scotchman, Irishman,
and Cockney. Tet this is done weekly in the papers
and nightly on the stage.
It is possible to travel through America without
meeting many specimens of the thorough Tankee,

Yankee Speech. 3S5
the broad Western man, or the distinctive Southerner
of the strongest type ; but they aU exist abundantly.
There are districts in New England, in the rough
mountain regions, where the Tankee flourishes as
grotesque in attire and speech as was ever described
in story or seen upon the stage. Western and
Southern peculiarities are stiU more common.
I know of no good physiological reason why a
Tankee should talk through his nose, unless he got
in the habit of shutting his mouth to keep out the
cold fogs and drizzling north-easters of Massachusetts
Bay. It is certain that men open their mouths and
broaden their speech as they go West, untU on the
Mississippi they teU you " thar are heaps of bar over
thar, whar I was raised." Southern speech is clipped,
softened, and broadened by the negro admixture. The
child learns its language from its negro nurse, servants,
and playmates, and this not unpleasant taint is never
quite eradicated.
Besides peculiarities of articulation and enunciation,
there are forms of expression peculiar to and charac
teristic of each section of the American States. A
Tankee does not swear; he says, I vum, I swon,
I swow, I vow, darn it, gaul darn your picter, by
golly, golly crimus; and uses other mean and
cowardly ways of whipping the devU round the
stump. The Western man has no trouble about
swearing, and has a remarkable breadth of expression.
He is catawampously chawed up ; while the Tankee
is a gone sucker, or describes himself as ' so as to be
crawlin'. 'He talks of spunkin' up to an aU-fired,
vol. i. 25

386 American Peculiarities and Eccentricities.
tarnation, slick gall, clean grit, I teU yeou neow. He
civilly invites you to hold yer yop. He lets on that
he felt kinder streaked, by golly! He describes a
man as being handsome as a picter, but so darnation
ugly ; or as a thunderin' fool, but a clever critter as
ever lived — ugly being Tankee for wicked, and clever
for good-natured. A plain girl is as homely as a
hedge-fence, but a Tankee may have a kinder
sneakin' notion arter her. He boasts that he is a
hull team and a boss to let. Tou can't tucker him
eout. It beats all natur heow he can go it when he
gets his dander up. He has got his eye-teeth cut,
true as preachin'. He gets hoppin' mad, and makes
aU gee again. He is dreadful glad to see you, and
is powerful sorry you enjoy such poor health.
I am inclined to think the Western vocabulary
more copious than that of the Tankee proper. The
language, Uke the country, has a certain breadth and
magnitude about it. A Western man sleeps so sound,
it would take an earthquake to wake him. He is in
danger pretty considerable much, because somebody
was down on him, Uke the whole Missouri on a sand
bar. He is a gone 'coon. He is down on aU cussed
varmints, gets into an everlasting fix, and holds that
the longest pole knocks down the persimmons. A
story smeUs rather taU. Stranger, he says, in bar
hunts I am numerous. He says a pathetic story
sunk into his feehngs Uke a snagged boat into the
Mississippi. He teUs of a person as cross as a bar
with two eubs and a sore tail. He laughs like a
hyena over a dead nigger. He walks through a fence

Western and Southern Locutions. 387
Uke a faUing tree through a cobweb. He goes the
whole hog. He raises right smart of corn and lives
where there is a smart chance of bars. Bust me
wide open, he says, if I didn't bulge into the creek
in the twinkling of a bedpost, I was so thunderin'
savagerous. In the south-west is found the combination of
Western and Southern character and speech. The
south-western man was born in old Kaintuck, raised
in Mississippi, is death on a bar, and smartly on a
painter fight. He walks the water, out hollers the
thunder, drinks the Mississippi, calculates that he
is the genuwine article, and that those he don't like
aint worth shucks. He tells of a fellow so poor and
thin he had to lean up agin a saplin' to cuss. He
gets as savage as a meat axe. He splurges about,
and blows up like a steamboat.
The Southerner is mighty glad to see you. He is
apt to be powerful lazy, and powerful slow; but if
you visit him where he has located himself, he'll go
for you to the hilt agin creation, that's tatur. When
people salute each other at meeting, he says they are
howdyin' and civilizin' each other. He has powerfu
nice corn. The extreme of facility is not as easy as
lying, but as easy as shootin'. A man who has un
dressed has shucked himself. To make a bet with a
man is to size his pile. Tankees guess everything,
past, present, and future; Southerners reckon and
calculate. AU these peculiarities of speech would fill
a small volume. Most of the Tankeeisms can be
found in the districts of England from which the
25— %

388 American Peculiarities and Eccentricities.
country was first settled. The colloquialisms of the
South and West are more original.
American humour consists largely of exaggeration,
and of strange and quaint expressions. Much that
seems droll to English readers is very seriously
intended. The man who described himself as
" squandering about permiscuous" had no idea that
his expression was funny. When he boasted of his
sister — " She slings the nastiest ankle in old Kentuck,"
he only intended to say that she had a pretty ankle,
and knew how to use it in the dance. So it was in
solemn earnest that a Western maiden, happening to
get sight of a denuded traveller, exclaimed, " WaU,
stranger, you've got a right smart chance of a leg, I
declar' !" To escape rapidly, west of the Mississippi,
might be " to vamose quicker'n greased lightnin'
down a peeled hickory." " Vamose," and " vamose
the ranch," are borrowed from Mexico by the Santa
Fe traders. " Cut stick," and " absquatulate," are
indigenous. A man cuts a stick when about to
travel. Absquatulate comes from a or ab, privative,
and squat, western for settle. When a squatter re
moves, he absquatulates. As for the greased light
ning and peeled hickory, Americans have a passion
for making improvements on everything. The
Mississippi boatmen improved the name of Bois
Brule into something they could understand, when
they called it Bob Ruly's Woods. The story of land
so rich that a squash vine, in its rapid growth, over
took a drove of pigs, was a western exaggeration.
The evidence of a witness in a Ufe insurance case,

Language and Manners. 389
involved in the blowing-up of a steamboat on the
Ohio, is droll, just because it is characteristic. The
witness knew the missing man. He saw him on the
deck of the steamboat just before the explosion.
"When," asked the lawyer, "was the last time you
saw him ?" " The very last time I ever set eyes on
him," said the careful witness, " was when the bUer
burst, and I was going up, / met him and the smoke
pipe coming down I" •
I do not think that American peculiarities of
language are so remarkable as those of character and
manners- — or, in other words, that Americanism is so
much in speech as in thought, feeling, and action.
Our language is English, modelled mainly upon
English literature ; but we are more independent in
other matters.
Some one has said — "A Tankee stands up at
prayers, takes his coat tail under his arms, turns his
back on the minister, and winks at the gals in the
singing seats." It is true that reverence is an uncul
tivated faculty in America, and finds little expression.
I can remember when people stood up in prayer-time ;
at present they sit very quietly in their seats. This
is true of the majority even in episcopal churches.
In none do all, or even the larger number, kneel,
except in the Roman Catholic churches. Theodore
Parker has remarked, in one of his sermons, that New
England was one of the few places in the civUized
world where there were no Jews. The Tankees are
too sharp for the children of Israel. Jews, however,
flourish in New Tork, and stiU more in the South

390 American. Peculiarities and Eccentricities.
and West. The Irish live and flourish in New
England, because they are willing to do plenty of
hard, rough work. When I first lived in New Tork,
the Irish kept all the corner groceries. Now nearly
aU such places are kept by Germans, who are more
frugal than Tankees, and nearly as sharp. Irishmen,
as a rule, are neither sharp nor frugal. Tankees come
near to the popular idea of a cross between the Scotch
man and Torkshireman. They are ingenious, enter
prising, persevering, self-confident, and possess in an
eminent degree that happy faculty which Sydney Smith
attributed to Earl RusseU, when he said his lordship
would take command of the Channel fleet at an hour's
notice. A genuine Tankee is always ready to go any
possible where, or do any possible thing. Mr. Lincoln
must have Tankee blood in his veins, or he would
never have taken the nomination for President. Mr.
Seward is a Tankee New Torker. General Banks
and General Butler were Tankee civilians, without
the least miUtary knowledge, but they were ready to
command armies. Mr. WeUes, the Secretary of the
Navy, was a Tankee printer, who knew nothing
about ships, but was ready to take charge of a navy.
Barnum, who has been somewhat well known in
England, always seemed to me a model Tankee. He
was born in Connecticut, kept store, edited a news
paper, preached the Gospel, became a showman, sold
Bibles, invented the nurse of General Washington,
exhibited the Fejee mermaid, organized and engineered
the American tour of Jenny Lind, brought out General
Tom Thumb, lectured on temperance, and made two

The Yankee Showman. 391
or three fortunes. One of his adventures on the Mis
sissippi, not contained in his published autobiography,
always seemed to me as Tankee as any of those he has
related. He was on his way up the river from New
Orleans, where he had been to spend the winter in
some speculation. Some of the sporting gentlemen
who make their home on the river engaged him in
the favourite betting game of poker, a bluff or brag
game, in which the skiU consists in managing so as
to have the best cards, or in boldly betting on the
worst. It was hard, I think, to beat the great show
man on either, but luck was against him, and he was
dead broke. He landed at a small town in Missis
sippi, where he found the chances of winning money
at play very smaU, on account of a revival that was
going forward. But " P. T." had more than one
string to his bow. In his earlier days, and not long
before this time, he had been a preacher — as it hap
pened, a Universalist, holding a creed that was agree
able to a person of his organization. He announced his
profession, and obtained a place to preach, but found
his doctrines anything but popular. The Southerners
are orthodox in their religious notions, and like strong
doctrine. The revival was attracting crowds to the
Presbyterian Meetinghouse. It was necessary to
make a bold movement, and the exhibitor of dwarfs
and prima donnas was equal to the occasion. He dis
missed his small and indifferent congregation, walked
over to the Presbyterian meeting, and announced to
the astonished and delighted congregation that he had
been converted from his errors, There was great

392 American Peculiarities and Eccentricities.
rejoicing : he was invited to preach, was rewarded
with a good coUection, resumed his voyage, and had
good luck at poker all the way to St. Louis.
This seems rather a strong story, and the hero of it
may have invented it ; but the man who could invite
the Baptist ministers of Boston to administer the
ordinance of the Lord's Supper to Joyce Heth, a poor
drunken old negress, whom he palmed off upon the
public by forged papers as the nurse of Washington,
who got up a public wedding of two giants at the
Broadway Tabernacle, to which the public was ad
mitted at fifty cents a head, and who later managed-
the wedding of two dwarfs as a public spectacle in the
most fashionable Episcopal Church in New Tork, may
have really had the adventure on the Mississippi. It
is certainly true that he was at one period selling
Bibles in New Tork every day, and managing a saloon
with negro dancing in the evening, with a genuine
negro boy, blacked and wigged, so as to pass for ta
make-believe one, because the New Torkers who ap
plauded what they supposed a white boy in a blacked
face and woolly wig, would have driven a real negro
from the stage and mobbed his exhibitor.

393

CHAPTER XXXI.
AMERICAN RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS.
Field sports in America. — Floating theatres and circuses. — Stars
that have shone. — Music. — Negro melodies. — " Dixie's Land"
in St. Louis. — Art culture. — Summer resorts. — The Cattskill
• Mountain House. — Saratoga. — A dinner at Niagara. — Sea
bathing. — Work and worry. — Making money. — Morals of
trade. — Contentment. — The domestic affections. — Calvinistic
stoicism. — Scattered families. — Socialism. — Emigration.
The public amusements in the United States are not
very different from those in England. There are no
fairs, but there are every year state and county agri
cultural shows, with trotting-matches for horses, and
prizes for the best female equestrianism. Hunting, as
practised in England, with horse and hound, scarcely
exists out of Vhginia, where English customs are best
preserved, but there is no lack of game or sportsmen.
Racing is a custom of the middle States arid the larger
cities. There are fine courses near New Tork, PhUa
delphia, Baltimore and New Orleans, and in many
places in Tennessee and Kentucky. In New England
and most of the North, horse-racing is supposed to
have been prohibited in the decalogue, and the races
are not very reputably attended. Circuses traverse
the country and diffuse a taste for gymnastics, and

394 American Recreations and Amusements.
there is no lack of menageries of wUd beasts, perform
ing ponies, and monkeys.
There are a few cricket-clubs, mostly made up of
" British residents," but the American game of base
ball is played by hundreds of clubs. There are bowl-
ing-aUeys in every viUage, and in the larger towns
some are kept expressly for ladies, who also play with
gentlemen at the watering-places. There are a few
yacht-clubs, and boat-clubs are more numerous. Almost
aU Americans ride weU, and a,re fond of driving.
Morphy made chess fashionable. The Germans excel
in gymnastics, arid hold Turner festivals wherever they
are numerous, with abundance of waltzing, and more
abundant lager bier, which Americans are also learning
to drink instead of whisky.
New Tork has an opera-house larger, I think, and
certainly more splendid, than any in London, and
eight or ten handsome theatres. There are theatres
also in every considerable town. There are plenty of
wandering stars, but scarcely any strolling companies.
America may, however, boast of some novelties in
the way of amusements never seen in Europe — float
ing theatres and chcuses, propeUed by steam, going
from town to town on the great western rivers, and
carrying not only stage, auditorium, scenery, &c, but
lodgings- and accommodations for the company, and,
in the case of chcuses, stabhng and forage for the
horses. The bUls are posted weeks in advance. On
the appointed day the floating theatre comes in sight,
flags flying, band playing, or a steam-organ filling the
whole region with its obstreperous harmonies.

Tlieatres and Actors. 395
The huge floating monster steams round, with its
head up stream, moors to the bank and throws out its
gangways. A crowd of idlers, black and white, gathers
on the shore to stare at it, and get glimpses of the
actors and actresses, or riders and tumblers, low
comedy-man or clownj as the case may be. The hour
of performance arrives at last, and a procession of gaUy-
dressed people issues from the broad streets of the town,
and boards the floating show, which has been " floating
down the river, the O-hi-o," and the Mississippi, Mis
souri, Red River, and Arkansas, as weU as theh tri
butaries. They fiU the boxes and parquette, whUe
every negro within five miles, who can raise the indis
pensable shUUng, is packed into the gaUery. Orchestra
strikes up, curtain rises, tragic sensations, screaming
farces, roars of laughter, rounds of applause, and under
aU the great current of the Mississippi sweeping on
ward to the Gulf.
Since my remembrance, nearly every dramatic or
operatic star of any magnitude has made the American
tour, which extends from Boston and New Tork along
the Atlantic coast to Charleston and Savannah, then
west to MobUe and New Orleans, sometimes by way
of Havana, in Cuba, then up the Mississippi and back
by the Lakes — a tour of four or five thousand mUes.
We have had singers from Malibran to Patti, both of
whom, by the way, made theh first successes in New
Tork ; actors from the elder Kean and Kemble to the
younger Kean and Mathews ; actresses, from Fanny
Kemble to the latest star ; Celeste, Fanny Ellsler —
how can I remember aU the dancers ? We had a visit

396 American Recreations and Amusements.
from Rachel — not yet, I beUeve, from her great rival,
Ristori. Then we have had stars of our own — Booth,
Hackett, Forrest, Miss Cushman, Miss Heron, Miss
Avonia Jones, Miss Bateman, and many more whose
names may not have been heard of across the Atlantic.
For many years aU our actors and actresses were
from England. In the first companies I knew, scarcely
any were born in America. Now, probably two-thirds
are Americans. StiU, our best actors have been, and
perhaps stiU are, EngUsh. Some have preferred Booth
to Kean, and Forrest to Macready, but I do not think
we ever had American actors hke Dowton, who de
lighted us when past seventy. It seems impossible
that America should ever produce such a low, such a
very low comedian as Jack Reeve — scarcely such a
comedian as Power. We have done better in tragedy
and eccentric drama. It should be observed that
many reputed American actors are of Enghsh birth,
and have taken theh first lessons on the Enghsh stage.
Nearly aU the American actors in London were born
in England or Ireland.
Music is more cultivated in America than in any
country in the world, except Germany. I am sure
there are ten pianofortes in every American town or
vUlage to one in England. Singing is taught in the
public schools, and the number of bands and ama
teurs is very great. As to a national music, I can say
little. The negro melodies are nearly all we have to
boast of. These have a charm that has made them
popular everywhere. Are they really negro ? Tes, in
their origin, undoubtedly. The negroes have plaintive,

Dixie's Land. 397
simple airs, which they sing to the rude accompani
ment of the banjo. The instrument is native African ;
so, in its rudiments, is the music ; but both have been
improved upon. The negro melodies are the product
of a cross between African Paganism and American
Methodism. Then the airs, as composed by the
negroes, have been refined by white performers, and
others have been composed in the same spirit. These
last constitute the greater number.
Some of these airs have a very singular character.
There is "Dixie's Land," for example. I do not
know its origin, but am inclined to believe its germ,
at least, was negro, and that it came from the South.
When it was first played in St. Louis, the effect was
very remarkable. It was at the theatre. The leader
of the orchestra had got hold of it and arranged it.
It was played as an interlude between the acts, but
not with the usual effect. The whole house listened
with breathless silence, and without giving the usual
applause, suddenly burst into one simultaneous yell of
delight and astonishment, and then made the band
play it over eleven times before they would be satis
fied. It was one of the last tunes I heard in America,
and the first I heard in London ; the next, I believe,
was also an Africo- American ah, the " Prahie Flower."
There are American composers of operatic music,
but they have the same difficulties in obtaining recog
nition as American authors. Why should a manager
risk the production of an American opera, and pay for
it, when the chefs d'ceuvres of Mozart and Rossini,
Verdi and Meyerbeer, are ready to his hand ? There

398 American Recreations and Amusements.
are not many original dramatists or composers ih
England ; it is a wonder that there should be any in
America. In art we are a Uttle better. There are several
clever American sculptors, and more painters. I see no
better Enghsh landscapes than I have seen in America.
Church, Kensett, and Cropsey of the younger, and
Cole and Durand of the older landscape artists, may
place theh works by the side of any in the Royal
Academy. American summer resorts ought to be reckoned
among theh recreations and amusements. Once, thou
sands of Southerners, planters and merchants, used to
come North in the summer-time. True, the more
patriotic came no farther than the Vhginia Springs,
but the more fashionable were seen at Saratoga and
Niagara, Atlantic City and Newport. The New
Torkers leave town by the 4th of July. They scatter
along the sea-coast or make the tour of Lake Champ?
lain, Montreal, and Niagara.
One of the finest summer resorts I have ever seen is
the CattskUl Mountain House. Take the day-boat at
New Tork, one of those magnificent twenty-knot
steamers, that move off to the tinkle of a beU, in sUent
majesty, and gUde past the pahsades and through the
grand highlands, until the CattskUls rise Uke a cloud
before you. At three o'clock, p.m., you land at a
sleepy village, and get into a stage-coach, which, after
a picturesque ride of two hours, sets you down at a
great hotel, standing on the brow of an overhanging
precipice, two thousand feet high, while the peaks of

The Mountain House and Saratoga. 399
the mountains rise a thousand or fifteen hundred feet
more. Tou dine, and then take a chah out on the
naked rock, as close to the edge of the cliff as you Uke,
and have a view over an expanse of three thousand
square mUes — a view bounded only by the mountains
on the horizon. The Hudson, from twelve to thirty
mUes away, is Uke a thread of silver at your feet.
Next morning, you go back to the CattskiU FaUs ; the
day after, you ascend the mountain peaks — that is, if
you "like the roughest sort of climbing.
The next place to do is Saratoga. It is a nice
vUlage of white houses with green blinds, wide streets,
shaded by the American elms, those broad, stately, and
graceful trees, that throw out theh branches hke the
pillars of a Gothic cathedral, and hotels — hotels which
accommodate, in the aggregate, five or six thousand
people. As we go to Saratoga for health, we rise
early, go to the bubbling springs, and drink from six
to twelve tumblers of Congress water — it tastes hke
Glauber salts, and produces a similar effect. Then
breakfast ; then a drive to the lake, or the bowling-
alley, or billiards, or mere lounging, with the necessary
mint-juleps or sherry-cobblers, untU an early dinner,
when we eat as if we had taken the whole dozen tumblers
of Congress water in the morning, and intended to drink
a simUar quantity the morning foUowing. After dinner,
the band plays under the trees, and you saunter or
lounge. An American gets aU possible chahs, and
makes himself comfortable. Then tea ; and after tea a
danee — a hop they caU it — just a little gentle exercise,
such as the Schottische, the waltz, and the polka can

400 American Recreations and Amusements.
give, and so, with more or less of flirtations, ice-creams;
mint-juleps, or other coohng beverages, the day gets
through. The next is the same, ditto repeated, and
so on, ad libitum ad infinitum.
I think I wUl not describe Niagara. No one
describes it ; they only teU how they felt when they
saw it. The taUor's exclamation — " Gods ! what a
place to sponge a coat !" — is as good as another. So
the painters have tried to give an idea of it. The
pictures of Cropsey and Church remind you of Niagara,
if you have seen it. They give httle idea otherwise.
It is too big a thing to put into words or on canvas.
But when you go to Niagara, dine once, if never
more, at the International Hotel. It is on a scale to
match Niagara. The drawing-room is a gorgeous
immensity of plate-glass, gUding, and upholstery. Tou
walk over a prairie of carpeting. But the dining-room
gives the best idea of infinite space, infinite eating,
infinite clatter. A vast regiment of negro waiters
parade, march, counter-march, and go through a series
of distracting evolutions, to the music of a full band
playing in an alcove. There is a march for them to
enter ; a three-four movement for soup ; a piscicato
passage for fish; the covers come off to a crash of
trombones, cymbals, and gongs; and so the whole
dinner goes off to appropriate music, with an accom
paniment of champagne corks hke the firing of skir
mishers. Altogether, it is a tremendous affair, even to
an American, used to taking his dinner with a few
hundred people about him. I can imagine what it
must be to an Englishman. The expense of such a

Sea-bathing. 401
dinner, with a biU of fare that would fiU four of my
pages, is three, or perhaps four, shiUings — but the
wines are extra. An American, who means to do the
thing handsomely, takes champagne. No other wine
is worth his drinking. An Enghsh lady, wishing to
give an idea of an American she met in Montreal,
described him as " the sort of man who would take
champagne with his soup !"
Newport is the nicest of seaside and bathing places,
but Atlantic City is, perhaps, the most popular. At
each there is a beautiful sea-beach, with the Atlantic
surf rolling upon it, and with no shingles to cut the
feet. Americans have no bathing machines, but long
ranges of dressing-rooms on shore. Ladies and gen
tlemen put on their bathing-dresses in these room s,
and then go into the surf together, let the waves roU
over them, if they cannot swim — if they can, they
plunge through and swim outside. Many of the
ladies are exceUent swimmers. The Newport season
begins after the Saratoga season has ended. A grand
baU closes each.
We talk in America of our great, our enlightened,
our free, and, above all, our happy country ! I never
thought America was a happy country — only that it
ought to be. In aU the years of peace and plenty we
were not happy. In no country are the faces of the
people furrowed with harder lines of care. In no
country that I know of is there so much hard, toU-
some, unremitting labour ; in none so little of recrea
tion and enjoyment of life. Work and worry eat out
vol. i. 26

402 American Recreations and Amusements.
the hearts of the people, and they die before their
time. It is a hard story, but it is a true one.
The scarcity and high price of labour compel the
smaUer proprietors, caUed farmers, to do their own
work. They raise large crops with heavy and con
tinuous labour. The owner of a hundred acres is a
slave to his land, a slave to his cattle, a slave to the
necessities of his position. His family must live as
weU and dress as well as theh neighbours. The
harvests press upon the reapers.
It is seldom that an American rethes from busi
ness to enjoy his fortune in comfort. Money -making
becomes a habit. He works because he always has
worked, and knows no other way. Of the few who
rethe, many become hypochondriacs, and some commit
suicide. An American miUionahe, Astor or Girard,
on being congratulated on his immense possessions,
said — "Would you take care of aU my property for
your board and clothes ?"
" No — certainly not !" was the answer.
" WeU," said the Tankee Croesus, " that is all I get."
It is aU that most wealthy Americans get. What
ever the amount of theh fortunes, they get board and
clothes — no better, often not so good, as others.
Then why the universal and everlasting struggle for
wealth ? Because it is the one thing needful ; the only
secure power, the only real distinction. Americans
speak of a man being worth so many thousands or
millions. Nowhere is money sought so eagerly;
nowhere is it so much valued; and in no civilized
country does it bring so Uttle to its possessor.

Making Money. ¦_ 403
The real work of America is to make money for
the sake of making it. It is an end, and not a means.
The value of a doUar consists in its power to make
doUars. " Get money, honestly if you can, but get
it." It is an almost universal maxim. To the
preacher, " a loud call" means the offer of a larger
salary. To the politician, a good office is one which
offers the highest pay or the richest perquisites. In
politics and business, and I am afraid in many other
matters, money is the great object, and scruples are
thrown to the winds.
Certain conventional notions of morahty are re
garded. There are few men of position in America
who would like to have it known that they had made
their money by gambling at cards, but they would
have no scruple against the most odious cheating, trw^
most gigantic frauds on the Stock Exchange. One
may be a " buU," or a " bear," in WaU-street; but it
would not do to keep a faro bank in Broadway.
Nearly aU Americans trade and speculate. They are
ready to swap horses, swap watches, swap farms ; and
to buy and sell anything. TaUeyrand said America
was a detestable country, where a man was ready to
sell a favourite dog. I think the habit of fixing a
price to everything may have misled the diplomatist.
A man might be very unwUling to seU his dog ; but
he would be very likely to describe him as worth so
many dollars. A mocking-bird that fills a house with
the songs of a hundred birds, besides the barkings of
dogs, the mewings of cats, the filings of saws, and
the noises of the knife-grinder, is declared, in addi-

404 American Recreations and Amusements.
tion to aU his accomplishments, to have cost twenty-
five doUars. Everything, whether for sale or not,
has a money value. Money is the habitual measure
of aU things. I beUeve the American husband uncon
sciously values his wife in the Federal currency ; and
a fine chUd is associated with some such idea as a
thousand doUars.
The pursuit of riches — that is, of money and
money's worth — without the enjoyment of wealth, is
a bar to happiness and a cause of misery. The
prizes of wealth, either in business or the lottery,
bear a smaU proportion to the blanks. The few who
get rich are disappointed because they never enjoy
theh riches. The many who strive in vain to get
rich are disappointed in theh object, and so unhappy.
I^The first element of happiness, or the enjoyment of
life, is content. There is no such thing in America
as being contented with one's position or condition.
The poor struggle to be rich, the rich to be richer.
Everyone is tugging, trying, scheming to advance — to
get ahead. It is a great scramble, in which aU are
troubled and none are satisfied. In Europe, the poor
man, as a rule, knows that he must remain poor, and
he submits to his lot, and tries to make the best of it.
In England the peasant does not expect to become a
noble. Most men live and die in the position to
which they are born. The exceptions are too rare to
excite much effort or discontent. Not so in America.
Every little ragged boy dreams of being President or
a John Jacob Astor. The dream may be a pleasant
one while it lasts, but what of the disappointing

Influence of Puritanism. 405
reality ? What of the excited, restless, feverish Ufe
spent in the pursuit of phantoms ?
The chief source of human happiness is the enjoy
ment of the domestic affections. In the countries of
the Old World, the loves of parents and children for
each other — the famUy affections — make up a large
portion of the enjoyment of hfe. America is strangely
destitute of these affections. Whatever may be the
causes, there is no doubt about the fact. TraveUers
have observed, and natives have deplored it. It would
be too much to say that Americans were without
natural affection; but it is strange how Uttle they
appear to have.
Our Puritan ancestors had much to do with it.
The settlers of New England were a cold, hard race.
They conscientiously suppressed theh natural affections
untU they starved them out. A faculty unused is
lost. The Puritans lost the power of loving, as the
fish in the dark river of the Mammoth cave have lost
the power to see. The blue laws of Connecticut
punished a man for kissing his wife or chUd on the
Sabbath day. What was forbidden on Sunday was
considered a mark of human fraUty on aU other
days. Then the grim Pilgrims were Calvinists of the most
rigid type. I do not wish to enter upon the thorny
paths of rehgious controversy, but few can doubt the
tendency of a belief in the doctrine of eternal repro
bation to harden the heart. Why should the father
or mother love the chUd possibly doomed to endless
perdition. I am certain that the early creed of New

406 American Recreations and Amusements.
England made the people hard, harsh, and inhuman.
^The effect has lasted beyond the cause.
The stoicism bred of Calvinism is seen to-day in
the manner in which the Northern people have borne
the losses of the war. There are portions of the
North in which almost every famUy has lost one or
more by the war, yet how Uttle do we hear of mourn
ing or sorrow. It is not so in the South. There
hearts are warm and family affections ardent and
demonstrative. There Rachel weeps for her chUdren,
and wUl not be comforted. The South is filled with
an agony of grief. They give fathers, husbands,
chUdren for theh country, but they feel theh loss.
The South mourns as England mourned her dead in
the Crimea. In the South, I have seen a grandfather
of sixty tenderly kiss his mother of eighty when he
met her in the street ; I have seen his grown-up and
married sons and daughters, as weU as his grand-
chUdren, come and kiss him before sitting down to
breakfast in the morning : I never saw such a thing
in New England or the North.
In the Northern States also, more than in the
South, the ties of famUy are so often broken that they
are loosely held. New England, for a hundred years,
has been the hive that poured its swarms of emigrants
over the new regions of the West. FamUies are
scattered far and wide. One son settles in Wisconsin,
another goes to Texas, a thhd to Oregon. One daughter
marries an Alabamian, another settles in California.
This separation of families, the infrequent and excep-

Socialism. 407
tional hardship of the slaves, is the habitual lot of
the Northern people.
Whatever the causes, the fact of an absence of
famUy affection must lessen the sum of human enjoy
ment. The more people are isolated, the less they
have to love, the less are theh sources of earthly happi
ness. They tend more to the Ishmaelism of competi
tion and the fierce struggle for gain.
Socialism, in America, in its various forms, has been
a protest and reaction against Mammonism and a
growing and almost universal egoism or selfishness.
As famUies were scattered, as society scarcely pretended
to exist, as poUtics became more and more debased
and despicable, as wealth faUed to satisfy and could
not purchase what was not in the market for sale,
men naturally inquired if there were not some other
form of social life less exhausting and more satis
fying. A few tried Owenism and Fourierism. The
former was generaUy repugnant, because the Ame
ricans, holding to equality in theory, aU the more
resolutely reject it in practice. Fourierism they could
not understand, and, at the period of its introduction,
were unprepared for. Fourierism has a religion and
moraUty of its own, and Americans twenty years ago
were far from ready to abandon the religion and
morals which they aU professed, if they did not aU
practise. Instead, therefore, of rushing into communities and
Phalansteries, they emigrated. As fast as they were
disgusted with the older communities they founded

408 American Recreations and Amusements.
new ones. There were far-spreading lands of promise
in the West. There were the broad prairies ready for
the plough. Great-States were buUding up beyond the
Mississippi. The lawyer who could not get clients in
New Tork could be a Member of Congress from Min
nesota. I knew a little red-headed infidel spouter in
New Tork who became a United States senator from
Oregon. Men seemed to expand as they increased
theh distance from the older States, as baUoons grow
larger when rising .into the rarer heights of the atmo
sphere. Sometimes, in the one case as in the other,
they burst and coUapsed in the process. America is a
great country ; it has been and may stiU be a pros
perous country ; it cannot yet be truly caUed a happy
one.

END OF VOL. i.