They expect food and clothes, and instruction as to every simple act of life, as do children. The negro domestic servant is handy at his own work; no servant more so; but he cannot go beyond that. He does not comprehend the object and purport of continued industry. If he have money he will play with it,--will amuse himself with it. If he have none, he will amuse himself without it. His work is like a schoolboy"s task; he knows it must be done, but never comprehends that the doing of it is the very end and essence of his life. He is a child in all things, and the extent of prudential wisdom to which he ever attains is to disdain emanc.i.p.ation, and cling to the security of his bondage. It is true enough that slavery has been a curse.
Whatever may have been its effect on the negroes, it has been a deadly curse upon the white masters.
The preaching of abolition during the war is to me either the deadliest of sins or the vainest of follies. Its only immediate result possible would be servile insurrection. That is so manifestly atrocious,--a wish for it would be so h.e.l.lish, that I do not presume the preachers of abolition to entertain it. But if that be not meant, it must be intended that an act of emanc.i.p.ation should be carried throughout the slave States,--either in their separation from the North, or after their subjection and consequent reunion with the North. As regards the States while in secession, the North cannot operate upon their slaves any more than England can operate on the slaves of Cuba. But if a reunion is to be a precursor of emanc.i.p.ation, surely that reunion should be first effected. A decision in the northern and western mind on such a subject cannot a.s.sist in obtaining that reunion,--but must militate against the practicability of such an object. This is so well understood, that Mr. Lincoln and his Government do not dare to call themselves abolitionists.*
*President Lincoln has proposed a plan for the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves in the border States, and for compensation to the owners.
His doing so proves that he regards present emanc.i.p.ation in the Gulf States as quite out of the question. It also proves that he looks forward to the recovery of the border States for the North, but that he does not look forward to the recovery of the Gulf States.
Abolition, in truth, is a political cry. It is the banner of defiance opposed to secession. As the differences between the North and South have grown with years, and have swelled to the proportions of national antipathy, southern nullification has amplified itself into secession, and northern free-soil principles have burst into this growth of abolition. Men have not calculated the results. Charming pictures are drawn for you of the negro in a state of Utopian bliss, owning his own hoe and eating his own hog; in a paradise, where everything is bought and sold, except his wife, his little ones, and himself. But the enfranchised negro has always thrown away his hoe, has eaten any man"s hog but his own,--and has too often sold his daughter for a dollar when any such market has been open to him.
I confess that this cry of abolition has been made peculiarly displeasing to me by the fact that the northern abolitionist is by no means willing to give even to the negro who is already free that position in the world which alone might tend to raise him in the scale of human beings,--if anything can so raise him and make him fit for freedom. The abolitionists hold that the negro is the white man"s equal. I do not. I see, or think that I see, that the negro is the white man"s inferior through laws of nature. That he is not mentally fit to cope with white men,--I speak of the full-blooded negro,--and that he must fill a position simply servile. But the abolitionist declares him to be the white man"s equal. But yet, when he has him at his elbow, he treats him with a scorn which even the negro can hardly endure. I will give him political equality, but not social equality, says the abolitionist. But even in this he is untrue. A black man may vote in New York, but he cannot vote under the same circ.u.mstances as a white man. He is subjected to qualifications which in truth debar him from the poll. A white man votes by manhood suffrage, providing he has been for one year an inhabitant of his State; but a man of colour must have been for three years a citizen of the State, and must own a property qualification of 50 free of debt. But political equality is not what such men want, nor indeed is it social equality.
It is social tolerance and social sympathy; and these are denied to the negro. An American abolitionist would not sit at table with a negro. He might do so in England at the house of an English d.u.c.h.ess; but in his own country the proposal of such a companion would be an insult to him. He will not sit with him in a public carriage if he can avoid it. In New York I have seen special street-cars for coloured people. The abolitionist is struck with horror when he thinks that a man and a brother should be a slave; but when the man and the brother has been made free, he is regarded with loathing and contempt. All this I cannot see with equanimity. There is falsehood in it from the beginning to the end. The slave as a rule is well treated,--gets all he wants and almost all he desires. The free negro as a rule is ill treated, and does not get that consideration which alone might put him in the worldly position for which his advocate declares him to be fit. It is false throughout,--this preaching. The negro is not the white man"s equal by nature. But to the free negro in the northern States this inequality is increased by the white man"s hardness to him.
In a former book which I wrote some few years since, I expressed an opinion as to the probable destiny of this race in the West Indies.
I will not now go over that question again. I then divided the inhabitants of those islands into three cla.s.ses,--the white, the black, and the coloured, taking a nomenclature which I found there prevailing. By coloured men I alluded to mulattoes, and all those of mixed European and African blood. The word "coloured," in the States, seems to apply to the whole negro race, whether full-blooded or half-blooded. I allude to this now because I wish to explain that, in speaking of what I conceive to be the intellectual inferiority of the negro race, I allude to those of pure negro descent,--or of descent so nearly pure as to make the negro element manifestly predominant.
In the West Indies, where I had more opportunity of studying the subject, I always believed myself able to tell a negro from a coloured man. Indeed the cla.s.ses are to a great degree distinct there, the greater portion of the retail trade of the country being in the hands of the coloured people. But in the States I have been able to make no such distinction. One sees generally neither the rich yellow of the West Indian mulatto, nor the deep oily black of the West Indian negro. The prevailing hue is a dry, dingy brown,--almost dusty in its dryness. I have observed but little difference made between the negro and the half-caste,--and no difference in the actual treatment. I have never met in American society any man or woman in whose veins there can have been presumed to be any taint of African blood. In Jamaica they are daily to be found in society.
Every Englishman probably looks forward to the accomplishment of abolition of slavery at some future day. I feel as sure of it as I do of the final judgment. When or how it shall come I will not attempt to foretell. The mode which seems to promise the surest success and the least present or future inconvenience, would be an edict enfranchising all female children born after a certain date, and all their children. Under such an arrangement the negro population would probably die out slowly,--very slowly. What might then be the fate of the cotton-fields of the Gulf States, who shall dare to say? It may be that coolies from India and from China will then have taken the place of the negro there, as they probably will have done also in Guiana and the West Indies.
CHAPTER IV.
WASHINGTON TO ST. LOUIS.
Though I had felt Washington to be disagreeable as a city, yet I was almost sorry to leave it when the day of my departure came. I had allowed myself a month for my sojourn in the capital, and I had stayed a month to the day. Then came the trouble of packing up, the necessity of calling on a long list of acquaintances one after another, the feeling that bad as Washington might be, I might be going to places that were worse, a conviction that I should get beyond the reach of my letters, and a sort of affection which I had acquired for my rooms. My landlord, being a coloured man, told me that he was sorry I was going. Would I not remain? Would I come back to him? Had I been comfortable? Only for so and so or so and so, he would have done better for me. No white American citizen, occupying the position of landlord, would have condescended to such comfortable words. I knew the man did not in truth want me to stay, as a lady and gentleman were waiting to go in the moment I went out; but I did not the less value the a.s.surance. One hungers and thirsts after such civil words among American citizens of this cla.s.s. The clerks and managers at hotels, the officials at railway stations, the cashiers at banks, the women in the shops;--ah! they are the worst of all. An American woman who is bound by her position to serve you,--who is paid in some shape to supply your wants, whether to sell you a bit of soap or bring you a towel in your bedroom at an hotel,--is, I think, of all human creatures, the most insolent. I certainly had a feeling of regret at parting with my coloured friend,--and some regret also as regards a few that were white.
As I drove down Pennsylvania Avenue, through the slush and mud, and saw, perhaps for the last time, those wretchedly dirty horse sentries who had refused to allow me to trot through the streets, I almost wished that I could see more of them. How absurd they looked, with a whole kit of rattletraps strapped on their horses" backs behind them,--blankets, coats, canteens, coils of rope, and, always at the top of everything else, a tin pot! No doubt these things are all necessary to a mounted sentry, or they would not have been there; but it always seemed as though the horse had been loaded gipsy-fashion, in a manner that I may perhaps best describe as higgledy-piggledy, and that there was a want of military precision in the packing. The man would have looked more graceful, and the soldier more warlike, had the pannikin been made to a.s.sume some rigidly fixed position instead of dangling among the ropes. The drawn sabre, too, never consorted well with the dirty outside woollen wrapper which generally hung loose from the man"s neck. Heaven knows, I did not begrudge him his comforter in that cold weather, or even his long, uncombed shock of hair; but I think he might have been made more spruce, and I am sure that he could not have looked more uncomfortable. As I went, however, I felt for him a sort of affection, and wished in my heart of hearts that he might soon be enabled to return to some more congenial employment.
I went out by the Capitol, and saw that also, as I then believed, for the last time. With all its faults it is a great building, and, though unfinished, is effective; its very size and pretension give it a certain majesty. What will be the fate of that vast pile, and of those other costly public edifices at Washington, should the South succeed wholly in their present enterprise? If Virginia should ever become a part of the southern republic, Washington cannot remain the capital of the northern republic. In such case it would be almost better to let Maryland go also, so that the future destiny of that unfortunate city may not be a source of trouble, and a stumbling block of opprobrium. Even if Virginia be saved, its position will be most unfortunate.
I fancy that the railroads in those days must have been doing a very prosperous business. From New York to Philadelphia, thence on to Baltimore, and again to Washington, I had found the cars full; so full that sundry pa.s.sengers could not find seats. Now, on my return to Baltimore, they were again crowded. The stations were all crowded.
Luggage-trains were going in and out as fast as the rails could carry them. Among the pa.s.sengers almost half were soldiers. I presume that these were men going on furlough, or on special occasions; for the regiments were of course not received by ordinary pa.s.senger trains.
About this time a return was called for by Congress of all the moneys paid by the government, on account of the army, to the lines between New York and Washington. Whether or no it was ever furnished I did not hear; but it was openly stated that the colonels of regiments received large gratuities from certain railway companies for the regiments pa.s.sing over their lines. Charges of a similar nature were made against officers, contractors, quartermasters, paymasters, generals, and cabinet ministers. I am not prepared to say that any of these men had dirty hands. It was not for me to make inquiries on such matters. But the continuance and universality of the accusations were dreadful. When everybody is suspected of being dishonest, dishonesty almost ceases to be regarded as disgraceful.
I will allude to a charge made against one member of the Cabinet, because the circ.u.mstances of the case were all acknowledged and proved. This gentleman employed his wife"s brother-in-law to buy ships, and the agent so employed pocketed about 20,000 by the transaction in six months. The excuse made was that this profit was in accordance with the usual practice of the ship-dealing trade, and that it was paid by the owners who sold, and not by the Government which bought. But in so vast an agency the ordinary rate of profit on such business became an enormous sum; and the gentleman who made the plea must surely have understood that that 20,000 was in fact paid by the government. It is the purchaser, and not the seller, who in fact pays all such fees. The question is this,--Should the government have paid so vast a sum for one man"s work for six months? And if so, was it well that that sum should go into the pocket of a near relative of the Minister whose special business it was to protect the government?
American private soldiers are not pleasant fellow-travellers. They are loud and noisy, and swear quite as much as the army could possibly have sworn in Flanders. They are, moreover, very dirty; and each man, with his long, thick great-coat, takes up more s.p.a.ce than is intended to be allotted to him. Of course I felt that if I chose to travel in a country while it had such a piece of business on its hands, I could not expect that everything should be found in exact order. The matter for wonder, perhaps, was that the ordinary affairs of life were so little disarranged, and that any travelling at all was practicable. Nevertheless the fact remains that American private soldiers are not agreeable fellow-travellers.
It was my present intention to go due west across the country into Missouri, skirting, as it were, the line of the war which had now extended itself from the Atlantic across into Kansas. There were at this time three main armies,--that of the Potomac, as the army of Virginia was called, of which Maclellan held the command; that of Kentucky, under General Buell, who was stationed at Louisville on the Ohio; and the army on the Mississippi, which had been under Fremont, and of which General Halleck now held the command. To these were opposed the three rebel armies of Beauregard, in Virginia; of Johnston, on the borders of Kentucky and Tennessee; and of Price, in Missouri. There was also a fourth army in Kansas, west of Missouri, under General Hunter; and while I was in Washington another general, supposed by some to be the "coming man," was sent down to Kansas to partic.i.p.ate in General Hunter"s command. This was General Jim Lane, who resigned a seat in the Senate in order that he might undertake this military duty. When he reached Kansas, having on his route made sundry violent abolition speeches, and proclaimed his intention of sweeping slavery out of the south-western States, he came to loggerheads with his superior officer respecting their relative positions.
On my arrival at Baltimore, I found the place knee-deep in mud and slush and half-melted snow. It was then raining hard,--raining dirt, not water, as it sometimes does. Worse weather for soldiers out in tents could not be imagined,--nor for men who were not soldiers, but who nevertheless were compelled to leave their houses. I only remained at Baltimore one day, and then started again, leaving there the greater part of my baggage. I had a vague hope,--a hope which I hardly hoped to realize,--that I might be able to get through to the South. At any rate I made myself ready for the chance by making my travelling impediments as light as possible, and started from Baltimore, prepared to endure all the discomfort which lightness of baggage entails. My route lay over the Alleghanies by Pittsburg and Cincinnati, and my first stopping-place was at Harrisburg, the political capital of Pennsylvania. There is nothing special at Harrisburg to arrest any traveller; but the local legislature of the State was then sitting, and I was desirous of seeing the Senate and Representatives of at any rate one State, during its period of vitality.
In Pennsylvania the General a.s.sembly, as the joint legislature is called, sits every year, commencing their work early in January, and continuing till it be finished. The usual period of sitting seems to be about ten weeks. In the majority of States, the legislature only sits every other year. In this State it sits every year, and the representatives are elected annually. The senators are elected for three years, a third of the body being chosen each year. The two chambers were ugly, convenient rooms, arranged very much after the fashion of the halls of Congress at Washington. Each member had his own desk, and his own chair. They were placed in the shape of a horse-shoe, facing the chairman, before whom sat three clerks. In neither house did I hear any set speech. The voices of the Speaker and of the clerks of the houses were heard more frequently than those of the members; and the business seemed to be done in a dull, serviceable, methodical manner, likely to be useful to the country, and very uninteresting to the gentlemen engaged. Indeed at Washington also, in Congress, it seemed to me that there was much less of set speeches than in our House of Commons. With us there are certain men whom it seems impossible to put down, and by whom the time of Parliament is occupied from night to night, with advantage to no one and with satisfaction to none but themselves. I do not think that the evil prevails to the same extent in America, either in Congress or in the State legislatures. As regards Washington, this good result may be a.s.sisted by a salutary practice which, as I was a.s.sured, prevails there. A member gets his speech printed at the Government cost, and sends it down free by post to his const.i.tuents, without troubling either the house with hearing it, or himself with speaking it. I cannot but think that the practice might be copied with success on our side of the water.
The appearance of the members of the legislature of Pennsylvania did not impress me very favourably. I do not know why we should wish a legislator to be neat in his dress, and comely, in some degree, in his personal appearance. There is no good reason, perhaps, why they should have cleaner shirts than their outside brethren, or have been more particular in the use of soap and water, and brush and comb.
But I have an idea that if ever our own Parliament becomes dirty, it will lose its prestige; and I cannot but think that the Parliament of Pennsylvania would gain an accession of dignity by some slightly increased devotion to the Graces. I saw in the two houses but one gentleman, a senator, who looked like a Quaker; but even he was a very untidy Quaker.
I paid my respects to the Governor, and found him briskly employed in arranging the appointments of officers. All the regimental appointments to the volunteer regiments,--and that is practically to the whole body of the army,*--are made by the State in which the regiments are mustered. When the affair commenced, the captains and lieutenants were chosen by the men; but it was found that this would not do. When the skeleton of a State militia only was required, such an arrangement was popular and not essentially injurious; but now that war had become a reality, and that volunteers were required to obey discipline, some other mode of promotion was found necessary.
As far as I could understand, the appointments were in the hands of the State Governor, who however was expected in the selection of the superior officers to be guided by the expressed wishes of the regiment, when no objection existed to such a choice. In the present instance the Governor"s course was very th.o.r.n.y. Certain unfinished regiments were in the act of being amalgamated;--two perfect regiments being made up from perhaps five imperfect regiments, and so on. But though the privates had not been forthcoming to the full number for each expected regiment, there had been no such dearth of officers, and consequently the present operation consisted in reducing their number.
*The army at this time consisted nominally of 660,000 men, of whom only 20,000 were regulars.
Nothing can be much uglier than the State House at Harrisburg, but it commands a magnificent view of one of the valleys into which the Alleghany mountains is broken. Harrisburg is immediately under the range, probably at its finest point, and the railway running west from the town to Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and Chicago pa.s.ses right over the chain. The line has been magnificently engineered, and the scenery is very grand. I went over the Alleghanies in mid-winter when they were covered with snow, but even when so seen they were very fine. The view down the valley from Altoona, a point near the summit, must in summer be excessively lovely. I stopped at Altoona one night with the object of getting about among the hills, and making the best of the winter view; but I found it impossible to walk. The snow had become frozen and was like gla.s.s. I could not progress a mile in any way. With infinite labour I climbed to the top of one little hill, and when there became aware that the descent would be very much more difficult. I did get down, but should not choose to describe the manner in which I accomplished the descent.
In running down the mountains to Pittsburg an accident occurred which in any other country would have thrown the engine off the line, and have reduced the carriages behind the engine to a heap of ruins. But here it had no other effect than that of delaying us for three or four hours. The tire of one of the heavy driving wheels flew off, and in the shock the body of the wheel itself was broken, one spoke and a portion of the circ.u.mference of the wheel was carried away, and the steam-chamber was ripped open. Nevertheless the train was pulled up, neither the engine nor any of the carriages got off the line, and the men in charge of the train seemed to think very lightly of the matter. I was amused to see how little was made of the affair by any of the pa.s.sengers. In England a delay of three hours would in itself produce a great amount of grumbling, or at least many signs of discomfort and temporary unhappiness. But here no one said a word.
Some of the younger men got out and looked at the ruined wheel; but most of the pa.s.sengers kept their seats, chewed their tobacco, and went to sleep. In all such matters an American is much more patient than an Englishman. To sit quiet, without speech, and ruminate in some contorted position of body comes to him by nature. On this occasion I did not hear a word of complaint--nor yet a word of surprise or thankfulness that the accident had been attended with no serious result. "I have got a furlough for ten days," one soldier said to me. "And I have missed every connection all through from Washington here. I shall have just time to turn round and go back when I get home." But he did not seem to be in any way dissatisfied.
He had not referred to his relatives when he spoke of "missing his connections," but to his want of good fortune as regarded railway travelling. He had reached Baltimore too late for the train on to Harrisburg, and Harrisburg too late for the train on to Pittsburg.
Now he must again reach Pittsburg too late for his further journey.
But nevertheless he seemed to be well pleased with his position.
Pittsburg is the Merthyr-Tydvil of Pennsylvania,--or perhaps I should better describe it as an amalgamation of Swansea, Merthyr-Tydvil, and South Shields. It is without exception the blackest place which I ever saw. The three English towns which I have named are very dirty, but all their combined soot and grease and dinginess do not equal that of Pittsburg. As regards scenery it is beautifully situated, being at the foot of the Alleghany mountains, and at the juncture of the two rivers Monongahela and Alleghany. Here, at the town, they come together and form the river Ohio. Nothing can be more picturesque than the site; for the spurs of the mountains come down close round the town, and the rivers are broad and swift, and can be seen for miles from heights which may be reached in a short walk.
Even the filth and wondrous blackness of the place are picturesque when looked down upon from above. The tops of the churches are visible, and some of the larger buildings may be partially traced through the thick, brown, settled smoke. But the city itself is buried in a dense cloud. The atmosphere was especially heavy when I was there, and the effect was probably increased by the general darkness of the weather. The Monongahela is crossed by a fine bridge, and on the other side the ground rises at once, almost with the rapidity of a precipice; so that a commanding view is obtained down upon the town and the two rivers and the different bridges, from a height immediately above them. I was never more in love with smoke and dirt than when I stood here and watched the darkness of night close in upon the floating soot which hovered over the housetops of the city. I cannot say that I saw the sun set, for there was no sun.
I should say that the sun never shone at Pittsburg,--as foreigners who visit London in November declare that the sun never shines there.
Walking along the river-side I counted thirty-two steamers, all beached upon the sh.o.r.e with their bows towards the land,--large boats, capable probably of carrying from one to two hundred pa.s.sengers each, and about 300 tons of merchandise. On inquiry I found that many of these were not now at work. They were resting idle, the trade down the Mississippi below St. Louis having been cut off by the war. Many of them, however, were still running, the pa.s.sage down the river being open to Wheeling in Virginia, to Portsmouth, Cincinnati and the whole of South Ohio, to Louisville in Kentucky, and to Cairo in Illinois, where the Ohio joins the Mississippi. The amount of traffic carried on by these boats while the country was at peace within itself was very great, and conclusive as to the increasing prosperity of the people. It seems that everybody travels in America, and that nothing is thought of distance. A young man will step into a car and sit beside you, with that easy, careless air which is common to a railway pa.s.senger in England who is pa.s.sing from one station to the next; and on conversing with him you will find that he is going seven or eight hundred miles. He is supplied with fresh newspapers three or four times a day as he pa.s.ses by the towns at which they are published; he eats a large a.s.sortment of gum-drops and apples, and is quite as much at home as in his own house. On board the river boats it is the same with him, with this exception, that when there he can get whisky when he wants it. He knows nothing of the ennui of travelling, and never seems to long for the end of his journey, as travellers do with us.
Should his boat come to grief upon the river, and lie by for a day or a night, it does not in the least disconcert him. He seats himself upon three chairs, takes a bite of tobacco, thrusts his hands into his trousers pockets and revels in an elysium of his own.
I was told that the stockholders in these boats were in a bad way at the present time. There were no dividends going. The same story was repeated as to many and many an investment. Where the war created business, as it had done on some of the main lines of railroad and in some special towns, money was pa.s.sing very freely; but away from this, ruin seemed to have fallen on the enterprise of the country.
Men were not broken-hearted, nor were they even melancholy; but they were simply ruined. That is nothing in the States, so long as the ruined man has the means left to him of supplying his daily wants till he can start himself again in life. It is almost the normal condition of the American man in business; and therefore I am inclined to think that when this war is over, and things begin to settle themselves into new grooves, commerce will recover herself more quickly there than she would do among any other people. It is so common a thing to hear of an enterprise that has never paid a dollar of interest on the original outlay,--of hotels, ca.n.a.ls, railroads, banks, blocks of houses, &c., that never paid even in the happy days of peace,--that one is tempted to disregard the absence of dividends, and to believe that such a trifling accident will not act as any check on future speculation. In no country has pecuniary ruin been so common as in the States; but then in no country is pecuniary ruin so little ruinous. "We are a recuperative people," a west-country gentleman once said to me. I doubted the propriety of his word, but I acknowledged the truth of his a.s.sertion.
Pittsburg and Alleghany, which latter is a town similar in its nature to Pittsburg on the other side of the river of the same name, regard themselves as places apart; but they are in effect one and the same city. They live under the same blanket of soot, which is woven by the joint efforts of the two places. Their united population is 135,000, of which Alleghany owns about 50,000. The industry of the towns is of that sort which arises from a union of coal and iron in the vicinity.
The Pennsylvanian coalfields are the most prolific in the Union; and Pittsburg is therefore great, exactly as Merthyr-Tydvil and Birmingham are great. But the foundry-work at Pittsburg is more nearly allied to the heavy, rough works of the Welsh coal metropolis than to the finish and polish of Birmingham.
"Why cannot you consume your own smoke?" I asked a gentleman there.
"Fuel is so cheap that it would not pay," he answered. His idea of the advantage of consuming smoke was confined to the question of its paying as a simple operation in itself. The consequent cleanliness and improvement in the atmosphere had not entered into his calculations. Any such result might be a fortuitous benefit, but was not of sufficient importance to make any effort in that direction expedient on its own account. "Coal was burned," he said, "in the foundries at something less than two dollars a ton; while that was the case, it could not answer the purpose of any iron-founder to put up an apparatus for the consumption of smoke." I did not pursue the argument any further, as I perceived that we were looking at the matter from two different points of view.
Everything in the hotel was black; not black to the eye, for the eye teaches itself to discriminate colours even when loaded with dirt, but black to the touch. On coming out of a tub of water my foot took an impress from the carpet exactly as it would have done had I trod barefooted on a path laid with soot. I thought that I was turning negro upwards, till I put my wet hand upon the carpet, and found that the result was the same. And yet the carpet was green to the eye,--a dull, dingy green, but still green. "You shouldn"t damp your feet,"
a man said to me, to whom I mentioned the catastrophe. Certainly Pittsburg is the dirtiest place I ever saw, but it is, as I said before, very picturesque in its dirt when looked at from above the blanket.
From Pittsburg I went on by train to Cincinnati, and was soon in the State of Ohio. I confess that I have never felt any great regard for Pennsylvania. It has always had in my estimation a low character for commercial honesty, and a certain flavour of pretentious hypocrisy.
This probably has been much owing to the acerbity and pungency of Sydney Smith"s witty denunciations against the drab-coloured State.
It is noted for repudiation of its own debts, and for sharpness in exaction of its own bargains. It has been always smart in banking. It has given Buchanan as a President to the country, and Cameron as a Secretary at War to the Government! When the battle of Bull"s Run was to be fought, Pennsylvanian soldiers were the men who, on that day, threw down their arms because the three months" term for which they had been enlisted was then expired! Pennsylvania does not in my mind stand on a par with Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Illinois, or Virginia. We are apt to connect the name of Benjamin Franklin with Pennsylvania, but Franklin was a Boston man. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania is rich and prosperous. Indeed it bears all those marks which Quakers generally leave behind them.
I had some little personal feeling in visiting Cincinnati, because my mother had lived there for some time, and had there been concerned in a commercial enterprise, by which no one, I believe, made any great sum of money. Between thirty and forty years ago she built a bazaar in Cincinnati, which I was a.s.sured by the present owner of the house, was at the time of its erection considered to be the great building of the town. It has been sadly eclipsed now, and by no means rears its head proudly among the great blocks around it. It had become a "Physico-medical Inst.i.tute" when I was there, and was under the dominion of a quack doctor on one side, and of a college of rights-of-women female medical professors on the other. "I believe, sir, no man or woman ever yet made a dollar in that building; and as for rent, I don"t even expect it." Such was the account given of the unfortunate bazaar by the present proprietor.
Cincinnati has long been known as a great town,--conspicuous among all towns for the number of hogs which are there killed, salted, and packed. It is the great hog metropolis of the western States; but Cincinnati has not grown with the rapidity of other towns. It has now 170,000 inhabitants, but then it got an early start. St. Louis, which is west of it again, near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi, has gone ahead of it. Cincinnati stands on the Ohio river, separated by a ferry from Kentucky, which is a slave State.
Ohio itself is a free-soil State. When the time comes for arranging the line of division, if such time shall ever come, it will be very hard to say where northern feeling ends and where southern wishes commence. Newport and Covington, which are in Kentucky, are suburbs of Cincinnati; and yet in these places slavery is rife. The domestic servants are mostly slaves, though it is essential that those so kept should be known as slaves who will not run away. It is understood that a slave who escapes into Ohio will not be caught and given up by the intervention of the Ohio police; and from Covington or Newport any slave can escape into Ohio with ease. But when that division takes place, no river like the Ohio can form the boundary between the divided nations. Such rivers are the highways, round which in this country people have cl.u.s.tered themselves. A river here is not a natural barrier, but a connecting street. It would be as well to make a railway a division, or the centre line of a city a national boundary. Kentucky and Ohio States are joined together by the Ohio river, with Cincinnati on one side and Louisville on the other; and I do not think that man"s act can upset these ties of nature. But between Kentucky and Tennessee there is no such bond of union. There a mathematical line has been simply drawn, a continuation of that line which divides Virginia from North Carolina, to which two latter States Kentucky and Tennessee belonged when the thirteen original States first formed themselves into a union. But that mathematical line has offered no peculiar advantages to population. No great towns cl.u.s.ter there, and no strong social interests would be dissevered should Kentucky throw in her lot with the North, and Tennessee with the South; but Kentucky owns a quarter of a million of slaves, and those slaves must either be emanc.i.p.ated or removed before such a junction can be firmly settled.
The great business of Cincinnati is hog-killing now, as it used to be in the old days of which I have so often heard. It seems to be an established fact, that in this portion of the world the porcine genus are all hogs. One never hears of a pig. With us a trade in hogs and pigs is subject to some little contumely. There is a feeling, which has perhaps never been expressed in words, but which certainly exists, that these animals are not so honourable in their bearings as sheep and oxen. It is a prejudice which by no means exists in Cincinnati. There hog killing and salting and packing are very honourable, and the great men in the trade are the merchant princes of the city. I went to see the performance, feeling it to be a duty to inspect everywhere that which I found to be of most importance; but I will not describe it. There were a crowd of men operating, and I was told that the point of honour was to "put through" a hog a minute. It must be understood that the animal enters upon the ceremony alive, and comes out in that cleanly, disembowelled guise in which it may sometimes be seen hanging up previous to the operation of the pork-butcher"s knife. To one special man was appointed a performance which seemed to be specially disagreeable, so that he appeared despicable in my eyes; but when on inquiry I learned that he earned five dollars, or a pound sterling, a day, my judgment as to his position was reversed. And after all what matters the ugly nature of such an occupation when a man is used to it?
Cincinnati is like all other American towns, with second, third, and fourth streets, seventh, eighth, and ninth streets, and so on. Then the cross-streets are named chiefly from trees. Chesnut, walnut, locust, &c. I do not know whence has come this fancy for naming streets after trees in the States, but it is very general. The town is well built, with good fronts to many of the houses, with large shops and larger stores;--of course also with an enormous hotel, which has never paid anything like a proper dividend to the speculator who built it. It is always the same story. But these towns shame our provincial towns by their breadth and grandeur. I am afraid that speculators with us are trammelled by an "ignorant impatience of ruin." I should not myself like to live in Cincinnati or in any of these towns. They are slow, dingy, and uninteresting; but they all possess an air of substantial, civic dignity. It must however be remembered that the Americans live much more in towns than we do.
All with us that are rich and aristocratic and luxurious live in the country, frequenting the metropolis for only a portion of the year.
But all that are rich and aristocratic and luxurious in the States live in the towns. Our provincial towns are not generally chosen as the residences of our higher cla.s.ses.
Cincinnati has 170,000 inhabitants, and there are 14,000 children at the free schools,--which is about one in twelve of the whole population. This number gives the average of scholars throughout the year ended 30th June, 1861. But there are other schools in Cincinnati,--parish schools and private schools, and it is stated to me that there were in all 32,000 children attending school in the city throughout the year. The education at the State schools is very good. Thirty-four teachers are employed, at an average salary of 92 each, ranging from 260 to 60 per annum. It is in this matter of education that the cities of the free States of America have done so much for the civilization and welfare of their population. This fact cannot be repeated in their praise too often. Those who have the management of affairs, who are at the top of the tree, are desirous of giving to all an opportunity of raising themselves in the scale of human beings. I dislike universal suffrage; I dislike vote by ballot; I dislike above all things the tyranny of democracy. But I do like the political feeling--for it is a political feeling--which induces every educated American to lend a hand to the education of his fellow-citizens. It shows, if nothing else does so, a germ of truth in that doctrine of equality. It is a doctrine to be forgiven when he who preaches it is in truth striving to raise others to his own level;--though utterly unpardonable when the preacher would pull down others to his level.
Leaving Cincinnati I again entered a slave State, namely, Kentucky.