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North America

Volume 2

by Anthony Trollope

August, 1999  [Etext #1866]


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NORTH AMERICA

by ANTHONY TROLLOPE




VOLUME II.



CONTENTS OF VOL. II.


CHAPTER I.

Washington

CHAPTER II.

Congress

CHAPTER III.

The Causes of the War

CHAPTER IV.

Washington to St. Louis

CHAPTER V.

Missouri

CHAPTER VI.

Cairo and Camp Wood

CHAPTER VII.

The Army of the North

CHAPTER VIII.

Back to Boston

CHAPTER IX.

The Constitution of the United States

CHAPTER X.

The Government

CHAPTER XI.

The Law Courts and Lawyers of the United States

CHAPTER XII.

The Financial Position

CHAPTER XIII.

The Post-office

CHAPTER XIV.

American Hotels

CHAPTER XV.

Literature

CHAPTER XVI.

Conclusion




NORTH AMERICA.


CHAPTER 1.

WASHINGTON.


The site of the present City of Washington was chosen with three
special views: firstly, that being on the Potomac it might have the
full advantage of water-carriage and a sea-port; secondly, that it
might be so far removed from the sea-board as to be safe from
invasion; and, thirdly, that it might be central alike to all the
States.  It was presumed, when Washington was founded, that these
three advantages would be secured by the selected position.  As
regards the first, the Potomac affords to the city but few of the
advantages of a sea-port.  Ships can come up, but not ships of large
burden.  The river seems to have dwindled since the site was chosen,
and at present it is, I think, evident that Washington can never be
great in its shipping.  Statio benefida carinis can never be its
motto.  As regards the second point, singularly enough Washington is
the only city of the Union that has been in an enemy's possession
since the United States became a nation.  In the war of 1812 it fell
into our hands, and we burned it.  As regards the third point,
Washington, from the lie of the land, can hardly have been said to
be centrical at any time.  Owing to the irregularities of the coast
it is not easy of access by railways from different sides.
Baltimore would have been far better.  But as far as we can now see,
and as well as we can now judge, Washington will soon be on the
borders of the nation to which it belongs, instead of at its center.
I fear, therefore, that we must acknowledge that the site chosen for
his country's capital by George Washington has not been fortunate.

I have a strong idea, which I expressed before in speaking of the
capital of the Canadas, that no man can ordain that on such a spot
shall be built a great and thriving city.  No man can so ordain even
though he leave behind him, as was the case with Washington, a
prestige sufficient to bind his successors to his wishes.  The
political leaders of the country have done what they could for
Washington.  The pride of the nation has endeavored to sustain the
character of its chosen metropolis.  There has been no rival,
soliciting favor on the strength of other charms.  The country has
all been agreed on the point since the father of the country first
commenced the work.  Florence and Rome in Italy have each their
pretensions; but in the States no other city has put itself forward
for the honor of entertaining Congress.  And yet Washington has been
a failure.  It is commerce that makes great cities, and commerce has
refused to back the general's choice.  New York and Philadelphia,
without any political power, have become great among the cities of
the earth.  They are beaten by none except by London and Paris.  But
Washington is but a ragged, unfinished collection of unbuilt broad
streets, as to the completion of which there can now, I imagine, be
but little hope.

Of all places that I know it is the most ungainly and most
unsatisfactory: I fear I must also say the most presumptuous in its
pretensions.  There is a map of Washington accurately laid down; and
taking that map with him in his journeyings, a man may lose himself
in the streets, not as one loses one's self in London, between
Shoreditch and Russell Square, but as one does so in the deserts of
the Holy Land, between Emmaus and Arimathea.  In the first place no
one knows where the places are, or is sure of their existence, and
then between their presumed localities the country is wild,
trackless, unbridged, uninhabited, and desolate.  Massachusetts
Avenue runs the whole length of the city, and is inserted on the
maps as a full-blown street, about four miles in length.  Go there,
and you will find yourself not only out of town, away among the
fields, but you will find yourself beyond the fields, in an
uncultivated, undrained wilderness.  Tucking your trowsers up to
your knees you will wade through the bogs, you will lose yourself
among rude hillocks, you will be out of the reach of humanity.  The
unfinished dome of the Capitol will loom before you in the distance,
and you will think that you approach the ruins of some western
Palmyra.  If you are a sportsman, you will desire to shoot snipe
within sight of the President's house.  There is much unsettled land
within the States of America, but I think none so desolate in its
state of nature as three-fourths of the ground on which is supposed
to stand the City of Washington.

The City of Washington is something more than four miles long, and
is something more than two miles broad.  The land apportioned to it
is nearly as compact as may be, and it exceeds in area the size of a
parallelogram four miles long by two broad.  These dimensions are
adequate for a noble city, for a city to contain a million of
inhabitants.  It is impossible to state with accuracy the actual
population of Washington, for it fluctuates exceedingly.  The place
is very full during Congress, and very empty during the recess.  By
which I mean it to be understood that those streets which are
blessed with houses are full when Congress meets.  I do not think
that Congress makes much difference to Massachusetts Avenue.  I
believe that the city never contains as many as eighty thousand, and
that its permanent residents are less than sixty thousand.

But, it will be said, was it not well to prepare for a growing city?
Is it not true that London is choked by its own fatness, not having
been endowed at its birth or during its growth with proper means for
accommodating its own increasing proportions?  Was it not well to
lay down fine avenues and broad streets, so that future citizens
might find a city well prepared to their hand?

There is no doubt much in such an argument, but its correctness must
be tested by its success.  When a man marries it is well that be
should make provision for a coming family.  But a Benedict, who
early in his career shall have carried his friends with considerable
self-applause through half a dozen nurseries, and at the end of
twelve years shall still be the father of one rickety baby, will
incur a certain amount of ridicule.  It is very well to be prepared
for good fortune, but one should limit one's preparation within a
reasonable scope.  Two miles by one might, perhaps, have done for
the skeleton sketch of a new city.  Less than half that would
contain much more than the present population of Washington; and
there are, I fear, few towns in the Union so little likely to enjoy
any speedy increase.

Three avenues sweep the whole length of Washington: Virginia Avenue,
Pennsylvania Avenue, and Massachusetts Avenue.  But Pennsylvania
Avenue is the only one known to ordinary men, and the half of that
only is so known.  This avenue is the backbone of the city, and
those streets which are really inhabited cluster round that half of
it which runs westward from the Capitol.  The eastern end, running
from the front of the Capitol, is again a desert.  The plan of the
city is somewhat complicated.  It may truly be called "a mighty
maze, but not without a plan."  The Capitol was intended to be the
center of the city.  It faces eastward, away from the Potomac--or
rather from the main branch of the Potomac, and also unfortunately
from the main body of the town.  It turns its back upon the chief
thoroughfare, upon the Treasury buildings, and upon the President's
house, and, indeed, upon the whole place.  It was, I suppose,
intended that the streets to the eastward should be noble and
populous, but hitherto they have come to nothing.  The building,
therefore, is wrong side foremost, and all mankind who enter it,
Senators, Representatives, and judges included, go in at the back
door.  Of course it is generally known that in the Capitol is the
chamber of the Senate, that of the House of Representatives, and the
Supreme Judicial Court of the Union.  It may be said that there are
two centers in Washington, this being one and the President's house
the other.  At these centers the main avenues are supposed to cross
each other, which avenues are called by the names of the respective
States.  At the Capitol, Pennsylvania Avenue, New Jersey Avenue,
Delaware Avenue, and Maryland Avenue converge.  They come from one
extremity of the city to the square of the Capitol on one side, and
run out from the other side of it to the other extremity of the
city.  Pennsylvania Avenue, New York Avenue, Vermont Avenue, and
Connecticut Avenue do the same at what is generally called
President's Square.  In theory, or on paper, this seems to be a
clear and intelligible arrangement; but it does not work well.
These center depots are large spaces, and consequently one portion
of a street is removed a considerable distance from the other.  It
is as though the same name should be given to two streets, one of
which entered St. James's Park at Buckingham Gate, while the other
started from the Park at Marlborough, House.  To inhabitants the
matter probably is not of much moment, as it is well known that this
portion of such an avenue and that portion of such another avenue
are merely myths--unknown lands away in the wilds.  But a stranger
finds himself in the position of being sent across the country knee
deep into the mud, wading through snipe grounds, looking for
civilization where none exists.

All these avenues have a slanting direction.  They are so arranged
that none of them run north and south, or east and west; but the
streets, so called, all run in accordance with the points of the
compass.  Those from east to west are A Street, B Street, C Street,
and so on--counting them away from the Capitol on each side, so that
there are two A streets and two B streets.  On the map these streets
run up to V Street, both right and left--V Street North and V Street
South.  Those really known to mankind are E, F, G, H, I, and K
Streets North.  Then those streets which run from north to south are
numbered First Street, Second Street, Third Street, and so on, on
each front of the Capitol, running to Twenty-fourth or Twenty-fifth
Street on each side.  Not very many of these have any existence, or,
I might perhaps more properly say, any vitality in their existence.

Such is the plan of the city, that being the arrangement and those
the dimensions intended by the original architects and founders of
Washington; but the inhabitants have hitherto confined themselves to
Pennsylvania Avenue West, and to the streets abutting from it or
near to it.  Whatever address a stranger may receive, however
perplexing it may seem to him, he may be sure that the house
indicated is near Pennsylvania Avenue.  If it be not, I should
recommend him to pay no attention to the summons.  Even in those
streets with which he will become best acquainted, the houses are
not continuous.  There will be a house, and then a blank; then two
houses, and then a double blank.  After that a hut or two, and then
probably an excellent, roomy, handsome family mansion.  Taken
altogether, Washington as a city is most unsatisfactory, and falls
more grievously short of the thing attempted than any other of the
great undertakings of which I have seen anything in the States.  San
Jose, the capital of the republic of Costa Rica, in Central America,
has been prepared and arranged as a new city in the same way.  But
even San Jose comes nearer to what was intended than does
Washington.

For myself, I do not believe in cities made after this fashion.
Commerce, I think, must select the site of all large congregations
of mankind.  In some mysterious way she ascertains what she wants,
and having acquired that, draws men in thousands round her
properties.  Liverpool, New York, Lyons, Glasgow, Venice,
Marseilles, Hamburg, Calcutta, Chicago, and Leghorn have all become
populous, and are or have been great, because trade found them to be
convenient for its purposes.  Trade seems to have ignored Washington
altogether.  Such being the case, the Legislature and the Executive
of the country together have been unable to make of Washington
anything better than a straggling congregation of buildings in a
wilderness.  We are now trying the same experiment at Ottawa, in
Canada, having turned our back upon Montreal in dudgeon.  The site
of Ottawa is more interesting than that of Washington, but I doubt
whether the experiment will be more successful.  A new town for art,
fashion, and politics has been built at Munich, and there it seems
to answer the expectation of the builders; but at Munich there is an
old city as well, and commerce had already got some considerable
hold on the spot before the new town was added to it.

The streets of Washington, such as exist, are all broad.  Throughout
the town there are open spaces--spaces, I mean, intended to be open
by the plan laid down for the city.  At the present moment it is
almost all open space.  There is also a certain nobility about the
proposed dimensions of the avenues and squares.  Desirous of
praising it in some degree, I can say that the design is grand.  The
thing done, however, falls so infinitely short of that design, that
nothing but disappointment is felt.  And I fear that there is no
look-out into the future which can justify a hope that the design
will be fulfilled.  It is therefore a melancholy place.  The society
into which one falls there consists mostly of persons who are not
permanently resident in the capital; but of those who were permanent
residents I found none who spoke of their city with affection.  The
men and women of Boston think that the sun shines nowhere else; and
Boston Common is very pleasant.  The New Yorkers believe in Fifth
Avenue with an unswerving faith; and Fifth Avenue is calculated to
inspire a faith.  Philadelphia to a Philadelphian is the center of
the universe; and the progress of Philadelphia, perhaps, justifies
the partiality.  The same thing may be said of Chicago, of Buffalo,
and of Baltimore.  But the same thing cannot be said in any degree
of Washington.  They who belong to it turn up their noses at it.
They feel that they live surrounded by a failure.  Its grand names
are as yet false, and none of the efforts made have hitherto been
successful.  Even in winter, when Congress is sitting, Washington is
melancholy; but Washington in summer must surely be the saddest spot
on earth.

There are six principal public buildings in Washington, as to which
no expense seems to have been spared, and in the construction of
which a certain amount of success has been obtained.  In most of
these this success has been more or less marred by an independent
deviation from recognized rules of architectural taste.  These are
the Capitol, the Post-office, the Patent-office, the Treasury, the
President's house, and the Smithsonian Institution.  The five first
are Grecian, and the last in Washington is called--Romanesque.  Had
I been left to classify it by my own unaided lights, I should have
called it bastard Gothic.

The Capitol is by far the most imposing; and though there is much
about it with which I cannot but find fault, it certainly is
imposing.  The present building was, I think, commenced in 1815, the
former Capitol having been destroyed by the English in the war of
1812-13.  It was then finished according to the original plan, with
a fine portico and well proportioned pediment above it--looking to
the east.  The outer flight of steps, leading up to this from the
eastern approach, is good and in excellent taste.  The expanse of
the building to the right and left, as then arranged, was well
proportioned, and, as far as we can now judge, the then existing
dome was well proportioned also.  As seen from the east the original
building must have been in itself very fine.  The stone is
beautiful, being bright almost as marble, and I do not know that
there was any great architectural defect to offend the eye.  The
figures in the pediment are mean.  There is now in the Capitol a
group apparently prepared for a pediment, which is by no means mean.
I was informed that they were intended for this position; but they,
on the other band, are too good for such a place, and are also too
numerous.  This set of statues is by Crawford.  Most of them are
well known, and they are very fine.  They now stand within the old
chamber of the Representative House, and the pity is that, if
elevated to such a position as that indicated, they can never be
really seen.  There are models of them all at West Point, and some
of them I have seen at other places in marble.  The Historical
Society, at New York, has one or two of them.  In and about the
front of the Capitol there are other efforts of sculpture--imposing
in their size, and assuming, if not affecting, much in the attitudes
chosen.  Statuary at Washington runs too much on two subjects, which
are repeated perhaps almost ad nauseam: one is that of a stiff,
steady-looking, healthy, but ugly individual, with a square jaw and
big jowl, which represents the great general; he does not prepossess
the beholder, because he appears to be thoroughly ill natured.  And
the other represents a melancholy, weak figure without any hair, but
often covered with feathers, and is intended to typify the red
Indian.  The red Indian is generally supposed to be receiving
comfort; but it is manifest that he never enjoys the comfort
ministered to him.  There is a gigantic statue of Washington, by
Greenough, out in the grounds in front of the building.  The figure
is seated and holding up one of its arms toward the city.  There is
about it a kind of weighty magnificence; but it is stiff, ungainly,
and altogether without life.

But the front of the original building is certainly grand.  The
architect who designed it must have had skill, taste, and nobility
of conception; but even this is spoiled, or rather wasted, by the
fact that the front is made to look upon nothing, and is turned from
the city.  It is as though, the facade of the London Post-office had
been made to face the Goldsmiths' Hall.  The Capitol stands upon the
side of a hill, the front occupying a much higher position than the
back; consequently they who enter it from the back--and everybody
does so enter it--are first called on to rise to the level of the
lower floor by a stiff ascent of exterior steps, which are in no way
grand or imposing, and then, having entered by a mean back door, are
instantly obliged to ascend again by another flight--by stairs
sufficiently appropriate to a back entrance, but altogether unfitted
for the chief approach to such a building.  It may, of course, be
said that persons who are particular in such matters should go in at
the front door and not at the back; but one must take these things
as one finds them.  The entrance by which the Capitol is approached
is such as I have described.  There are mean little brick chimneys
at the left hand as one walks in, attached to modern bakeries, which
have been constructed in the basement for the use of the soldiers;
and there is on the other hand the road by which wagons find their
way to the underground region with fuel, stationery, and other
matters desired by Senators and Representatives, and at present by
bakers also.

In speaking of the front I have spoken of it as it was originally
designed and built.  Since that period very heavy wings have been
added to the pile--wings so heavy that they are or seem to be much
larger than the original structure itself.  This, to my thinking,
has destroyed the symmetry of the whole.  The wings, which in
themselves are by no means devoid of beauty, are joined to the
center by passages so narrow that from exterior points of view the
light can be seen through them.  This robs the mass of all oneness,
of all entirety as a whole, and gives a scattered, straggling
appearance, where there should be a look of massiveness and
integrity.  The dome also has been raised--a double drum having been
given to it.  This is unfinished, and should not therefore yet be
judged; but I cannot think that the increased height will be an
improvement.  This, again, to my eyes, appears to be straggling
rather than massive.  At a distance it commands attention; and to
one journeying through the desert places of the city gives that idea
of Palmyra which I have before mentioned.

Nevertheless, and in spite of all that I have said, I have had
pleasure in walking backward and forward, and through the grounds
which lie before the eastern front of the Capitol.  The space for
the view is ample, and the thing to be seen has points which are
very grand.  If the Capitol were finished and all Washington were
built around it, no man would say that the house in which Congress
sat disgraced the city.

Going west, but not due west, from the Capitol, Pennsylvania Avenue
stretches in a right line to the Treasury chambers.  The distance is
beyond a mile; and men say scornfully that the two buildings have
been put so far apart in order to save the secretaries who sit in
the bureaus from a too rapid influx of members of Congress.  This
statement I by no means indorse; but it is undoubtedly the fact that
both Senators and Representatives are very diligent in their calls
upon gentlemen high in office.  I have been present on some such
occasions, and it has always seemed to me a that questions of
patronage have been paramount.  This reach of Pennsylvania Avenue is
the quarter for the best shops of Washington--that is to say, the
frequented side of it is so, that side which is on your right as you
leave the Capitol.  Of the other side the world knows nothing.  And
very bad shops they are.  I doubt whether there be any town in the
world at all equal in importance to Washington which is in such
respects so ill provided.  The shops are bad and dear.  In saying
this I am guided by the opinions of all whom I heard speak on the
subject.  The same thing was told me of the hotels.  Hearing that
the city was very full at the time of my visit--full to overflowing--
I had obtained private rooms, through a friend, before I went
there.  Had I not done so, I might have lain in the streets, or have
made one with three or four others in a small room at some third-
rate inn.  There had never been so great a throng in the town.  I am
bound to say that my friend did well for me.  I found myself put up
at the house of one Wormley, a colored man, in I Street, to whose
attention I can recommend any Englishman who may chance to want
quarters in Washington.  He has a hotel on one side of the street
and private lodging-houses on the other, in which I found myself
located.  From what I heard of the hotels, I conceived myself to be
greatly in luck.  Willard's is the chief of these; and the
everlasting crowd and throng of men with which the halls and
passages of the house were always full certainly did not seem to
promise either privacy or comfort.  But then there are places in
which privacy and comfort are not expected--are hardly even desired--
and Washington is one of them.

The Post-office and the Patent-office, lie a little away from
Pennsylvania Avenue in I Street, and are opposite to each other.
The Post-office is certainly a very graceful building.  It is
square, and hardly can be said to have any settled front or any
grand entrance.  It is not approached by steps, but stands flush on
the ground, alike on each of the four sides.  It is ornamented with
Corinthian pilasters, but is not over-ornamented.  It is certainly a
structure creditable to any city.  The streets around it are all
unfinished; and it is approached through seas of mud and sloughs of
despond, which have been contrived, as I imagine, to lessen, if
possible, the crowd of callers, and lighten in this way the
overtasked officials within.  That side by which the public in
general were supposed to approach was, during my sojourn, always
guarded by vast mountains of flour barrels.  Looking up at the
windows of the building, I perceived also that barrels were piled
within, and then I knew that the Post-office had become a provision
depot for the army.  The official arrangements here for the public
were so bad as to be absolutely barbarous.  I feel some remorse in
saying this, for I was myself treated with the utmost courtesy by
gentlemen holding high positions in the office, to which I was
specially attracted by my own connection with the post-office in
England.  But I do not think that such courtesy should hinder me
from telling what I saw that was bad, seeing that it would not
hinder me from telling what I saw that was good.  In Washington
there is but one post-office.  There are no iron pillars or wayside
letter-boxes, as are to be found in other towns of the Union--no
subsidiary offices at which stamps can be bought and letters posted.
The distances of the city are very great, the means of transit
through the city very limited, the dirt of the city ways unrivaled
in depth and tenacity, and yet there is but one post-office.  Nor is
there any established system of letter-carriers.  To those who
desire it letters are brought out and delivered by carriers, who
charge a separate porterage for that service; but the rule is that
letters should be delivered from the window.  For strangers this is
of course a necessity of their position; and I found that, when once
I had left instruction that my letters should be delivered, those
instructions, were carefully followed.  Indeed, nothing could exceed
the civility of the officials within; but so also nothing can exceed
the barbarity of the arrangements without.  The purchase of stamps I
found to be utterly impracticable.  They were sold at a window in a
corner, at which newspapers were also delivered, to which there was
no regular ingress and from which there was no egress, it would
generally be deeply surrounded by a crowd of muddy soldiers, who
would wait there patiently till time should enable them to approach
the window.  The delivery of letters was almost more tedious, though
in that there was a method.  The aspirants stood in a long line, en
cue, as we are told by Carlyle that the bread-seekers used to
approach the bakers' shops at Paris during the Revolution.  This
"cue" would sometimes project out into the street.  The work inside
was done very slowly.  The clerk had no facility, by use of a desk
or otherwise, for running through the letters under the initials
denominated, but turned letter by letter through his hand.  To one
questioner out of ten would a letter be given.  It no doubt may be
said in excuse for this that the presence of the army round
Washington caused, at that period, special inconvenience; and that
plea should of course be taken, were it not that a very trifling
alteration in the management within would have remedied all the
inconvenience.  As a building, the Washington Post-office is very
good; as the center of a most complicated and difficult department,
I believe it to be well managed; but as regards the special
accommodation given by it to the city in which it stands, much
cannot, I think, be said in its favor.

Opposite to that which is, I presume, the back of the Post-office,
stands the Patent-office.  This also is a grand building, with a
fine portico of Doric pillars at each of its three fronts.  These
are approached by flights of steps, more gratifying to the eye than
to the legs.  The whole structure is massive and grand, and, if the
streets round it were finished, would be imposing.  The utilitarian
spirit of the nation has, however, done much toward marring the
appearance of the building, by piercing it with windows altogether
unsuited to it, both in number and size.  The walls, even under the
porticoes, have been so pierced, in order that the whole space might
be utilized without loss of light; and the effect is very mean.  The
windows are small, and without ornament--something like a London
window of the time of George III.  The effect produced by a dozen
such at the back of a noble Doric porch, looking down among the
pillars, may be imagined.

In the interior of this building the Minister of the Interior holds
his court, and, of course, also the Commissioners of Patents.  Here
is, in accordance with the name of the building, a museum of models
of all patents taken out.  I wandered through it, gazing with
listless eye now upon this and now upon that; but to me, in my
ignorance, it was no better than a large toy-shop.  When I saw an
ancient, dusty white hat, with some peculiar appendage to it which
was unintelligible, it was no more to me than any other old white
hat.  But had I been a man of science, what a tale it might have
told!  Wandering about through the Patent-office I also found a
hospital for soldiers.  A British officer was with me who pronounced
it to be, in its kind, very good.  At any rate it was sweet, airy,
and large.  In these days the soldiers had got hold of everything.

The Treasury chambers is as yet an unfinished building.  The front
to the south has been completed, but that to the north has not been
built.  Here at the north stands as yet the old Secretary of State's
office.  This is to come down, and the Secretary of State is to be
located in the new building, which will be added to the Treasury.
This edifice will probably strike strangers more forcibly than any
other in the town, both from its position and from its own
character.  It Stands with its side to Pennsylvania Avenue, but the
avenue here, has turned round, and runs due north and south, having
taken a twist, so as to make way for the Treasury and for the
President's house, through both of which it must run had it been
carried straight on throughout.  These public offices stand with
their side to the street, and the whole length is ornamented with an
exterior row of Ionic columns raised high above the footway.  This
is perhaps the prettiest thing in the city, and when the front to
the north has been completed, the effect will be still better.  The
granite monoliths which have been used, and which are to be used, in
this building are very massive.  As one enters by the steps to the
south there are two flat stones, one on each side of the ascent, the
surface of each of which is about twenty feet by eighteen.  The
columns are, I think, all monoliths.  Of those which are still to be
erected, and which now lie about in the neighboring streets, I
measured one or two--one which was still in the rough I found to be
thirty-two feet long by five feet broad, and four and a half deep.
These granite blocks have been brought to Washington from the State
of Maine.  The finished front of this building, looking down to the
Potomac, is very good; but to my eyes this also has been much
injured by the rows of windows which look out from the building into
the space of the portico.

The President's house--or the White House as it is now called all
the world over--is a handsome mansion fitted for the chief officer
of a great republic, and nothing more.  I think I may say that we
have private houses in London considerably larger.  It is neat and
pretty, and with all its immediate outside belongings calls down no
adverse criticism.  It faces on to a small garden, which seems to be
always accessible to the public, and opens out upon that everlasting
Pennsylvania Avenue, which has now made another turn.  Here in front
of the White House is President's Square, as it is generally called.
The technical name is, I believe, La Fayette Square.  The houses
round it are few in number--not exceeding three or four on each
side, but they are among the best in Washington, and the whole place
is neat and well kept.  President's Square is certainly the most
attractive part of the city.  The garden of the square is always
open, and does not seem to suffer from any public ill usage; by
which circumstance I am again led to suggest that the gardens of our
London squares might be thrown open in the same way.  In the center
of this one at Washington, immediately facing the President's house,
is an equestrian statue of General Jackson.  It is very bad; but
that it is not nearly as bad as it might be is proved by another
equestrian statue--of General Washington--erected in the center of a
small garden plat at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue, near the
bridge leading to Georgetown.  Of all the statues on horseback which
I ever saw, either in marble or bronze, this is by far the worst and
most ridiculous.  The horse is most absurd, but the man sitting on
the horse is manifestly drunk.  I should think the time must come
when this figure at any rate will be removed.

I did not go inside the President's house, not having had while at
Washington an opportunity of paying my personal respects to Mr.
Lincoln.  I had been told that this was to be done without trouble,
but when I inquired on the subject I found that this was not exactly
the case.  I believe there are times when anybody may walk into the
President's house without an introduction; but that, I take it, is
not considered to be the proper way of doing the work.  I found that
something like a favor would be incurred, or that some disagreeable
trouble would be given, if I made a request to be presented, and
therefore I left Washington without seeing the great man.

The President's house is nice to look at, but it is built on marshy
ground, not much above the level of the Potomac, and is very
unhealthy.  I was told that all who live there become subject to
fever and ague, and that few who now live there have escaped it
altogether.  This comes of choosing the site of a new city, and
decreeing that it shall be built on this or on that spot.  Large
cities, especially in these latter days, do not collect themselves
in unhealthy places.  Men desert such localities--or at least do not
congregate at them when their character is once known.  But the poor
President cannot desert the White House.  He must make the most of
the residence which the nation has prepared for him.

Of the other considerable public building of Washington, called the
Smithsonian Institution, I have said that its style was bastard
Gothic; by this I mean that its main attributes are Gothic, but that
liberties have been taken with it, which, whether they may injure
its beauty or no, certainly are subversive of architectural purity.
It is built of red stone, and is not ugly in itself.  There is a
very nice Norman porch to it, and little bits of Lombard Gothic have
been well copied from Cologne.  But windows have been fitted in with
stilted arches, of which the stilts seem to crack and bend, so
narrow are they and so high.  And then the towers with high
pinnacled roofs are a mistake--unless indeed they be needed to give
to the whole structure that name of Romanesque which it has assumed.
The building is used for museums and lectures, and was given to the
city by one James Smithsonian, an Englishman.  I cannot say that the
City of Washington seems to be grateful, for all to whom I spoke on
the subject hinted that the Institution was a failure.  It is to be
remarked that nobody in Washington is proud of Washington, or of
anything in it.  If the Smithsonian Institution were at New York or
at Boston, one would have a different story to tell.

There has been an attempt made to raise at Washington a vast obelisk
to the memory of Washington--the first in war and first in peace, as
the country is proud to call him.  This obelisk is a fair type of
the city.  It is unfinished--not a third of it having as yet been
erected--and in all human probability ever will remain so.  If
finished, it would be the highest monument of its kind standing on
the face of the globe; and yet, after all, what would it be even
then as compared with one of the great pyramids?  Modern attempts
cannot bear comparison with those of the old world in simple
vastness.  But in lieu of simple vastness, the modern world aims to
achieve either beauty or utility.  By the Washington monument, if
completed, neither would be achieved.  An obelisk with the
proportions of a needle may be very graceful; but an obelisk which
requires an expanse of flat-roofed, sprawling buildings for its
base, and of which the shaft shall be as big as a cathedral tower,
cannot be graceful.  At present some third portion of the shaft has
been built, and there it stands.  No one has a word to say for it.
No one thinks that money will ever again be subscribed for its
completion.  I saw somewhere a box of plate-glass kept for
contributions for this purpose, and looking in perceived that two
half-dollar pieces had been given--but both of them were bad.  I was
told also that the absolute foundation of the edifice is bad--that
the ground, which is near the river and swampy, would not bear the
weight intended to be imposed on it.

A sad and saddening spot was that marsh, as I wandered down on it
all alone one Sunday afternoon.  The ground was frozen and I could
walk dry-shod, but there was not a blade of grass.  Around me on all
sides were cattle in great numbers--steers and big oxen--lowing in
their hunger for a meal.  They were beef for the army, and never
again, I suppose, would it be allowed to them to fill their big maws
and chew the patient cud.  There, on the brown, ugly, undrained
field, within easy sight of the President's house, stood the
useless, shapeless, graceless pile of stones.  It was as though I
were looking on the genius of the city.  It was vast, pretentious,
bold, boastful with a loud voice, already taller by many heads than
other obelisks, but nevertheless still in its infancy--ugly,
unpromising, and false.  The founder of the monument had said, Here
shall be the obelisk of the world! and the founder of the city had
thought of his child somewhat in the same strain.  It is still
possible that both city and monument shall be completed; but at the
present moment nobody seems to believe in the one or in the other.
For myself, I have much faith in the American character, but I
cannot believe either in Washington City or in the Washington
Monument.  The boast made has been too loud, and the fulfillment yet
accomplished has been too small!

Have I as yet said that Washington was dirty in that winter of 1861-
62?  Or, I should rather ask, have I made it understood that in
walking about Washington one waded as deep in mud as one does in
floundering through an ordinary plowed field in November?  There
were parts of Pennsylvania Avenue which would have been considered
heavy ground by most hunting-men, and through some of the remoter
streets none but light weights could have lived long.  This was the
state of the town when I left it in the middle of January.  On my
arrival in the middle of December, everything was in a cloud of
dust.  One walked through an atmosphere of floating mud; for the
dirt was ponderous and thick, and very palpable in its atoms.  Then
came a severe frost and a little snow; and if one did not fall while
walking, it was very well.  After that we had the thaw; and
Washington assumed its normal winter condition.  I must say that,
during the whole of this time, the atmosphere was to me
exhilarating; but I was hardly out of the doctor's hands while I was
there, and he did not support my theory as to the goodness of the
air.  "It is poisoned by the soldiers," he said, "and everybody is
ill."  But then my doctor was, perhaps, a little tinged with
Southern proclivities.

On the Virginian side of the Potomac stands a country-house called
Arlington Heights, from which there is a fine view down upon the
city.  Arlington Heights is a beautiful spot--having all the
attractions of a fine park in our country.  It is covered with grand
timber.  The ground is varied and broken, and the private roads
about sweep here into a dell and then up a brae side, as roads
should do in such a domain.  Below it was the Potomac, and
immediately on the other side stands the City of Washington.  Any
city seen thus is graceful; and the white stones of the big
buildings, when the sun gleams on them, showing the distant rows of
columns, seem to tell something of great endeavor and of achieved
success.  It is the place from whence Washington should be seen by
those who wish to think well of the present city and of its future
prosperity.  But is it not the case that every city is beautiful
from a distance?

The house at Arlington Heights is picturesque, but neither large nor
good.  It has before it a high Greek colonnade, which seems to be
almost bigger than the house itself.  Had such been built in a city--
and many such a portico does stand in cities through the States--it
would be neither picturesque nor graceful; but here it is surrounded
by timber, and as the columns are seen through the trees, they
gratify the eye rather than offend it.  The place did belong, and as
I think does still belong, to the family of the Lees--if not already
confiscated.  General Lee, who is or would be the present owner,
bears high command in the army of the Confederates, and knows well
by what tenure he holds or is likely to hold his family property.
The family were friends of General Washington, whose seat, Mount
Vernon, stands about twelve miles lower down the river and here, no
doubt, Washington often stood, looking on the site he had chosen.
If his spirit could stand there now and look around upon the masses
of soldiers by which his capital is surrounded, how would it address
the city of his hopes?  When he saw that every foot of the
neighboring soil was desecrated by a camp, or torn into loathsome
furrows of mud by cannon and army wagons--that agriculture was gone,
and that every effort both of North and South was concentrated on
the art of killing; when he saw that this was done on the very spot
chosen by himself for the center temple of an everlasting union,
what would he then say as to that boast made on his behalf by his
countrymen, that he was first in war and first in peace?  Washington
was a great man, and I believe a good man.  I, at any rate, will not
belittle him.  I think that he had the firmness and audacity
necessary for a revolutionary leader, that he had honesty to
preserve him from the temptations of ambition and ostentation, and
that he had the good sense to be guided in civil matters by men who
had studied the laws of social life and the theories of free
government.  He was justus et tenax propositi; and in periods that
might well have dismayed a smaller man, he feared neither the throne
to which he opposed himself nor the changing voices of the fellow-
citizens for whose welfare he had fought.  But sixty or seventy
years will not suffice to give to a man the fame of having been
first among all men.  Washington did much, and I for one do not
believe that his work will perish.  But I have always found it
difficult--I may say impossible--to sound his praises in his own
land.  Let us suppose that a courteous Frenchman ventures an opinion
among Englishmen that Wellington was a great general, would he feel
disposed to go on with his eulogium when encountered on two or three
sides at once with such observations as the following:  "I should
rather calculate he was; about the first that ever did live or ever
will live.  Why, he whipped your Napoleon everlasting whenever he
met him.  He whipped everybody out of the field.  There warn't
anybody ever lived was able to stand nigh him, and there won't come
any like him again.  Sir, I guess our Wellington never had his likes
on your side of the water.  Such men can't grow in a down-trodden
country of slaves and paupers."  Under such circumstances the
Frenchman would probably be shut up.  And when I strove to speak of
Washington I generally found myself shut up also.

Arlington Heights, when I was at Washington, was the headquarters of
General McDowell, the general to whom is attributed--I believe most
wrongfully--the loss of the battle of Bull's Run.  The whole place
was then one camp.  The fences had disappeared.  The gardens were
trodden into mud.  The roads had been cut to pieces, and new tracks
made everywhere through the grounds.  But the timber still remained.
Some no doubt had fallen, but enough stood for the ample
ornamentation of the place.  I saw placards up, prohibiting the
destruction of the trees, and it is to be hoped that they have been
spared.  Very little in this way has been spared in the country all
around.

Mount Vernon, Washington's own residence, stands close over the
Potomac, about six miles below Alexandria.  It will be understood
that the capital is on the eastern, or Maryland side of the river,
and that Arlington Heights, Alexandria, and Mount Vernon are in
Virginia.  The River Potomac divided the two old colonies, or States
as they afterward became; but when Washington was to be built, a
territory, said to be ten miles square, was cut out of the two
States and was called the District of Columbia.  The greater portion
of this district was taken from Maryland, and on that the city was
built.  It comprised the pleasant town of Georgetown, which is now a
suburb--and the only suburb--of Washington.  The portion of the
district on the Virginian side included Arlington heights, and went
so far down the river as to take in the Virginian City of
Alexandria.  This was the extreme western point of the district; but
since that arrangement was made, the State of Virginia petitioned to
have their portion of Columbia back again, and this petition was
granted.  Now it is felt that the land on both sides of the river
should belong to the city, and the government is anxious to get back
the Virginian section.  The city and the immediate vicinity are
freed from all State allegiance, and are under the immediate rule of
the United States government--having of course its own municipality;
but the inhabitants have no political power, as power is counted in
the States.  They vote for no political officer, not even for the
President, and return no member to Congress, either as a senator or
as a Representative.  Mount Vernon was never within the District of
Columbia.

When I first made inquiry on the subject, I was told that Mount
Vernon at that time was not to be reached; that though it was not in
the hands of the rebels, neither was it in the hands of Northerners,
and that therefore strangers could not go there; but this, though it
was told to me and others by those who should have known the facts,
was not the case.  I had gone down the river with a party of ladies,
and we were opposite to Mount Vernon; but on that occasion we were
assured we could not land.  The rebels, we were told, would
certainly seize the ladies, and carry them off into Secessia.  On
hearing which, the ladies were of course doubly anxious to be
landed.  But our stern commander, for we were on a government boat,
would not listen to their prayers, but carried us instead on board
the "Pensacola," a sloop-of-war which was now lying in the river,
ready to go to sea, and ready also to run the gantlet of the rebel
batteries which lined the Virginian shore of the river for many
miles down below Alexandria and Mount Vernon.  A sloop-of-war in
these days means a large man-of-war, the guns of which are so big
that they only stand on one deck, whereas a frigate would have them
on two decks, and a line-of-battle ship on three.  Of line-of-battle
ships there will, I suppose, soon be none, as the "Warrior" is only
a frigate.  We went over the "Pensacola," and I must say she was
very nice, pretty, and clean.  I have always found American sailors
on their men-of-war to be clean and nice looking--as much so I
should say as our own; but nothing can be dirtier, more untidy, or
apparently more ill preserved than all the appurtenances of their
soldiers.

We landed also on this occasion at Alexandria, and saw as melancholy
and miserable a town as the mind of man can conceive.  Its ordinary
male population, counting by the voters, is 1500, and of these 700
were in the Southern army.  The place had been made a hospital for
Northern soldiers, and no doubt the site for that purpose had been
well chosen.  But let any woman imagine what would be the feelings
of her life while living in a town used as a hospital for the
enemies against whom her absent husband was then fighting.  Her own
man would be away--ill, wounded, dying, for what she knew, without
the comfort of any hospital attendance, without physic, with no one
to comfort him; but those she hated with a hatred much keener than
his were close to her hand, using some friend's house that had been
forcibly taken, crawling out into the sun under her eyes, taking the
bread from her mouth!  Life in Alexandria at this time must have
been sad enough.  The people were all secessionists, but the town
was held by the Northern party.  Through the lines, into Virginia,
they could not go at all.  Up to Washington they could not go
without a military pass, not to be obtained without some cause
given.  All trade was at an end.  In no town at that time was trade
very flourishing; but here it was killed altogether--except that
absolutely necessary trade of bread.  Who would buy boots or coats,
or want new saddles, or waste money on books, in such days as these,
in such a town as Alexandria?  And then out of 1500 men, one-half
had gone to fight the Southern battles!  Among the women of
Alexandria secession would have found but few opponents.

It was here that a hot-brained young man, named Ellsworth, was
killed in the early days of the rebellion.  He was a colonel in the
Northern volunteer army, and on entering Alexandria found a
secession flag flying at the chief hotel.  Instead of sending up a
corporal's guard to remove it, he rushed up and pulled it down with
his own hand.  As he descended, the landlord shot him dead, and one
of his soldier's shot the landlord dead.  It was a pity that so
brave a lad, who had risen so high, should fall so vainly; but they
have made a hero of him in America; have inscribed his name on
marble monuments, and counted him up among their great men.  In all
this their mistake is very great.  It is bad for a country to have
no names worthy of monumental brass; but it is worse for a country
to have monumental brasses covered with names which have never been
made worthy of such honor.  Ellsworth had shown himself to be brave
and foolish.  Let his folly be pardoned on the score of his courage,
and there, I think, should have been an end of it.

I found afterward that Mount Vernon was accessible, and I rode
thither with some officers of the staff of General Heintzelman,
whose outside pickets were stationed beyond the old place.  I
certainly should not have been well pleased had I been forced to
leave the country without seeing the house in which Washington had
lived and died.  Till lately this place was owned and inhabited by
one of the family, a Washington, descended from a brother of the
general's; but it has now become the property of the country, under
the auspices of Mr. Everett, by whose exertions was raised the money
with which it was purchased.  It is a long house, of two stories,
built, I think, chiefly of wood, with a veranda, or rather long
portico, attached to the front, which looks upon the river.  There
are two wings, or sets of outhouses, containing the kitchen and
servants' rooms, which were joined by open wooden verandas to the
main building; but one of these verandas has gone, under the
influence of years.  By these a semicircular sweep is formed before
the front door, which opens away from the river, and toward the old
prim gardens, in which, we were told, General Washington used to
take much delight.  There is nothing very special about the house.
Indeed, as a house, it would now be found comfortless and
inconvenient.  But the ground falls well down to the river, and the
timber, if not fine, is plentiful and picturesque.  The chief
interest of the place, however, is in the tomb of Washington and his
wife.  It must be understood that it was a common practice
throughout the States to make a family burying-ground in any
secluded spot on the family property.  I have not unfrequently come
across these in my rambles, and in Virginia I have encountered
small, unpretending gravestones under a shady elm, dated as lately
as eight or ten years back.  At Mount Vernon there is now a cemetery
of the Washington family; and there, in an open vault--a vault
open, but guarded by iron grating--is the great man's tomb, and by
his side the tomb of Martha his wife.  As I stood there alone, with
no one by to irritate me by assertions of the man's absolute
supremacy, I acknowledged that I had come to the final resting-place
of a great and good man,--of a man whose patriotism was, I believe,
an honest feeling, untinged by any personal ambition of a selfish
nature.  That he was pre-eminently a successful man may have been
due chiefly to the excellence of his cause, and the blood and
character of the people who put him forward as their right arm in
their contest; but that he did not mar that success by arrogance, or
destroy the brightness of his own name by personal aggrandizement,
is due to a noble nature and to the calm individual excellence of
the man.

Considering the circumstances and history of the place, the position
of Mount Vernon, as I saw it, was very remarkable.  It lay exactly
between the lines of the two armies.  The pickets of the Northern
army had been extended beyond it, not improbably with the express
intention of keeping a spot so hallowed within the power of the
Northern government.  But since the war began it had been in the
hands of the seceders.  In fact, it stood there in the middle of the
battle-field, on the very line of division between loyalism and
secession.  And this was the spot which Washington had selected as
the heart and center, and safest rallying homestead of the united
nation which he left behind him.  But Washington, when he resolved
to found his capital on the banks of the Potomac, knew nothing of
the glories of the Mississippi.  He did not dream of the speedy
addition to his already gathered constellations of those Western
stars--of Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa; nor did he dream
of Texas conquered, Louisiana purchased, and Missouri and Kansas
rescued from the wilderness.

I have said that Washington was at that time--the Christmas of 1861-
62--a melancholy place.  This was partly owing to the despondent
tone in which so many Americans then spoke of their own affairs.  It
was not that the Northern men thought that they were to be beaten,
or that the Southern men feared that things were going bad with
their party across the river; but that nobody seemed to have any
faith in anybody.  McClellan had been put up as the true man--
exalted perhaps too quickly, considering the limited opportunities
for distinguishing himself which fortune had thrown in his way; but
now belief in McClellan seemed to be slipping away.  One felt that
it was so from day to day, though it was impossible to define how or
whence the feeling came.  And then the character of the ministry
fared still worse in public estimation.  That Lincoln, the
President, was honest, and that Chase, the Secretary of the
Treasury, was able, was the only good that one heard spoken.  At
this time two Jonahs were specially pointed out as necessary
sacrifices, by whose immersion into the comfortless ocean of private
life the ship might perhaps be saved.  These were Mr. Cameron, the
Secretary of War, and Mr. Welles, the Secretary of the Navy.  It was
said that Lincoln, when pressed to rid his cabinet of Cameron, had
replied, that when a man was crossing a stream the moment was hardly
convenient for changing his horse; but it came to that at last, that
he found he must change his horse, even in the very sharpest run of
the river.  Better that than sit an animal on whose exertions he
knew that he could not trust.  So Mr. Cameron went, and Mr. Stanton
became Secretary of War in his place.  But Mr. Cameron, though put
out of the cabinet, was to be saved from absolute disgrace by being
sent as Minister to Russia.  I do not know that it would become me
here to repeat the accusations made against Mr. Cameron, but it had
long seemed to me that the maintenance in such a position, at such a
time, of a gentleman who had to sustain such a universal absence of
public confidence, must have been most detrimental to the army and
to the government.

Men whom one met in Washington were not unhappy about the state of
things, as I had seen men unhappy in the North and in the West.
They were mainly indifferent, but with that sort of indifference
which arises from a break down of faith in anything.  "There was the
army!  Yes, the army!  But what an army!  Nobody obeyed anybody.
Nobody did anything!  Nobody thought of advancing!  There were,
perhaps, two hundred thousand men assembled round Washington; and
now the effort of supplying them with food and clothing was as much
as could be accomplished!  But the contractors, in the mean time,
were becoming rich.  And then as to the government!  Who trusted it?
Who would put their faith in Seward and Cameron?  Cameron was now
gone, it was true; and in that way the whole of the cabinet would
soon be broken up.  As to Congress, what could Congress do?  Ask
questions which no one would care to answer, and finally get itself
packed up and sent home."  The President and the Constitution fared
no better in men's mouths.  The former did nothing--neither harm nor
good; and as for the latter, it had broken down and shown itself to
be inefficient.  So men ate, and drank, and laughed, waiting till
chaos should come, secure in the belief that the atoms into which
their world would resolve itself would connect themselves again in
some other form without trouble on their part.

And at Washington I found no strong feeling against England and
English conduct toward America.  "We men of the world," a Washington
man might have said, "know very well that everybody must take care
of himself first.  We are very good friends with you--of course, and
are very glad to see you at our table whenever you come across the
water; but as for rejoicing at your joys, or expecting you to
sympathize with our sorrows, we know the world too well for that.
We are splitting into pieces, and of course that is gain to you.
Take another cigar."  This polite, fashionable, and certainly
comfortable way of looking at the matter had never been attained at
New York or Philadelphia, at Boston or Chicago.  The Northern
provincial world of the States had declared to itself that those who
were not with it were against it; that its neighbors should be
either friends or foes; that it would understand nothing of
neutrality.  This was often mortifying to me, but I think I liked it
better on the whole than the laisser-aller indifference of
Washington.

Everybody acknowledged that society in Washington had been almost
destroyed by the loss of the Southern half of the usual sojourners
in the city.  The Senators and members of government, who heretofore
had come front the Southern States, had no doubt spent more money in
the capital than their Northern brethren.  They and their families
had been more addicted to social pleasures.  They are the
descendants of the old English Cavaliers, whereas the Northern men
have come from the old English Roundheads.  Or if, as may be the
case, the blood of the races has now been too well mixed to allow of
this being said with absolute truth, yet something of the manners of
the old forefathers has been left.  The Southern gentleman is more
genial, less dry--I will not say more hospitable, but more given to
enjoy hospitality than his Northern brother; and this difference is
quite as strong with the women as with the men.  It may therefore be
understood that secession would be very fatal to the society of
Washington.  It was not only that the members of Congress were not
there.  As to very many of the Representatives, it may be said that
they do not belong sufficiently to Washington to make a part of its
society.  It is not every Representative that is, perhaps, qualified
to do so.  But secession had taken away from Washington those who
held property in the South--who were bound to the South by any ties,
whether political or other; who belonged to the South by blood,
education, and old habits.  In very many cases--nay, in most such
cases--it had been necessary that a man should select whether he
would be a friend to the South, and therefore a rebel; or else an
enemy to the South, and therefore untrue to all the predilections
and sympathies of his life.  Here has been the hardship.  For such
people there has been no neutrality possible.  Ladies even have not
been able to profess themselves simply anxious for peace and good-
will, and so to remain tranquil.  They who are not for me are
against me, has been spoken by one side and by the other.  And I
suppose that in all civil war it is necessary that it should be so.
I heard of various cases in which father and son had espoused
different sides in order that property might be retained both in the
North and in the South.  Under such circumstances it may be supposed
that society in Washington would be considerably cut up.  All this
made the place somewhat melancholy.



CHAPTER II.

CONGRESS.


In the interior of the Capitol much space is at present wasted, but
this arises from the fact of great additions to the original plan
having been made.  The two chambers--that of the Senate and the
Representatives--are in the two new wings, on the middle or what we
call the first floor.  The entrance is made under a dome to a large
circular hall, which is hung around with surely the worst pictures
by which a nation ever sought to glorify its own deeds.  There are
yards of paintings at Versailles which are bad enough; but there is
nothing at Versailles comparable in villany to the huge daubs which
are preserved in this hall at the Capitol.  It is strange that even
self-laudatory patriotism should desire the perpetuation of such
rubbish.  When I was there the new dome was still in progress; and
an ugly column of wood-work, required for internal support and
affording a staircase to the top, stood in this hall.  This of
course was a temporary and necessary evil; but even this was hung
around with the vilest of portraits.

From the hall, turning to the left, if the entrance be made at the
front door, one goes to the new Chamber of Representatives, passing
through that which was the old chamber.  This is now dedicated to
the exposition of various new figures by Crawford, and to the sale
of tarts and gingerbread--of very bad tarts and gingerbread.  Let
that old woman look to it, or let the house dismiss her.  In fact,
this chamber is now but a vestibule to a passage--a second hall, as
it were, and thus thrown away.  Changes probably will be made which
will bring it into some use or some scheme of ornamentation.  From
this a passage runs to the Representative Chamber, passing between
those tell-tale windows, which, looking to the right and left,
proclaim the tenuity of the building.  The windows on one side--that
looking to the east or front--should, I think, be closed.  The
appearance, both from the inside and from the outside, would be thus
improved.

The Representative Chamber itself--which of course answers to our
House of Commons--is a handsome, commodious room, admirably fitted
for the purposes required.  It strikes one as rather low; but I
doubt, if it were higher, whether it would be better adapted for
hearing.  Even at present it is not perfect in this respect as
regards the listeners in the gallery.  It is a handsome, long
chamber, lighted by skylights from the roof, and is amply large
enough for the number to be accommodated.  The Speaker sits opposite
to the chief entrance, his desk being fixed against the opposite
wall.  He is thus brought nearer to the body of the men before him
than is the case with our Speaker.  He sits at a marble table, and
the clerks below him are also accommodated with marble.  Every
representative has his own arm-chair, and his own desk before it.
This may be done for a house consisting of about two hundred and
forty members, but could hardly be contrived with us.  These desks
are arranged in a semicircular form, or in a broad horseshoe, and
every member as he sits faces the Speaker.  A score or so of little
boys are always running about the floor ministering to the members'
wishes--carrying up petitions to the chair, bringing water to long-
winded legislators, delivering and carrying out letters, and running
with general messages.  They do not seem to interrupt the course of
business, and yet they are the liveliest little boys I ever saw.
When a member claps his hands, indicating a desire for attendance,
three or four will jockey for the honor.  On the whole, I thought
the little boys had a good time of it.

But not so the Speaker.  It seemed to me that the amount of work
falling upon the Speaker's shoulders was cruelly heavy.  His voice
was always ringing in my ears exactly as does the voice of the
croupier at a gambling-table, who goes on declaring and explaining
the results of the game, and who generally does so in sharp, loud,
ringing tones, from which all interest in the proceeding itself
seems to be excluded.  It was just so with the Speaker in the House
of Representatives.  The debate was always full of interruptions;
but on every interruption the Speaker asked the gentleman
interrupted whether he would consent to be so treated.  "The
gentleman from Indiana has the floor."  "The gentleman from Ohio
wishes to ask the gentleman from Indiana a question."  "The
gentleman from Indiana gives permission."  "The gentleman from
Ohio!"--these last words being a summons to him of Ohio to get up
and ask his question.  "The gentleman from Pennsylvania rises to
order."  "The gentleman from Pennsylvania is in order."  And then
the House seems always to be voting, and the Speaker is always
putting the question.  "The gentlemen who agree to the amendment
will say Aye."  Not a sound is heard.  "The gentlemen who oppose the
amendment will say No."  Again not a sound.  "The Ayes have it,"
says the Speaker, and then he goes on again.  All this he does with
amazing rapidity, and is always at it with the same hard, quick,
ringing, uninterested voice.  The gentleman whom I saw in the chair
was very clever, and quite up to the task.  But as for dignity--!
Perhaps it might be found that any great accession of dignity would
impede the celerity of the work to be done, and that a closer copy
of the British model might not on the whole increase the efficiency
of the American machine.

When any matter of real interest occasioned a vote, the ayes and
noes would be given aloud; and then, if there were a doubt arising
from the volume of sound, the Speaker would declare that the "ayes"
or the "noes" would seem to have it!  And upon this a poll would be
demanded.  In such cases the Speaker calls on two members, who come
forth and stand fronting each other before the chair, making a
gangway.  Through this the ayes walk like sheep, the tellers giving
them an accelerating poke when they fail to go on with rapidity.
Thus they are counted, and the noes are counted in the same way.  It
seemed to me that it would be very possible in a dishonest
legislator to vote twice on any subject of great interest; but it
may perhaps be the case that there are no dishonest legislators in
the house of Representatives.

According to a list which I obtained, the present number of members
is 173, and there are 63 vacancies occasioned by secession.  New
York returns 33 members; Pennsylvania, 25; Ohio, 21; Virginia, 13;
Massachusetts and Indiana, 11; Tennessee and Kentucky, 10; South
Carolina, 6; and so on, till Delaware, Kansas, and Florida return
only 1 each.  When the Constitution was framed, Pennsylvania
returned 8, and New York only 6; whereas Virginia returned 10, and
South Carolina 5, From which may be gathered the relative rate of
increase in population of the free-soil States and the slave States.
All these States return two Senators each to the other House--Kansas
sending as many as New York.  The work in the House begins at twelve
noon, and is not often carried on late into the evening.  Indeed,
this, I think, is never done till toward the end of the session.

The Senate house is in the opposite wing of the building, the
position of the one house answering exactly to that of the other.
It is somewhat smaller, but is, as a matter of course, much less
crowded.  There are 34 States, and, therefore, 68 seats and 68 desks
only are required.  These also are arranged in a horseshoe form, and
face the President; but there was a sad array of empty chairs when I
was in Washington, nineteen or twenty seats being vacant in
consequence of secession.  In this house the Vice-President of the
United States acts as President, but has by no means so hard a job
of work as his brother on the other side of the way.  Mr. Hannibal
Hamlin, from Maine, now fills this chair.  I was driven, while in
Washington, to observe something amounting almost to a peculiarity
in the Christian names of the gentlemen who were then administrating
the government of the country.  Mr. Abraham Lincoln was the
President; Mr. Hannibal Hamlin, the Vice-President; Mr. Galusha
Grow, the Speaker of the House of Representatives; Mr. Salmon Chase,
the Secretary of the Treasury; Mr. Caleb Smith, the Attorney-
General; Mr. Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War; and Mr. Gideon
Welles, the Secretary of the Navy.

In the Senate House, as in the other house, there are very
commodious galleries for strangers, running round the entire
chambers, and these galleries are open to all the world.  As with
all such places in the States, a large portion of them is
appropriated to ladies.  But I came at last to find that the word
lady signified a female or a decently dressed man.  Any arrangement
for classes is in America impossible; the seats intended for
gentlemen must, as a matter of course, be open to all men; but by
giving up to the rougher sex half the amount of accommodation
nominally devoted to ladies, the desirable division is to a certain
extent made.  I generally found that I could obtain admittance to
the ladies' gallery if my coat were decent and I had gloves with me.

All the adjuncts of both these chambers are rich and in good
keeping.  The staircases are of marble, and the outside passages and
lobbies are noble in size and in every way convenient.  One knows
well the trouble of getting into the House of Lords and House of
Commons, and the want of comfort which attends one there; and an
Englishman cannot fail to make comparisons injurious to his own
country.  It would not, perhaps, be possible to welcome all the
world in London as is done in Washington, but there can be no good
reason why the space given to the public with us should not equal
that given in Washington.  But, so far are we from sheltering the
public, that we have made our House of Commons so small that it will
not even hold all its own members.

I had an opportunity of being present at one of their field days in
the senate, Slidell and Mason had just then been sent from Fort
Warren across to England in the Rinaldo.  And here I may as well say
what further there is for me to say about those two heroes.  I was
in Boston when they were taken, and all Boston was then full of
them.  I was at Washington when they were surrendered, and at
Washington for a time their names were the only household words in
vogue.  To me it had from the first been a matter of certainty that
England would demand the restitution of the men.  I had never
attempted to argue the matter on the legal points, but I felt, as
though by instinct, that it would be so.  First of all there reached
us, by telegram from Cape Race, rumors of what the press in England
was saying; rumors of a meeting in Liverpool, and rumors of the
feeling in London.  And then the papers followed, and we got our
private letters.  It was some days before we knew what was actually
the demand made by Lord Palmerston's cabinet; and during this time,
through the five or six days which were thus passed, it was clear to
be seen that the American feeling was undergoing a great change--or
if not the feeling, at any rate the purpose.  Men now talked of
surrendering these Commissioners, as though it were a line of
conduct which Mr. Seward might find convenient; and then men went
further, and said that Mr. Seward would find any other line of
conduct very inconvenient.  The newspapers, one after another, came
round.  That, under all these circumstances, the States government
behaved well in the matter, no one, I think, can deny; but the
newspapers, taken as a whole, were not very consistent, and, I
think, not very dignified.  They had declared with throats of brass
that these men should never be surrendered to perfidious Albion; but
when it came to be understood that in all probability they would be
so surrendered, they veered round without an excuse, and spoke of
their surrender as of a thing of course.  And thus, in the course of
about a week, the whole current of men's minds was turned.  For
myself, on my first arrival at Washington, I felt certain that there
would be war, and was preparing myself for a quick return to
England; but from the moment that the first whisper of England's
message reached us, and that I began to hear how it was received and
what men said about it, I knew that I need not hurry myself.  One
met a minister here, and a Senator there, and anon some wise
diplomatic functionary.  By none of these grave men would any secret
be divulged; none of them had any secret ready for divulging.  But
it was to be read in every look of the eye, in every touch of the
hand, and in every fall of the foot of each of them, that Mason and
Slidell would go to England.

Then we had, in all the fullness of diplomatic language, Lord
Russell's demand, and Mr. Seward's answer.  Lord Russell's demand
was worded in language so mild, was so devoid of threat, was so free
from anger, that at the first reading it seemed to ask for nothing.
It almost disappointed by its mildness.  Mr. Seward's reply, on the
other hand, by its length of argumentation, by a certain sharpness
of diction, to which that gentleman is addicted in his State papers,
and by a tone of satisfaction inherent through it all, seemed to
demand more than he conceded.  But, in truth, Lord Russell had
demanded everything, and the United States government had conceded
everything.

I have said that the American government behaved well in its mode of
giving the men up, and I think that so much should be allowed to
them on a review of the whole affair.  That Captain Wilkes had no
instructions to seize the two men, is a known fact.  He did seize
them, and brought them into Boston harbor, to the great delight of
his countrymen.  This delight I could understand, though of course I
did not share it.  One of these men had been the parent of the
Fugitive Slave Law; the other had been great in fostering the
success of filibustering.  Both of them were hot secessionists, and
undoubtedly rebels.  No two men on the continent were more grievous
in their antecedents and present characters to all Northern feeling.
It is impossible to deny that they were rebels against the
government of their country.  That Captain Wilkes was not on this
account justified in seizing them, is now a matter of history; but
that the people of the loyal States should rejoice in their seizure,
was a matter of course.  Wilkes was received with an ovation, which
as regarded him was ill judged and undeserved, but which in its
spirit was natural.  Had the President's government at that moment
disowned the deed done by Wilkes, and declared its intention of
giving up the men unasked, the clamor raised would have been very
great, and perhaps successful.  We were told that the American
lawyers were against their doing so; and indeed there was such a
shout of triumph that no ministry in a country so democratic could
have ventured to go at once against it, and to do so without any
external pressure.

Then came the one ministerial blunder.  The President put forth his
message, in which he was cunningly silent on the Slidell and Mason
affair; but to his message was appended, according to custom, the
report from Mr. Welles, the Secretary of the Navy.  In this report
approval was expressed of the deed done by Captain Wilkes.  Captain
Wilkes was thus in all respects indemnified, and the blame, if any,
was taken from his shoulders and put on to the shoulders of that
officer who was responsible for the Secretary's letter.  It is true
that in that letter the Secretary declared that in case of any
future seizure the vessel seized must be taken into port, and so
declared in animadverting on the fact that Captain Wilkes had not
brought the "Trent" into port.  But, nevertheless, Secretary Welles
approved of Captain Wilkes's conduct.  He allowed the reasons to be
good which Wilkes had put forward for leaving the ship, and in all
respects indemnified the captain.  Then the responsibility shifted
itself to Secretary Welles; but I think it must be clear that the
President, in sending forward that report, took that responsibility
upon himself.  That he is not bound to send forward the reports of
his Secretaries as he receives them--that he can disapprove them and
require alteration, was proved at the very time by the fact that he
had in this way condemned Secretary Cameron's report, and caused a
portion of it to be omitted.  Secretary Cameron had unfortunately
allowed his entire report to be printed, and it appeare d in a New
York paper.  It contained a recommendation with reference to the
slave question most offensive to a part of the cabinet, and to the
majority of Mr. Lincoln's party.  This, by order of the President,
was omitted in the official way.  It was certainly a pity that Mr.
Welles's paragraph respecting the "Trent" was not omitted also.  The
President was dumb on the matter, and that being so the Secretary
should have been dumb also.

But when the demand was made, the States government yielded at once,
and yielded without bluster.  I cannot say I much admired Mr.
Seward's long letter.  It was full of smart special pleading, and
savored strongly, as Mr. Seward's productions always do, of the
personal author.  Mr. Seward was making an effort to place a great
State paper on record, but the ars celare artem was altogether
wanting; and, if I am not mistaken, he was without the art itself.
I think he left the matter very much where he found it.  The men,
however, were to be surrendered, and the good policy consisted in
this, that no delay was sought, no diplomatic ambiguities were put
into request.  It was the opinion of very many that some two or
three months might be gained by correspondence, and that at the end
of that time things might stand on a different footing.  If during
that time the North should gain any great success over the South,
the States might be in a position to disregard England's threats.
No such game was played.  The illegality of the arrest was at once
acknowledged, and the men were given up with a tranquillity that
certainly appeared marvelous after all that had so lately occurred.

Then came Mr. Sumner's field day.  Mr. Charles Sumner is a Senator
from Massachusetts, known as a very hot abolitionist, and as having
been the victim of an attack made upon him in the Senate House by
Senator Brooks.  He was also, at the time of which I am writing,
Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, which position is as
near akin to that of a British minister in Parliament as can be
attained under the existing Constitution of the States.  It is not
similar, because such chairman is by no means bound to the
government; but he has ministerial relations, and is supposed to be
specially conversant with all questions relating to foreign affairs.
It was understood that Mr. Sumner did not intend to find fault
either with England or with the government of his own country as to
its management of this matter; or that, at least, such fault-finding
was not his special object, but that he was desirous to put forth
views which might lead to a final settlement of all difficulties
with reference to the right of international search.

On such an occasion, a speaker gives himself very little chance of
making a favorable impression on his immediate hearers if he reads
his speech from a written manuscript.  Mr. Sumner did so on this
occasion, and I must confess that I was not edified.  It seemed to
me that he merely repeated, at greater length, the arguments which I
had heard fifty times during the last thirty or forty days.  I am
told that the discourse is considered to be logical, and that it
"reads" well.  As regards the gist of it, or that result which Mr.
Sumner thinks to be desirable, I fully agree with him, as I think
will all the civilized world before many years have passed.  If
international law be what the lawyers say it is, international law
must be altered to suit the requirements of modern civilization.  By
those laws, as they are construed, everything is to be done for two
nations at war with each other; but nothing is to be done for all
the nations of the world that can manage to maintain the peace.  The
belligerents are to be treated with every delicacy, as we treat our
heinous criminals; but the poor neutrals are to be handled with
unjust rigor, as we handle our unfortunate witnesses in order that
the murderer may, if possible, be allowed to escape.  Two men living
in the same street choose to pelt each other across the way with
brickbats, and the other inhabitants are denied the privileges of
the footpath lest they should interfere with the due prosecution of
the quarrel!  It is, I suppose, the truth that we English have
insisted on this right of search with more pertinacity than any
other nation.  Now in this case of Slidell and Mason we have felt
ourselves aggrieved, and have resisted.  Luckily for us there was no
doubt of the illegality of the mode of seizure in this instance; but
who will say that if Captain Wilkes had taken the "Trent" into the
harbor of New York, in order that the matter might have been
adjudged there, England would have been satisfied?  Our grievance
was, that our mail-packet was stopped on the seas while doing its
ordinary beneficent work.  And our resolve is, that our mail-packets
shall not be so stopped wit impunity.  As we were high handed in old
days in insisting on this right of search, it certainly behoves us
to see that we be just in our modes of proceeding.  Would Captain
Wilkes have been right, according to the existing law, if he had
carried the "Trent" away to New York?  If so, we ought not to be
content with having escaped from such a trouble merely through a
mistake on his part.  Lord Russell says that the voyage was an
innocent voyage.  That is the fact that should be established; not
only that the voyage was, in truth, innocent, but that it should not
be made out to be guilty by any international law.  Of its real
innocency all thinking men must feel themselves assured.  But it is
not only of the seizure that we complain, but of the search also.
An honest man is not to be bandied by a policeman while on his daily
work, lest by chance a stolen watch should be in his pocket.  If
international law did give such power to all belligerents,
international law must give it no longer.  In the beginning of these
matters, as I take it, the object was when two powerful nations were
at war to allow the smaller fry of nations to enjoy peace and quiet,
and to avoid, if possible, the general scuffle.  Thence arose the
position of a neutral.  But it was clearly not fair that any such
nation, having proclaimed its neutrality, should, after that, fetch
and carry for either of the combatants to the prejudice of the
other.  Hence came the right of search, in order that unjust
falsehood might be prevented.  But the seas were not then bridged
with ships as they are now bridged, and the laws as written were,
perhaps, then practical and capable of execution.  Now they are
impracticable and not capable of execution.  It will not, however,
do for us to ignore them if they exist; and therefore they should be
changed.  It is, I think, manifest that our own pretensions as to
the right of search must be modified after this.  And now I trust I
may finish my book without again naming Messrs. Slidell and Mason.

The working of the Senate bears little or no analogy to that of our
House of Lords.  In the first place, the Senator's tenure there is
not hereditary, nor is it for life.  They are elected, and sit for
six years.  Their election is not made by the people of their
States, but by the State legislature.  The two Houses, for instance,
of the State of Massachusetts meet together and elect by their joint
vote to the vacant seat for their State.  It is so arranged that an
entirely new Senate is not elected every sixth year.  Instead of
this a third of the number is elected every second year.  It is a
common thing for Senators to be re-elected, and thus to remain in
the house for twelve and eighteen years.  In our Parliament the
House of Commons has greater political strength and wider political
action than the House of Lords; but in Congress the Senate counts
for more than the House of Representatives in general opinion.
Money bills must originate in the House of Representatives, but that
is, I think, the only special privilege attaching to the public
purse which the Lower House enjoys over the Upper.  Amendments to
such bills can be moved in the Senate; and all such bills must pass
the Senate before they become law.  I am inclined to think that
individual members of the Senate work harder than individual
Representatives.  More is expected of them, and any prolonged
absence from duty would be more remarked in the Senate than in the
other House.  In our Parliament this is reversed.  The payment made
to members of the Senate is 3000 dollars, or 600l., per annum, and
to a Representative, 500l. per annum.  To this is added certain
mileage allowance for traveling backward and forward between their
own State and the Capitol.  A Senator, therefore, from California or
Oregon has not altogether a bad place; but the halcyon days of
mileage allowances are, I believe, soon to be brought to an end.  It
is quite within rule that the Senator of to-day should be the
Representative of to-morrow.  Mr. Crittenden, who was Senator from
Kentucky, is now a member of the Lower House from an electoral
district in that State.  John Quincy Adams went into the House of
Representatives after he had been President of the United States.

Divisions in the Senate do not take place as in the House of
Representatives.  The ayes and noes are called for in the same way;
but if a poll be demanded, the Clerk of the House calls out the
names of the different Senators, and makes out lists of the votes
according to the separate answers given by the members.  The mode is
certainly more dignified than that pursued in the other House, where
during the ceremony of voting the members look very much like sheep
being passed into their pens.

I heard two or three debates in the House of Representatives, and
that one especially in which, as I have said before, a chapter was
read out of the Book of Joshua.  The manner in which the Creator's
name and the authority of His Word was banded about the house on
that occasion did not strike me favorably.  The question originally
under debate was the relative power of the civil and military
authority.  Congress had desired to declare its ascendency over
military matters, but the army and the Executive generally had
demurred to this,--not with an absolute denial of the rights of
Congress, but with those civil and almost silent generalities with
which a really existing power so well knows how to treat a nominal
power.  The ascendant wife seldom tells her husband in so many words
that his opinion in the house is to go for nothing; she merely
resolves that such shall be the case, and acts accordingly.  An
observer could not but perceive that in those days Congress was
taking upon itself the part, not exactly of an obedient husband, but
of a husband vainly attempting to assert his supremacy.  "I have got
to learn," said one gentleman after another, rising indignantly on
the floor, "that the military authority of our generals is above
that of this House."  And then one gentleman relieved the difficulty
of the position by branching off into an eloquent discourse against
slavery, and by causing a chapter to be read out of the Book of
Joshua.

On that occasion the gentleman's diversion seemed to have the effect
of relieving the House altogether from the embarrassment of the
original question; but it was becoming manifest, day by day, that
Congress was losing its ground, and that the army was becoming
indifferent to its thunders: that the army was doing so, and also
that ministers were doing so.  In the States, the President and his
ministers are not in fact subject to any parliamentary
responsibility.  The President may be impeached, but the member of
an opposition does not always wish to have recourse to such an
extreme measure as impeachment.  The ministers are not in the
houses, and cannot therefore personally answer questions.  Different
large subjects, such as foreign affairs, financial affairs, and army
matters, are referred to Standing Committees in both Houses; and
these committees have relations with the ministers.  But they have
no constitutional power over the ministers; nor have they the much
more valuable privilege of badgering a minister hither and thither
by viva voce questions on every point of his administration.  The
minister sits safe in his office--safe there for the term of the
existing Presidency if he can keep well with the president; and
therefore, even under ordinary circumstances, does not care much for
the printed or written messages of Congress.  But under
circumstances so little ordinary as those of 186l-62, while
Washington was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of soldiers,
Congress was absolutely impotent.  Mr. Seward could snap his fingers
at Congress, and he did so.  He could not snap his fingers at the
army; but then he could go with the army, could keep the army on his
side by remaining on the same side with the army; and this as it
seemed he resolved to do.  It must be understood that Mr. Seward was
not Prime Minister.  The President of the United States has no Prime
Minister--or hitherto has had none.  The Minister for Foreign
Affairs has usually stood highest in the cabinet, and Mr. Seward, as
holding that position, was not inclined to lessen its authority.  He
was gradually assuming for that position the prerogatives of a
Premier, and men were beginning to talk of Mr. Seward's ministry.
It may easily be understood that at such a time the powers of
Congress would be undefined, and that ambitious members of Congress
would rise and assert on the floor, with that peculiar voice of
indignation so common in parliamentary debate, "that they had got to
learn," etc. etc. etc.  It seemed to me that the lesson which they
had yet to learn was then in the process of being taught to them.
They were anxious to be told all about the mischance at Ball's
Bluff, but nobody would tell them anything about it.  They wanted to
know something of that blockade on the Potomac; but such knowledge
was not good for them.  "Pack them up in boxes, and send them home,"
one military gentleman said to me.  And I began to think that
something of the kind would be done, if they made themselves
troublesome.  I quote here the manner in which their questions,
respecting the affair at Ball's Bluff, were answered by the
Secretary of war.  "The Speaker laid before the House a letter from
the Secretary of War, in which he says that he has the honor to
acknowledge the receipt of the resolution adopted on the 6th
instant, to the effect that the answer of the Department to the
resolution, passed on the second day of the session, is not
responsive and satisfactory to the House, and requesting a farther
answer.  The Secretary has now to state that measures have been
taken to ascertain who is responsible for the disastrous movement at
Ball's Bluff, but that it is not compatible with the public interest
to make known those measures at the present time."

In truth the days are evil for any Congress of debaters, when a
great army is in camp on every side of them.  The people had called
for the army, and there it was.  It was of younger birth than
Congress, and had thrown its elder brother considerably out of favor
as has been done before by many a new-born baby.  If Congress could
amuse itself with a few set speeches, and a field day or two, such
as those afforded by Mr. Sumner, it might all be very well--provided
that such speeches did not attack the army.  Over and beyond this,
let them vote the supplies and have done with it.  Was it probable
that General McClellan should have time to answer questions about
Ball's Bluff--and he with such a job of work on his hands?  Congress
could of course vote what committees of military inquiry it might
please, and might ask questions without end; but we all know to what
such questions lead, when the questioner has no power to force an
answer by a penalty.  If it might be possible to maintain the
semblance of respect for Congress, without too much embarrassment to
military secretaries, such semblance should be maintained; but if
Congress chose to make itself really disagreeable, then no semblance
could be kept up any longer.  That, as far as I could judge, was the
position of Congress in the early months of 1862; and that, under
existing circumstances, was perhaps the only possible position that
it could fill.

All this to me was very melancholy.  The streets of Washington were
always full of soldiers.  Mounted sentries stood at the corners of
all the streets with drawn sabers--shivering in the cold and
besmeared with mud.  A military law came out that civilians might
not ride quickly through the street.  Military riders galloped over
one at every turn, splashing about through the mud, and reminding
one not unfrequently of John Gilpin.  Why they always went so fast,
destroying their horses' feet on the rough stones, I could never
learn.  But I, as a civilian, given as Englishmen are to trotting,
and furnished for the time with a nimble trotter, found myself
harried from time to time by muddy men with sabers, who would dash
after me, rattling their trappings, and bid me go at a slower pace.
There is a building in Washington, built by private munificence and
devoted, according to an inscription which it bears, "To the Arts."
It has been turned into an army clothing establishment.  The streets
of Washington, night and day, were thronged with army wagons.  All
through the city military huts and military tents were to be seen,
pitched out among the mud and in the desert places.  Then there was
the chosen locality of the teamsters and their mules and horses--a
wonderful world in itself; and all within the city!  Here horses and
mules lived--or died--sub dio, with no slightest apology for a
stable over them, eating their provender from off the wagons to
which they were fastened.  Here, there, and everywhere large houses
were occupied as the headquarters of some officer, or the bureau of
some military official.  At Washington and round Washington the army
was everything.  While this was so, is it to be conceived that
Congress should ask questions about military matters with success?

All this, as I say, filled me with sorrow.  I hate military
belongings, and am disgusted at seeing the great affairs of a nation
put out of their regular course.  Congress to me is respectable.
Parliamentary debates--be they ever so prosy, as with us, or even so
rowdy, as sometimes they have been with our cousins across the
water--engage my sympathies.  I bow inwardly before a Speaker's
chair, and look upon the elected representatives of any nation as
the choice men of the age.  Those muddy, clattering dragoons,
sitting at the corners of the streets with dirty woolen comforters
around their ears, were to me hideous in the extreme.  But there at
Washington, at the period of which I am writing, I was forced to
acknowledge that Congress was at a discount, and that the rough-shod
generals were the men of the day.  "Pack them up and send them in
boxes to their several States."  It would come to that, I thought,
or to something like that, unless Congress would consent to be
submissive.  "I have yet to learn--!" said indignant members,
stamping with their feet on the floor of the House.  One would have
said that by that time the lesson might almost have been understood.

Up to the period of this civil war Congress has certainly worked
well for the United States.  It might be easy to pick holes in it;
to show that some members have been corrupt, others quarrelsome, and
others again impracticable.  But when we look at the circumstances
under which it has been from year to year elected; when we remember
the position of the newly populated States from which the members
have been sent, and the absence throughout the country of that old
traditionary class of Parliament men on whom we depend in England;
when we think how recent has been the elevation in life of the
majority of those who are and must be elected, it is impossible to
deny them praise for intellect, patriotism, good sense, and
diligence.  They began but sixty years ago, and for sixty years
Congress has fully answered the purpose for which it was
established.  With no antecedents of grandeur, the nation, with its
Congress, has made itself one of the five great nations of the
world.  And what living English politician will say even now, with
all its troubles thick upon it, that it is the smallest of the five?
When I think of this, and remember the position in Europe which an
American has been able to claim for himself, I cannot but
acknowledge that Congress on the whole has been conducted with
prudence, wisdom, and patriotism.

The question now to be asked is this--  Have the powers of Congress
been sufficient, or are they sufficient, for the continued
maintenance of free government in the States under the Constitution?
I think that the powers given by the existing Constitution to
Congress can no longer be held to be sufficient; and that if the
Union be maintained at all, it must be done by a closer assimilation
of its congressional system to that of our Parliament.  But to that
matter I must allude again, when speaking of the existing
Constitution of the States.



CHAPTER III.

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR.


I have seen various essays purporting to describe the causes of this
civil war between the North and South; but they have generally been
written with the view of vindicating either one side or the other,
and have spoken rather of causes which should, according to the
ideas of their writers, have produced peace, than of those which
did, in the course of events, actually produce war.  This has been
essentially the case with Mr. Everett, who in his lecture at New
York, on the 4th of July, 1860, recapitulated all the good things
which the North has done for the South, and who proved--if he has
proved anything--that the South should have cherished the North
instead of hating it.  And this was very much the case also with Mr.
Motley in his letter to the London Times.  That letter is good in
its way, as is everything that comes from Mr. Motley, but it does
not tell us why the war has existed.  Why is it that eight millions
of people have desired to separate themselves from a rich and mighty
empire--from an empire which was apparently on its road to
unprecedented success, and which had already achieved wealth,
consideration, power, and internal well-being?

One would be glad to imagine, from the essays of Mr. Everett and of
Mr. Motley, that slavery has had little or nothing to do with it.  I
must acknowledge it to be my opinion that slavery in its various
bearings has been the single and necessary cause of the war; that
slavery being there in the South, this war was only to be avoided by
a voluntary division--secession voluntary both on the part of North
and South; that in the event of such voluntary secession being not
asked for, or if asked for not conceded, revolution and civil war
became necessary--were not to be avoided by any wisdom or care on
the part of the North.

The arguments used by both the gentlemen I have named prove very
clearly that South Carolina and her sister States had no right to
secede under the Constitution; that is to say, that it was not open
to them peaceably to take their departure, and to refuse further
allegiance to the President and Congress without a breach of the
laws by which they were bound.  For a certain term of years, namely,
from 1781 to 1787, the different States endeavored to make their way
in the world simply leagued together by certain articles of
confederation.  It was declared that each State retained its
sovereignty, freedom, and independence; and that the said States
then entered severally into a firm league of friendship with each
other for their common defense.  There was no President, no Congress
taking the place of our Parliament, but simply a congress of
delegates or ambassadors, two or three from each State, who were to
act in accordance with the policy of their own individual States.
It is well that this should be thoroughly understood, not as bearing
on the question of the present war, but as showing that a loose
confederation, not subversive of the separate independence of the
States, and capable of being partially dissolved at the will of each
separate State, was tried, and was found to fail.  South Carolina
took upon herself to act as she might have acted had that
confederation remained in force; but that confederation was an
acknowledged failure.  National greatness could not be achieved
under it, and individual enterprise could not succeed under it.
Then in lieu of that, by the united consent of the thirteen States,
the present Constitution was drawn up and sanctioned, and to that
every State bound itself in allegiance.  In that Constitution no
power of secession is either named or presumed to exist.  The
individual sovereignty of the States had, in the first instance,
been thought desirable.  The young republicans hankered after the
separate power and separate name which each might then have
achieved; but that dream had been found vain--and therefore the
States, at the cost of some fond wishes, agreed to seek together for
national power rather than run the risks entailed upon separate
existence.  Those of my readers who may be desirous of examining
this matter for themselves, are referred to the Articles of
Confederation and the Constitution of the United States.  The latter
alone is clear enough on the subject, but is strengthened by the
former in proving that under the latter no State could possess the
legal power of seceding.

But they who created the Constitution, who framed the clauses, and
gave to this terribly important work what wisdom they possessed, did
not presume to think that it could be final.  The mode of altering
the Constitution is arranged in the Constitution.  Such alterations
must be proposed either by two-thirds of both the houses of the
general Congress, or by the legislatures of two-thirds of the
States; and must, when so proposed, be ratified by the legislatures
of three-fourths of the States, (Article V.)  There can, I think, be
no doubt that any alteration so carried would be valid--even though
that alteration should go to the extent of excluding one or any
number of States from the Union.  Any division so made would be made
in accordance with the Constitution.

South Carolina and the Southern States no doubt felt that they would
not succeed in obtaining secession in this way, and therefore they
sought to obtain the separation which they wanted by revolution--by
revolution and rebellion, as Naples has lately succeeded in her
attempt to change her political status; as Hungary is looking to do;
as Poland has been seeking to do any time since her subjection; as
the revolted colonies of Great Britain succeeded in doing in 1776,
whereby they created this great nation which is now undergoing all
the sorrows of a civil war.  The name of secession claimed by the
South for this movement is a misnomer.  If any part of a nationality
or empire ever rebelled against the government established on behalf
of the whole, South Carolina so rebelled when, on the 20th of
November, 1860, she put forth her ordinance of so-called secession;
and the other Southern States joined in that rebellion when they
followed her lead.  As to that fact, there cannot, I think, much
longer be any doubt in any mind.  I insist on this especially,
repeating perhaps unnecessarily opinions expressed in my first
volume, because I still see it stated by English writers that the
secession ordinance of South Carolina should have been accepted as a
political act by the Government of the United States.  It seems to
me that no government can in this way accept an act of rebellion
without declaring its own functions to be beyond its own power.

But what if such rebellion be justifiable, or even reasonable? what
if the rebels have cause for their rebellion?  For no one will now
deny that rebellion may be both reasonable and justifiable; or that
every subject in the land may be bound in duty to rebel.  In such
case the government will be held to have brought about its own
punishment by its own fault.  But as government is a wide affair,
spreading itself gradually, and growing in virtue or in vice from
small beginnings--from seeds slow to produce their fruits--it is
much easier to discern the incidence of the punishment than the
perpetration of the fault.  Government goes astray by degrees, or
sins by the absence of that wisdom which should teach rulers how to
make progress as progress is made by those whom they rule.  The
fault may be absolutely negative and have spread itself over
centuries; may be, and generally has been, attributable to dull,
good men; but not the less does the punishment come at a blow.  The
rebellion exists and cannot be put down--will put down all that
opposes it; but the government is not the less bound to make its
fight.  That is the punishment that comes on governing men or on
governing a people that govern not well or not wisely.

As Mr. Motley says in the paper to which I have alluded, "No man, on
either side of the Atlantic, with Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins,
will dispute the right of a people, or of any portion of a people,
to rise against oppression, to demand redress of grievances, and in
case of denial of justice to take up arms to vindicate the sacred
principle of liberty.  Few Englishmen or Americans will deny that
the source of government is the consent of the governed, or that
every nation has the right to govern itself according to its will.
When the silent consent is changed to fierce remonstrance,
revolution is impending.  The right of revolution is indisputable.
It is written on the whole record of our race, British and American
history is made up of rebellion and revolution.  Hampden, Pym, and
Oliver Cromwell; Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, all were rebels."
Then comes the question whether South Carolina and the Gulf States
had so suffered as to make rebellion on their behalf justifiable or
reasonable; or if not, what cause had been strong enough to produce
in them so strong a desire for secession, a desire which has existed
for fully half the term through which the United States has existed
as a nation, and so firm a resolve to rush into rebellion with the
object of accomplishing that which they deemed not to be
accomplished on other terms?

It must, I think, be conceded that the Gulf States have not suffered
at all by their connection with the Northern States; that in lieu of
any such suffering, they owe all their national greatness to the
Northern States; that they have been lifted up, by the commercial
energy of the Atlantic States and by the agricultural prosperity of
the Western States, to a degree of national consideration and
respect through the world at large which never could have belonged
to them standing alone.  I will not trouble my readers with
statistics which few would care to follow; but let any man of
ordinary every-day knowledge turn over in his own mind his present
existing ideas of the wealth and commerce of New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburg, and Cincinnati, and compare them
with his ideas as to New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile,
Richmond, and Memphis.  I do not name such towns as Baltimore and
St. Louis, which stand in slave States, but which have raised
themselves to prosperity by Northern habits.  If this be not
sufficient, let him refer to population tables and tables of
shipping and tonnage.  And of those Southern towns which I have
named the commercial wealth is of Northern creation.  The success of
New Orleans as a city can be no more attributed to Louisianians than
can that of the Havana to the men of Cuba, or of Calcutta to the
natives of India.  It has been a repetition of the old story, told
over and over again through every century since commerce has
flourished in the world; the tropics can produce, but the men from
the North shall sow and reap, and garner and enjoy.  As the
Creator's work has progressed, this privilege has extended itself to
regions farther removed and still farther from southern influences.
If we look to Europe, we see that this has been so in Greece, Italy,
Spain, France, and the Netherlands; in England and Scotland; in
Prussia and in Russia; and the Western World shows us the same
story.  Where is now the glory of the Antilles? where the riches of
Mexico and the power of Peru?  They still produce sugar, guano,
gold, cotton, coffee--almost whatever we may ask them--and will
continue to do so while held to labor under sufficient restraint;
but where are their men, where are their books, where is their
learning, their art, their enterprise?  I say it with sad regret at
the decadence of so vast a population; but I do say that the
Southern States of America have not been able to keep pace with
their Northern brethren; that they have fallen behind in the race,
and, feeling that the struggle is too much for them, have therefore
resolved to part.

The reasons put forward by the South for secession have been
trifling almost beyond conception.  Northern tariffs have been the
first, and perhaps foremost.  Then there has been a plea that the
national exchequer has paid certain bounties to New England
fishermen, of which the South has paid its share, getting no part of
such bounty in return.  There is also a complaint as to the
navigation laws--meaning, I believe, that the laws of the States
increase the cost of coast traffic by forbidding foreign vessels to
engage in the trade, thereby increasing also the price of goods and
confining the benefit to the North, which carries on the coasting
trade of the country, and doing only injury to the South, which has
none of it.  Then last, but not least, comes that grievance as to
the Fugitive Slave Law.  The law of the land as a whole--the law of
the nation--requires the rendition from free States of all fugitive
slaves.  But the free States will not obey this law.  They even pass
State laws in opposition to it, "Catch your own slaves," they say,
"and we will not hinder you; at any rate we will not hinder you
officially.  Of non-official hinderance you must take your chance.
But we absolutely decline to employ our officers to catch your
slaves."  That list comprises, as I take it, the amount of Southern
official grievances.  Southern people will tell you privately of
others.  They will say that they cannot sleep happy in their beds,
fearing lest insurrection should be roused among their slaves.  They
will tell you of domestic comfort invaded by Northern falsehood.
They will explain to you how false has been Mrs. Beecher Stowe.
Ladies will fill your ears and your hearts too with tales of the
daily efforts they make for the comfort of their "people," and of
the ruin to those efforts which arises from the malice of the
abolitionists.  To all this you make some answer with your tongue
that is hardly true--for in such a matter courtesy forbids the plain
truth.  But your heart within answers truly, "Madam, dear madam,
your sorrow is great; but that sorrow is the necessary result of
your position."

As to those official reasons, in what fewest words I can use I will
endeavor to show that they come to nothing.  The tariff--and a
monstrous tariff it then was--was the ground put forward by South
Carolina for secession when General Jackson was President and Mr.
Calhoun was the hero of the South.  Calhoun bound himself and his
State to take certain steps toward secession at a certain day if
that tariff were not abolished.  The tariff was so absurd that
Jackson and his government were forced to abandon it--would have
abandoned it without any threat from Calhoun; but under that threat
it was necessary that Calhoun should be defied.  General Jackson
proposed a compromise tariff, which was odious to Calhoun--not on
its own behalf, for it yielded nearly all that was asked, but as
being subversive of his desire for secession.  The President,
however, not only insisted on his compromise, but declared his
purpose of preventing its passage into law unless Calhoun himself,
as Senator, would vote for it.  And he also declared his purpose--
not, we may presume, officially--of hanging Calhoun, if he took that
step toward secession which he had bound himself to take in the
event of the tariff not being repealed.  As a result of all this
Calhoun voted for the compromise, and secession for the time was
beaten down.  That was in 1832, and may be regarded as the
commencement of the secession movement.  The tariff was then a
convenient reason, a ground to be assigned with a color of justice
because it was a tariff admitted to be bad.  But the tariff has been
modified again and again since that, and the tariff existing when
South Carolina seceded in 1860 had been carried by votes from South
Carolina.  The absurd Morrill tariff could not have caused
secession, for it was passed, without a struggle, in the collapse of
Congress occasioned by secession.

The bounty to fishermen was given to create sailors, so that a
marine might be provided for the nation.  I need hardly show that
the national benefit would accrue to the whole nation for whose
protection such sailors were needed.  Such a system of bounties may
be bad; but if so, it was bad for the whole nation.  It did not
affect South Carolina otherwise than it affected Illinois,
Pennsylvania, or even New York.

The navigation laws may also have been bad.  According to my
thinking such protective laws are bad; but they created no special
hardship on the South.  By any such a theory of complaint all
sections of all nations have ground of complaint against any other
section which receives special protection under any law.  The
drinkers of beer in England should secede because they pay a tax,
whereas the consumers of paper pay none.  The navigation laws of the
States are no doubt injurious to the mercantile interests of the
States.  I at least have no doubt on the subject.  But no one will
think that secession is justified by the existence of a law of
questionable expediency.  Bad laws will go by the board if properly
handled by those whom they pinch, as the navigation laws went by the
board with us in England.

As to that Fugitive Slave Law, it should be explained that the
grievance has not arisen from the loss of slaves.  I have heard it
stated that South Carolina, up to the time of the secession, had
never lost a slave in this way--that is, by Northern opposition to
the Fugitive Slave Law; and that the total number of slaves escaping
successfully into the Northern States, and there remaining through
the non-operation of this law, did not amount to five in the year.
It has not been a question of property, but of feeling.  It has been
a political point; and the South has conceived--and probably
conceived truly--that this resolution on the part of Northern States
to defy the law with reference to slaves, even though in itself it
might not be immediately injurious to Southern property, was an
insertion of the narrow end of the wedge.  It was an action taken
against slavery--an action taken by men of the North against their
fellow-countrymen in the South.  Under such circumstances, the
sooner such countrymen should cease to be their fellows the better
it would be for them.  That, I take it, was the argument of the
South, or at any rate that was its feeling.

I have said that the reasons given for secession have been trifling,
and among them have so estimated this matter of the Fugitive Slave
Law.  I mean to assert that the ground actually put forward is
trifling--the loss, namely, of slaves to which the South has been
subjected.  But the true reason pointed at in this--the conviction,
namely, that the North would not leave slavery alone, and would not
allow it to remain as a settled institution--was by no means
trifling.  It has been this conviction on the part of the South that
the North would not live in amity with slavery--would continue to
fight it under this banner or under that, would still condemn it as
disgraceful to men and rebuke it as impious before God--which has
produced rebellion and civil war, and will ultimately produce that
division for which the South is fighting and against which the North
is fighting, and which, when accomplished, will give the North new
wings, and will leave the South without political greatness or
commercial success.

Under such circumstances I cannot think that rebellion on the part
of the South was justified by wrongs endured, or made reasonable by
the prospect of wrongs to be inflicted.  It is disagreeable, that
having to live with a wife who is always rebuking one for some
special fault; but the outside world will not grant a divorce on
that account, especially if the outside world is well aware that the
fault so rebuked is of daily occurrence.  "If you do not choose to
be called a drunkard by your wife," the outside world will say, "it
will be well that you should cease to drink."  Ah! but that habit of
drinking, when once acquired, cannot easily be laid aside.  The
brain will not work; the organs of the body will not perform their
functions; the blood will not run.  The drunkard must drink till he
dies.  All that may be a good ground for divorce, the outside world
will say; but the plea should be put in by the sober wife, not by
the intemperate husband.  But what if the husband takes himself off
without any divorce, and takes with him also his wife's property,
her earnings, that on which he has lived and his children?  It may
be a good bargain still for her, the outside world will say; but
she, if she be a woman of spirit, will not willingly put up with
such wrongs.  The South has been the husband drunk with slavery, and
the North has been the ill-used wife.

Rebellion, as I have said, is often justifiable but it is, I think,
never justifiable on the part of a paid servant of that government
against which it is raised.  We must, at any rate, feel that this is
true of men in high places--as regards those men to whom by reason
of their offices it should specially belong to put down rebellion.
Had Washington been the governor of Virginia, had Cromwell been a
minister of Charles, had Garibaldi held a marshal's baton under the
Emperor of Austria or the King of Naples, those men would have been
traitors as well as rebels.  Treason and rebellion may be made one
under the law, but the mind will always draw the distinction.  I, if
I rebel against the Crown, am not on that account necessarily a
traitor.  A betrayal of trust is, I take it, necessary to treason.
I am not aware that Jefferson Davis is a traitor; but that Buchanan
was a traitor admits, I think, of no doubt.  Under him, and with his
connivance, the rebellion was allowed to make its way.  Under him,
and by his officers, arms and ships and men and money were sent away
from those points at which it was known that they would be needed,
if it were intended to put down the coming rebellion, and to those
points at which it was known that they would be needed, if it were
intended to foster the coming rebellion.  But Mr. Buchanan had no
eager feeling in favor of secession.  He was not of that stuff of
which are made Davis, and Toombs, and Slidell.  But treason was
easier to him than loyalty.  Remonstrance was made to him, pointing
out the misfortunes which his action, or want of action, would bring
upon the country.  "Not in my time," he answered.  "It will not be
in my time."  So that he might escape unscathed out of the fire,
this chief ruler of a nation of thirty millions of men was content
to allow treason and rebellion to work their way!  I venture to say
so much here as showing how impossible it was that Mr. Lincoln's
government, on its coming into office, should have given to the
South, not what the South had asked, for the South had not asked,
but what the South had taken, what the South had tried to filch.
Had the South waited for secession till Mr. Lincoln had been in his
chair, I could understand that England should sympathize with her.
For myself I cannot agree to that scuttling of the ship by the
captain on the day which was to see the transfer of his command to
another officer.

The Southern States were driven into rebellion by no wrongs
inflicted on them; but their desire for secession is not on that
account matter for astonishment.  It would have been surprising had
they not desired secession.  Secession of one kind, a very practical
secession, had already been forced upon them by circumstances.  They
had become a separate people, dissevered from the North by habits,
morals, institutions, pursuits, and every conceivable difference in
their modes of thought and action.  They still spoke the same
language, as do Austria and Prussia; but beyond that tie of language
they had no bond but that of a meager political union in their
Congress at Washington.  Slavery, as it had been expelled from the
North, and as it had come to be welcomed in the South, had raised
such a wall of difference that true political union was out of the
question.  It would be juster, perhaps, to say that those physical
characteristics of the South which had induced this welcoming of
slavery, and those other characteristics of the North which had
induced its expulsion, were the true causes of the difference.  For
years and years this has been felt by both, and the fight has been
going on.  It has been continued for thirty years, and almost always
to the detriment of the South.  In 1845 Florida and Texas were
admitted into the Union as slave States.  I think that no State had
then been admitted, as a free State, since Michigan, in 1836.  In
1846 Iowa was admitted as a free State, and from that day to this
Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon, and Kansas have been
brought into the Union; all as free States.  The annexation of
another slave State to the existing Union had become, I imagine,
impossible--unless such object were gained by the admission of
Texas.  We all remember that fight about Kansas, and what sort of a
fight it was!  Kansas lies alongside of Missouri, a slave State, and
is contiguous to no other State.  If the free-soil party could, in
the days of Pierce and Buchanan, carry the day in Kansas, it is not
likely that they would be beaten on any new ground under such a
President as Lincoln.  We have all heard in Europe how Southern men
have ruled in the White House, nearly from the days of Washington
downward; or if not Southern men, Northern men, such as Pierce and
Buchanan, with Southern politics; and therefore we have been taught
to think that the South has been politically the winning party.
They have, in truth, been the losing party as regards national
power.  But what they have so lost they have hitherto recovered by
political address and individual statecraft.  The leading men of the
South have seen their position, and have gone to their work with the
exercise of all their energies.  They organized the Democratic party
so as to include the leaders among the Northern politicians.  They
never begrudged to these assistants a full share of the good things
of official life.  They have been aided by the fanatical
abolitionism of the North by which the Republican party has been
divided into two sections.  It has been fashionable to be a
Democrat, that is, to hold Southern politics, and unfashionable to
be a Republican, or to hold anti-Southern politics.  In that way the
South has lived and struggled on against the growing will of the
population; but at last that will became too strong, and when Mr.
Lincoln was elected, the South knew that its day was over.

It is not surprising that the South should have desired secession.
It is not surprising that it should have prepared for it.  Since the
days of Mr. Calhoun its leaders have always understood its position
with a fair amount of political accuracy.  Its only chance of
political life lay in prolonged ascendency at Washington.  The
swelling crowds of Germans, by whom the Western States were being
filled, enlisted themselves to a man in the ranks of abolition.
What was the acquisition of Texas against such hosts as these?  An
evil day was coming on the Southern politicians, and it behooved
them to be prepared.  As a separate nation--a nation trusting to
cotton, having in their hands, as they imagined, a monopoly of the
staple of English manufacture, with a tariff of their own, and those
rabid curses on the source of all their wealth no longer ringing in
their ears, what might they not do as a separate nation?  But as a
part of the Union, they were too weak to hold their own if once
their political finesse should fail them.  That day came upon them,
not unexpected, in 1860, and therefore they cut the cable.

And all this has come from slavery.  It is hard enough, for how
could the South have escaped slavery?  How, at least, could the
South have escaped slavery any time during these last thirty years?
And is it, moreover, so certain that slavery is an unmitigated evil,
opposed to God's will, and producing all the sorrows which have ever
been produced by tyranny and wrong?  It is here, after all, that one
comes to the difficult question.  Here is the knot which the fingers
of men cannot open, and which admits of no sudden cutting with the
knife.  I have likened the slaveholding States to the drunken
husband, and in so doing have pronounced judgment against them.  As
regards the state of the drunken man, his unfitness for partnership
with any decent, diligent, well-to-do wife, his ruined condition,
and shattered prospects, the simile, I think, holds good.  But I
refrain from saying that as the fault was originally with the
drunkard in that he became such, so also has the fault been with the
slave States.  At any rate I refrain from so saying here, on this
page.  That the position of a slaveowner is terribly prejudicial,
not to the slave, of whom I do not here speak, but to the owner; of
so much at any rate I feel assured.  That the position is therefore
criminal and damnable, I am not now disposed to take upon myself to
assert.

The question of slavery in America cannot be handled fully and
fairly by any one who is afraid to go back upon the subject, and
take its whole history since one man first claimed and exercised the
right of forcing labor from another man.  I certainly am afraid of
any such task; but I believe that there has been no period yet,
since the world's work began, when such a practice has not prevailed
in a large portion, probably in the largest portion, of the world's
work fields.  As civilization has made its progress, it has been the
duty and delight, as it has also been the interest of the men at the
top of affairs, not to lighten the work of the men below, but so to
teach them that they should recognize the necessity of working
without coercion.  Emancipation of serfs and thrals, of bondsmen and
slaves, has always meant this--that men having been so taught,
should then work without coercion.

In talking or writing of slaves, we always now think of the negro
slave.  Of us Englishmen it must at any rate be acknowledged that we
have done what in us lay to induce him to recognize this necessity
for labor.  At any rate we acted on the presumption that he would do
so, and gave him his liberty throughout all our lands at a cost
which has never yet been reckoned up in pounds, shillings, and
pence.  The cost never can be reckoned up, nor can the gain which we
achieved in purging ourselves from the degradation and
demoralization of such employment.  We come into court with clean
hands, having done all that lay with us to do to put down slavery
both at home and abroad.  But when we enfranchised the negroes, we
did so with the intention, at least, that they should work as free
men.  Their share of the bargain in that respect they have declined
to keep, wherever starvation has not been the result of such resolve
on their part; and from the date of our emancipation, seeing the
position which the negroes now hold with us, the Southern States of
America have learned to regard slavery as a permanent institution,
and have taught themselves to regard it as a blessing, and not as a
curse.

Negroes were first taken over to America because the white man could
not work under the tropical heats, and because the native Indian
would not work.  The latter people has been, or soon will be,
exterminated--polished off the face of creation, as the Americans
say--which fate must, I should say, in the long run attend all non-
working people.  As the soil of the world is required for increasing
population, the non-working people must go.  And so the Indians have
gone.  The negroes, under compulsion, did work, and work well; and
under their hands vast regions of the western tropics became fertile
gardens.  The fact that they were carried up into northern regions
which from their nature did not require such aid, that slavery
prevailed in New York and Massachusetts, does not militate against
my argument.  The exact limits of any great movement will not be
bounded by its purpose.  The heated wax which you drop on your
letter spreads itself beyond the necessities of your seal.  That
these negroes would not have come to the Western World without
compulsion, or having come, would not have worked without
compulsion, is, I imagine, acknowledged by all.  That they have
multiplied in the Western World and have there become a race
happier, at any rate in all the circumstances of their life, than
their still untamed kinsmen in Africa, must also be acknowledged.
Who, then, can dare to wish that all that has been done by the negro
immigration should have remained undone?

The name of slave is odious to me.  If I know myself I would not own
a negro though he could sweat gold on my behoof.  I glory in that
bold leap in the dark which England took with regard to her own West
Indian slaves.  But I do not see the less clearly the difficulty of
that position in which the Southern States have been placed; and I
will not call them wicked, impious, and abominable, because they now
hold by slavery, as other nations have held by it at some period of
their career.  It is their misfortune that they must do so now--now,
when so large a portion of the world has thrown off the system,
spurning as base and profitless all labor that is not free.  It is
their misfortune, for henceforth they must stand alone, with small
rank among the nations, whereas their brethren of the North will
still "flame in the forehead of the morning sky."

When the present Constitution of the United States was written--the
merit of which must probably be given mainly to Madison and
Hamilton, Madison finding the French democratic element, and
Hamilton the English conservative element--this question of slavery
was doubtless a great trouble.  The word itself is not mentioned in
the Constitution.  It speaks not of a slave, but of a "person held
to service or labor."  It neither sanctions nor forbids slavery.  It
assumes no power in the matter of slavery; and under it, at the
present moment, all Congress voting together, with the full consent
of the legislatures of thirty-three States, could not
constitutionally put down slavery in the remaining thirty-fourth
State.  In fact the Constitution ignored the subject.

But, nevertheless, Washington, and Jefferson from whom Madison
received his inspiration, were opposed to slavery.  I do not know
that Washington ever took much action in the matter, but his
expressed opinion is on record.  But Jefferson did so throughout his
life.  Before the Declaration of Independence he endeavored to make
slavery illegal in Virginia.  In this he failed, but long afterward,
when the United States was a nation, he succeeded in carrying a law
by which the further importation of slaves into any of the States
was prohibited after a certain year--1820.  When this law was
passed, the framers of it considered that the gradual abolition of
slavery would be secured.  Up to that period the negro population in
the States had not been self-maintained.  As now in Cuba, the
numbers had been kept up by new importations, and it was calculated
that the race, when not recruited from Africa, would die out.  That
this calculation was wrong we now know, and the breeding-grounds of
Virginia have been the result.

At that time there were no cotton fields.  Alabama and Mississippi
were outlying territories.  Louisiana had been recently purchased,
but was not yet incorporated as a State.  Florida still belonged to
Spain, and was all but unpopulated.  Of Texas no man had yet heard.
Of the slave States, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia were
alone wedded to slavery.  Then the matter might have been managed.
But under the Constitution as it had been framed, and with the
existing powers of the separate States, there was not even then open
any way by which slavery could be abolished other than by the
separate action of the States; nor has there been any such way
opened since.  With slavery these Southern States have grown and
become fertile.  The planters have thriven, and the cotton fields
have spread themselves.  And then came emancipation in the British
islands.  Under such circumstances and with such a lesson, could it
be expected that the Southern States should learn to love abolition?

It is vain to say that slavery has not caused secession, and that
slavery has not caused the war.  That, and that only, has been the
real cause of this conflict, though other small collateral issues
may now be put forward to bear the blame.  Those other issues have
arisen from this question of slavery, and are incidental to it and a
part of it.  Massachusetts, as we all know, is democratic in its
tendencies, but South Carolina is essentially aristocratic.  This
difference has come of slavery.  A slave country, which has
progressed far in slavery, must be aristocratic in its nature--
aristocratic and patriarchal.  A large slaveowner from Georgia may
call himself a democrat, may think that he reveres republican
institutions, and may talk with American horror of the thrones of
Europe; but he must in his heart be an aristocrat.  We, in England,
are apt to speak of republican institutions, and of universal
suffrage, which is perhaps the chief of them, as belonging equally
to all the States.  In South Carolina there is not and has not been
any such thing.  The electors for the President there are chosen not
by the people, but by the legislature; and the votes for the
legislature are limited by a high property qualification.  A high
property qualification is required for a member of the House of
Representatives in South Carolina; four hundred freehold acres of
land and ten negroes is one qualification.  Five hundred pounds
clear of debt is another qualification; for, where a sum of money is
thus named, it is given in English money.  Russia and England are
not more unlike in their political and social feelings than are the
real slave States and the real free-soil States.  The gentlemen from
one and from the other side of the line have met together on neutral
ground, and have discussed political matters without flying
frequently at each other's throats, while the great question on
which they differed was allowed to slumber.  But the awakening has
been coming by degrees, and now the South had felt that it was come.
Old John Brown, who did his best to create a servile insurrection at
Harper's Ferry, has been canonized through the North and West, to
the amazement and horror of the South.  The decision in the "Dred
Scott" case, given by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, has been received with shouts of execration through
the North and West.  The Southern gentry have been Uncle-Tommed into
madness.  It is no light thing to be told daily by your fellow-
citizens, by your fellow-representatives, by your fellow-senators,
that you are guilty of the one damning sin that cannot be forgiven.
All this they could partly moderate, partly rebuke, and partly bear
as long as political power remained in their hands; but they have
gradually felt that that was going, and were prepared to cut the
rope and run as soon as it was gone.

Such, according to my ideas, have been the causes of the war.  But I
cannot defend the South.  As long as they could be successful in
their schemes for holding the political power of the nation, they
were prepared to hold by the nation.  Immediately those schemes
failed, they were prepared to throw the nation overboard.  In this
there has undoubtedly been treachery as well as rebellion.  Had
these politicians been honest--though the political growth of
Washington has hardly admitted of political honesty--but had these
politicians been even ordinarily respectable in their dishonesty,
they would have claimed secession openly before Congress, while yet
their own President was at the White House.  Congress would not have
acceded.  Congress itself could not have acceded under the
Constitution; but a way would have been found, had the Southern
States been persistent in their demand.  A way, indeed, has been
found; but it has lain through fire and water, through blood and
ruin, through treason and theft, and the downfall of national
greatness.  Secession will, I think, be accomplished, and the
Southern Confederation of States will stand something higher in the
world than Mexico and the republics of Central America.  Her cotton
monopoly will have vanished, and her wealth will have been wasted.

I think that history will agree with me in saying that the Northern
States had no alternative but war.  What concession could they make?
Could they promise to hold their peace about slavery?  And had they
so promised, would the South have believed them?  They might have
conceded secession; that is, they might have given all that would
have been demanded.  But what individual chooses to yield to such
demands.  And if not an individual, then what people will do so?
But, in truth, they could not have yielded all that was demanded.
Had secession been granted to South Carolina and Georgia, Virginia
would have been coerced to join those States by the nature of her
property, and with Virginia Maryland would have gone, and
Washington, the capital.  What may be the future line of division
between the North and the South, I will not pretend to say; but that
line will probably be dictated by the North.  It may still be hoped
that Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland will go with the
North, and be rescued from slavery.  But had secession been yielded,
had the prestige of success fallen to the lot of the South, those
States must have become Southern.

While on the subject of slavery--for in discussing the cause of the
war, slavery is the subject that must be discussed--I cannot forbear
to say a few words about the negroes of the North American States.
The Republican party of the North is divided into two sections, of
which one may be called abolitionist, and the other non-
abolitionist.  Mr. Lincoln's government presumes itself to belong to
the latter, though its tendencies toward abolition are very strong.
The abolition party is growing in strength daily.  It is but a short
time since Wendell Phillips could not lecture in Boston without a
guard of police.  Now, at this moment of my writing, he is a popular
hero.  The very men who, five years since, were accustomed to make
speeches, strong as words could frame them, against abolition, are
now turning round, and, if not preaching abolition, are patting the
backs of those who do so.  I heard one of Mr. Lincoln's cabinet
declare old John Brown to be a hero and a martyr.  All the
Protestant Germans are abolitionists--and they have become so strong
a political element in the country that many now declare that no
future President can be elected without their aid.  The object is
declared boldly.  No long political scheme is asked for, but instant
abolition is wanted; abolition to be declared while yet the war is
raging.  Let the slaves of all rebels be declared free; and all
slaveowners in the seceding States are rebels!

One cannot but ask what abolition means, and to what it would lead.
Any ordinance of abolition now pronounced would not effect the
emancipation of the slaves, but might probably effect a servile
insurrection.  I will not accuse those who are preaching this
crusade of any desire for so fearful a scourge on the land.  They
probably calculate that an edict of abolition once given would be so
much done toward the ultimate winning of the battle.  They are
making their hay while their sun shines.  But if they could
emancipate those four million slaves, in what way would they then
treat them?  How would they feed them?  In what way would they treat
the ruined owners of the slaves, and the acres of land which would
lie uncultivated?  Of all subjects with which a man may be called on
to deal, it is the most difficult.  But a New England abolitionist
talks of it as though no more were required than an open path for
his humanitarian energies.  "I could arrange it all to-morrow
morning," a gentleman said to me, who is well known for his zeal in
this cause!

Arrange it all to-morrow morning--abolition of slavery having become
a fact during the night!  I should not envy that gentleman his
morning's work.  It was bad enough with us; but what were our
numbers compared with those of the Southern States?  We paid a price
for the slaves, but no price is to be paid in this case.  The value
of the property would probably be lowly estimated at 100l. a piece
for men, women, and children, or 4,000,000l. sterling for the whole
population.  They form the wealth of the South; and if they were
bought, what should be done with them?  They are like children.
Every slaveowner in the country--every man who has had aught to do
with slaves--will tell the same story.  In Maryland and Delaware are
men who hate slavery, who would be only too happy to enfranchise
their slaves; but the negroes who have been slaves are not fit for
freedom.  In many cases, practically, they cannot be enfranchised.
Give them their liberty, starting them well in the world at what
expense you please, and at the end of six months they will come back
upon your hands for the means of support.  Everything must be done
for them.  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--he will amuse
himself with it.  If he have none, he will amuse himself without it.
His work is like a school-boy'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
emancipation 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 hellish, 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 emancipation 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
emancipation, surely that reunion should be first effected.  A
decision in the Northern and Western mind on such a subject cannot
assist 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 emancipation of
slaves in the border States, which gives compensation to the owners.
His doing so proves that he regards present emancipation 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 circumstances 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 color must have been for three
years a citizen of the State, and must own a property qualification
of 50l. 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 duchess, 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 colored 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 classes--the white, the
black, and the colored, taking a nomenclature which I found there
prevailing.  By colored men I alluded to mulattoes, and all those of
mixed European and African blood.  The word "colored," 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 colored man.  Indeed, the classes are to a
great degree distinct there, the greater portion of the retail trade
of the country being in the hands of the colored 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 mouth 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 colored 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 assurance.  One hungers and thirsts
after such civil words among American citizens of this class.  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 bed-room at a
hotel--is, I think, of all human creatures, the most insolent.  I
certainly had a feeling of regret at parting with my colored 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 assume some
rigidly fixed position instead of dangling among the ropes.  The
drawn saber, too, never consorted well with the dirty outside woolen
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 passengers 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 passengers 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
passenger 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 passing 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 circumstances 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 20,000l. 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 20,000l. 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-travelers.  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 space
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 traveling
at all was practicable.  Nevertheless, the fact remains that
American private soldiers are not agreeable fellow-travelers.

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 McClellan 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 participate 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 Southwestern 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 traveling 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
Alleghenies, 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 traveler; 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 Assembly, 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
horseshoe, 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 assisted by a salutary practice
which, as I was assured, prevails there.  A member gets his speech
printed at the government cost, and sends it down free by post to
his constituents, 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 favorably.  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 thorny.
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, passes right
over the chain.  The line has been magnificently engineered, and the
scenery is very grand.  I went over the Alleghanies in midwinter,
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 glass.  I could not
progress a mile in any way.  With infinite labor 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 circumference 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 passengers.  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 the most of the passengers 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 traveling.  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 house-tops 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 shore, with their bows toward the land--large
boats, capable probably of carrying from one to two hundred
passengers each, and about three hundred 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 passage 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 passenger in
England who is passing 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 passes by the towns at which they are published;
he eats a large assortment 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
traveling, and never seems to long for the end of his journey, as
travelers do with us.  Should his boat come to grief upon the river,
and lay 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 hand into his trowsers 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 passing 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,
canals, railroads, banks, blocks of houses, etc. 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 assertion.

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 coal fields are
the most prolific in the Union; and Pittsburg is therefore great,
exactly as Merthyr-Tydvil and Birmingham are great.  But the
foundery 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 founderies 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 colors 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 upward, 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 flavor of
pretentious hypocrisy.  This probably has been much owing to the
acerbity and pungency of Sydney Smith's witty denunciations against
the drab-colored 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 of 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 Massachusetts, 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 assured 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 "Physio-medical Institute" 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 with ease can escape into Ohio.  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 clustered 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 center 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 cluster 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 emancipated 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 honorable 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 is
very honorable, 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 honor 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,
disemboweled 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.  Chestnut, walnut,
locust, etc.  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 trammeled 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 classes.

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 of 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 92l. each, ranging from 260l. to 60l. 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 votes 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.
When the war broke out, Kentucky took upon itself to say that it
would be neutral, as if neutrality in such a position could by any
means have been possible!  Neutrality on the borders of secession,
on the battle-field of the coming contest, was of course impossible.
Tennessee, to the south, had joined the South by a regular secession
ordinance.  Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, to the north, were of
course true to the Union.  Under these circumstances it became
necessary that Kentucky should choose her side.  With the exception
of the little State of Delaware, in which from her position
secession would have been impossible, Kentucky was, I think, less
inclined to rebellion, more desirous of standing by the North, than
any other of the slave States.  She did all she could, however, to
put off the evil day of so evil a choice.  Abolition within her
borders was held to be abominable as strongly as it was so held in
Georgia.  She had no sympathy, and could have none, with the
teachings and preachings of Massachusetts.  But she did not wish to
belong to a confederacy of which the Northern States were to be the
declared enemy, and be the border State of the South under such
circumstances.  She did all she could for personal neutrality.  She
made that effort for general reconciliation of which I have spoken
as the Crittenden Compromise.  But compromises and reconciliation
were not as yet possible, and therefore it was necessary that she
should choose her part.  Her governor declared for secession, and at
first also her legislature was inclined to follow the governor.  But
no overt act of secession by the State was committed, and at last it
was decided that Kentucky should be declared to be loyal.  It was in
fact divided.  Those on the southern border joined the
secessionists; whereas the greater portion of the State, containing
Frankfort, the capital, and the would-be secessionist governor, who
lived there, joined the North.  Men in fact became Unionists or
secessionists not by their own conviction, but through the necessity
of their positions; and Kentucky, through the necessity of her
position, became one of the scenes of civil war.

I must confess that the difficulty of the position of the whole
country seems to me to have been under-estimated in England.  In
common life it is not easy to arrange the circumstances of a divorce
between man and wife, all whose belongings and associations have for
many years been in common.  Their children, their money, their
house, their friends, their secrets have been joint property, and
have formed bonds of union.  But yet such quarrels may arise, such
mutual antipathy, such acerbity and even ill usage, that all who
know them admit that a separation is needed.  So it is here in the
States.  Free soil and slave soil could, while both were young and
unused to power, go on together--not without many jars and unhappy
bickerings, but they did go on together.  But now they must part;
and how shall the parting be made?  With which side shall go this
child, and who shall remain in possession of that pleasant
homestead?  Putting secession aside, there were in the United States
two distinct political doctrines, of which the extremes were opposed
to each other as pole is opposed to pole.  We have no such variance
of creed, no such radical difference as to the essential rules of
life between parties in our country.  We have no such cause for
personal rancor in our Parliament as has existed for some years past
in both Houses of Congress.  These two extreme parties were the
slaveowners of the South and the abolitionists of the North and
West.  Fifty years ago the former regarded the institution of
slavery as a necessity of their position--generally as an evil
necessity, and generally also as a custom to be removed in the
course of years.  Gradually they have learned to look upon slavery
as good in itself, and to believe that it has been the source of
their wealth and the strength of their position.  They have declared
it to be a blessing inalienable, that should remain among them
forever as an inheritance not to be touched and not to be spoken of
with hard words.  Fifty years ago the abolitionists of the North
differed only in opinion from the slave owners of the South in
hoping for a speedier end to this stain upon the nation, and in
thinking that some action should be taken toward the final
emancipation of the bondsmen.  But they also have progressed; and,
as the Southern masters have called the institution blessed, they
have called it accursed.  Their numbers have increased, and with
their numbers their power and their violence.  In this way two
parties have been formed who could not look on each other without
hatred.  An intermediate doctrine has been held by men who were
nearer in their sympathies to the slaveowners than to the
abolitionists, but who were not disposed to justify slavery as a
thing apart.  These men have been aware that slavery has existed in
accordance with the Constitution of their country, and have been
willing to attach the stain which accompanies the institution to the
individual State which entertains it, and not to the national
government by which the question has been constitutionally ignored.
The men who have participated in the government have naturally been
inclined toward the middle doctrine; but as the two extremes have
retreated farther from each other, the power of this middle class of
politicians has decreased.  Mr. Lincoln, though he does not now
declare himself an abolitionist, was elected by the abolitionists;
and when, as a consequence of that election, secession was
threatened, no step which he could have taken would have satisfied
the South which had opposed him, and been at the same time true to
the North which had chosen him.  But it was possible that his
government might save Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri.
As Radicals in England become simple Whigs when they are admitted
into public offices, so did Mr. Lincoln with his government become
anti-abolitionist when he entered on his functions.  Had he combated
secession with emancipation of the slaves, no slave State would or
could have held by the Union.  Abolition for a lecturer may be a
telling subject.  It is easy to bring down rounds of applause by
tales of the wrongs of bondage.  But to men in office abolition was
too stern a reality.  It signified servile insurrection, absolute
ruin to all Southern slaveowners, and the absolute enmity of every
slave State.

But that task of steering between the two has been very difficult.
I fear that the task of so steering with success is almost
impossible.  In England it is thought that Mr. Lincoln might have
maintained the Union by compromising matters with the South--or, if
not so, that he might have maintained peace by yielding to the
South.  But no such power was in his hands.  While we were blaming
him for opposition to all Southern terms, his own friends in the
North were saying that all principle and truth was abandoned for the
sake of such States as Kentucky and Missouri.  "Virginia is gone;
Maryland cannot go.  And slavery is endured, and the new virtue of
Washington is made to tamper with the evil one, in order that a show
of loyalty may be preserved in one or two States which, after all,
are not truly loyal!"  That is the accusation made against the
government by the abolitionists; and that made by us, on the other
side, is the reverse.  I believe that Mr. Lincoln had no alternative
but to fight, and that he was right also not to fight with abolition
as his battle-cry.  That he may be forced by his own friends into
that cry, is, I fear, still possible.  Kentucky, at any rate, did
not secede in bulk.  She still sent her Senators to Congress.  and
allowed herself to be reckoned among the stars in the American
firmament.  But she could not escape the presence of the war.  Did
she remain loyal, or did she secede, that was equally her fate.

The day before I entered Kentucky a battle was fought in that State,
which gave to the Northern arms their first actual victory.  It was
at a place called Mill Spring, near Somerset, toward the south of
the State.  General Zollicoffer, with a Confederate army numbering,
it was supposed, some eight thousand men, had advanced upon a
smaller Federal force, commanded by General Thomas, and had been
himself killed, while his army was cut to pieces and dispersed; the
cannon of the Confederates were taken, and their camp seized and
destroyed.  Their rout was complete; but in this instance again the
advancing party had been beaten, as had, I believe, been the case in
all the actions hitherto fought throughout the war.  Here, however,
had been an actual victory, and, it was not surprising that in
Kentucky loyal men should rejoice greatly, and begin to hope that
the Confederates would be beaten out of the State.  Unfortunately,
however, General Zollicoffer's army had only been an offshoot from
the main rebel army in Kentucky.  Buell, commanding the Federal
troops at Louisville, and Sydney Johnston, the Confederate general,
at Bowling Green, as yet remained opposite to each other, and the
work was still to be done.

I visited the little towns of Lexington and Frankfort, in Kentucky.
At the former I found in the hotel to which I went seventy-five
teamsters belonging to the army.  They were hanging about the great
hall when I entered, and clustering round the stove in the middle of
the chamber; a dirty, rough, quaint set of men, clothed in a
wonderful variety of garbs, but not disorderly or loud.  The
landlord apologized for their presence, alleging that other
accommodation could not be found for them in the town.  He received,
he said, a dollar a day for feeding them, and for supplying them
with a place in which they could lie down.  It did not pay him, but
what could he do?  Such an apology from an American landlord was in
itself a surprising fact.  Such high functionaries are, as a rule,
men inclined to tell a traveler that if he does not like the guests
among whom he finds himself, he may go elsewhere.  But this landlord
had as yet filled the place for not more than two or three weeks,
and was unused to the dignity of his position.  While I was at
supper, the seventy-five teamsters were summoned into the common
eating-room by a loud gong, and sat down to their meal at the public
table.  They were very dirty; I doubt whether I ever saw dirtier
men; but they were orderly and well behaved, and but for their
extreme dirt might have passed as the ordinary occupants of a well-
filled hotel in the West.  Such men, in the States, are less clumsy
with their knives and forks, less astray in an unused position, more
intelligent in adapting themselves to a new life than are Englishmen
of the same rank.  It is always the same story.  With us there is no
level of society.  Men stand on a long staircase, but the crowd
congregates near the bottom, and the lower steps are very broad.  In
America men stand upon a common platform, but the platform is raised
above the ground, though it does not approach in height the top of
our staircase.  If we take the average altitude in the two
countries, we shall find that the American heads are the more
elevated of the two.  I conceived rather an affection for those
dirty teamsters; they answered me civilly when I spoke to them, and
sat in quietness, smoking their pipes, with a dull and dirty but
orderly demeanor.

The country about Lexington is called the Blue Grass Region, and
boasts itself as of peculiar fecundity in the matter of pasturage.
Why the grass is called blue, or in what way or at what period it
becomes blue, I did not learn; but the country is very lovely and
very fertile.  Between Lexington and Frankfort a large stock farm,
extending over three thousand acres, is kept by a gentleman who is
very well known as a breeder of horses, cattle, and sheep.  He has
spent much money on it, and is making for himself a Kentucky
elysium.  He was kind enough to entertain me for awhile, and showed
me something of country life in Kentucky.  A farm in that part of
the State depends, and must depend, chiefly on slave labor.  The
slaves are a material part of the estate, and as they are regarded
by the law as real property--being actually adstricti glebae--an
inheritor of land has no alternative but to keep them.  A gentleman
in Kentucky does not sell his slaves.  To do so is considered to be
low and mean, and is opposed to the aristocratic traditions of the
country.  A man who does so willingly, puts himself beyond the pale
of good fellowship with his neighbors.  A sale of slaves is regarded
as a sign almost of bankruptcy.  If a man cannot pay his debts, his
creditors can step in and sell his slaves; but he does not himself
make the sale.  When a man owns more slaves than he needs, he hires
them out by the year; and when he requires more than he owns, he
takes them on hire by the year.  Care is taken in such hirings not
to remove a married man away from his home.  The price paid for a
negro's labor at the time of my visit was about a hundred dollars,
or twenty pounds for the year; but this price was then extremely low
in consequence of the war disturbances.  The usual price had been
about fifty or sixty per cent. above this.  The man who takes the
negro on hire feeds him, clothes him, provides him with a bed, and
supplies him with medical attendance.  I went into some of their
cottages on the estate which I visited, and was not in the least
surprised to find them preferable in size, furniture, and all
material comforts to the dwellings of most of our own agricultural
laborers.  Any comparison between the material comfort of a Kentucky
slave and an English ditcher and delver would be preposterous.  The
Kentucky slave never wants for clothing fitted to the weather.  He
eats meat twice a day, and has three good meals; he knows no limit
but his own appetite; his work is light; he has many varieties of
amusement; he has instant medical assistance at all periods of
necessity for himself, his wife, and his children.  Of course he
pays no rent, fears no baker, and knows no hunger.  I would not have
it supposed that I conceive slavery with all these comforts to be
equal to freedom without them; nor do I conceive that the negro can
be made equal to the white man.  But in discussing the condition of
the negro, it is necessary that we should understand what are the
advantages of which abolition would deprive him, and in what
condition he has been placed by the daily receipt of such
advantages.  If a negro slave wants new shoes, he asks for them, and
receives them, with the undoubting simplicity of a child.  Such a
state of things has its picturesquely patriarchal side; but what
would be the state of such a man if he were emancipated to-morrow?

The natural beauty of the place which I was visiting was very great.
The trees were fine and well scattered over the large, park-like
pastures, and the ground was broken on every side into hills.  There
was perhaps too much timber, but my friend seemed to think that that
fault would find a natural remedy only too quickly.  "I do not like
to cut down trees if I can help it," he said.  After that I need not
say that my host was quite as much an Englishman as an American.  To
the purely American farmer a tree is simply an enemy to be trodden
under foot, and buried underground, or reduced to ashes and thrown
to the winds with what most economical dispatch may be possible.  If
water had been added to the landscape here it would have been
perfect, regarding it as ordinary English park-scenery.  But the
little rivers at this place have a dirty trick of burying themselves
under the ground.  They go down suddenly into holes, disappearing
from the upper air, and then come up again at the distance of
perhaps half a mile.  Unfortunately their periods of seclusion are
more prolonged than those of their upper-air distance.  There were
three or four such ascents and descents about the place.

My host was a breeder of race-horses, and had imported sires from
England; of sheep also, and had imported famous rams; of cattle too,
and was great in bulls.  He was very loud in praise of Kentucky and
its attractions, if only this war could be brought to an end.  But I
could not obtain from him an assurance that the speculation in which
he was engaged had been profitable.  Ornamental farming in England
is a very pretty amusement for a wealthy man, but I fancy--without
intending any slight on Mr. Mechi--that the amusement is expensive.
I believe that the same thing may be said of it in a slave State.

Frankfort is the capital of Kentucky, and is as quietly dull a
little town as I ever entered.  It is on the River Kentucky, and as
the grounds about it on every side rise in wooded hills, it is a
very pretty place.  In January it was very pretty, but in summer it
must be lovely.  I was taken up to the cemetery there by a path
along the river, and am inclined to say that it is the sweetest
resting-place for the dead that I have ever visited.  Daniel Boone
lies there.  He was the first white man who settled in Kentucky; or
rather, perhaps, the first who entered Kentucky with a view to a
white man's settlement.  Such frontier men as was Daniel Boone never
remained long contented with the spots they opened.  As soon as he
had left his mark in that territory he went again farther west, over
the big rivers into Missouri, and there he died.  But the men of
Kentucky are proud of Daniel Boone, and so they have buried him in
the loveliest spot they could select, immediately over the river.
Frankfort is worth a visit, if only that this grave and graveyard
may be seen.  The legislature of the State was not sitting when I
was there, and the grass was growing in the streets.

Louisville is the commercial city of the State, and stands on the
Ohio.  It is another great town, like all the others, built with
high stores, and great houses and stone-faced blocks.  I have no
doubt that all the building speculations have been failures, and
that the men engaged in them were all ruined.  But there, as the
result of their labor, stands a fair great city on the southern
banks of the Ohio.  Here General Buell held his headquarters, but
his army lay at a distance.  On my return from the West I visited
one of the camps of this army, and will speak of it as I speak of my
backward journey.  I had already at this time begun to conceive an
opinion that the armies in Kentucky and in Missouri would do at any
rate as much for the Northern cause as that of the Potomac, of which
so much more had been heard in England.

While I was at Louisville the Ohio was flooded.  It had begun to
rise when I was at Cincinnati, and since then had gone on increasing
hourly, rising inch by inch up into the towns upon its bank.  I
visited two suburbs of Louisville, both of which were submerged, as
to the streets and ground floors of the houses.  At Shipping Port,
one of these suburbs, I saw the women and children clustering in the
up-stairs room, while the men were going about in punts and
wherries, collecting drift-wood from the river for their winter's
firing.  In some places bedding and furniture had been brought over
to the high ground, and the women were sitting, guarding their
little property.  That village, amid the waters, was a sad sight to
see; but I heard no complaints.  There was no tearing of hair and no
gnashing of teeth; no bitter tears or moans of sorrow.  The men who
were not at work in the boats stood loafing about in clusters,
looking at the still rising river, but each seemed to be personally
indifferent to the matter.  When the house of an American is carried
down the river, he builds himself another, as he would get himself a
new coat when his old coat became unserviceable.  But he never
laments or moans for such a loss.  Surely there is no other people
so passive under personal misfortune!

Going from Louisville up to St. Louis, I crossed the Ohio River and
passed through parts of Indiana and of Illinois, and, striking the
Mississippi opposite St. Louis, crossed that river also, and then
entered the State of Missouri.  The Ohio was, as I have said,
flooded, and we went over it at night.  The boat had been moored at
some unaccustomed place.  There was no light.  The road was deep in
mud up to the axle-tree, and was crowded with wagons and carts,
which in the darkness of the night seemed to have stuck there.  But
the man drove his four horses through it all, and into the ferry-
boat, over its side.  There were three or four such omnibuses, and
as many wagons, as to each of which I predicted in my own mind some
fatal catastrophe.  But they were all driven on to the boat in the
dark, the horses mixing in through each other in a chaos which would
have altogether incapacitated any English coachman.  And then the
vessel labored across the flood, going sideways, and hardly keeping
her own against the stream.  But we did get over, and were all
driven out again, up to the railway station in safety.  On reaching
the Mississippi about the middle of the next day, we found it frozen
over, or rather covered from side to side with blocks of ice which
had forced their way down the river, so that the steam-ferry could
not reach its proper landing.  I do not think that we in England
would have attempted the feat of carrying over horses and carriages
under stress of such circumstances.  But it was done here.  Huge
plankings were laid down over the ice, and omnibuses and wagons were
driven on.  In getting out again, these vehicles, each with four
horses, had to be twisted about, and driven in and across the
vessel, and turned in spaces to look at which would have broken the
heart of an English coachman.  And then with a spring they were
driven up a bank as steep as a ladder!  Ah me! under what mistaken
illusions have I not labored all the days of my youth, in supposing
that no man could drive four horses well but an English stage
coachman!  I have seen performances in America--and in Italy and
France also, but above all in America--which would have made the
hair of any English professional driver stand on end.

And in this way I entered St. Louis.



CHAPTER V.

MISSOURI.


Missouri is a slave State, lying to the west of the Mississippi and
to the north of Arkansas.  It forms a portion of the territory ceded
by France to the United States in 1803.  Indeed, it is difficult to
say how large a portion of the continent of North America is
supposed to be included in that territory.  It contains the States
of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas, as also the present
Indian Territory; but it also is said to have contained all the land
lying back from them to the Rocky Mountains, Utah, Nebraska, and
Dakota, and forms no doubt the widest dominion ever ceded by one
nationality to another.

Missouri lies exactly north of the old Missouri compromise line--
that is, 36.30 north.  When the Missouri compromise was made it was
arranged that Missouri should be a slave State, but that no other
State north of the 36.30 line should ever become slave soil.
Kentucky and Virginia, as also of course Maryland and Delaware, four
of the old slave States, were already north of that line; but the
compromise was intended to prevent the advance of slavery in the
Northwest.  The compromise has been since annulled, on the ground, I
believe, that Congress had not constitutionally the power to declare
that any soil should be free, or that any should be slave soil.
That is a question to be decided by the States themselves, as each
individual State may please.  So the compromise was repealed.  But
slavery has not on that account advanced.  The battle has been
fought in Kansas, and, after a long and terrible struggle, Kansas
has come out of the fight as a free State.  Kansas is in the same
parallel of latitude as Virginia, and stretches west as far as the
Rocky Mountains,

When the census of the population of Missouri was taken in 1860, the
slaves amounted to ten per cent. of the whole number.  In the Gulf
States the slave population is about forty-five per cent. of the
whole.  In the three border States of Kentucky, Virginia, and
Maryland, the slaves amount to thirty per cent. of the whole
population.  From these figures it will be seen that Missouri, which
is comparatively a new slave State, has not gone ahead with slavery
as the old slave States have done, although from its position and
climate, lying as far south as Virginia, it might seem to have had
the same reasons for doing so.  I think there is every reason to
believe that slavery will die out in Missouri.  The institution is
not popular with the people generally; and as white labor becomes
abundant--and before the war it was becoming abundant--men recognize
the fact that the white man's labor is the more profitable.  The
heat in this State, in midsummer, is very great, especially in the
valleys of the rivers.  At St. Louis, on the Mississippi, it reaches
commonly to ninety degrees, and very frequently goes above that.
The nights, moreover, are nearly as hot as the days; but this great
heat does not last for any very long period, and it seems that white
men are able to work throughout the year.  If correspondingly severe
weather in winter affords any compensation to the white man for what
of heat he endures during the summer, I can testify that such
compensation is to be found in Missouri.  When I was there we were
afflicted with a combination of snow, sleet, frost, and wind, with a
mixture of ice and mud, that makes me regard Missouri as the most
inclement land into which I ever penetrated.

St. Louis, on the Mississippi, is the great town of Missouri, and is
considered by the Missourians to be the star of the West.  It is not
to be beaten in population, wealth, or natural advantages by any
other city so far west; but it has not increased with such rapidity
as Chicago, which is considerably to the north of it, on Lake
Michigan.  Of the great Western cities I regard Chicago as the most
remarkable, seeing that St. Louis was a large town before Chicago
had been founded.

The population of St. Louis is 170,000.  Of this number only 2000
are slaves.  I was told that a large proportion of the slaves of
Missouri are employed near the Missouri River in breaking hemp.  The
growth of hemp is very profitably carried on in that valley, and the
labor attached to it is one which white men do not like to
encounter.  Slaves are not generally employed in St. Louis for
domestic service as is done almost universally in the towns of
Kentucky.  This work is chiefly in the hands of Irish and Germans.
Considerably above one-third of the population of the whole city is
made up of these two nationalities.  So much is confessed; but if I
were to form an opinion from the language I heard in the streets of
the town, I should say that nearly every man was either an Irishman
or a German.

St. Louis has none of the aspects of a slave city.  I cannot say
that I found it an attractive place; but then I did not visit it at
an attractive time.  The war had disturbed everything, given a
special color of its own to men's thoughts and words, and destroyed
all interest except that which might proceed from itself.  The town
is well built, with good shops, straight streets, never-ending rows
of excellent houses, and every sign of commercial wealth and
domestic comfort--of commercial wealth and domestic comfort in the
past, for there was no present appearance either of comfort or of
wealth.  The new hotel here was to be bigger than all the hotels of
all other towns.  It is built, and is an enormous pile, and would be
handsome but for a terribly ambitious Grecian doorway.  It is built,
as far as the walls and roof are concerned, but in all other
respects is unfinished.  I was told that the shares of the original
stockholders were now worth nothing.  A shareholder, who so told me,
seemed to regard this as the ordinary course of business.

The great glory of the town is the "levee," as it is called, or the
long river beach up to which the steamers are brought with their
bows to the shore.  It is an esplanade looking on to the river, not
built with quays or wharves, as would be the case with us, but with
a sloping bank running down to the water.  In the good days of peace
a hundred vessels were to be seen here, each with its double
funnels.  The line of them seemed to be never ending even when I was
there, but then a very large proportion of them were lying idle.
They resemble huge, wooden houses, apparently of frail architecture,
floating upon the water.  Each has its double row of balconies
running round it, and the lower or ground floor is open throughout.
The upper stories are propped and supported on ugly sticks and
rickety-looking beams; so that the first appearance does not convey
any great idea of security to a stranger.  They are always painted
white, and the paint is always very dirty.  When they begin to move,
they moan and groan in melancholy tones which are subversive of all
comfort; and as they continue on their courses they puff and
bluster, and are forever threatening to burst and shatter themselves
to pieces.  There they lie, in a continuous line nearly a mile in
length, along the levee of St. Louis, dirty, dingy, and now, alas!
mute.  They have ceased to groan and puff, and, if this war be
continued for six months longer, will become rotten and useless as
they lie.

They boast at St. Louis that they command 46,000 miles of navigable
river water, counting the great rivers up and down from that place.
These rivers are chiefly the Mississippi; the Missouri and Ohio,
which fall into the Mississippi near St. Louis; the Platte and
Kansas Rivers, tributaries of the Missouri; the Illinois, and the
Wisconsin.  All these are open to steamers, and all of them traverse
regions rich in corn, in coal, in metals, or in timber.  These
ready-made highways of the world center, as it were, at St. Louis,
and make it the depot of the carrying trade of all that vast
country.  Minnesota is 1500 miles above New Orleans, but the wheat
of Minnesota can be brought down the whole distance without change
of the vessel in which it is first deposited.  It would seem to be
impossible that a country so blessed should not become rich.  It
must be remembered that these rivers flow through lands that have
never yet been surpassed in natural fertility.  Of all countries in
the world one would say that the States of America should have been
the last to curse themselves with a war; but now the curse has
fallen upon them with a double vengeance, it would seem that they
could never be great in war: their very institutions forbid it;
their enormous distances forbid it; the price of labor forbids it;
and it is forbidden also by the career of industry and expansion
which has been given to them.  But the curse of fighting has come
upon them, and they are showing themselves to be as eager in the
works of war as they have shown themselves capable in the works of
peace.  Men and angels must weep as they behold the things that are
being done, as they watch the ruin that has come and is still
coming, as they look on commerce killed and agriculture suspended.
No sight so sad has come upon the earth in our days.  They were a
great people; feeding the world, adding daily to the mechanical
appliances of mankind, increasing in population beyond all measures
of such increase hitherto known, and extending education as fast as
they extended their numbers.  Poverty had as yet found no place
among them, and hunger was an evil of which they had read but were
themselves ignorant.  Each man among their crowds had a right to be
proud of his manhood.  To read and write--I am speaking here of the
North--was as common as to eat and drink.  To work was no disgrace,
and the wages of work were plentiful.  To live without work was the
lot of none.  What blessing above these blessings was needed to make
a people great and happy?  And now a stranger visiting them would
declare that they are wallowing in a very slough of despond.  The
only trade open is the trade of war.  The axe of the woodsman is at
rest; the plow is idle; the artificer has closed his shop.  The roar
of the foundery is still heard because cannon are needed, and the
river of molten iron comes out as an implement of death.  The stone-
cutter's hammer and the mason's trowel are never heard.  The gold of
the country is hiding itself as though it had returned to its mother
earth, and the infancy of a paper currency has been commenced.  Sick
soldiers, who have never seen a battle-field, are dying by hundreds
in the squalid dirt of their unaccustomed camps.  Men and women talk
of war, and of war only.  Newspapers full of the war are alone read.
A contract for war stores--too often a dishonest contract--is the
one path open for commercial enterprise.  The young man must go to
the war or he is disgraced.  The war swallows everything, and as yet
has failed to produce even such bitter fruits as victory or glory.
Must it not be said that a curse has fallen upon the land?

And yet I still hope that it may ultimately be for good.  Through
water and fire must a nation be cleansed of its faults.  It has been
so with all nations, though the phases of their trials have been
different.  It did not seem to be well with us in Cromwell's early
days; nor was it well with us afterward in those disgraceful years
of the later Stuarts.  We know how France was bathed in blood in her
effort to rid herself of her painted sepulcher of an ancient throne;
how Germany was made desolate, in order that Prussia might become a
nation.  Ireland was poor and wretched till her famine came.  Men
said it was a curse, but that curse has been her greatest blessing.
And so will it be here in the West.  I could not but weep in spirit
as I saw the wretchedness around me--the squalid misery of the
soldiers, the inefficiency of their officers, the bickerings of
their rulers, the noise and threats, the dirt and ruin, the terrible
dishonesty of those who were trusted!  These are things which made a
man wish that he were anywhere but there.  But I do believe that God
is still over all, and that everything is working for good.  These
things are the fire and water through which this nation must pass.
The course of this people had been too straight, and their way had
been too pleasant.  That which to others had been ever difficult had
been made easy for them.  Bread and meat had come to them as things
of course, and they hardly remembered to be thankful.  "We,
ourselves, have done it," they declared aloud.  "We are not as other
men.  We are gods upon the earth.  Whose arm shall be long enough to
stay us, or whose bolt shall be strong enough to strike us?"

Now they are stricken sore, and the bolt is from their own bow.
Their own hands have raised the barrier that has stayed them.  They
have stumbled in their running, and are lying hurt upon the ground;
while they who have heard their boastings turn upon them with
ridicule, and laugh at them in their discomforture.  They are
rolling in the mire, and cannot take the hand of any man to help
them.  Though the hand of the by-stander may be stretched to them,
his face is scornful and his voice full of reproaches.  Who has not
known that hour of misery when in the sullenness of the heart all
help has been refused, and misfortune has been made welcome to do
her worst?  So is it now with those once United States.  The man who
can see without inward tears the self-inflicted wounds of that
American people can hardly have within his bosom the tenderness of
an Englishman's heart.

But the strong runner will rise again to his feet, even though he be
stunned by his fall.  He will rise again, and will have learned
something by his sorrow.  His anger will pass away, and he will
again brace himself for his work.  What great race has ever been won
by any man, or by any nation, without some such fall during its
course?  Have we not all declared that some check to that career was
necessary?  Men in their pursuit of intelligence had forgotten to be
honest; in struggling for greatness they had discarded purity.  The
nation has been great, but the statesmen of the nation have been
little.  Men have hardly been ambitious to govern, but they have
coveted the wages of governors.  Corruption has crept into high
places--into places that should have been high--till of all holes
and corners in the land they have become the lowest.  No public man
has been trusted for ordinary honesty.  It is not by foreign voices,
by English newspapers or in French pamphlets, that the corruption of
American politicians has been exposed, but by American voices and by
the American press.  It is to be heard on every side.  Ministers of
the cabinet, senators, representatives, State legislatures, officers
of the army, officials of the navy, contractors of every grade--all
who are presumed to touch, or to have the power of touching public
money, are thus accused.  For years it has been so.  The word
politician has stunk in men's nostrils.  When I first visited New
York, some three years since, I was warned not to know a man,
because he was a "politician."  We in England define a man of a
certain class as a blackleg.  How has it come about that in American
ears the word politician has come to bear a similar signification?

The material growth of the States has been so quick that the
political growth has not been able to keep pace with it.  In
commerce, in education, in all municipal arrangements, in mechanical
skill, and also in professional ability the country has stalked on
with amazing rapidity; but in the art of governing, in all political
management and detail, it has made no advance.  The merchants of our
country and of that country have for many years met on terms of
perfect equality; but it has never been so with their statesmen and
our statesmen, with their diplomatists and our diplomatists.
Lombard Street and Wall Street can do business with each other on
equal footing, but it is not so between Downing Street and the State
office at Washington.  The science of statesmanship has yet to be
learned in the States, and certainly the highest lesson of that
science, which teaches that honesty is the best policy.

I trust that the war will have left such a lesson behind it.  If it
do so, let the cost in money be what it may, that money will not
have been wasted.  If the American people can learn the necessity of
employing their best men for their highest work--if they can
recognize these honest men, and trust them when they are so
recognized--then they may become as great in politics as they have
become great in commerce and in social institutions.

St. Louis, and indeed the whole State of Missouri, was at the time
of my visit under martial law.  General Halleck was in command,
holding his headquarters at St. Louis, and carrying out, at any rate
as far as the city was concerned, what orders he chose to issue.  I
am disposed to think that, situated as Missouri then was, martial
law was the best law.  No other law could have had force in a town
surrounded by soldiers, and in which half of the inhabitants were
loyal to the existing government and half of them were in favor of
rebellion.  The necessity for such power is terrible, and the power
itself in the hands of one man must be full of danger; but even that
is better than anarchy.  I will not accuse General Halleck of
abusing his power, seeing that it is hard to determine what is the
abuse of such power and what its proper use.  When we were at St.
Louis a tax was being gathered of 100l. a head from certain men
presumed to be secessionists; and, as the money was not of course
very readily paid, the furniture of these suspected secessionists
was being sold by auction.  No doubt such a measure was by them
regarded as a great abuse.  One gentleman informed me that, in
addition to this, certain houses of his had been taken by the
government at a fixed rent, and that the payment of the rent was now
refused unless he would take the oath of allegiance.  He no doubt
thought that an abuse of power!  But the worst abuse of such power
comes not at first, but with long usage.

Up to the time, however, at which I was at St. Louis, martial law
had chiefly been used in closing grog-shops and administering the
oath of allegiance to suspected secessionists.  Something also had
been done in the way of raising money by selling the property of
convicted secessionists; and while I was there eight men were
condemned to be shot for destroying railway bridges.  "But will they
be shot?" I asked of one of the officers.  "Oh, yes.  It will be
done quietly, and no one will know anything about it; we shall get
used to that kind of thing presently."  And the inhabitants of
Missouri were becoming used to martial law.  It is surprising how
quickly a people can reconcile themselves to altered circumstances,
when the change comes upon them without the necessity of any
expressed opinion on their own part.  Personal freedom has been
considered as necessary to the American of the States as the air he
breathes.  Had any suggestion been made to him of a suspension of
the privilege of habeas corpus, of a censorship of the press, or of
martial law, the American would have declared his willingness to die
on the floor of the House of Representatives, and have proclaimed
with ten million voices his inability to live under circumstances so
subversive of his rights as a man.  And he would have thoroughly
believed the truth of his own assertions.  Had a chance been given
of an argument on the matter, of stump speeches and caucus meetings,
these things could never have been done.  But as it is, Americans
are, I think, rather proud of the suspension of the habeas corpus.
They point with gratification to the uniformly loyal tone of the
newspapers, remarking that any editor who should dare to give even a
secession squeak would immediately find himself shut up.  And now
nothing but good is spoken of martial law.  I thought it a nuisance
when I was prevented by soldiers from trotting my horse down
Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington; but I was assured by Americans
that such restrictions were very serviceable in a community.  At St.
Louis martial law was quite popular.  Why should not General Halleck
be as well able to say what was good for the people as any law or
any lawyer?  He had no interest in the injury of the State, but
every interest in its preservation.  "But what," I asked, "would be
the effect were he to tell you to put all your fires out at eight
o'clock?"  "If he were so to order, we should do it; but we know
that he will not."  But who does know to what General Halleck or
other generals may come, or how soon a curfew-bell may be ringing in
American towns?  The winning of liberty is long and tedious; but the
losing it is a down-hill, easy journey.

It was here, in St. Louis, that General Fremont held his military
court.  He was a great man here during those hundred days through
which his command lasted.  He lived in a great house, had a body-
guard, was inaccessible as a great man should be, and fared
sumptuously every day.  He fortified the city--or rather, he began
to do so.  He constructed barracks here, and instituted military
prisons.  The fortifications have been discontinued as useless, but
the barracks and the prisons remain.  In the latter there were 1200
secessionist soldiers who had been taken in the State of Missouri.
"Why are they not exchanged?" I asked.  "Because they are not
exactly soldiers," I was informed.  "The secessionists do not
acknowledge them."  "Then would it not be cheaper to let them go?"
"No," said my informant; "because in that case we would have to
catch them again."  And so the 1200 remain in their wretched prison--
thinned from week to week and from day to day by prison disease and
prison death.

I went out twice to Benton Barracks, as the camp of wooden huts was
called, which General Fremont had erected near the fair-ground of
the city.  This fair-ground, I was told, had been a pleasant place.
It had been constructed for the recreation of the city, and for the
purpose of periodical agricultural exhibitions.  There is still in
it a pretty ornamented cottage, and in the little garden a solitary
Cupid stood, dismayed by the dirt and ruin around him.  In the fair-
green are the round buildings intended for show cattle and
agricultural implements, but now given up to cavalry horses and
Parrott guns.  But Benton Barracks are outside the fair-green.  Here
on an open space, some half mile in length, two long rows of wooden
sheds have been built, opposite to each other, and behind them are
other sheds used for stabling and cooking places.  Those in front
are divided, not into separate huts, but into chambers capable of
containing nearly two hundred men each.  They were surrounded on the
inside by great wooden trays, in three tiers--and on each tray four
men were supposed to sleep.  I went into one or two while the crowd
of soldiers was in them, but found it inexpedient to stay there
long.  The stench of those places was foul beyond description.
Never in my life before had I been in a place so horrid to the eyes
and nose as Benton Barracks.  The path along the front outside was
deep in mud.  The whole space between the two rows of sheds was one
field of mud, so slippery that the foot could not stand.  Inside and
outside every spot was deep in mud.  The soldiers were mud-stained
from foot to sole.  These volunteer soldiers are in their nature
dirty, as must be all men brought together in numerous bodies
without special appliances for cleanliness, or control and
discipline as to their personal habits.  But the dirt of the men in
the Benton Barracks surpassed any dirt that I had hitherto seen.
Nor could it have been otherwise with them.  They were surrounded by
a sea of mud, and the foul hovels in which they were made to sleep
and live were fetid with stench and reeking with filth.  I had at
this time been joined by another Englishman, and we went through
this place together.  When we inquired as to the health of the men,
we heard the saddest tales--of three hundred men gone out of one
regiment, of whole companies that had perished, of hospitals crowded
with fevered patients.  Measles had been the great scourge of the
soldiers here--as it had also been in the army of the Potomac.  I
shall not soon forget my visits to Benton Barracks.  It may be that
our own soldiers were as badly treated in the Crimea; or that French
soldiers were treated worse in their march into Russia.  It may be
that dirt and wretchedness, disease and listless idleness, a descent
from manhood to habits lower than those of the beasts, are necessary
in warfare.  I have sometimes thought that it is so; but I am no
military critic, and will not say.  This I say--that the degradation
of men to the state in which I saw the American soldiers in Benton
Barracks is disgraceful to humanity.

General Halleck was at this time commanding in Missouri, and was
himself stationed at St. Louis; but his active measures against the
rebels were going on to the right and to the left.  On the left
shore of the Mississippi, at Cairo, in Illinois, a fleet of gun-
boats was being prepared to go down the river, and on the right an
army was advancing against Springfield, in the southwestern district
of Missouri, with the object of dislodging Price, the rebel
guerrilla leader there, and, if possible, of catching him.  Price
had been the opponent of poor General Lyons, who was killed at
Wilson's Creek, near Springfield, and of General Fremont, who during
his hundred days had failed to drive him out of the State.  This
duty had now been intrusted to General Curtis, who had for some time
been holding his headquarters at Rolla, half way between St. Louis
and Springfield.  Fremont had built a fort at Rolla, and it had
become a military station.  Over 10,000 men had been there at one
time, and now General Curtis was to advance from Rolla against Price
with something above that number of men.  Many of them, however, had
already gone on, and others were daily being sent up from St. Louis.
Under these circumstances my friend and I, fortified with a letter
of introduction to General Curtis, resolved to go and see the army
at Rolla.

On our way down by the railway we encountered a young German
officer, an aide-de-camp of the Federals, and under his auspices we
saw Rolla to advantage.  Our companions in the railway were chiefly
soldiers and teamsters.  The car was crowded, and filled with
tobacco smoke, apple peel, and foul air.  In these cars during the
winter there is always a large lighted stove, a stove that might
cook all the dinners for a French hotel, and no window is ever
opened.  Among our fellow-travelers there was here and there a west-
country Missouri farmer going down, under the protection of the
advancing army, to look after the remains of his chattels--wild,
dark, uncouth, savage-looking men.  One such hero I specially
remember, as to whom the only natural remark would be that one would
not like to meet him alone on a dark night.  He was burly and big,
unwashed and rough, with a black beard, shorn some two months since.
He had sharp, angry eyes, and sat silent, picking his teeth with a
bowie knife.  I met him afterward at the Rolla Hotel, and found that
he was a gentleman of property near Springfield.  He was mild and
meek as a sucking dove, asked my advice as to the state of his
affairs, and merely guessed that things had been pretty rough with
him.  Things had been pretty rough with him.  The rebels had come
upon his land.  House, fences, stock, and crop were all gone.  His
homestead had been made a ruin, and his farm had been turned into a
wilderness.  Everything was gone.  He had carried his wife and
children off to Illinois, and had now returned, hoping that he might
get on in the wake of the army till he could see the debris of his
property.  But even he did not seem disturbed.  He did not bemoan
himself or curse his fate.  "Things were pretty rough," he said; and
that was all that he did say.

It was dark when we got into Rolla.  Everything had been covered
with snow, and everywhere the snow was frozen.  We had heard that
there was a hotel, and that possibly we might get a bed-room there.
We were first taken to a wooden building, which we were told was the
headquarters of the army, and in one room we found a colonel with a
lot of soldiers loafing about, and in another a provost martial
attended by a newspaper correspondent.  We were received with open
arms, and a suggestion was at once made that we were no doubt
picking up news for European newspapers.  "Air you a son of the Mrs.
Trollope?" said the correspondent.  "Then, sir, you are an accession
to Rolla."  Upon which I was made to sit down, and invited to "loaf
about" at the headquarters as long as I might remain at Rolla.
Shortly, however, there came on a violent discussion about wagons.
A general had come in and wanted all the colonel's wagons, but the
colonel swore that he had none, declared how bitterly he was impeded
with sick men, and became indignant and reproachful.  It was Brutus
and Cassius again; and as we felt ourselves in the way, and anxious
moreover to ascertain what might be the nature of the Rolla hotel,
we took up our heavy portmanteaus--for they were heavy--and with a
guide to show us the way, started off through the dark and over the
hill up to our inn.  I shall never forget that walk.  It was up hill
and down hill, with an occasional half-frozen stream across it.  My
friend was impeded with an enormous cloak lined with fur, which in
itself was a burden for a coalheaver.  Our guide, who was a clerk
out of the colonel's office, carried an umbrella and a small
dressing-bag, but we ourselves manfully shouldered our portmanteaus.
Sydney Smith declared that an Englishman only wasted his time in
training himself for gymnastic aptitudes, seeing that for a shilling
he could always hire a porter.  Had Sydney Smith ever been at Rolla
he would have written differently.  I could tell at great length how
I fell on my face in the icy snow, how my friend stuck in the frozen
mud when he essayed to jump the stream, and how our guide walked on
easily in advance, encouraging us with his voice from a distance.
Why is it that a stout Englishman bordering on fifty finds himself
in such a predicament as that?  No Frenchman, no Italian, no German
would so place himself, unless under the stress of insurmountable
circumstances.  No American would do so under any circumstances.  As
I slipped about on the ice and groaned with that terrible fardle on
my back, burdened with a dozen shirts, and a suit of dress clothes,
and three pair of boots, and four or five thick volumes, and a set
of maps, and a box of cigars, and a washing tub, I confessed to
myself that I was a fool.  What was I doing in such a galley as
that?  Why had I brought all that useless lumber down to Rolla?  Why
had I come to Rolla, with no certain hope even of shelter for a
night?  But we did reach the hotel; we did get a room between us
with two bedsteads.  And pondering over the matter in my mind, since
that evening, I have been inclined to think that the stout
Englishman is in the right of it.  No American of my age and weight
will ever go through what I went through then, but I am not sure
that he does not in his accustomed career go through worse things
even than that.  However, if I go to Rolla again during the war, I
will at any rate leave the books behind me.

What a night we spent in that inn!  They who know America will be
aware that in all hotels there is a free admixture of different
classes.  The traveler in Europe may sit down to dinner with his
tailor and shoemaker; but if so, his tailor and shoemaker have
dressed themselves as he dresses, and are prepared to carry
themselves according to a certain standard, which in exterior does
not differ from his own.  In the large Eastern cities of the States,
such as Boston, New York, and Washington, a similar practice of life
is gradually becoming prevalent.  There are various hotels for
various classes, and the ordinary traveler does not find himself at
the same table with a butcher fresh from the shambles.  But in the
West there are no distinctions whatever.  A man's a man for a' that
in the West, let the "a' that" comprise what it may of coarse attire
and unsophisticated manners.  One soon gets used to it.  In that inn
at Rolla was a public room, heated in the middle by a stove, and
round that we soon found ourselves seated in a company of soldiers,
farmers, laborers, and teamsters.  But there was among them a
general; not a fighting, or would-be fighting general of the present
time, but one of the old-fashioned local generals,--men who held, or
had once held, some fabulous generalship in the State militia.
There we sat, cheek by jowl with our new friends, till nearly twelve
o'clock, talking politics and discussing the war.  The general was a
stanch Unionist, having, according to his own showing, suffered
dreadful things from secessionist persecutors since the rebellion
commenced.  As a matter of course everybody present was for the
Union.  In such a place one rarely encounters any difference of
opinion.  The general was very eager about the war, advocating the
immediate abolition of slavery, not as a means of improving the
condition of the Southern slaves, but on the ground that it would
ruin the Southern masters.  We all sat by, edging in a word now and
then, but the general was the talker of the evening.  He was very
wrathy, and swore at every other word.  "It was pretty well time,"
he said, "to crush out this rebellion, and by ---- it must and
should be crushed out; General Jim Lane was the man to do it, and by
---- General Jim Lane would do it!" and so on.  In all such
conversations the time for action has always just come, and also the
expected man.  But the time passes by as other weeks and months have
passed before it, and the new general is found to be no more
successful than his brethren.  Our friend was very angry against
England.  "When we've polished off these accursed rebels, I guess
we'll take a turn at you.  You had your turn when you made us give
up Mason and Slidell, and we'll have our turn by-and-by."  But in
spite of his dislike to our nation he invited us warmly to come and
see him at his home on the Missouri River.  It was, according to his
showing, a new Eden, a Paradise upon earth.  He seemed to think that
we might perhaps desire to buy a location, and explained to us how
readily we could make our fortunes.  But he admitted in the course
of his eulogiums that it would be as much as his life was worth to
him to ride out five miles from his own house.  In the mean time the
teamsters greased their boots, the soldiers snored, those who were
wet took off their shoes and stockings, hanging them to dry round
the stove, and the Western farmers chewed tobacco in silence, and
ruminated.  At such a house all the guests go in to their meals
together.  A gong is sounded on a sudden, close behind your ears;
accustomed as you may probably be to the sound, you jump up from
your chair in the agony of the crash, and by the time that you have
collected your thoughts the whole crowd is off in a general stampede
into the eating-room.  You may as well join them; if you hesitate as
to feeding with so rough a lot of men, you will have to set down
afterward with the women and children of the family, and your lot
will then be worse.  Among such classes in the Western States the
men are always better than the women.  The men are dirty and civil,
the women are dirty and uncivil.

On the following day we visited the camp, going out in an ambulance
and returning on horseback.  We were accompanied by the general's
aid-de-camp, and also, to our great gratification, by the general's
daughter.  There had been a hard frost for some nights, but though
the cold was very great there was always heat enough in the middle
of the day to turn the surface of the ground into glutinous mud;
consequently we had all the roughness induced by frost, but none of
the usually attendant cleanliness.  Indeed, it seemed that in these
parts nothing was so dirty as frost.  The mud stuck like paste and
encompassed everything.  We heard that morning that from sixty to
seventy baggage wagons had "broken through," as they called it, and
stuck fast near a river, in their endeavor to make their way on to
Lebanon.  We encountered two generals of brigade, General Siegel, a
German, and General Ashboth, a Hungarian, both of whom were waiting
till the weather should allow them to advance.  They were extremely
courteous, and warmly invited us to go on with them to Lebanon and
Springfield, promising to us such accommodation as they might be
able to obtain for themselves.  I was much tempted to accept the
offer; but I found that day after day might pass before any forward
movement was commenced, and that it might be weeks before
Springfield or even Lebanon could be reached.  It was my wish,
moreover, to see what I could of the people, rather than to
scrutinize the ways of the army.  We dined at the tent of General
Ashboth, and afterward rode his horses through the camp back to
Rolla, I was greatly taken with this Hungarian gentleman.  He was a
tall, thin, gaunt man of fifty, a pure-blooded Magyar a I was told,
who had come from his own country with Kossuth to America.  His camp
circumstances were not very luxurious, nor was his table very richly
spread; but he received us with the ease and courtesy of a
gentleman.  He showed us his sword, his rifle, his pistols, his
chargers, and daguerreotype of a friend he had loved in his own
country.  They were all the treasures that he carried with him--over
and above a chess-board and a set of chessmen, which sorely tempted
me to accompany him in his march.

In my next chapter, which will, I trust, be very short, I purport to
say a few words as to what I saw of the American army, and therefore
I will not now describe the regiments which we visited.  The tents
were all encompassed by snow, and the ground on which they stood was
a bed of mud; but yet the soldiers out here were not so wretchedly
forlorn, or apparently so miserably uncomfortable, as those at
Benton Barracks.  I did not encounter that horrid sickly stench, nor
were the men so pale and woe-begone.  On the following day we
returned to St. Louis, bringing back with us our friend the German
aid-de-camp.  I stayed two days longer in that city, and then I
thought that I had seen enough of Missouri; enough of Missouri at
any rate under the present circumstances of frost and secession.  As
regards the people of the West, I must say that they were not such
as I expected to find them.  With the Northerns we are all more or
less intimately acquainted.  Those Americans whom we meet in our own
country, or on the continent, are generally from the North, or if
not so they have that type of American manners which has become
familiar to us.  They are talkative, intelligent, inclined to be
social, though frequently not sympathetically social with ourselves;
somewhat soi-disant, but almost invariably companionable.  As the
traveler goes southward into Maryland and Washington, the type is
not altered to any great extent.  The hard intelligence of the
Yankee gives place gradually to the softer, and perhaps more
polished, manner of the Southern.  But the change thus experienced
is not great as is that between the American of the Western and the
American of the Atlantic States.  In the West I found the men gloomy
and silent--I might almost say sullen.  A dozen of them will sit for
hours round a stove, speechless.  They chew tobacco and ruminate.
They are not offended if you speak to them, but they are not
pleased.  They answer with monosyllables, or, if it be practicable,
with a gesture of the head.  They care nothing for the graces or--
shall I say--for the decencies of life.  They are essentially a
dirty people.  Dirt, untidiness, and noise seem in nowise to afflict
them.  Things are constantly done before your eyes which should be
done and might be done behind your back.  No doubt we daily come
into the closest contact with matters which, if we saw all that
appertains to them, would cause us to shake and shudder.  In other
countries we do not see all this, but in the Western States we do.
I have eaten in Bedouin tents, and have been ministered to by Turks
and Arabs.  I have sojourned in the hotels of old Spain and of
Spanish America.  I have lived in Connaught, and have taken up my
quarters with monks of different nations.  I have, as it were, been
educated to dirt, and taken out my degree in outward abominations.
But my education had not reached a point which would enable me to
live at my ease in the Western States.  A man or woman who can do
that may be said to have graduated in the highest honors, and to
have become absolutely invulnerable, either through the sense of
touch, or by the eye, or by the nose.  Indifference to appearances
is there a matter of pride.  A foul shirt is a flag of triumph.  A
craving for soap and water is as the wail of the weak and the
confession of cowardice.  This indifference is carried into all
their affairs, or rather this manifestation of indifference.  A few
pages back, I spoke of a man whose furniture had been sold to pay a
heavy tax raised on him specially as a secessionist; the same man
had also been refused the payment of rent due to him by the
government, unless he would take a false oath.  I may presume that
he was ruined in his circumstances by the strong hand of the
Northern army.  But he seemed in no wise to be unhappy about his
ruin.  He spoke with some scorn of the martial law in Missouri, but
I felt that it was esteemed a small matter by him that his furniture
was seized and sold.  No men love money with more eager love than
these Western men, but they bear the loss of it as an Indian bears
his torture at the stake.  They are energetic in trade, speculating
deeply whenever speculation is possible; but nevertheless they are
slow in motion, loving to loaf about.  They are slow in speech,
preferring to sit in silence, with the tobacco between their teeth.
They drink, but are seldom drunk to the eye; they begin at it early
in the morning, and take it in a solemn, sullen, ugly manner,
standing always at a bar; swallowing their spirits, and saying
nothing as they swallow it.  They drink often, and to great excess;
but they carry it off without noise, sitting down and ruminating
over it with the everlasting cud within their jaws.  I believe that
a stranger might go into the West, and passing from hotel to hotel
through a dozen of them, might sit for hours at each in the large
everlasting public hall, and never have a word addressed to him.  No
stranger should travel in the Western States, or indeed in any of
the States, without letters of introduction.  It is the custom of
the country, and they are easily procured.  Without them everything
is barren; for men do not travel in the States of America as they do
in Europe, to see scenery and visit the marvels of old cities which
are open to all the world.  The social and political life of the
American must constitute the interest of the traveler, and to these
he can hardly make his way without introductions.

I cannot part with the West without saying, in its favor, that there
is a certain manliness about its men which gives them a dignity of
their own.  It is shown in that very indifference of which I have
spoken.  Whatever turns up, the man is still there; still
unsophisticated and still unbroken.  It has seemed to me that no
race of men requires less outward assistance than these pioneers of
civilization.  They rarely amuse themselves.  Food, newspapers, and
brandy smashes suffice for life; and while these last, whatever may
occur, the man is still there in his manhood.  The fury of the mob
does not shake him, nor the stern countenance of his present martial
tyrant.  Alas! I cannot stick to my text by calling him a just man.
Intelligence, energy, and endurance are his virtues.  Dirt,
dishonesty, and morning drinks are his vices.

All native American women are intelligent.  It seems to be their
birthright.  In the Eastern cities they have, in their upper
classes, superadded womanly grace to this intelligence, and
consequently they are charming as companions.  They are beautiful
also, and, as I believe, lack nothing that a lover can desire in his
love.  But I cannot fancy myself much in love with a Western lady,
or rather with a lady in the West.  They are as sharp as nails, but
then they are also as hard.  They know, doubtless, all that they
ought to know, but then they know so much more than they ought to
know.  They are tyrants to their parents, and never practice the
virtue of obedience till they have half-grownup daughters of their
own.  They have faith in the destiny of their country, if in nothing
else; but they believe that that destiny is to be worked out by the
spirit and talent of the young women.  I confess that for me Eve
would have had no charms had she not recognized Adam as her lord.  I
can forgive her in that she tempted him to eat the apple.  Had she
come from the West country, she would have ordered him to make his
meal, and then I could not have forgiven her.

St. Louis should be, and still will be, a town of great wealth.  To
no city can have been given more means of riches.  I have spoken of
the enormous mileage of water communication of which she is the
center.  The country around her produces Indian-corn, wheat,
grasses, hemp, and tobacco.  Coal is dug even within the boundaries
of the city, and iron mines are worked at a distance from it of a
hundred miles.  The iron is so pure that it is broken off in solid
blocks, almost free from alloy; and as the metal stands up on the
earth's surface in the guise almost of a gigantic metal pillar,
instead of lying low within its bowels, it is worked at a cheap
rate, and with great certainty.  Nevertheless, at the present
moment, the iron works of Pilot Knob, as the place is called, do not
pay.  As far as I could learn, nothing did pay, except government
contracts.



CHAPTER VI

CAIRO AND CAMP WOOD.


To whatever period of life my days may be prolonged, I do not think
that I shall ever forget Cairo.  I do not mean Grand Cairo, which is
also memorable in its way, and a place not to be forgotten, but
Cairo in the State of Illinois, which by native Americans is always
called Caaro.  An idea is prevalent in the States--and I think I
have heard the same broached in England--that a popular British
author had Cairo, State of Illinois, in his eye when, under the name
of Eden, he depicted a chosen, happy spot on the Mississippi River,
and told us how certain English immigrants fixed themselves in that
locality, and there made light of those little ills of life which
are incident to humanity even in the garden of the valley of the
Mississippi.  But I doubt whether that author ever visited Cairo in
midwinter, and I am sure that he never visited Cairo when Cairo was
the seat of an American army.  Had he done so, his love of truth
would have forbidden him to presume that even Mark Tapley could have
enjoyed himself in such an Eden.

I had no wish myself to go to Cairo, having heard it but
indifferently spoken of by all men; but my friend with whom I was
traveling was peremptory in the matter.  He had heard of gun-boats
and mortar-boats, of forts built upon the river, of Columbiads,
Dahlgrens, and Parrotts, of all the pomps and circumstance of
glorious war, and entertained an idea that Cairo was the nucleus or
pivot of all really strategetic movements in this terrible national
struggle.  Under such circumstances I was as it were forced to go to
Cairo, and bore myself, under the circumstances, as much like Mark
Tapley as my nature would permit.  I was not jolly while I was there
certainly, but I did not absolutely break down and perish in its
mud.

Cairo is the southern terminus of the Illinois Central Railway.
There is but one daily arrival there, namely, at half-past four in
the morning; and but one dispatch, which is at half-past three in
the morning.  Everything is thus done to assist that view of life
which Mark Tapley took when he resolved to ascertain under what
possible worst circumstances of existence he could still maintain
his jovial character.  Why anybody should ever arrive at Cairo at
half-past four A.M., I cannot understand.  The departure at any hour
is easy of comprehension.  The place is situated exactly at the
point at which the Ohio and the Mississippi meet, and is, I should
say--merely guessing on the matter--some ten or twelve feet lower
than the winter level of the two rivers.  This gives it naturally a
depressed appearance, which must have much aided Mark Tapley in his
endeavors.  Who were the founders of Cairo I have never ascertained.
They are probably buried fathoms deep in the mud, and their names
will no doubt remain a mystery to the latest ages.  They were
brought thither, I presume, by the apparent water privileges of the
place; but the water privileges have been too much for them, and by
the excess of their powers have succeeded in drowning all the
capital of the early Cairovians, and in throwing a wet blanket of
thick, moist, glutinous dirt over all their energies.

The free State of Illinois runs down far south between the slave
States of Kentucky to the east, and of Missouri to the west, and is
the most southern point of the continuous free-soil territory of the
Northern States.  This point of it is a part of a district called
Egypt, which is as fertile as the old country from whence it has
borrowed a name; but it suffers under those afflictions which are
common to all newly-settled lands which owe their fertility to the
vicinity of great rivers.  Fever and ague universally prevail.  Men
and women grow up with their lantern faces like specters.  The
children are prematurely old; and the earth, which is so fruitful,
is hideous in its fertility.  Cairo and its immediate neighborhood
must, I suppose, have been subject to yearly inundation before it
was "settled up."  At present it is guarded on the shores of each
river by high mud banks, built so as to protect the point of land.
These are called the levees, and do perform their duty by keeping
out the body of the waters.  The shore between the banks is, I
believe, never above breast-deep with the inundation; and from the
circumstances of the place, and the soft, half-liquid nature of the
soil, this inundation generally takes the shape of mud instead of
water.

Here, at the very point, has been built a town.  Whether the town
existed during Mr. Tapley's time I have not been able to learn.  At
the period of my visit it was falling quickly into ruin; indeed, I
think I may pronounce it to have been on its last legs.  At that
moment a galvanic motion had been pumped into it by the war
movements of General Halleck; but the true bearings of the town, as
a town, were not less plainly to be read on that account.  Every
street was absolutely impassable from mud.  I mean that in walking
down the middle of any street in Cairo, a moderately-framed man
would soon stick fast, and not be able to move.  The houses are
generally built at considerable intervals, and rarely face each
other; and along one side of each street a plank boarding was laid,
on which the mud had accumulated only up to one's ankles.  I walked
all over Cairo with big boots, and with my trowsers tucked up to my
knees; but at the crossings I found considerable danger, and
occasionally had my doubts as to the possibility of progress.  I was
alone in my work, and saw no one else making any such attempt.  But
few only were moving about, and they moved in wretched carts, each
drawn by two miserable, floundering horses.  These carts were always
empty, but were presumed to be engaged in some way on military
service.  No faces looked out at the windows of the houses, no forms
stood in the doorways.  A few shops were open, but only in the
drinking-shops did I see customers.  In these, silent, muddy men
were sitting, not with drink before them, as men sit with us, but
with the cud within their jaws, ruminating.  Their drinking is
always done on foot.  They stand silent at a bar, with two small
glasses before them.  Out of one they swallow the whisky, and from
the other they take a gulp of water, as though to rinse their
mouths.  After that, they again sit down and ruminate.  It was thus
that men enjoyed themselves at Cairo.

I cannot tell what was the existing population of Cairo.  I asked
one resident; but he only shook his head and said that the place was
about "played out."  And a miserable play it must have been.  I
tried to walk round the point on the levees, but I found that the
mud was so deep and slippery on that which protected the town from
the Mississippi that I could not move on it.  On the other, which
forms the bank of the Ohio, the railway runs, and here was gathered
all the life and movement of the place.  But the life was galvanic
in its nature, created by a war galvanism of which the shocks were
almost neutralized by mud.

As Cairo is of all towns in America the most desolate, so is its
hotel the most forlorn and wretched.  Not that it lacked custom.  It
was so full that no room was to be had on our first entry from the
railway cars at five A.M., and we were reduced to the necessity of
washing our hands and faces in the public wash-room.  When I entered
it the barber and his assistants were asleep there, and four or five
citizens from the railway were busy at the basins.  There is a fixed
resolution in these places that you shall be drenched with dirt and
drowned in abominations, which is overpowering to a mind less strong
than Mark Tapley's.  The filth is paraded and made to go as far as
possible.  The stranger is spared none of the elements of nastiness.
I remember how an old woman once stood over me in my youth, forcing
me to swallow the gritty dregs of her terrible medicine cup.  The
treatment I received in the hotel at Cairo reminded me of that old
woman.  In that room I did not dare to brush my teeth lest I should
give offense; and I saw at once that I was regarded with suspicion
when I used my own comb instead of that provided for the public.

At length we got a room, one room for the two.  I had become so
depressed in spirits that I did not dare to object to this
arrangement.  My friend could not complain much, even to me, feeling
that these miseries had been produced by his own obstinacy.  "It is
a new phase of life," he said.  That at any rate was true.  If
nothing more be necessary for pleasurable excitement than a new
phase of life, I would recommend all who require pleasurable
excitement to go to Cairo.  They will certainly find a new phase of
life.  But do not let them remain too long, or they may find
something beyond a new phase of life.  Within a week of that time my
friend was taking quinine, looking hollow about the eyes, and
whispering to me of fever and ague.  To say that there was nothing
eatable or drinkable in that hotel, would be to tell that which will
be understood without telling.  My friend, however, was a cautious
man, carrying with him comfortable tin pots, hermetically sealed,
from Fortnum & Mason's; and on the second day of our sojourn we were
invited by two officers to join their dinner at a Cairo eating-
house.  We plowed our way gallantly through the mud to a little
shanty, at the door of which we were peremptorily commanded by the
landlord to scrub ourselves, before we entered, with the stump of an
old broom.  This we did, producing on our nether persons the
appearance of bread which has been carefully spread with treacle by
an economic housekeeper.  And the proprietor was right, for had we
not done so, the treacle would have run off through the whole house.
But after this we fared royally.  Squirrel soup and prairie chickens
regaled us.  One of our new friends had laden his pockets with
champagne and brandy; the other with glasses and a corkscrew; and as
the bottle went round, I began to feel something of the spirit of
Mark Tapley in my soul.

But our visit to Cairo had been made rather with reference to its
present warlike character than with any eye to the natural beauties
of the place.  A large force of men had been collected there, and
also a fleet of gun-boats.  We had come there fortified with letters
to generals and commodores, and were prepared to go through a large
amount of military inspection.  But the bird had flown before our
arrival; or rather the body and wings of the bird, leaving behind
only a draggled tail and a few of its feathers.  There were only a
thousand soldiers at Cairo when we were there--that is, a thousand
stationed in the Cairo sheds.  Two regiments passed through the
place during the time, getting out of one steamer on to another, or
passing from the railway into boats.  One of these regiments passed
before me down the slope of the river bank, and the men as a body
seemed to be healthy.  Very many were drunk, and all were mud-
clogged up to their shoulders and very caps.  In other respects they
appeared to be in good order.  It must be understood that these
soldiers, the volunteers, had never been made subject to any
discipline as to cleanliness.  They wore their hair long.  Their
hats or caps, though all made in some military form and with some
military appendance, were various and ill assorted.  They all were
covered with loose, thick, blue-gray great-coats, which no doubt
were warm and wholesome, but which from their looseness and color
seemed to be peculiarly susceptible of receiving and showing a very
large amount of mud.  Their boots were always good; but each man was
shod as he liked.  Many wore heavy overboots coming up the leg--
boots of excellent manufacture, and from their cost, if for no other
reason, quite out of the reach of an English soldier--boots in which
a man would be not at all unfortunate to find himself hunting; but
from these, or from their high-lows, shoes, or whatever they might
wear, the mud had never been even scraped.  These men were all
warmly clothed, but clothed apparently with an endeavor to contract
as much mud as might be possible.

The generals and commodores were gone up the Ohio River and up the
Tennessee in an expedition with gunboats, which turned out to be
successful, and of which we have all read in the daily history of
this war.  They had departed the day before our arrival; and though
we still found at Cairo a squadron of gun-boats--if gun-boats go in
squadrons--the bulk of the army had been moved.  There were left
there one regiment and one colonel, who kindly described to us the
battles he had fought, and gave us permission to see everything that
was to be seen.  Four of these gun-boats were still lying in the
Ohio, close under the terminus of the railway, with their flat, ugly
noses against the muddy bank; and we were shown over two of them.
They certainly seemed to be formidable weapons for river warfare,
and to have been "got up quite irrespective of expense."  So much,
indeed, may be said for the Americans throughout the war.  They
cannot be accused of parsimony.  The largest of these vessels,
called the "Benton," had cost 36,000l.  These boats are made with
sides sloping inward at an angle of forty-five degrees.  The iron is
two and a half inches thick, and it has not, I believe, been
calculated that this will resist cannon-shot of great weight, should
it be struck in a direct line.  But the angle of the sides of the
boat makes it improbable that any such shot should strike them; and
the iron, bedded as it is upon oak, is supposed to be sufficient to
turn a shot that does not hit it in a direct line.  The boats are
also roofed in with iron; and the pilots who steer the vessel stand
incased, as it were, under an iron cupola.  I imagine that these
boats are well calculated for the river service, for which they have
been built.  Six or seven of them had gone up the Tennessee River
the day before we reached Cairo; and while we were there they
succeeded in knocking down Fort Henry, and in carrying off the
soldiers stationed there and the officer in command.  One of the
boats, however, had been penetrated by a shot, which made its way
into the boiler; and the men on deck--six, I think, in number--were
scalded to death by the escaping steam.  The two pilots up in the
cupola were destroyed in this terrible manner.  As they were
altogether closed in by the iron roof and sides, there was no escape
for the steam.  The boats, however, were well made and very
powerfully armed, and will probably succeed in driving the
secessionist armies away from the great river banks.  By what
machinery the secessionist armies are to be followed into the
interior is altogether another question.

But there was also another fleet at Cairo, and we were informed that
we were just in time to see the first essay made at testing the
utility of this armada.  It consisted of no less than thirty-eight
mortar-boats, each of which had cost 1700l.  These mortar-boats were
broad, flat-bottomed rafts, each constructed with a deck raised
three feet above the bottom.  They were protected by high iron sides
supposed to be proof against rifle-balls, and, when supplied, had
been furnished each with a little boat, a rope, and four rough
sweeps or oars.  They had no other furniture or belongings, and were
to be moved either by steam-tugs or by the use of the long oars
which were sent with them.  It was intended that one 13-inch mortar,
of enormous weight, should be put upon each; that these mortars
should be fired with twenty-three pounds of powder; and that the
shell thrown should, at a distance of three miles, fall with
absolute precision into any devoted town which the rebels might hold
the river banks.  The grandeur of the idea is almost sublime.  So
large an amount of powder had, I imagine, never then been used for
the single charge in any instrument of war; and when we were told
that thirty-eight of them were to play at once on a city, and that
they could be used with absolute precision, it seemed as though the
fate of Sodom and Gomorrah could not be worse than the fate of that
city.  Could any city be safe when such implements of war were about
upon the waters?

But when we came to inspect the mortar-boats, our misgivings as to
any future destination for this fleet were relieved; and our
admiration was given to the smartness of the contractor who had
secured to himself the job of building them.  In the first place,
they had all leaked till the spaces between the bottoms and the
decks were filled with water.  This space had been intended for
ammunition, but now seemed hardly to be fitted for that purpose.
The officer who was about to test them, by putting a mortar into one
and by firing it off with twenty-three pounds of powder, had the
water pumped out of a selected raft; and we were towed by a steam-
tug, from their moorings a mile up the river, down to the spot where
the mortar lay ready to be lifted in by a derrick.  But as we turned
on the river, the tug-boat which had brought us down was unable to
hold us up against the force of the stream.  A second tug-boat was
at hand; and, with one on each side, we were just able in half an
hour to recover the hundred yards which we had lost down the river.
The pressure against the stream was so great, owing partly to the
weight of the raft and partly to the fact that its flat head buried
itself in the water, that it was almost immovable against the
stream, although the mortar was not yet on it.

It soon became manifest that no trial could be made on that day, and
so we were obliged to leave Cairo without having witnessed the
firing of the great gun.  My belief is that very little evil to the
enemy will result from those mortar-boats, and that they cannot be
used with much effect.  Since that time they have been used on the
Mississippi, but as yet we do not know with what results.  Island
No. 10 has been taken; but I do not know that the mortar-boats
contributed much to that success.  But the enormous cost of moving
them against the stream of the river is in itself a barrier to their
use.  When we saw them--and then they were quite new--many of the
rivets were already gone.  The small boats had been stolen from some
of them, and the ropes and oars from others.  There they lay,
thirty-eight in number, up against the mud banks of the Ohio, under
the boughs of the half-clad, melancholy forest trees, as sad a
spectacle of reckless prodigality as the eye ever beheld.  But the
contractor who made them no doubt was a smart man.

This armada was moored on the Ohio, against the low, reedy bank, a
mile above the levee, where the old, unchanged forest of nature came
down to the very edge of the river, and mixed itself with the
shallow, overflowing waters.  I am wrong in saying that it lay under
the boughs of the trees, for such trees do not spread themselves out
with broad branches.  They stand thickly together, broken, stunted,
spongy with rot, straight, and ugly, with ragged tops and shattered
arms, seemingly decayed, but still ever renewing themselves with the
rapid, moist life of luxuriant forest vegetation.  Nothing to my
eyes is sadder than the monotonous desolation of such scenery.  We
in England, when we read and speak of the primeval forests of
America, are apt to form pictures in our minds of woodland glades,
with spreading oaks, and green, mossy turf beneath--of scenes than
which nothing that God has given us is more charming.  But these
forests are not after that fashion; they offer no allurement to the
lover, no solace to the melancholy man of thought.  The ground is
deep with mud or overflown with water.  The soil and the river have
no defined margins.  Each tree, though full of the forms of life,
has all the appearance of death.  Even to the outward eye they seem
to be laden with ague, fever, sudden chills, and pestilential
malaria.

When we first visited the spot we were alone, and we walked across
from the railway line to the place at which the boats were moored.
They lay in treble rank along the shore, and immediately above them
an old steamboat was fastened against the bank.  Her back was
broken, and she was given up to ruin--placed there that she might
rot quietly into her watery grave.  It was midwinter, and every tree
was covered with frozen sleet and small particles of snow which had
drizzled through the air; for the snow had not fallen in hearty,
honest flakes.  The ground beneath our feet was crisp with frost,
but traitorous in its crispness; not frozen manfully so as to bear a
man's weight, but ready at every point to let him through into the
fat, glutinous mud below.  I never saw a sadder picture, or one
which did more to awaken pity for those whose fate had fixed their
abodes in such a locality.  And yet there was a beauty about it too--
a melancholy, death-like beauty.  The disordered ruin and confused
decay of the forest was all gemmed with particles of ice.  The eye
reaching through the thin underwood could form for itself
picturesque shapes and solitary bowers of broken wood, which were
bright with the opaque brightness of the hoar-frost.  The great
river ran noiselessly along, rapid but still with an apparent
lethargy in its waters.  The ground beneath our feet was fertile
beyond compare, but as yet fertile to death rather than to life.
Where we then trod man had not yet come with his axe and his plow;
but the railroad was close to us, and within a mile of the spot
thousands of dollars had been spent in raising a city which was to
have been rich with the united wealth of the rivers and the land.
Hitherto fever and ague, mud and malaria, had been too strong for
man, and the dollars had been spent in vain.  The day, however, will
come when this promontory between the two great rivers will be a fit
abode for industry.  Men will settle there, wandering down from the
North and East, and toil sadly, and leave their bones among the mud.
Thin, pale-faced, joyless mothers will come there, and grow old
before their time; and sickly children will be born, struggling up
with wan faces to their sad life's labor.  But the work will go on,
for it is God's work; and the earth will be prepared for the people
and the fat rottenness of the still living forest will be made to
give forth its riches.

We found that two days at Cairo were quite enough for us.  We had
seen the gun-boats and the mortar-boats, and gone through the sheds
of the soldiers.  The latter were bad, comfortless, damp, and cold;
and certain quarters of the officers, into which we were hospitably
taken, were wretched abodes enough; but the sheds of Cairo did not
stink like those of Benton Barracks at St. Louis, nor had illness
been prevalent there to the same degree.  I do not know why this
should have been so, but such was the result of my observation.  The
locality of Benton Barracks must, from its nature, have been the
more healthy, but it had become by art the foulest place I ever
visited.  Throughout the army it seemed to be the fact, that the men
under canvas were more comfortable, in better spirits, and also in
better health, than those who were lodged in sheds.  We had
inspected the Cairo army and the Cairo navy, and had also seen all
that Cairo had to show us of its own.  We were thoroughly disgusted
with the hotel, and retired on the second night to bed, giving
positive orders that we might be called at half-past two, with
reference to that terrible start to be made at half-past three.  As
a matter of course we kept dozing and waking till past one, in our
fear lest neglect on the part of the watcher should entail on us
another day at this place; of course we went fast asleep about the
time at which we should have roused ourselves; and of course we were
called just fifteen minutes before the train started.  Everybody
knows how these things always go.  And then the pair of us jumping
out of bed in that wretched chamber, went through the mockery of
washing and packing which always takes place on such occasions; a
mockery indeed of washing, for there was but one basin between us!
And a mockery also of packing, for I left my hair-brushes behind me!
Cairo was avenged in that I had declined to avail myself of the
privileges of free citizenship which had been offered to me in that
barber's shop.  And then, while we were in our agony, pulling at the
straps of our portmanteaus and swearing at the faithlessness of the
boots, up came the clerk of the hotel--the great man from behind the
bar--and scolded us prodigiously for our delay.  "Called!  We had
been called an hour ago!"  Which statement, however, was decidedly
untrue, as we remarked, not with extreme patience.  "We should
certainly be late," he said; "it would take us five minutes to reach
the train, and the cars would be off in four."  Nobody who has not
experienced them can understand the agonies of such moments--of such
moments as regards traveling in general; but none who have not been
at Cairo can understand the extreme agony produced by the threat of
a prolonged sojourn in that city.  At last we were out of the house,
rushing through the mud, slush, and half-melted snow, along the
wooden track to the railway, laden with bags and coats, and deafened
by that melancholy, wailing sound, as though of a huge polar she-
bear in the pangs of travail upon an iceberg, which proceeds from an
American railway-engine before it commences its work.  How we
slipped and stumbled, and splashed and swore, rushing along in the
dark night, with buttons loose, and our clothes half on!  And how
pitilessly we were treated!  We gained our cars, and even succeeded
in bringing with us our luggage; but we did not do so with the
sympathy, but amid the derision of the by-standers.  And then the
seats were all full, and we found that there was a lower depth even
in the terrible deep of a railway train in a Western State.  There
was a second-class carriage, prepared, I presume, for those who
esteemed themselves too dirty for association with the aristocracy
of Cairo; and into this we flung ourselves.  Even this was a joy to
us, for we were being carried away from Eden.  We had acknowledged
ourselves to be no fitting colleagues for Mark Tapley, and would
have been glad to escape from Cairo even had we worked our way out
of the place as assistant stokers to the engine-driver.  Poor Cairo!
unfortunate Cairo!  "It is about played out!" said its citizen to
me.  But in truth the play was commenced a little too soon.  Those
players have played out; but another set will yet have their
innings, and make a score that shall perhaps be talked of far and
wide in the Western World.

We were still bent upon army inspection, and with this purpose went
back from Cairo to Louisville, in Kentucky.  I had passed through
Louisville before, as told in my last chapter, but had not gone
south from Louisville toward the Green River, and had seen nothing
of General Buell's soldiers.  I should have mentioned before that
when we were at St. Louis, we asked General Halleck, the officer in
command of the Northern army of Missouri, whether he could allow us
to pass through his lines to the South.  This he assured us he was
forbidden to do, at the same time offering us every facility in his
power for such an expedition if we could obtain the consent of Mr.
Seward, who at that time had apparently succeeded in engrossing into
his own hands, for the moment, supreme authority in all matters of
government.  Before leaving Washington we had determined not to ask
Mr. Seward, having but little hope of obtaining his permission, and
being unwilling to encounter his refusal.  Before going to General
Halleck, we had considered the question of visiting the land of
"Dixie" without permission from any of the men in authority.  I
ascertained that this might easily have been done from Kentucky to
Tennessee, but that it could only be done on foot.  There are very
few available roads running North and South through these States.
The railways came before roads; and even where the railways are far
asunder, almost all the traffic of the country takes itself to them,
preferring a long circuitous conveyance with steam, to short
distances without.  Consequently such roads as there are run
laterally to the railways, meeting them at this point or that, and
thus maintaining the communication of the country.  Now the railways
were of course in the hands of the armies.  The few direct roads
leading from North to South were in the same condition, and the by-
roads were impassable from mud.  The frontier of the North,
therefore, though very extended, was not very easily to be passed,
unless, as I have said before, by men on foot.  For myself I confess
that I was anxious to go South; but not to do so without my coats
and trowsers, or shirts and pocket-handkerchiefs.  The readiest way
of getting across the line--and the way which was, I believe, the
most frequently used--was from below Baltimore, in Maryland, by boat
across the Potomac.  But in this there was a considerable danger of
being taken, and I had no desire to become a state-prisoner in the
hands of Mr. Seward under circumstances which would have justified
our Minister in asking for my release only as a matter of favor.
Therefore, when at St. Louis, I gave up all hopes of seeing "Dixie"
during my present stay in America.  I presume it to be generally
known that Dixie is the negro's heaven, and that the Southern slave
States, in which it is presumed that they have found a Paradise,
have since the beginning of the war been so named.

We remained a few days at Louisville, and were greatly struck with
the natural beauty of the country around it.  Indeed, as far as I
was enabled to see, Kentucky has superior attractions, as a place of
rural residence for an English gentleman, to any other State in the
Union.  There is nothing of landscape there equal to the banks of
the Upper Mississippi, or to some parts of the Hudson River.  It has
none of the wild grandeur of the White Mountains of New Hampshire,
nor does it break itself into valleys equal to those of the
Alleghanies, in Pennsylvania.  But all those are beauties for the
tourist rather than for the resident.  In Kentucky the land lays in
knolls and soft sloping hills.  The trees stand apart, forming
forest openings.  The herbage is rich, and the soil, though not
fertile like the prairies of Illinois, or the river bottoms of the
Mississippi and its tributaries, is good, steadfast, wholesome
farming ground.  It is a fine country for a resident gentleman
farmer, and in its outward aspect reminds me more of England in its
rural aspects than any other State which I visited.  Round
Louisville there are beautiful sites for houses, of which advantage
in some instances has been taken.  But, nevertheless, Louisville,
though a well-built, handsome city, is not now a thriving city.  I
liked it because the hotel was above par, and because the country
round it was good for walking; but it has not advanced as Cincinnati
and St. Louis have advanced.  And yet its position on the Ohio is
favorable, and it is well circumstanced as regards the wants of its
own State.  But it is not a free-soil city.  Nor, indeed, is St.
Louis; but St. Louis is tending that way, and has but little to do
with the "domestic institution."  At the hotels in Cincinnati and
St. Louis you are served by white men, and are very badly served.
At Louisville the ministration is by black men, "bound to labor."
The difference in the comfort is very great.  The white servants are
noisy, dirty, forgetful, indifferent, and sometimes impudent.  The
negroes are the very reverse of all this; you cannot hurry them; but
in all other respects--and perhaps even in that respect also--they
are good servants.  This is the work for which they seem to have
been intended.  But nevertheless where they are, life and energy
seem to languish, and prosperity cannot make any true advance.  They
are symbols of the luxury of the white men who employ them, and as
such are signs of decay and emblems of decreasing power.  They are
good laborers themselves, but their very presence makes labor
dishonorable.  That Kentucky will speedily rid herself of the
institution, I believe firmly.  When she has so done, the commercial
city of that State may perhaps go ahead again like her sisters.

At this very time the Federal army was commencing that series of
active movements in Kentucky, and through Tennessee, which led to
such important results, and gave to the North the first solid
victories which they had gained since the contest began.  On the
nineteenth of January, one wing of General Buell's army, under
General Thomas, had defeated the secessionists near Somerset, in the
southeastern district of Kentucky, under General Zollicoffer, who
was there killed.  But in that action the attack was made by
Zollicoffer and the secessionists.  When we were at Louisville we
heard of the success of that gun-boat expedition up the Tennessee
river by which Fort Henry was taken.  Fort Henry had been built by
the Confederates on the Tennessee, exactly on the confines of the
States of Tennessee and Kentucky.  They had also another fort, Fort
Donelson, on the Cumberland River, which at that point runs parallel
to the Tennessee, and is there distant from it but a very few miles.
Both these rivers run into the Ohio.  Nashville, which is the
capital of Tennessee, is higher up on the Cumberland; and it was now
intended to send the gun-boats down the Tennessee back into the
Ohio, and thence up the Cumberland, there to attack Fort Donelson,
and afterward to assist General Buell's army in making its way down
to Nashville.  The gun-boats were attached to General Halleck's
army, and received their directions from St. Louis.  General Buell's
headquarters were at Louisville, and his advanced position was on
the Green River, on the line of the railway from Louisville to
Nashville.  The secessionists had destroyed the railway bridge over
the Green River, and were now lying at Bowling Green, between the
Green River and Nashville.  This place it was understood that they
had fortified.

Matters were in this position when we got a military pass to go down
by the railway to the army on the Green River, for the railway was
open to no one without a military pass; and we started, trusting
that Providence would supply us with rations and quarters.  An
officer attached to General Buell's staff, with whom however our
acquaintance was of the very slightest, had telegraphed down to say
that we were coming.  I cannot say that I expected much from the
message, seeing that it simply amounted to a very thin introduction
to a general officer to whom we were strangers even by name, from a
gentleman to whom we had brought a note from another gentleman whose
acquaintance we had chanced to pick up on the road.  We manifestly
had no right to expect much; but to us, expecting very little, very
much was given.  General Johnson was the officer to whose care we
were confided, he being a brigadier under General McCook, who
commanded the advance.  We were met by an aid-de-camp and saddle-
horses, and soon found ourselves in the general's tent, or rather in
a shanty formed of solid upright wooden logs, driven into the ground
with the bark still on, and having the interstices filled in with
clay.  This was roofed with canvas, and altogether made a very
eligible military residence.  The general slept in a big box, about
nine feet long and four broad, which occupied one end of the shanty,
and he seemed in all his fixings to be as comfortably put up as any
gentleman might be when out on such a picnic as this.  We arrived in
time for dinner, which was brought in, table and all, by two
negroes.  The party was made up by a doctor, who carved, and two of
the staff, and a very nice dinner we had.  In half an hour we were
intimate with the whole party, and as familiar with the things
around us as though we had been living in tents all our lives.
Indeed, I had by this time been so often in the tents of the
Northern army, that I almost felt entitled to make myself at home.
It has seemed to me that an Englishman has always been made welcome
in these camps.  There has been and is at this moment a terribly
bitter feeling among Americans against England, and I have heard
this expressed quite as loudly by men in the army as by civilians;
but I think I may say that this has never been brought to bear upon
individual intercourse.  Certainly we have said some very sharp
things of them--words which, whether true or false, whether deserved
or undeserved, must have been offensive to them.  I have known this
feeling of offense to amount almost to an agony of anger.  But
nevertheless I have never seen any falling off in the hospitality
and courtesy generally shown by a civilized people to passing
visitors, I have argued the matter of England's course throughout
the war, till I have been hoarse with asseverating the rectitude of
her conduct and her national unselfishness.  I have met very strong
opponents on the subject, and have been coerced into loud strains of
voice; but I never yet met one American who was personally uncivil
to me as an Englishman, or who seemed to be made personally angry by
my remarks.  I found no coldness in that hospitality to which as a
stranger I was entitled, because of the national ill feeling which
circumstances have engendered.  And while on this subject I will
remark that, when traveling, I have found it expedient to let those
with whom I might chance to talk know at once that I was an
Englishman.  In fault of such knowledge things would be said which
could not but be disagreeable to me; but not even from any rough
Western enthusiast in a railway carriage have I ever heard a word
spoken insolently to England, after I had made my nationality known.
I have learned that Wellington was beaten at Waterloo; that Lord
Palmerston was so unpopular that he could not walk alone in the
streets; that the House of Commons was an acknowledged failure; that
starvation was the normal condition of the British people, and that
the queen was a blood-thirsty tyrant.  But these assertions were not
made with the intention that they should be heard by an Englishman.
To us as a nation they are at the present moment unjust almost
beyond belief; but I do not think that the feeling has ever taken
the guise of personal discourtesy.

We spent two days in the camp close upon the Green River, and I do
not know that I enjoyed any days of my trip more thoroughly than I
did these.  In truth, for the last month since I had left
Washington, my life had not been one of enjoyment.  I had been
rolling in mud and had been damp with filth.  Camp Wood, as they
called this military settlement on the Green River, was also muddy;
but we were excellently well mounted; the weather was very cold, but
peculiarly fine, and the soldiers around us, as far as we could
judge, seemed to be better off in all respects than those we had
visited at St. Louis, at Rolla, or at Cairo.  They were all in
tents, and seemed to be light-spirited and happy.  Their rations
were excellent; but so much may, I think, be said of the whole
Northern army, from Alexandria on the Potomac to Springfield in the
west of Missouri.  There was very little illness at that time in the
camp in Kentucky, and the reports made to us led us to think that on
the whole this had been the most healthy division of the army.  The
men, moreover, were less muddy than their brethren either east or
west of them--at any rate this may be said of them as regards the
infantry.

But perhaps the greatest charm of the place to me was the beauty of
the scenery.  The Green River at this spot is as picturesque a
stream as I ever remember to have seen in such a country.  It lies
low down between high banks, and curves hither and thither, never
keeping a straight line.  Its banks are wooded; but not, as is so
common in America, by continuous, stunted, uninteresting forest, but
by large single trees standing on small patches of meadow by the
water side, with the high banks rising over them, with glades
through them open for the horseman.  The rides here in summer must
be very lovely.  Even in winter they were so, and made me in love
with the place in spite of that brown, dull, barren aspect which the
presence of an army always creates.  I have said that the railway
bridge which crossed the Green River at this spot had been destroyed
by the secessionists.  This had been done effectually as regarded
the passage of trains, but only in part as regarded the absolute
fabric of the bridge.  It had been, and still was when I saw it, a
beautifully light construction, made of iron and supported over a
valley, rather than over a river, on tall stone piers.  One of these
piers had been blown up; but when we were there, the bridge had been
repaired with beams and wooden shafts.  This had just been
completed, and an engine had passed over it.  I must confess that it
looked to me most perilously insecure; but the eye uneducated in
such mysteries is a bad judge of engineering work.  I passed with a
horse backward and forward on it, and it did not tumble down then;
but I confess that on the first attempt I was glad enough to lead
the horse by the bridle.

That bridge was certainly a beautiful fabric, and built in a most
lovely spot.  Immediately under it there was also a pontoon bridge.
The tents of General McCook's division were immediately at the
northern end of it, and the whole place was alive with soldiers,
nailing down planks, pulling up temporary rails at each side,
carrying over straw for the horses, and preparing for the general
advance of the troops.  It was a glorious day.  There had been heavy
frost at night; but the air was dry, and the sun though cold was
bright.  I do not know when I saw a prettier picture.  It would
perhaps have been nothing without the loveliness of the river
scenery; but the winding of the stream at the spot, the sharp wooded
hills on each side, the forest openings, and the busy, eager,
strange life together filled the place with no common interest.  The
officers of the army at the spot spoke with bitterest condemnation
of the vandalism of their enemy in destroying the bridge.  The
justice of the indignation I ventured very strongly to question.
"Surely you would have destroyed their bridge?" I said.  "But they
are rebels," was the answer.  It has been so throughout the contest;
and the same argument has been held by soldiers and by non-soldiers--
by women and by men.  "Grant that they are rebels," I have
answered.  "But when rebels fight they cannot be expected to be more
scrupulous in their mode of doing so than their enemies who are not
rebels."  The whole population of the North has from the beginning
of this war considered themselves entitled to all the privileges of
belligerents; but have called their enemies Goths and Vandals for
even claiming those privileges for themselves.  The same feeling was
at the bottom of their animosity against England.  Because the South
was in rebellion, England should have consented to allow the North
to assume all the rights of a belligerent, and should have denied
all those rights to the South!  Nobody has seemed to understand that
any privilege which a belligerent can claim must depend on the very
fact of his being in encounter with some other party having the same
privilege.  Our press has animadverted very strongly on the States
government for the apparent untruthfulness of their arguments on
this matter; but I profess that I believe that Mr. Seward and his
colleagues--and not they only but the whole nation--have so
thoroughly deceived themselves on this subject, have so talked and
speechified themselves into a misunderstanding of the matter, that
they have taught themselves to think that the men of the South could
be entitled to no consideration from any quarter.  To have rebelled
against the stars and stripes seems to a Northern man to be a crime
putting the criminal altogether out of all courts--a crime which
should have armed the hands of all men against him, as the hands of
all men are armed at a dog that is mad, or a tiger that has escaped
from its keeper.  It is singular that such a people, a people that
has founded itself on rebellion, should have such a horror of
rebellion; but, as far as my observation may have enabled me to read
their feelings rightly, I do believe that it has been as sincere as
it is irrational.

We were out riding early on the morning of the second day of our
sojourn in the camp, and met the division of General Mitchell, a
detachment of General Buell's army, which had been in camp between
the Green River and Louisville, going forward to the bridge which
was then being prepared for their passage.  This division consisted
of about 12,000 men, and the road was crowded throughout the whole
day with them and their wagons.  We first passed a regiment of
cavalry, which appeared to be endless.  Their cavalry regiments are,
in general, more numerous than those of the infantry, and on this
occasion we saw, I believe, about 1200 men pass by us.  Their horses
were strong and serviceable, and the men were stout and in good
health; but the general appearance of everything about them was
rough and dirty.  The American cavalry have always looked to me like
brigands.  A party of them would, I think, make a better picture
than an equal number of our dragoons; but if they are to be regarded
in any other view than that of the picturesque, it does not seem to
me that they have been got up successfully.  On this occasion they
were forming themselves into a picture for my behoof, and as the
picture was, as a picture, very good, I at least have no reason to
complain.

We were taken to see one German regiment, a regiment of which all
the privates were German and all the officers save one--I think the
surgeon.  We saw the men in their tents, and the food which they
eat, and were disposed to think that hitherto things were going well
with them.  In the evening the colonel and lieutenant-colonel, both
of whom had been in the Prussian service, if I remember rightly,
came up to the general's quarters, and we spent the evening together
in smoking cigars and discussing slavery round the stove.  I shall
never forget that night, or the vehement abolition enthusiasm of the
two German colonels.  Our host had told us that he was a slaveowner;
and as our wants were supplied by two sable ministers, I concluded
that he had brought with him a portion of his domestic institution.
Under such circumstances I myself should have avoided such a
subject, having been taught to believe that Southern gentlemen did
not generally take delight in open discussions on the subject.  But
had we been arguing the question of the population of the planet
Jupiter, or the final possibility of the transmutation of metals,
the matter could not have been handled with less personal feeling.
The Germans, however, spoke the sentiments of all the Germans of the
Western States--that is, of all the Protestant Germans, and to them
is confined the political influence held by the German immigrants.
They all regard slavery as an evil, holding on the matter opinions
quite as strong as ours have ever been.  And they argue that as
slavery is an evil, it should therefore be abolished at once.  Their
opinions are as strong as ours have ever been, and they have not had
our West Indian experience.  Any one desiring to understand the
present political position of the States should realize the fact of
the present German influence on political questions.  Many say that
the present President was returned by German voters.  In one sense
this is true, for he certainly could not have been returned without
them; but for them, or for their assistance, Mr. Breckinridge would
have been President, and this civil war would not have come to pass.
As abolitionists they are much more powerful than the Republicans of
New England, and also more in earnest.  In New England the matter is
discussed politically; in the great Western towns, where the Germans
congregate by thousands, they profess to view it philosophically.  A
man, as a man, is entitled to freedom.  That is their argument, and
it is a very old one.  When you ask them what they would propose to
do with 4,000,000 of enfranchised slaves and with their ruined
masters, how they would manage the affairs of those 12,000,000 of
people, all whose wealth and work and very life have hitherto been
hinged and hung upon slavery, they again ask you whether slavery is
not in itself bad, and whether anything acknowledged to be bad
should be allowed to remain.

But the American Germans are in earnest, and I am strongly of
opinion that they will so far have their way, that the country which
for the future will be their country will exist without the taint of
slavery.  In the Northern nationality, which will reform itself
after this war is over, there will, I think, be no slave State.
That final battle of abolition will have to be fought among a people
apart, and I must fear that while it lasts their national prosperity
will not be great.



CHAPTER VII.

THE ARMY OF THE NORTH.


I trust that it may not be thought that in this chapter I am going
to take upon myself the duties of a military critic.  I am well
aware that I have no capacity for such a task, and that my opinion
on such matters would be worth nothing.  But it is impossible to
write of the American States as they were when I visited them, and
to leave that subject of the American army untouched.  It was all
but impossible to remain for some months in the Northern States
without visiting the army.  It was impossible to join in any
conversation in the States without talking about the army.  It was
impossible to make inquiry as to the present and future condition of
the people without basing such inquiries more or less upon the
doings of the army.  If a stranger visit Manchester with the object
of seeing what sort of place Manchester is, he must visit the cotton
mills and printing establishments, though he may have no taste for
cotton and no knowledge on the subject of calicoes.  Under pressure
of this kind I have gone about from one army to another, looking at
the drilling of regiments, of the manoeuvres of cavalry, at the
practice of artillery, and at the inner life of the camps.  I do not
feel that I am in any degree more fitted to take the command of a
campaign than I was before I began, or even more fitted to say who
can and who cannot do so.  But I have obtained on my own mind's eye
a tolerably clear impression of the outward appearance of the
Northern army; I have endeavored to learn something of the manner in
which it was brought together, and of its cost as it now stands; and
I have learned--as any man in the States may learn, without much
trouble or personal investigation--how terrible has been the
peculation of the contractors and officers by whom that army has
been supplied.  Of these things, writing of the States at this
moment, I must say something.  In what I shall say as to that matter
of peculation, I trust that I may be believed to have spoken without
personal ill feeling or individual malice.

While I was traveling in the States of New England and in the
Northwest, I came across various camps at which young regiments were
being drilled and new regiments were being formed.  These lay in our
way as we made our journeys, and, therefore, we visited them; but
they were not objects of any very great interest.  The men had not
acquired even any pretense of soldier-like bearing.  The officers
for the most part had only just been selected, having hardly as yet
left their civil occupations, and anything like criticism was
disarmed by the very nature of the movement which had called the men
together.  I then thought, as I still think, that the men themselves
were actuated by proper motives, and often by very high motives, in
joining the regiments.  No doubt they looked to the pay offered.  It
is not often that men are able to devote themselves to patriotism
without any reference to their personal circumstances.  A man has
got before him the necessity of earning his bread, and very
frequently the necessity of earning the bread of others besides
himself.  This comes before him not only as his first duty, but as
the very law of his existence.  His wages are his life, and when he
proposes to himself to serve his country, that subject of payment
comes uppermost as it does when he proposes to serve any other
master.  But the wages given, though very high in comparison with
those of any other army, have not been of a nature to draw together
from their distant homes, at so short a notice, so vast a cloud of
men, had no other influence been at work.  As far as I can learn,
the average rate of wages in the country since the war began has
been about 65 cents a day over and beyond the workman's diet.  I
feel convinced that I am putting this somewhat too low, taking the
average of all the markets from which the labor has been withdrawn.
In large cities labor has been much higher than this, and a
considerable proportion of the army has been taken from large
cities.  But, taking 65 cents a day as the average, labor has been
worth about 17 dollars a month over and above the laborer's diet.
In the army the soldier receives 13 dollars a month, and also
receives his diet and clothes; in addition to this, in many States,
6 dollars a month have been paid by the State to the wives and
families of those soldiers who have left wives and families in the
States behind them.  Thus for the married men the wages given by the
army have been 2 dollars a month, or less than 5l. a year, more than
his earnings at home, and for the unmarried man they have been 4
dollars a month, or less than 10l. a year, below his earnings at
home.  But the army also gives clothing to the extent of 3 dollars a
month.  This would place the unmarried soldier, in a pecuniary point
of view, worse off by one dollar a month, or 2l. l0s. a year, than
he would have been at home; and would give the married man 5 dollars
a month, or 12l. a year, more than his ordinary wages, for absenting
himself from his family.  I cannot think, therefore, that the
pecuniary attractions have been very great.

Our soldiers in England enlist at wages which are about one-half
that paid in the ordinary labor market to the class from whence they
come.  But labor in England is uncertain, whereas in the States it
is certain.  In England the soldier with his shilling gets better
food than the laborer with his two shillings; and the Englishman has
no objection to the rigidity of that discipline which is so
distasteful to an American.  Moreover, who in England ever dreamed
of raising 600,000 new troops in six months, out of a population of
thirty million?  But this has been done in the Northern States out
of a population of eighteen million.  If England were invaded,
Englishmen would come forward in the same way, actuated, as I
believe, by the same high motives.  My object here is simply to show
that the American soldiers have not been drawn together by the
prospect of high wages, as has been often said since the war began.

They who inquire closely into the matter will find that hundreds and
thousands have joined the army as privates, who in doing so have
abandoned all their best worldly prospects, and have consented to
begin the game of life again, believing that their duty to their
country has now required their services.  The fact has been that in
the different States a spirit of rivalry has been excited.  Indiana
has endeavored to show that she was as forward as Illinois;
Pennsylvania has been unwilling to lag behind New York;
Massachusetts, who has always struggled to be foremost in peace, has
desired to boast that she was first in war also; the smaller States
have resolved to make their names heard, and those which at first
were backward in sending troops have been shamed into greater
earnestness by the public voice.  There has been a general feeling
throughout the people that the thing should be done--that the
rebellion must be put down, and that it must be put down by arms.
Young men have been ashamed to remain behind; and their elders,
acting under that glow of patriotism which so often warms the hearts
of free men, but which, perhaps, does not often remain there long in
all its heat, have left their wives and have gone also.  It may be
true that the voice of the majority has been coercive on many--that
men have enlisted partly because the public voice required it of
them, and not entirely through the promptings of individual spirit.
Such public voice in America is very potent; but it is not, I think,
true that the army has been gathered together by the hope of high
wages.

Such was my opinion of the men when I saw them from State to State
clustering into their new regiments.  They did not look like
soldiers; but I regarded them as men earnestly intent on a work
which they believed to be right.  Afterward when I saw them in their
camps, amid all the pomps and circumstances of glorious war,
positively converted into troops, armed with real rifles and doing
actual military service, I believed the same of them--but cannot say
that I then liked them so well.  Good motives had brought them
there.  They were the same men, or men of the same class, that I had
seen before.  They were doing just that which I knew they would have
to do.  But still I found that the more I saw of them, the more I
lost of that respect for them which I had once felt.  I think it was
their dirt that chiefly operated upon me.  Then, too, they had
hitherto done nothing, and they seemed to be so terribly intent upon
their rations!  The great boast of this army was that they eat meat
twice a day, and that their daily supply of bread was more than they
could consume.

When I had been two or three weeks in Washington, I went over to the
army of the Potomac and spent a few days with some of the officers.
I had on previous occasions ridden about the camps, and had seen a
review at which General McClellan trotted up and down the lines with
all his numerous staff at his heels.  I have always believed reviews
to be absurdly useless as regards the purpose for which they are
avowedly got up--that, namely, of military inspection.  And I
believed this especially of this review.  I do not believe that any
commander-in-chief ever learns much as to the excellence or
deficiencies of his troops by watching their manoeuvres on a vast
open space; but I felt sure that General McClellan had learned
nothing on this occasion.  If before his review he did not know
whether his men were good as soldiers, he did not possess any such
knowledge after the review.  If the matter may be regarded as a
review of the general--if the object was to show him off to the men,
that they might know how well he rode, and how grand he looked with
his staff of forty or fifty officers at his heels, then this review
must be considered as satisfactory.  General McClellan does ride
very well.  So much I learned, and no more.

It was necessary to have a pass for crossing the Potomac either from
one side or from the other, and such a pass I procured from a friend
in the War-office, good for the whole period of my sojourn in
Washington.  The wording of the pass was more than ordinarily long,
as it recommended me to the special courtesy of all whom I might
encounter; but in this respect it was injurious to me rather than
otherwise, as every picket by whom I was stopped found it necessary
to read it to the end.  The paper was almost invariably returned to
me without a word; but the musket which was not unfrequently kept
extended across my horse's nose by the reader's comrade would be
withdrawn, and then I would ride on to the next barrier.  It seemed
to me that these passes were so numerous and were signed by so many
officers that there could have been no risk in forging them.  The
army of the Potomac, into which they admitted the bearer, lay in
quarters which were extended over a length of twenty miles up and
down on the Virginian side of the river, and the river could be
traversed at five different places.  Crowds of men and women were
going over daily, and no doubt all the visitors who so went with
innocent purposes were provided with proper passports; but any whose
purposes were not innocent, and who were not so provided, could have
passed the pickets with counterfeited orders.  This, I have little
doubt, was done daily.  Washington was full of secessionists, and
every movement of the Federal army was communicated to the
Confederates at Richmond, at which city was now established the
Congress and headquarters of the Confederacy.  But no such tidings
of the Confederate army reached those in command at Washington.
There were many circumstances in the contest which led to this
result, and I do not think that General McClellan had any power to
prevent it.  His system of passes certainly did not do so.

I never could learn from any one what was the true number of this
army on the Potomac.  I have been informed by those who professed to
know that it contained over 200,000 men, and by others who also
professed to know, that it did not contain 100,000.  To me the
soldiers seemed to be innumerable, hanging like locusts over the
whole country--a swarm desolating everything around them.  Those
pomps and circumstances are not glorious in my eyes.  They affect me
with a melancholy which I cannot avoid.  Soldiers gathered together
in a camp are uncouth and ugly when they are idle; and when they are
at work their work is worse than idleness.  When I have seen a
thousand men together, moving their feet hither at one sound and
thither at another, throwing their muskets about awkwardly, prodding
at the air with their bayonets, trotting twenty paces here and
backing ten paces there, wheeling round in uneven lines, and
looking, as they did so, miserably conscious of the absurdity of
their own performances, I have always been inclined to think how
little the world can have advanced in civilization, while grown-up
men are still forced to spend their days in such grotesque
performances.  Those to whom the "pomps and circumstances" are dear--
nay, those by whom they are considered simply necessary--will be
able to confute me by a thousand arguments.  I readily own myself
confuted.  There must be soldiers, and soldiers must be taught.  But
not the less pitiful is it to see men of thirty undergoing the
goose-step, and tortured by orders as to the proper mode of handling
a long instrument which is half gun and half spear.  In the days of
Hector and Ajax, the thing was done in a more picturesque manner;
and the songs of battle should, I think, be confined to those ages.

The ground occupied by the divisions on the farther or southwestern
side of the Potomac was, as I have said, about twenty miles in
length and perhaps seven in breadth.  Through the whole of this
district the soldiers were everywhere.  The tents of the various
brigades were clustered together in streets, the regiments being
divided; and the divisions combining the brigades lay apart at some
distance from each other.  But everywhere, at all points, there were
some signs of military life.  The roads were continually thronged
with wagons, and tracks were opened for horses wherever a shorter
way might thus be made available.  On every side the trees were
falling or had fallen.  In some places whole woods had been felled
with the express purpose of rendering the ground impracticable for
troops; and firs and pines lay one over the other, still covered
with their dark, rough foliage, as though a mighty forest had grown
there along the ground, without any power to raise itself toward the
heavens.  In other places the trees had been chopped off from their
trunks about a yard from the ground, so that the soldier who cut it
should have no trouble in stooping, and the tops had been dragged
away for firewood or for the erection of screens against the wind.
Here and there, in solitary places, there were outlying tents,
looking as though each belonged to some military recluse; and in the
neighborhood of every division was to be found a photographing
establishment upon wheels, in order that the men might send home to
their sweethearts pictures of themselves in their martial costumes.

I wandered about through these camps both on foot and on horseback
day after day; and every now and then I would come upon a farm-house
that was still occupied by its old inhabitants.  Many of such houses
had been deserted, and were now held by the senior officers of the
army; but some of the old families remained, living in the midst of
this scene of war in a condition most forlorn.  As for any tillage
of their land, that, under such circumstances, might be pronounced
as hopeless.  Nor could there exist encouragement for farm-work of
any kind.  Fences had been taken down and burned; the ground had
been overrun in every direction.  The stock had of course
disappeared; it had not been stolen, but had been sold in a hurry
for what under such circumstances it might fetch.  What farmer could
work or have any hope for his land in the middle of such a crowd of
soldiers?  But yet there were the families.  The women were in their
houses, and the children playing at their doors; and the men, with
whom I sometimes spoke, would stand around with their hands in their
pockets.  They knew that they were ruined; they expected no redress.
In nine cases out of ten they were inimical in spirit to the
soldiers around them.  And yet it seemed that their equanimity was
never disturbed.  In a former chapter I have spoken of a certain
general--not a fighting general of the army, but a local farming
general--who spoke loudly, and with many curses, of the injury
inflicted on him by the secessionists.  With that exception I heard
no loud complaint of personal suffering.  These Virginian farmers
must have been deprived of everything--of the very means of earning
bread.  They still hold by their houses, though they were in the
very thick of the war, because there they had shelter for their
families, and elsewhere they might seek it in vain.  A man cannot
move his wife and children if he have no place to which to move
them, even though his house be in the midst of disease, of
pestilence, or of battle.  So it was with them then, but it seemed
as though they were already used to it.

But there was a class of inhabitants in that same country to whom
fate had been even more unkind than to those whom I saw.  The lines
of the Northern army extended perhaps seven or eight miles from the
Potomac; and the lines of the Confederate army were distant some
four miles from those of their enemies.  There was, therefore, an
intervening space or strip of ground, about four miles broad, which
might be said to be no man's land.  It was no man's land as to
military possession, but it was still occupied by many of its old
inhabitants.  These people were not allowed to pass the lines either
of one army or of the other; or if they did so pass, they were not
allowed to return to their homes.  To these homes they were forced
to cling, and there they remained.  They had no market; no shops at
which to make purchases, even if they had money to buy; no customers
with whom to deal, even if they had produce to sell.  They had their
cows, if they could keep them from the Confederate soldiers, their
pigs and their poultry; and on them they were living--a most forlorn
life.  Any advance made by either party must be over their
homesteads.  In the event of battle, they would be in the midst of
it; and in the mean time they could see no one, hear of nothing, go
nowhither beyond the limits of that miserable strip of ground!

The earth was hard with frost when I paid my visit to the camp, and
the general appearance of things around my friend's quarters was on
that account cheerful enough.  It was the mud which made things sad
and wretched.  When the frost came it seemed as though the army had
overcome one of its worst enemies.  Unfortunately cold weather did
not last long.  I have been told in Washington that they rarely have
had so open a season.  Soon after my departure that terrible enemy
the mud came back upon them; but during my stay the ground was hard
and the weather very sharp.  I slept in a tent, and managed to keep
my body warm by an enormous overstructure of blankets and coats; but
I could not keep my head warm.  Throughout the night I had to go
down like a fish beneath the water for protection, and come up for
air at intervals, half smothered.  I had a stove in my tent; but the
heat of that, when lighted, was more terrible than the severity of
the frost.

The tents of the brigade with which I was staying had been pitched
not without an eye to appearances.  They were placed in streets as
it were, each street having its name, and between them screens had
been erected of fir poles and fir branches, so as to keep off the
wind.  The outside boundaries of the nearest regiment were
ornamented with arches, crosses, and columns, constructed in the
same way; so that the quarters of the men were reached, as it were,
through gateways.  The whole thing was pretty enough; and while the
ground was hard the camp was picturesque, and a visit to it was not
unpleasant.  But unfortunately the ground was in its nature soft and
deep, composed of red clay; and as the frost went and the wet
weather came, mud became omnipotent and destroyed all prettiness.
And I found that the cold weather, let it be ever so cold, was not
severe upon the men.  It was wet which they feared and had cause to
fear, both for themselves and for their horses.  As to the horses,
but few of them were protected by any shelter or covering
whatsoever.  Through both frost and wet they remained out, tied to
the wheel of a wagon or to some temporary rack at which they were
fed.  In England we should imagine that any horse so treated must
perish; but here the animal seemed to stand it.  Many of them were
miserable enough in appearance, but nevertheless they did the work
required of them.  I have observed that horses throughout the States
are treated in a hardier manner than is usually the case with us.

At the period of which I am speaking--January, 1862--the health of
the army of the Potomac was not as good as it had been, and was
beginning to give way under the effects of the winter.  Measles had
become very prevalent, and also small-pox, though not of a virulent
description; and men, in many instances, were sinking under fatigue.
I was informed by various officers that the Irish regiments were on
the whole the most satisfactory.  Not that they made the best
soldiers, for it was asserted that they were worse, as soldiers,
than the Americans or Germans; not that they became more easily
subject to rule, for it was asserted that they were unruly; but
because they were rarely ill.  Diseases which seized the American
troops on all sides seemed to spare them.  The mortality was not
excessive, but the men became sick and ailing, and fell under the
doctor's hands.

Mr. Olmstead, whose name is well known in England as a writer on the
Southern States, was at this time secretary to a sanitary commission
on the army, and published an abstract of the results of the
inquiries made, on which I believe perfect reliance may be placed.
This inquiry was extended to two hundred regiments, which were
presumed to be included in the army of the Potomac; but these
regiments were not all located on the Virginian side of the river,
and must not therefore be taken as belonging exclusively to the
divisions of which I have been speaking.  Mr. Olmstead says: "The
health of our armies is evidently not above the average of armies in
the field.  The mortality of the army of the Potomac during the
summer months averaged 3 1/2 per cent., and for the whole army it is
stated at 5 per cent."  "Of the camps inspected, 5 per cent.," he
says, "were in admirable order; 44 per cent. fairly clean and well
policed.  The condition of 26 per cent. was negligent and slovenly,
and of 24 per cent. decidedly bad, filthy, and dangerous."  Thus 50
per cent. were either negligent and slovenly, or filthy and
dangerous.  I wonder what the report would have been had Camp
Benton, at St. Louis, been surveyed!  "In about 80 per cent. of the
regiments the officers claimed to give systematic attention to the
cleanliness of the men; but it is remarked that they rarely enforced
the washing of the feet, and not always of the head and neck."  I
wish Mr. Olmstead had added that they never enforced the cutting of
the hair.  No single trait has been so decidedly disadvantageous to
the appearance of the American army as the long, uncombed, rough
locks of hair which the men have appeared so loath to abandon.  In
reading the above one cannot but think of the condition of those
other twenty regiments!

According to Mr. Olmstead two-thirds of the men were native born,
and one-third was composed of foreigners.  These foreigners are
either Irish or German.  Had a similar report been made of the
armies in the West, I think it would have been seen that the
proportion of foreigners was still greater.  The average age of the
privates was something under twenty-five, and that of the officers
thirty-four.  I may here add, from my own observation, that an
officer's rank could in no degree be predicated from his age.
Generals, colonels, majors, captains, and lieutenants had been all
appointed at the same time, and without reference to age or
qualification.  Political influence, or the power of raising
recruits, had been the standard by which military rank was
distributed.  The old West Point officers had generally been chosen
for high commands, but beyond this everything was necessarily new.
Young colonels and ancient captains abounded without any harsh
feeling as to the matter on either side.  Indeed, in this respect,
the practice of the country generally was simply carried out.
Fathers and mothers in America seem to obey their sons and daughters
naturally, and as they grow old become the slaves of their
grandchildren.

Mr. Olmstead says that food was found to be universally good and
abundant.  On this matter Mr. Olmstead might have spoken in stronger
language without exaggeration.  The food supplied to the American
armies has been extravagantly good, and certainly has been
wastefully abundant.  Very much has been said of the cost of the
American army, and it has been made a matter of boasting that no
army so costly has ever been put into the field by any other nation.
The assertion is, I believe, at any rate true.  I have found it
impossible to ascertain what has hitherto been expended on the army.
I much doubt whether even Mr. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury,
or Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, know themselves, and I do not
suppose that Mr. Stanton's predecessor much cared.  Some approach,
however, may be reached to the amount actually paid in wages and for
clothes and diet; and I give below a statement which I have seen of
the actual annual sum proposed to be expended on these heads,
presuming the army to consist of 500,000 men.  The army is stated to
contain 660,000 men, but the former numbers given would probably be
found to be nearer the mark:--


Wages of privates, including sergeants and
  corporals                                $86,640,000
Salaries of regimental officers             23,784,000
Extra wages of privates; extra pay to
  mounted officers, and salary to
  officers above the rank of colonel        l7,000,000
                                          ------------
                                          $127,424,000
                                                or
                                            25,484,000 pounds sterling.


To this must be added the cost of diet and clothing.  The food of
the men, I was informed, was supplied at an average cost of l7 cents
a day, which, for an army of 500,000 men, would amount to 6,200,000
pounds per annum.  The clothing of the men is shown by the printed
statement of their War Department to amount to $3.00 a month for a
period of five years.  That, at least, is the amount allowed to a
private of infantry or artillery.  The cost of the cavalry uniforms
and of the dress of the non-commissioned officers is something
higher, but not sufficiently so to make it necessary to make special
provision for the difference in a statement so rough as this.  At
$3.00 a month the clothing of the army would amount to 3,600,000
pounds.  The actual annual cost would therefore be as follows:


Salaries and wages          25,484,400 pounds.
Diet of the soldiers         6,200,000    "
Clothing for the soldiers    3,600,000    "
                            ----------
                            35,280,400    "


I believe that these figures may be trusted, unless it be with
reference to that sum of $l7,000,000, or 3,400,000 pounds, which is
presumed to include the salaries of all general officers, with their
staffs, and also the extra wages paid to soldiers in certain cases.
This is given as an estimate, and may be over or under the mark.
The sum named as the cost of clothing would be correct, or nearly
so, if the army remained in its present force for five years.  If it
so remained for only one year, the cost would be one-fifth higher.
It must of course be remembered that the sum above named includes
simply the wages, clothes, and food of the men.  It does not
comprise the purchase of arms, horses, ammunition, or wagons; the
forage of horses; the transport of troops, or any of those
incidental expenses of warfare which are always, I presume, heavier
than the absolute cost of the men, and which, in this war, have been
probably heavier than in any war ever waged on the face of God's
earth.  Nor does it include that terrible item of peculation, as to
which I will say a word or two before I finish this chapter.

The yearly total payment of the officers and soldiers of the army is
as follows.  As regards the officers, it must be understood that
this includes all the allowances made to them, except as regards
those on the staff.  The sums named apply only to the infantry and
artillery.  The pay of the cavalry is about ten per cent. higher:--


Lieutenant-General*     1850 pounds.
Major-general           1150    "
Brigadier-General        800    "
Colonel                  530    "
Lieutenant-Colonel**     475    "
Major                    430    "
Captain                  300    "
First Lieutenant         265    "
Second Lieutenant        245    "
First Sergeant            48    "
Sergeant                  40    "
Corporal                  34    "
Private                   31    "


* General Scott alone holds that rank in the United States Army.

** A colonel and lieutenant-colonel are attached to each regiment.


In every grade named the pay is, I believe, higher than that given
by us, or, as I imagine, by any other nation.  It is, however,
probable that the extra allowances paid to some of our higher
officers when on duty may give to their positions for a time a
higher pecuniary remuneration.  It will of course be understood that
there is nothing in the American army answering to our colonel of a
regiment.  With us the officer so designated holds a nominal command
of high dignity and emolument as a reward for past services.

I have already spoken of my visits to the camps of the other armies
in the field, that of General Halleck, who held his headquarters at
St. Louis, in Missouri, and that of General Buell, who was at
Louisville, in Kentucky.  There was also a fourth army under General
Hunter, in Kansas, but I did not make my way as far west as that.  I
do not pretend to any military knowledge, and should be foolish to
attempt military criticism; but as far as I could judge by
appearance, I should say that the men in Buell's army were, of the
three, in the best order.  They seemed to me to be cleaner than the
others, and, as far as I could learn, were in better health.  Want
of discipline and dirt have, no doubt, been the great faults of the
regiments generally, and the latter drawback may probably be
included in the former.  These men have not been accustomed to act
under the orders of superiors, and when they entered on the service
hardly recognized the fact that they would have to do so in aught
else than in their actual drill and fighting.  It is impossible to
conceive any class of men to whom the necessary discipline of a
soldier would come with more difficulty than to an American citizen.
The whole training of his life has been against it.  He has never
known respect for a master, or reverence for men of a higher rank
than himself.  He has probably been made to work hard for his wages--
harder than an Englishman works--but he has been his employer's
equal.  The language between them has been the language of equals,
and their arrangement as to labor and wages has been a contract
between equals.  If he did not work he would not get his money--and
perhaps not if he did.  Under these circumstances he has made his
fight with the world; but those circumstances have never taught him
that special deference to a superior, which is the first essential
of a soldier's duty.  But probably in no respect would that
difficulty be so severely felt as in all matters appertaining to
personal habits.  Here at any rate the man would expect to be still
his own master, acting for himself and independent of all outer
control.  Our English Hodge, when taken from the plow to the camp,
would, probably, submit without a murmur to soap and water and a
barber's shears; he would have received none of that education which
would prompt him to rebel against such ordinances; but the American
citizen, who for awhile expects to shake hands with his captain
whenever he sees him, and is astonished when he learns that he must
not offer him drinks, cannot at once be brought to understand that
he is to be treated like a child in the nursery; that he must change
his shirt so often, wash himself at such and such intervals, and go
through a certain process of cleansing his outward garments daily.
I met while traveling a sergeant of a regiment of the American
regulars, and he spoke of the want of discipline among the
volunteers as hopeless.  But even he instanced it chiefly by their
want of cleanliness.  "They wear their shirts till they drop off
their backs," said he; "and what can you expect from such men as
that?"  I liked that sergeant for his zeal and intelligence, and
also for his courtesy when he found that I was an Englishman; for
previous to his so finding he had begun to abuse the English
roundly--but I did not quite agree with him about the volunteers.
It is very bad that soldiers should be dirty, bad also that they
should treat their captains with familiarity, and desire to exchange
drinks with the majors.  But even discipline is not everything; and
discipline will come at last even to the American soldiers,
distasteful as it may be, when the necessity for it is made
apparent.  But these volunteers have great military virtues.  They
are intelligent, zealous in their cause, handy with arms, willing
enough to work at all military duties, and personally brave.  On the
other hand, they are sickly, and there has been a considerable
amount of drunkenness among them.  No man who has looked to the
subject can, I think, doubt that a native American has a lower
physical development than an Irishman, a German, or an Englishman.
They become old sooner, and die at an earlier age.  As to that
matter of drink, I do not think that much need be said against them.
English soldiers get drunk when they have the means of doing so, and
American soldiers would not get drunk if the means were taken away
from them.  A little drunkenness goes a long way in a camp, and ten
drunkards will give a bad name to a company of a hundred.  Let any
man travel with twenty men of whom four are tipsy, and on leaving
them he will tell you that every man of them was a drunkard.

I have said that these men are brave, and I have no doubt that they
are so.  How should it be otherwise with men of such a race?  But it
must be remembered that there are two kinds of courage, one of which
is very common and the other very uncommon.  Of the latter
description of courage it cannot be expected that much should be
found among the privates of any army, and perhaps not very many
examples among the officers.  It is a courage self-sustained, based
on a knowledge of the right, and on a life-long calculation that any
results coming from adherence to the right will be preferable to any
that can be produced by a departure from it.  This is the courage
which will enable a man to stand his ground, in battle or elsewhere,
though broken worlds should fall around him.  The other courage,
which is mainly an affair of the heart or blood and not of the
brain, always requires some outward support.  The man who finds
himself prominent in danger bears himself gallantly, because the
eyes of many will see him; whether as an old man he leads an army,
or as a young man goes on a forlorn hope, or as a private carries
his officer on his back out of the fire, he is sustained by the love
of praise.  And the men who are not individually prominent in
danger, who stand their ground shoulder to shoulder, bear themselves
gallantly also, each trusting in the combined strength of his
comrades.  When such combined courage has been acquired, that useful
courage is engendered which we may rather call confidence, and which
of all courage is the most serviceable in the army.  At the battle
of Bull's Run the army of the North became panic-stricken, and fled.
From this fact many have been led to believe that the American
soldiers would not fight well, and that they could not be brought to
stand their ground under fire.  This I think has been an unfair
conclusion.  In the first place, the history of the battle of Bull's
Run has yet to be written; as yet the history of the flight only has
been given to us.  As far as I can learn, the Northern soldiers did
at first fight well; so well, that the army of the South believed
itself to be beaten.  But a panic was created--at first, as it
seems, among the teamsters and wagons.  A cry was raised, and a rush
was made by hundreds of drivers with their carts and horses; and
then men who had never seen war before, who had not yet had three
months' drilling as soldiers, to whom the turmoil of that day must
have seemed as though hell were opening upon them, joined themselves
to the general clamor and fled to Washington, believing that all was
lost.  But at the same time the regiments of the enemy were going
through the same farce in the other direction!  It was a battle
between troops who knew nothing of battles; of soldiers who were not
yet soldiers.  That individual high-minded courage which would have
given to each individual recruit the self-sustained power against a
panic, which is to be looked for in a general, was not to be looked
for in them.  Of the other courage of which I have spoken, there was
as much as the circumstances of the battle would allow.

On subsequent occasions the men have fought well.  We should, I
think, admit that they have fought very well when we consider how
short has been their practice at such work.  At Somerset, at Fort
Henry, at Fort Donelson, at Corinth, the men behaved with courage,
standing well to their arms, though at each place the slaughter
among them was great.  They have always gone well into fire, and
have general]y borne themselves well under fire.  I am convinced
that we in England can make no greater mistake than to suppose that
the Americans as soldiers are deficient in courage.

But now I must come to a matter in which a terrible deficiency has
been shown, not by the soldiers, but by those whose duty it has been
to provide for the soldiers.  It is impossible to speak of the army
of the North and to leave untouched that hideous subject of army
contracts.  And I think myself the more specially bound to allude to
it because I feel that the iniquities which have prevailed prove
with terrible earnestness the demoralizing power of that dishonesty
among men in high places, which is the one great evil of the
American States.  It is there that the deficiency exists, which must
be supplied before the public men of the nation can take a high rank
among other public men.  There is the gangrene, which must be cut
out before the government, as a government, can be great.  To make
money is the one thing needful, and men have been anxious to meddle
with the affairs of government, because there might money be made
with the greatest ease.  "Make money," the Roman satirist said;
"make it honestly if you can, but at any rate make money."  That
first counsel would be considered futile and altogether vain by
those who have lately dealt with the public wants of the American
States.

This is bad in a most fatal degree, not mainly because men in high
places have been dishonest, or because the government has been badly
served by its own paid officers.  That men in high places should be
dishonest, and that the people should be cheated by their rulers, is
very bad.  But there is worse than this.  The thing becomes so
common, and so notorious, that the American world at large is taught
to believe that dishonesty is in itself good.  "It behoves a man to
be smart, sir!"  Till the opposite doctrine to that be learned; till
men in America--ay, and in Europe, Asia, and Africa--can learn that
it specially behoves a man not to be smart, they will have learned
little of their duty toward God, and nothing of their duty toward
their neighbor.

In the instances of fraud against the States government to which I
am about to allude, I shall take all my facts from the report made
to the House of Representatives at Washington by a committee of that
House in December, 1861.  "Mr. Washburne, from the Select Committee
to inquire into the Contracts of the Government, made the following
Report."  That is the heading of the pamphlet.  The committee was
known as the Van Wyck Committee, a gentleman of that name having
acted as chairman.

The committee first went to New York, and began their inquiries with
reference to the purchase of a steamboat called the "Catiline."  In
this case a certain Captain Comstock had been designated from
Washington as the agent to be trusted in the charter or purchase of
the vessel.  He agreed on behalf of the government to hire that
special boat for 2000l. a month for three months, having given
information to friends of his on the matter, which enabled them to
purchase it out and out for less than 4000l.  These friends were not
connected with shipping matters, but were lawyers and hotel
proprietors.  The committee conclude "that the vessel was chartered
to the government at an unconscionable price; and that Captain
Comstock, by whom this was effected, while enjoying THE PECULIAR
CONFIDENCE OF THE GOVERNMENT, was acting for and in concert with the
parties who chartered the vessel, and was in fact their agent."  But
the report does not explain why Captain Comstock was selected for
this work by authority from Washington, nor does it recommend that
he be punished.  It does not appear that Captain Comstock had ever
been in the regular service of the government, but that he had been
master of a steamer.

In the next place one Starbuck is employed to buy ships.  As a
government agent he buys two for 1300l. and sells them to the
government for 2900l.  The vessels themselves, when delivered at the
navy yard, were found to be totally unfit for the service for which
they had been purchased.  But why was Starbuck employed, when, as
appears over and over again in the report, New York was full of paid
government servants ready and fit to do the work?  Starbuck was
merely an agent, and who will believe that he was allowed to pocket
the whole difference of 1600l.?  The greater part of the plunder
was, however, in this case refunded.

Then we come to the case of Mr. George D. Morgan, brother-in-law of
Mr. Welles, the Secretary of the Navy.  I have spoken of this
gentleman before, and of his singular prosperity.  He amassed a
large fortune in five months, as a government agent for the purchase
of vessels, he having been a wholesale grocer by trade.  This
gentleman had had no experience whatsoever with reference to ships.
It is shown by the evidence that he had none of the requisite
knowledge, and that there were special servants of the government in
New York at that time, sent there specially for such services as
these, who were in every way trustworthy, and who had the requisite
knowledge.  Yet Mr. Morgan was placed in this position by his
brother-in-law, the Secretary of the Navy, and in that capacity made
about 20,000l. in five months, all of which was paid by the
government, as is well shown to have been the fact in the report
before me.  One result of such a mode of agency is given; one other
result, I mean, besides the 20,000l. put into the pocket of the
brother of the Secretary of the Navy.  A ship called the "Stars and
Stripes" was bought by Mr. Morgan for 11,000l., which had been built
some months before for 7000l.  This vessel was bought from a company
which was blessed with a president.  The president made the bargain
with the government agent, but insisted on keeping back from his own
company 2000l. out of the 11,000l. for expenses incident to the
purchase.  The company did not like being mulcted of its prey, and
growled heavily; but their president declared that such bargains
were not got at Washington for nothing.  Members of Congress had to
be paid to assist in such things.  At least he could not reduce his
little private bill for such assistance below 1600l.  He had, he
said, positively paid out so much to those venal members of
Congress, and had made nothing for himself to compensate him for his
own exertions.  When this president came to be examined, he admitted
that he had really made no payments to members of Congress.  His own
capacity had been so great that no such assistance had been found
necessary.  But he justified his charge on the ground that the sum
taken by him was no more than the company might have expected him to
lay out on members of Congress, or on ex-members who are specially
mentioned, had he not himself carried on the business with such
consummate discretion!  It seems to me that the members or ex-
members of Congress were shamefully robbed in this matter.

The report deals manfully with Mr. Morgan, showing that for five
months' work--which work he did not do and did not know how to do--
he received as large a sum as the President's salary for the whole
Presidential term of four years.  So much better is it to be an
agent of government than simply an officer!  And the committee adds,
that they "do not find in this transaction the less to censure in
the fact that this arrangement between the Secretary of the Navy and
Mr. Morgan was one between brothers-in-law."  After that who will
believe that Mr. Morgan had the whole of that 20,000l. for himself?
And yet Mr. Welles still remains Secretary of the Navy, and has
justified the whole transaction in an explanation admitting
everything, and which is considered by his friends to be an able
State paper.  "It behoves a man to be smart, sir."  Mr. Morgan and
Secretary Welles will no doubt be considered by their own party to
have done their duty well as high-trading public functionaries.  The
faults of Mr. Morgan and of Secretary Welles are nothing to us in
England; but the light in which such faults may be regarded by the
American people is much to us.

I will now go on to the case of a Mr. Cummings.  Mr. Cummings, it
appears, had been for many years the editor of a newspaper in
Philadelphia, and had been an intimate political friend and ally of
Mr. Cameron.  Now at the time of which I am writing, April, 1861,
Mr. Cameron was Secretary of War, and could be very useful to an old
political ally living in his own State.  The upshot of the present
case will teach us to think well of Mr. Cameron's gratitude.

In April, 1861, stores were wanted for the army at Washington, and
Mr. Cameron gave an order to his old friend Cummings to expend
2,000,000 dollars, pretty much according to his fancy, in buying
stores.  Governor Morgan, the Governor of New York State, and a
relative of our other friend Morgan, was joined with Mr. Cummings in
this commission, Mr. Cameron no doubt having felt himself bound to
give the friends of his colleague at the Navy a chance.  Governor
Morgan at once made over his right to his relative; but better
things soon came in Mr. Morgan's way, and he relinquished his share
in this partnership at an early date.  In this transaction he did
not himself handle above 25,000 dollars.  Then the whole job fell
into the hands of Mr. Cameron's old political friend.

The 2,000,000 dollars, or 400,000l., were paid into the hands of
certain government treasurers at New York, but they had orders to
honor the draft of the political friend of the Secretary of War, and
consequently 50,000l. was immediately withdrawn by Mr. Cummings, and
with this he went to work.  It is shown that he knew nothing of the
business; that he employed a clerk from Albany whom he did not know,
and confided to this clerk the duty of buying such stores as were
bought; that this clerk was recommended to him by Mr. Weed, the
editor of a newspaper at Albany, who is known in the States as the
special political friend of Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State; and
that in this way he spent 32,000l.  He bought linen pantaloons and
straw hats to the amount of 4200l., because he thought the soldiers
looked hot in the warm weather; but he afterward learned that they
were of no use.  He bought groceries of a hardware dealer named
Davidson, at Albany, that town whence came Mr. Weed's clerk.  He did
not know what was Davidson's trade, nor did he know exactly what he
was going to buy; but Davidson proposed to sell him something which
Mr. Cummings believed to be some kind of provisions, and he bought
it.  He did not know for how much--whether over 2000l. or not.  He
never saw the articles, and had no knowledge of their quality.  It
was out of the question that he should have such knowledge, as he
naively remarks.  His clerk Humphreys saw the articles.  He presumed
they were brought from Albany, but did not know.  He afterward
bought a ship--or two or three ships.  He inspected one ship "by a
mere casual visit:" that is to say, he did not examine her boilers;
he did not know her tonnage, but he took the word of the seller for
everything.  He could not state the terms of the charter, or give
the substance of it.  He had had no former experience in buying or
chartering ships.  He also bought 75,000 pairs of shoes at only 25
cents (or one shilling) a pair more than their proper price.  He
bought them of a Mr. Hall, who declares that he paid Mr. Cummings
nothing for the job, but regarded it as a return for certain
previous favors conferred by him on Mr. Cummings in the occasional
loans of 100l. or 200l.

At the end of the examination it appears that Mr. Cummings still
held in his hand a slight balance of 28,000l., of which he had
forgotten to make mention in the body of his own evidence.  "This
item seems to have been overlooked by him in his testimony," says
the report.  And when the report was made, nothing had yet been
learned of the destiny of this small balance.

Then the report gives a list of the army supplies miscellaneously
purchased by Mr. Cummings: 280 dozen pints of ale at 9s. 6d. a
dozen; a lot of codfish and herrings; 200 boxes of cheeses and a
large assortment of butter; some tongues; straw hats and linen
"pants;" 23 barrels of pickles; 25 casks of Scotch ale, price not
stated; a lot of London porter, price not stated; and some Hall
carbines of which I must say a word more further on.  It should be
remembered that no requisition had come from the army for any of the
articles named; that the purchase of herrings and straw hats was
dictated solely by the discretion of Cummings and his man Humphreys,
or, as is more probable, by the fact that some other person had such
articles by him for sale; and that the government had its own
established officers for the supply of things properly ordered by
military requisition.  These very same articles also were apparently
procured, in the first place, as a private speculation, and were
made over to the government on the failure of that speculation.
"Some of the above articles," says the report, "were shipped by the
Catiline, which was probably loaded on private account, and, not
being able to obtain a clearance, was, in some way, through Mr.
Cummings, transferred over to the government--SCOTCH ALE, LONDON
PORTER, SELECTED HERRINGS, and all."  The italics, as well as the
words, are taken from the report.

This was the confidential political friend of the Secretary of War,
by whom he was intrusted with 400,000l. of public money!  Twenty-
eight thousand pounds had not been accounted for when the report was
made, and the army supplies were bought after the fashion above
named.  That Secretary of War, Mr. Cameron, has since left the
cabinet; but he has not been turned out in disgrace; he has been
nominated as Minister to Russia, and the world has been told that
there was some difference of opinion between him and his colleagues
respecting slavery!  Mr. Cameron, in some speech or paper, declared
on his leaving the cabinet that he had not intended to remain long
as Secretary of War.  This assertion, I should think, must have been
true.

And now about the Hall carbines, as to which the gentlemen on this
committee tell their tale with an evident delight in the richness of
its incidents which at once puts all their readers in accord with
them.  There were altogether some five thousand of these, all of
which the government sold to a Mr. Eastman in June, 1861, for 14s.
each, as perfectly useless, and afterward bought in August for 4l.
8s. each, about 4s. a carbine having been expended in their repair
in the mean time.  But as regards 790 of these now famous weapons,
it must be explained they had been sold by the government as
perfectly useless, and at a nominal price, previously to this second
sale made by the government to Mr. Eastman.  They had been so sold,
and then, in April, 1861, they had been bought again for the
government by the indefatigable Cummings for 3l. each.  Then they
were again sold as useless for 14s. each to Eastman, and instantly
rebought on behalf of the government for 4l. 8s. each!  Useless for
war purposes they may have been, but as articles of commerce it must
be confessed that they were very serviceable.

This last purchase was made by a man named Stevens on behalf of
General Fremont, who at that time commanded the army of the United
States in Missouri.  Stevens had been employed by General Fremont as
an agent on the behalf of government, as is shown with clearness in
the report, and on hearing of these muskets telegraphed to the
general at once: "I have 5000 Hall's rifled cast-steel muskets,
breach-loading, new, at 22 dollars."  General Fremont telegraphed
back instantly: "I will take the whole 5000 carbines. . . .  I will
pay all extra charges." . . . .  And so the purchase was made.  The
muskets, it seems, were not absolutely useless even as weapons of
war.  "Considering the emergency of the times?" a competent witness
considered them to be worth "10 or 12 dollars."  The government had
been as much cheated in selling them as it had in buying them.  But
the nature of the latter transaction is shown by the facts that
Stevens was employed, though irresponsibly employed, as a government
agent by General Fremont; that he bought the muskets in that
character himself, making on the transaction 1l. 18s. on each
musket; and that the same man afterward appeared as an aid-de-camp
on General Fremont's staff.  General Fremont had no authority
himself to make such a purchase, and when the money was paid for the
first installment of the arms, it was so paid by the special order
of General Fremont himself out of moneys intended to be applied to
other purposes.  The money was actually paid to a gentleman known at
Fremont's headquarters as his special friend, and was then paid in
that irregular way because this friend desired that that special
bill should receive immediate payment.  After that, who can believe
that Stevens was himself allowed to pocket the whole amount of the
plunder?

There is a nice little story of a clergyman in New York who sold,
for 40l. and certain further contingencies, the right to furnish 200
cavalry horses; but I should make this too long if I told all the
nice little stories.  As the frauds at St. Louis were, if not in
fact the most monstrous, at any rate the most monstrous which have
as yet been brought to the light, I cannot finish this account
without explaining something of what was going on at that Western
Paradise in those halcyon days of General Fremont.

General Fremont, soon after reaching St. Louis, undertook to build
ten forts for the protection of that city.  These forts have since
been pronounced as useless, and the whole measure has been treated
with derision by officers of his own army.  But the judgment
displayed in the matter is a military question with which I do not
presume to meddle.  Even if a general be wrong in such a matter, his
character as a man is not disgraced by such error.  But the manner
of building them was the affair with which Mr. Van Wyck's Committee
had to deal.  It seems that five of the forts, the five largest,
were made under the orders of a certain Major Kappner, at a cost of
12,000l., and that the other five could have been built at least for
the same sum.  Major Kappner seems to have been a good and honest
public servant, and therefore quite unfit for the superintendence of
such work at St. Louis.  The other five smaller forts were also in
progress, the works on them having been continued from 1st of
September to 25th of September, 1861; but on the 25th of September
General Fremont himself gave special orders that a contract should
be made with a man named Beard, a Californian, who had followed him
from California to St. Louis.  This contract is dated the 25th of
September.  But nevertheless the work specified in that contract was
done previous to that date, and most of the money paid was paid
previous to that date.  The contract did not specify any lump sum,
but agreed that the work should be paid for by the yard and by the
square foot.  No less a sum was paid to Beard for this work--the
cormorant Beard, as the report calls him--than 24,200l., the last
payment only, amounting to 4000l., having been made subsequent to
the date of the contract.  Twenty thousand two hundred pounds was
paid to Beard before the date of the contract!  The amounts were
paid at five times, and the last four payments were made on the
personal order of General Fremont.  This Beard was under no bond,
and none of the officers of the government knew anything of the
terms under which he was working.  On the 14th of October General
Fremont was ordered to discontinue these works, and to abstain from
making any further payments on their account.  But, disobeying this
order, he directed his quartermaster to pay a further sum of 4000l.
to Beard out of the first sums he should receive from Washington, he
then being out of money.  This, however, was not paid.  "It must be
understood," says the report, "that every dollar ordered to be paid
by General Fremont on account of these works was diverted from a
fund specially appropriated for another purpose."  And then again:
"The money appropriated by Congress to subsist and clothe and
transport our armies was then, in utter contempt of all law and of
the army regulations, as well as in defiance of superior authority,
ordered to be diverted from its lawful purpose and turned over to
the cormorant Beard.  While he had received l70,000 dollars
(24,200l.) from the government, it will be seen from the testimony
of Major Kappner that there had only been paid to the honest German
laborers, who did the work on the first five forts built under his
directions, the sum of 15,500 dollars, (3100l.,) leaving from 40,000
to 50,000 dollars (8000l. to 10,000l.) still due; and while these
laborers, whose families were clamoring for bread, were besieging
the quartermaster's department for their pay, this infamous
contractor Beard is found following up the army and in the
confidence of the major-general, who gives him orders for large
purchases, which could only have been legally made through the
quartermaster's department."  After that, who will believe that all
the money went into Beard's pocket?  Why should General Fremont have
committed every conceivable breach of order against his government,
merely with the view of favoring such a man as Beard?

The collusion of the Quartermaster M'Instry with fraudulent knaves
in the purchase of horses is then proved.  M'Instry was at this time
Fremont's quartermaster at St. Louis.  I cannot go through all
these.  A man of the name of Jim Neil comes out in beautiful pre-
eminence.  No dealer in horses could get to the quartermaster except
through Jim Neil, or some such go-between.  The quartermaster
contracted with Neil and Neil with the owners of horses; Neil at the
time being also military inspector of horses for the quartermaster.
He bought horses as cavalry horses for 24l. or less, and passed them
himself as artillery horses for 30l.  In other cases the military
inspectors were paid by the sellers to pass horses.  All this was
done under Quartermaster M'Instry, who would himself deal with none
but such as Neil.  In one instance, one Elliard got a contract from
M'instry, the profit of which was 8000l.  But there was a man named
Brady.  Now Brady was a friend of M'Instry, who, scenting the
carrion afar off, had come from Detroit, in Michigan, to St. Louis.
M'instry himself had also come from Detroit.  In this case Elliard
was simply directed by M'Instry to share his profits with Brady, and
consequently paid to Brady 4000l., although Brady gave to the
business neither capital nor labor.  He simply took the 4000l. as
the quartermaster's friend.  This Elliard, it seems, also gave a
carriage and horses to Mrs. Fremont.  Indeed, Elliard seems to have
been a civil and generous fellow.  Then there is a man named
Thompson, whose case is very amusing.  Of him the committee thus
speaks: "It must be said that Thompson was not forgetful of the
obligations of gratitude, for, after he got through with the
contract, he presented the son of Major M'instry with a riding pony.
That was the only mark of respect," to use his own words, "that he
showed to the family of Major M'instry."

General Fremont himself desired that a contract should be made with
one Augustus Sacchi for a thousand Canadian horses.  It turned out
that Sacchi was "nobody: a man of straw living in a garret in New
York, whom nobody knew, a man who was brought out there"--to St.
Louis--"as a good person through whom to work."  "It will hardly be
believed," says the report, "that the name of this same man Sacchi
appears in the newspapers as being on the staff of General Fremont,
at Springfield, with the rank of captain."

I do not know that any good would result from my pursuing further
the details of this wonderful report.  The remaining portion of it
refers solely to the command held by General Fremont in Missouri,
and adds proof upon proof of the gross robberies inflicted upon the
government of the States by the very persons set in high authority
to protect the government.  We learn how all utensils for the camp,
kettles, blankets, shoes, mess pans, etc., were supplied by one
firm, without a contract, at an enormous price, and of a quality so
bad as to be almost useless, because the quartermaster was under
obligations to the partners.  We learn that one partner in that firm
gave 40l. toward a service of plate for the quartermaster, and 60l.
toward a carriage for Mrs. Fremont.  We learn how futile were the
efforts of any honest tradesman to supply good shoes to soldiers who
were shoeless, and the history of one special pair of shoes which
was thrust under the nose of the quartermaster is very amusing.  We
learn that a certain paymaster properly refused to settle an account
for matters with which he had no concern, and that General Fremont
at once sent down soldiers to arrest him unless he made the illegal
payment.  In October 1000l. was expended in ice, all which ice was
wasted.  Regiments were sent hither and thither with no military
purpose, merely because certain officers, calling themselves
generals, desired to make up brigades for themselves.  Indeed, every
description of fraud was perpetrated, and this was done not through
the negligence of those in high command, but by their connivance and
often with their express authority.

It will be said that the conduct of General Fremont during the days
of his command in Missouri is not a matter of much moment to us in
England; that it has been properly handled by the committee of
Representatives appointed by the American Congress to inquire into
the matter; and that after the publication of such a report by them,
it is ungenerous in a writer from another nation to speak upon the
subject.  This would be so if the inquiries made by that committee
and their report had resulted in any general condemnation of the men
whose misdeeds and peculations have been exposed.  This, however, is
by no means the case.  Those who were heretofore opposed to General
Fremont on political principles are opposed to him still; but those
who heretofore supported him are ready to support him again.  He has
not been placed beyond the pale of public favor by the record which
has been made of his public misdeeds.  He is decried by the
Democrats because he is a Republican, and by the anti-abolitionists
because he is an Abolitionist; but he is not decried because he has
shown himself to be dishonest in the service of his government.  He
was dismissed from his command in the West, but men on his side of
the question declare that he was so dismissed because his political
opponents had prevailed.  Now, at the moment that I am writing this,
men are saying that the President must give him another command.  He
is still a major-general in the army of the States, and is as
probable a candidate as any other that I could name for the next
Presidency.*


* Since this was written, General Fremont has been restored to high
military command, and now holds rank and equal authority with
McClellan and Halleck.  In fact, the charges made against him by the
committee of the House of Representatives have not been allowed to
stand in his way.  He is politically popular with a large section of
the nation, and therefore it has been thought well to promote him to
high place.  Whether he be fit for such place either as regards
capability or integrity, seems to be considered of no moment.


The same argument must be used with reference to the other gentlemen
named.  Mr. Welles is still a cabinet minister and Secretary of the
Navy.  It has been found impossible to keep Mr. Cameron in the
cabinet, but he was named as the minister of the States government
to Russia, after the publication of the Van Wyck report, when the
result of his old political friendship with Mr. Alexander Cummings
was well known to the President who appointed him and to the Senate
who sanctioned his appointment.  The individual corruption of any
one man--of any ten men--is not much.  It should not be insisted on
loudly by any foreigner in making up a balance-sheet of the virtues
and vices of the good and bad qualities of any nation.  But the
light in which such corruption is viewed by the people whom it most
nearly concerns is very much.  I am far from saying that democracy
has failed in America.  Democracy there has done great things for a
numerous people, and will yet, as I think, be successful.  But that
doctrine as to the necessity of smartness must be eschewed before a
verdict in favor of American democracy can be pronounced.  "It
behoves a man to be smart, sir."  In those words are contained the
curse under which the States government has been suffering for the
last thirty years.  Let us hope that the people will find a mode of
ridding themselves of that curse.  I, for one, believe that they
will do so.



CHAPTER VIII.

BACK TO BOSTON.


From Louisville we returned to Cincinnati, in making which journey
we were taken to a place called Seymour, in Indiana, at which spot
we were to "make connection" with the train running on the
Mississippi and Ohio line from St. Louis to Cincinnati.  We did make
the connection, but were called upon to remain four hours at Seymour
in consequence of some accident on the line.  In the same way, when
going eastward from Cincinnati to Baltimore a few days later, I was
detained another four hours at a place called Crestline, in Ohio.
On both occasions I spent my time in realizing, as far as that might
be possible, the sort of life which men lead who settle themselves
at such localities.  Both these towns--for they call themselves
towns--had been created by the railways.  Indeed this has been the
case with almost every place at which a few hundred inhabitants have
been drawn together in the Western States.  With the exception of
such cities as Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, settlers can
hardly be said to have chosen their own localities.  These have been
chosen for them by the originators of the different lines of
railway.  And there is nothing in Europe in any way like to these
Western railway settlements.  In the first place, the line of the
rails runs through the main street of the town, and forms not
unfrequently the only road.  At Seymour I could find no way of
getting away from the rails unless I went into the fields.  At
Crestline, which is a larger place, I did find a street in which
there was no railroad, but it was deserted, and manifestly out of
favor with the inhabitants.  As there were railway junctions at both
these posts, there were, of course, cross-streets, and the houses
extended themselves from the center thus made along the lines,
houses being added to houses at short intervals as new-corners
settled themselves down.  The panting, and groaning, and whistling
of engines is continual; for at such places freight trains are
always kept waiting for passenger trains, and the slower freight
trains for those which are called fast.  This is the life of the
town; and indeed as the whole place is dependent on the railway, so
is the railway held in favor and beloved.  The noise of the engines
is not disliked, nor are its puffings and groanings held to be
unmusical.  With us a locomotive steam-engine is still, as it were,
a beast of prey, against which one has to be on one's guard--in
respect to which one specially warns the children.  But there, in
the Western States, it has been taken to the bosoms of them all as a
domestic animal; no one fears it, and the little children run about
almost among its wheels.  It is petted and made much of on all
sides--and, as far as I know, it seldom bites or tears.  I have not
heard of children being destroyed wholesale in the streets, or of
drunken men becoming frequent sacrifices.  But had I been consulted
beforehand as to the natural effects of such an arrangement, I
should have said that no child could have been reared in such a
town, and that any continuance of population under such
circumstances must have been impracticable.

Such places, however, do thrive and prosper with a prosperity
especially their own, and the boys and girls increase and multiply
in spite of all dangers.  With us in England it is difficult to
realize the importance which is attached to a railway in the States,
and the results which a railway creates.  We have roads everywhere,
and our country had been cultivated throughout with more or less
care before our system of railways had been commenced; but in
America, especially in the North, the railways have been the
precursors of cultivation.  They have been carried hither and
thither, through primeval forests and over prairies, with small hope
of other traffic than that which they themselves would make by their
own influences.  The people settling on their edges have had the
very best of all roads at their service; but they have had no other
roads.  The face of the country between one settlement and another
is still in many cases utterly unknown; but there is the connecting
road by which produce is carried away, and new-comers are brought
in.  The town that is distant a hundred miles by the rail is so near
that its inhabitants are neighbors; but a settlement twenty miles
distant across the uncleared country is unknown, unvisited, and
probably unheard of by the women and children.  Under such
circumstances the railway is everything.  It is the first necessity
of life, and gives the only hope of wealth.  It is the backbone of
existence from whence spring, and by which are protected, all the
vital organs and functions of the community.  It is the right arm of
civilization for the people, and the discoverer of the fertility of
the land.  It is all in all to those people, and to those regions.
It has supplied the wants of frontier life with all the substantial
comfort of the cities, and carried education, progress, and social
habits into the wilderness.  To the eye of the stranger such places
as Seymour and Crestline are desolate and dreary.  There is nothing
of beauty in them--given either by nature or by art.  The railway
itself is ugly, and its numerous sidings and branches form a mass of
iron road which is bewildering, and, according to my ideas, in
itself disagreeable.  The wooden houses open down upon the line, and
have no gardens to relieve them.  A foreigner, when first surveying
such a spot, will certainly record within himself a verdict against
it; but in doing so he probably commits the error of judging it by a
wrong standard.  He should compare it with the new settlements which
men have opened up in spots where no railway has assisted them, and
not with old towns in which wealth has long been congregated.  The
traveler may see what is the place with the railway; then let him
consider how it might have thriven without the railway.

I confess that I became tired of my sojourn at both the places I
have named.  At each I think that I saw every house in the place,
although my visit to Seymour was made in the night; and at both I
was lamentably at a loss for something to do.  At Crestline I was
all alone, and began to feel that the hours which I knew must pass
before the missing train could come would never make away with
themselves.  There were many others stationed there as I was, but to
them had been given a capability for loafing which niggardly Nature
has denied to me.  An American has the power of seating himself in
the close vicinity of a hot stove and feeding in silence on his own
thoughts by the hour together.  It may be that he will smoke; but
after awhile his cigar will come to an end.  He sits on, however,
certainly patient, and apparently contented.  It may be that he
chews, but if so, he does it with motionless jaws, and so slow a
mastication of the pabulum upon which he feeds, that his employment
in this respect only disturbs the absolute quiet of the circle when,
at certain long, distant intervals, he deposits the secretion of his
tobacco in an ornamental utensil which may probably be placed in the
farthest corner of the hall.  But during all this time he is happy.
It does not fret him to sit there and think and do nothing.  He is
by no means an idle man--probably one much given to commercial
enterprise.  Idle men out there in the West we may say there are
none.  How should any idle man live in such a country?  All who were
sitting hour after hour in that circle round the stove of the
Crestline Hotel hall--sitting there hour after hour in silence, as I
could not sit--were men who earned their bread by labor.  They were
farmers, mechanics, storekeepers; there was a lawyer or two, and one
clergyman.  Sufficient conversation took place at first to indicate
the professions of many of them.  One may conclude that there could
not be place there for an idle man.  But they all of them had a
capacity for a prolonged state of doing nothing which is to me
unintelligible, and which is by me very much to be envied.  They are
patient as cows which from hour to hour lie on the grass chewing
their cud.  An Englishman, if he be kept waiting by a train in some
forlorn station in which he can find no employment, curses his fate
and all that has led to his present misfortune with an energy which
tells the story of his deep and thorough misery.  Such, I confess,
is my state of existence under such circumstances.  But a Western
American gives himself up to "loafing," and is quite happy.  He
balances himself on the back legs of an arm-chair, and remains so,
without speaking, drinking or smoking for an hour at a stretch; and
while he is doing so he looks as though he had all that he desired.
I believe that he is happy, and that he has all that he wants for
such an occasion--an arm-chair in which to sit, and a stove on which
he can put his feet and by which he can make himself warm.

Such was not the phase of character which I had expected to find
among the people of the West.  Of all virtues patience would have
been the last which I should have thought of attributing to them.  I
should have expected to see them angry when robbed of their time,
and irritable under the stress of such grievances as railway delays;
but they are never irritable under such circumstances as I have
attempted to describe, nor, indeed, are they a people prone to
irritation under any grievances.  Even in political matters they are
long-enduring, and do not form themselves into mobs for the
expression of hot opinion.  We in England thought that masses of the
people would rise in anger if Mr. Lincoln's government should
consent to give up Slidell and Mason; but the people bore it without
any rising.  The habeas corpus has been suspended, the liberty of
the press has been destroyed for a time, the telegraph wires have
been taken up by the government into their own hands, but
nevertheless the people have said nothing.  There has been no rising
of a mob, and not even an expression of an adverse opinion.  The
people require to be allowed to vote periodically, and, having
acquired that privilege, permit other matters to go by the board.
In this respect we have, I think, in some degree misunderstood their
character.  They have all been taught to reverence the nature of
that form of government under which they live, but they are not
specially addicted to hot political fermentation.  They have learned
to understand that democratic institutions have given them liberty,
and on that subject they entertain a strong conviction which is
universal.  But they have not habitually interested themselves
deeply in the doings of their legislators or of their government.
On the subject of slavery there have been and are different
opinions, held with great tenacity and maintained occasionally with
violence; but on other subjects of daily policy the American people
have not, I think, been eager politicians.  Leading men in public
life have been much less trammeled by popular will than among us.
Indeed with us the most conspicuous of our statesmen and legislators
do not lead, but are led.  In the States the noted politicians of
the day have been the leaders, and not unfrequently the coercers of
opinion.  Seeing this, I claim for England a broader freedom in
political matters than the States have as yet achieved.  In speaking
of the American form of government, I will endeavor to explain more
clearly the ideas which I have come to hold on this matter.

I survived my delay at Seymour, after which I passed again through
Cincinnati, and then survived my subsequent delay at Crestline.  As
to Cincinnati, I must put on record the result of a country walk
which I took there, or rather on which I was taken by my friend.  He
professed to know the beauties of the neighborhood and to be well
acquainted with all that was attractive in its vicinity.  Cincinnati
is built on the Ohio, and is closely surrounded by picturesque hills
which overhang the suburbs of the city.  Over these I was taken,
plowing my way through a depth of mud which cannot be understood by
any ordinary Englishman.  But the depth of mud was not the only
impediment nor the worst which we encountered.  As we began to
ascend from the level of the outskirts of the town we were greeted
by a rising flavor in the air, which soon grew into a strong odor,
and at last developed itself into a stench that surpassed in
offensiveness anything that my nose had ever hitherto suffered.
When we were at the worst we hardly knew whether to descend or to
proceed.  It had so increased in virulence that at one time I felt
sure that it arose from some matter buried in the ground beneath my
feet.  But my friend, who declared himself to be quite at home in
Cincinnati matters, and to understand the details of the great
Cincinnati trade, declared against this opinion of mine.  Hogs, he
said, were at the bottom of it.  It was the odor of hogs going up to
the Ohio heavens--of hogs in a state of transit from hoggish nature
to clothes-brushes, saddles, sausages, and lard.  He spoke with an
authority that constrained belief; but I can never forgive him in
that he took me over those hills, knowing all that he professed to
know.  Let the visitors to Cincinnati keep themselves within the
city, and not wander forth among the mountains.  It is well that the
odor of hogs should ascend to heaven and not hang heavy over the
streets; but it is not well to intercept that odor in its ascent.
My friend became ill with fever, and had to betake himself to the
care of nursing friends; so that I parted company with him at
Cincinnati.  I did not tell him that his illness was deserved as
well as natural, but such was my feeling on the matter.  I myself
happily escaped the evil consequences which his imprudence might
have entailed on me.

I again passed through Pittsburg, and over the Alleghany Mountains
by Altoona, and down to Baltimore--back into civilization,
secession, conversation, and gastronomy.  I never had secessionist
sympathies and never expressed them.  I always believed in the North
as a people--discrediting, however, to the utmost the existing
Northern government, or, as I should more properly say, the existing
Northern cabinet; but nevertheless, with such feelings and such
belief I found myself very happy at Baltimore.  Putting aside
Boston--which must, I think, be generally preferred by Englishmen to
any other city in the States--I should choose Baltimore as my
residence if I were called upon to live in America.  I am not led to
this, if I know myself, solely by the canvas-back ducks; and as to
the terrapins, I throw them to the winds.  The madeira, which is
still kept there with a reverence which I should call superstitious
were it not that its free circulation among outside worshipers
prohibits the just use of such a word, may have something to do with
it, as may also the beauty of the women--to some small extent.
Trifles do bear upon our happiness in a manner that we do not
ourselves understand and of which we are unconscious.  But there was
an English look about the streets and houses which I think had as
much to do with it as either the wine, the women, or the ducks, and
it seemed to me as though the manners of the people of Maryland were
more English than those of other Americans.  I do not say that they
were on this account better.  My English hat is, I am well aware,
less graceful, and I believe less comfortable, than a Turkish fez
and turban; nevertheless I prefer my English hat.  New York I regard
as the most thoroughly American of all American cities.  It is by no
means the one in which I should find myself the happiest; but I do
not on that account condemn it.

I have said that in returning to Baltimore I found myself among
secessionists.  In so saying I intend to speak of a certain set
whose influence depends perhaps more on their wealth, position, and
education than on their numbers.  I do not think that the population
of the city was then in favor of secession, even if it had ever been
so.  I believe that the mob of Baltimore is probably the roughest
mob in the States--is more akin to a Paris mob, and I may perhaps
also say to a Manchester mob, than that of any other American city.
There are more roughs in Baltimore than elsewhere, and the roughs
there are rougher.  In those early days of secession, when the
troops were being first hurried down from New England for the
protection of Washington, this mob was vehemently opposed to its
progress.  Men had been taught to think that the rights of the State
of Maryland were being invaded by the passage of the soldiers, and
they also were undoubtedly imbued with a strong prepossession for
the Southern cause.  The two ideas had then gone together.  But the
mob of Baltimore had ceased to be secessionists within twelve months
of their first exploit.  In April, 1861, they had refused to allow
Massachusetts soldiers to pass through the town on their way to
Washington; and in February, 1862, they were nailing Union flags on
the door-posts of those who refused to display such banners as signs
of triumph at the Northern victories!

That Maryland can ever go with the South, even in the event of the
South succeeding in secession, no Marylander can believe.  It is not
pretended that there is any struggle now going on with such an
object.  No such result has been expected, certainly since the
possession of Washington was secured to the North by the army of the
Potomac.  By few, I believe, was such a result expected even when
Washington was insecure.  And yet the feeling for secession among a
certain class in Baltimore is as strong now as ever it was.  And it
is equally strong in certain districts of the State--in those
districts which are most akin to Virginia in their habits, modes of
thought, and ties of friendship.  These men, and these women also,
pray for the South if they be pious, give their money to the South
if they be generous, work for the South if they be industrious,
fight for the South if they be young, and talk for the South
morning, noon, and night, in spite of General Dix and his columbiads
on Federal Hill.  It is in vain to say that such men and women have
no strong feeling on the matter, and that they are praying, working,
fighting, and talking under dictation.  Their hearts are in it.  And
judging from them, even though there were no other evidence from
which to judge, I have no doubt that a similar feeling is strong
through all the seceding States.  On this subject the North, I
think, deceives itself in supposing that the Southern rebellion has
been carried on without any strong feeling on the part of the
Southern people.  Whether the mob of Charleston be like the mob of
Baltimore I cannot tell; but I have no doubt as to the gentry of
Charleston and the gentry of Baltimore being in accord on the
subject.

In what way, then, when the question has been settled by the force
of arms, will these classes find themselves obliged to act?  In
Virginia and Maryland they comprise, as a rule, the highest and best
educated of the people.  As to parts of Kentucky the same thing may
be said, and probably as to the whole of Tennessee.  It must be
remembered that this is not as though certain aristocratic families
in a few English counties should find themselves divided off from
the politics and national aspirations of their country-men, as was
the case long since with reference to the Roman Catholic adherents
of the Stuarts, and as has been the case since then in a lesser
degree with the firmest of the old Tories who had allowed themselves
to be deceived by Sir Robert Peel.  In each of these cases the
minority of dissentients was so small that the nation suffered
nothing, though individuals were all but robbed of their
nationality.  but as regards America it must be remembered that each
State has in itself a governing power, and is in fact a separate
people.  Each has its own legislature, and must have its own line of
politics.

The secessionists of Maryland and of Virginia may consent to live in
obscurity; but if this be so, who is to rule in those States?  From
whence are to come the senators and the members of Congress; the
governors and attorney-generals?  From whence is to come the
national spirit of the two States, and the salt that shall preserve
their political life?  I have never believed that these States would
succeed in secession.  I have always felt that they would be held
within the Union, whatever might be their own wishes.  But I think
that they will be so held in a manner and after a fashion that will
render any political vitality almost impossible till a new
generation shall have sprung up.  In the mean time life goes on
pleasantly enough in Baltimore, and ladies meet together, knitting
stockings and sewing shirts for the Southern soldiers, while the
gentlemen talk Southern politics and drink the health of the
(Southern) president in ambiguous terms, as our Cavaliers used to
drink the health of the king.

During my second visit to Baltimore I went over to Washington for a
day or two, and found the capital still under the empire of King
Mud.  How the elite of a nation--for the inhabitants of Washington
consider themselves to be the elite--can consent to live in such a
state of thraldom, a foreigner cannot understand.  Were I to say
that it was intended to be typical of the condition of the
government, I might be considered cynical; but undoubtedly the
sloughs of despond which were deepest in their despondency were to
be found in localities which gave an appearance of truth to such a
surmise.  The Secretary of State's office, in which Mr. Seward was
still reigning, though with diminished glory, was divided from the
headquarters of the commander-in-chief, which are immediately
opposite to it, by an opaque river which admitted of no transit.
These buildings stand at the corner of President Square, and it had
been long understood that any close intercourse between them had not
been considered desirable by the occupants of the military side of
the causeway.  But the Secretary of State's office was altogether
unapproachable without a long circuit and begrimed legs.  The
Secretary of War's department was, if possible, in a worse
condition.  This is situated on the other side of the President's
house, and the mud lay, if possible, thicker in this quarter than it
did round Mr. Seward's chambers.  The passage over Pennsylvania
Avenue, immediately in front of the War Office, was a thing not to
be attempted in those days.  Mr. Cameron, it is true, had gone, and
Mr. Stanton was installed; but the labor of cleansing the interior
of that establishment had hitherto allowed no time for a glance at
the exterior dirt, and Mr. Stanton should, perhaps, be held as
excused.  That the Navy Office should be buried in mud, and quite
debarred from approach, was to be expected.  The space immediately
in front of Mr. Lincoln's own residence was still kept fairly clean,
and I am happy to be able to give testimony to this effect.  Long
may it remain so.  I could not, however, but think that an energetic
and careful President would have seen to the removal of the dirt
from his own immediate neighborhood.  It was something that his own
shoes should remain unpolluted; but the foul mud always clinging to
the boots and leggings of those by whom he was daily surrounded
must, I should think, have been offensive to him.  The entrance to
the Treasury was difficult to achieve by those who had not learned
by practice the ways of the place; but I must confess that a
tolerably clear passage was maintained on that side which led
immediately down to the halls of Congress.  Up at the Capitol the
mud was again triumphant in the front of the building; this however
was not of great importance, as the legislative chambers of the
States are always reached by the back doors.  I, on this occasion,
attempted to leave the building by the grand entrance, but I soon
became entangled among rivers of mud and mazes of shifting sand.
With difficulty I recovered my steps, and finding my way back to the
building was forced to content myself by an exit among the crowd of
Senators and Representatives who were thronging down the back
stairs.

Of dirt of all kinds it behoves Washington and those concerned in
Washington to make themselves free.  It is the Augean stables
through which some American Hercules must turn a purifying river
before the American people can justly boast either of their capital
or of their government.  As to the material mud, enough has been
said.  The presence of the army perhaps caused it, and the excessive
quantity of rain which had fallen may also be taken as a fair plea.
But what excuse shall we find for that other dirt?  It also had been
caused by the presence of the army, and by that long-continued down-
pouring of contracts which had fallen like Danae's golden shower
into the laps of those who understood how to avail themselves of
such heavenly waters.  The leaders of the rebellion are hated in the
North.  The names of Jefferson Davis, of Cobb, Toombs, and Floyd are
mentioned with execration by the very children.  This has sprung
from a true and noble feeling; from a patriotic love of national
greatness and a hatred of those who, for small party purposes, have
been willing to lessen the name of the United States.  I have
reverenced the feeling even when I have not shared it.  But, in
addition to this, the names of those also should be execrated who
have robbed their country when pretending to serve it; who have
taken its wages in the days of its great struggle, and at the same
time have filched from its coffers; who have undertaken the task of
steering the ship through the storm in order that their hands might
be deep in the meal-tub and the bread-basket, and that they might
stuff their own sacks with the ship's provisions.  These are the men
who must be loathed by the nation--whose fate must be held up as a
warning to others before good can come!  Northern men and women talk
of hanging Davis and his accomplices.  I myself trust that there
will be no hanging when the war is over.  I believe there will be
none, for the Americans are not a blood-thirsty people.  But if
punishment of any kind be meted out, the men of the North should
understand that they have worse offenders among them than Davis and
Floyd.

At the period of which I am now speaking, there had come a change
over the spirit of Mr. Lincoln's cabinet.  Mr. Seward was still his
Secretary of State, but he was, as far as outside observers could
judge, no longer his Prime Minister.  In the early days of the war,
and up to the departure of Mr. Cameron from out of the cabinet, Mr.
Seward had been the Minister of the nation.  In his dispatches he
talks ever of We or of I.  In every word of his official writings,
of which a large volume has been published, he shows plainly that he
intends to be considered as the man of the day--as the hero who is
to bring the States through their difficulties.  Mr. Lincoln may be
king, but Mr. Seward is mayor of the palace, and carries the king in
his pocket.  From the depth of his own wisdom he undertakes to teach
his ministers in all parts of the world, not only their duties, but
their proper aspiration.  He is equally kind to foreign statesmen,
and sends to them messages as though from an altitude which no
European politician had ever reached.  At home he has affected the
Prime Minister in everything, dropping the We and using the I in a
manner that has hardly made up by its audacity for its deficiency in
discretion.  It is of course known everywhere that he had run Mr.
Lincoln very hard for the position of Republican candidate for the
Presidency.  Mr. Lincoln beat him, and Mr. Seward is well aware that
in the states a man has never a second chance for the presidential
chair.  Hence has arisen his ambition to make for himself a new
place in the annals of American politics.  Hitherto there has been
no Prime Minister known in the government of the United States.  Mr.
Seward has attempted a revolution in that matter, and has essayed to
fill the situation.  For awhile it almost seemed that he was
successful.  He interfered with the army, and his interferences were
endured.  He took upon himself the business of the police, and
arrested men at his own will and pleasure.  The habeas corpus was in
his hand, and his name was current through the States as a covering
authority for every outrage on the old laws.  Sufficient craft, or
perhaps cleverness, he possessed to organize a position which should
give him a power greater than the power of the President; but he had
not the genius which would enable him to hold it.  He made foolish
prophecies about the war, and talked of the triumphs which he would
win.  He wrote state-papers on matters which he did not understand,
and gave himself the airs of diplomatic learning while he showed
himself to be sadly ignorant of the very rudiments of diplomacy.  He
tried to joke as Lord Palmerston jokes, and nobody liked his joking.
He was greedy after the little appanages of power, taking from
others who loved them as well as he did privileges with which he
might have dispensed.  And then, lastly, he was successful in
nothing.  He had given himself out as the commander of the
commander-in-chief; but then under his command nothing got itself
done.  For a month or two some men had really believed in Mr.
Seward.  The policemen of the country had come to have an absolute
trust in him, and the underlings of the public offices were
beginning to think that he might be a great man.  But then, as is
ever the case with such men, there came suddenly a downfall.  Mr.
Cameron went from the cabinet, and everybody knew that Mr. Seward
would be no longer commander of the commander-in-chief.  His prime
ministership was gone from him, and he sank down into the
comparatively humble position of Minister for Foreign Affairs.  His
lettres de cachet no longer ran.  His passport system was repealed.
His prisoners were released.  And though it is too much to say that
writs of habeas corpus were no longer suspended, the effect and very
meaning of the suspension were at once altered.  When I first left
Washington, Mr. Seward was the only minister of the cabinet whose
name was ever mentioned with reference to any great political
measure.  When I returned to Washington, Mr. Stanton was Mr.
Lincoln's leading minister, and, as Secretary of War, had
practically the management of the army and of the internal police.

I have spoken here of Mr. Seward by name, and in my preceding
paragraphs I have alluded with some asperity to the dishonesty of
certain men who had obtained political power under Mr. Lincoln, and
used it for their own dishonest purposes.  I trust that I may not be
understood as bringing any such charges against Mr. Seward.  That
such dishonesty has been frightfully prevalent all men know who knew
anything of Washington during the year 1861.  In a former chapter I
have alluded to this more at length, stating circumstances, and in
some cases giving the names of the persons charged with offenses.
Whenever I have done so, I have based my statements on the Van Wyck
report, and the evidence therein given.  This is the published
report of a committee appointed by the house of Representatives; and
as it has been before the world for some months without refutation,
I think that I have a right to presume it to be true.*  On no less
authority than this would I consider myself justified in bringing
any such charge.  Of Mr. Seward's incompetency I have heard very
much among American politicians; much also of his ambition.  With
worse offenses than these I have not heard him charged.


* I ought perhaps to state that General Fremont has published an
answer to the charges preferred against him.  That answer refers
chiefly to matters of military capacity or incapacity, as to which I
have expressed no opinion.  General Fremont does allude to the
accusations made against him regarding the building of the forts;
but in doing so he seem to me rather to admit than to deny the acts
as stated by the committee.


At the period of which I am writing, February, 1862, the long list
of military successes which attended the Northern army through the
late winter and early spring had commenced.  Fort henry, on the
Tennessee River, had first been taken, and after that, Fort
Donelson, on the Cumberland River, also in the State, Tennessee.
Price had been driven out of Missouri into Arkansas by General
Curtis, acting under General Halleck's orders.  The chief body of
the Confederate army in the West had abandoned the fortified
position which they had long held at Bowling Green, in the
southwestern district of Kentucky.  Roanoke Island, on the coast of
North Carolina, had been taken by General Burnside's expedition, and
a belief had begun to manifest itself in Washington that the army of
the Potomac was really about to advance.  It is impossible to
explain in what way the renewed confidence of the Northern party
showed itself, or how one learned that the hopes of the
secessionists were waxing dim; but it was so; and even a stranger
became aware of the general feeling as clearly as though it were a
defined and established fact.  In the early part of the winter, when
I reached Washington, the feeling ran all the other way.  Northern
men did not say that they were despondent; they did not with spoken
words express diffidence as to their success; but their looks
betrayed diffidence, and the moderation of their self-assurance
almost amounted to despondency.  In the capital the parties were
very much divided.  The old inhabitants were either secessionists or
influenced by "secession proclivities," as the word went; but the
men of the government and of the two Houses of Congress were, with a
few exceptions, of course Northern.  It should be understood that
these parties were at variance with each other on almost every point
as to which men can disagree.  In our civil war it may be presumed
that all Englishmen were at any rate anxious for England.  They
desired and fought for different modes of government; but each party
was equally English in its ambition.  In the States there is the
hatred of a different nationality added to the rancor of different
politics.  The Southerners desire to be a people of themselves--to
divide themselves by every possible mark of division from New
England; to be as little akin to New York as they are to London, or,
if possible, less so.  Their habits, they say, are different; their
education, their beliefs, their propensities, their very virtues and
vices are not the education, or the beliefs, or the propensities, or
the virtues and vices of the North.  The bond that ties them to the
North is to them a Mezentian marriage, and they hate their Northern
spouses with a Mezentian hatred.  They would be anything sooner than
citizens of the United States.  They see to what Mexico has come,
and the republics of Central America; but the prospect of even that
degradation is less bitter to them than a share in the glory of the
stars and stripes.  Better, with them, to reign in hell than serve
in heaven!  It is not only in politics that they will be beaten, if
they be beaten, as one party with us may be beaten by another; but
they will be beaten as we should be beaten if France annexed us, and
directed that we should live under French rule.  Let an Englishman
digest and realize that idea, and he will comprehend the feelings of
a Southern gentleman as he contemplates the probability that his
State will be brought back into the Union.  And the Northern feeling
is as strong.  The Northern man has founded his national ambition on
the territorial greatness of his nation.  He has panted for new
lands, and for still extended boundaries.  The Western World has
opened her arms to him, and has seemed to welcome him as her only
lord.  British America has tempted him toward the north, and Mexico
has been as a prey to him on the south.  He has made maps of his
empire, including all the continent, and has preached the Monroe
doctrine as though it had been decreed by the gods.  He has told the
world of his increasing millions, and has never yet known his store
to diminish.  He has pawed in the valley, and rejoiced in his
strength.  He has said among the trumpets, ha! ha!  He has boasted
aloud in his pride, and called on all men to look at his glory.  And
now shall he be divided and shorn?  Shall he be hemmed in from his
ocean, and shut off from his rivers?  Shall he have a hook run into
his nostrils, and a thorn driven into his jaw?  Shall men say that
his day is over, when he has hardly yet tasted the full cup of his
success?  Has his young life been a dream, and not a truth?  Shall
he never reach that giant manhood which the growth of his boyish
years has promised him?  If the South goes from him, he will be
divided, shorn, and hemmed in.  The hook will have pierced his nose,
and the thorn will fester in his jaw.  Men will taunt him with his
former boastings, and he will awake to find himself but a mortal
among mortals.

Such is the light in which the struggle is regarded by the two
parties, and such the hopes and feelings which have been engendered.
It may therefore be surmised with what amount of neighborly love
secessionists and Northern neighbors regarded each other in such
towns as Baltimore and Washington.  Of course there was hatred of
the deepest dye; of course there were muttered curses, or curses
which sometimes were not simply muttered.  Of course there was
wretchedness, heart-burnings, and fearful divisions in families.
That, perhaps, was the worst of all.  The daughter's husband would
be in the Northern ranks, while the son was fighting in the South;
or two sons would hold equal rank in the two armies, sometimes
sending to each other frightful threats of personal vengeance.  Old
friends would meet each other in the street, passing without
speaking; or, worse still, would utter words of insult for which
payment is to be demanded when a Southern gentleman may again be
allowed to quarrel in his own defense.

And yet society went on.  Women still smiled, and men were happy to
whom such smiles were given.  Cakes and ale were going, and ginger
was still hot in the mouth.  When many were together no words of
unhappiness were heard.  It was at those small meetings of two or
three that women would weep instead of smiling, and that men would
run their hands through their hair and sit in silence, thinking of
their ruined hopes and divided children.

I have spoken of Southern hopes and Northern fears, and have
endeavored to explain the feelings of each party.  For myself I
think that the Southerners have been wrong in their hopes, and that
those of the North have been wrong in their fears.  It is not better
to rule in hell than serve in heaven.  Of course a Southern
gentleman will not admit the premises which are here by me taken for
granted.  The hell to which I allude is, the sad position of a low
and debased nation.  Such, I think, will be the fate of the Gulf
States, if they succeed in obtaining secession--of a low and debased
nation, or, worse still, of many low and debased nations.  They will
have lost their cotton monopoly by the competition created during
the period of the war, and will have no material of greatness on
which either to found themselves or to flourish.  That they had much
to bear when linked with the North, much to endure on account of
that slavery from which it was all but impossible that they should
disentangle themselves, may probably be true.  But so have all
political parties among all free nations much to bear from political
opponents, and yet other free nations do not go to pieces.  Had it
been possible that the slaveowners and slave properties should have
been scattered in parts through all the States and not congregated
in the South, the slave party would have maintained itself as other
parties do; but in such case, as a matter of course, it would not
have thought of secession.  It has been the close vicinity of
slaveowners to each other, the fact that their lands have been
coterminous, that theirs was especially a cotton district, which has
tempted them to secession.  They have been tempted to secession, and
will, as I think, still achieve it in those Gulf States, much to
their misfortune.

And the fears of the North are, I think, equally wrong.  That they
will be deceived as to that Monroe doctrine is no doubt more than
probable.  That ambition for an entire continent under one rule will
not, I should say, be gratified.  But not on that account need the
nation be less great, or its civilization less extensive.  That hook
in its nose and that thorn in its jaw will, after all, be but a hook
of the imagination and an ideal thorn.  Do not all great men suffer
such ere their greatness be established and acknowledged?  There is
scope enough for all that manhood can do between the Atlantic and
the Pacific, even though those hot, swampy cotton fields be taken
away; even though the snows of the British provinces be denied to
them.  And as for those rivers and that sea-board, the Americans of
the North will have lost much of their old energy and usual force of
will if any Southern confederacy be allowed to deny their right of
way or to stop their commercial enterprises.  I believe that the
South will be badly off without the North; but I feel certain that
the North will never miss the South when once the wounds to her
pride have been closed.

From Washington I journeyed back to Boston through the cities which
I had visited in coming thither, and stayed again on my route, for a
few days, at Baltimore, at Philadelphia, and at New York.  At each
town there were those whom I now regarded almost as old friends, and
as the time of my departure drew near I felt a sorrow that I was not
to be allowed to stay longer.  As the general result of my sojourn
in the country, I must declare that I was always happy and
comfortable in the Eastern cities, and generally unhappy and
uncomfortable in the West.  I had previously been inclined to think
that I should like the roughness of the West, and that in the East I
should encounter an arrogance which would have kept me always on the
verge of hot water; but in both these surmises I found myself to
have been wrong.  And I think that most English travelers would come
to the same conclusion.  The Western people do not mean to be harsh
or uncivil, but they do not make themselves pleasant.  In all the
Eastern cities--I speak of the Eastern cities north of Washington--a
society may be found which must be esteemed as agreeable by
Englishmen who like clever, genial men, and who love clever, pretty
women.

I was forced to pass twice again over the road between New York and
Boston, as the packet by which I intended to leave America was fixed
to sail from the former port.  I had promised myself, and had
promised others, that I would spend in Boston the last week of my
sojourn in the States, and this was a promise which I was by no
means inclined to break.  If there be a gratification in this world
which has no alloy, it is that of going to an assured welcome.  The
belief that arms and hearts are open to receive one--and the arms
and hearts of women, too, as far as they allow themselves to open
them--is the salt of the earth, the sole remedy against sea-
sickness, the only cure for the tedium of railways, the one
preservative amid all the miseries and fatigue of travail.  These
matters are private, and should hardly be told of in a book; but in
writing of the States, I should not do justice to my own convictions
of the country if I did not say how pleasantly social intercourse
there will ripen into friendship, and how full of love that
friendship may become.  I became enamored of Boston at last.  Beacon
Street was very pleasant to me, and the view over Boston Common was
dear to my eyes.  Even the State House, with its great yellow-
painted dome, became sightly, and the sunset over the western waters
that encompass the city beats all other sunsets that I have seen.

During my last week there the world of Boston was moving itself on
sleighs.  There was not a wheel to be seen in the town.  The
omnibuses and public carriages had been dismounted from their axles
and put themselves upon snow-runners, and the private world had
taken out its winter carriages, and wrapped itself up in buffalo
robes.  Men now spoke of the coming thaw as of a misfortune which
must come, but which a kind Providence might perhaps postpone--as we
all, in short, speak of death.  In the morning the snow would have
been hardened by the night's frost, and men would look happy and
contented.  By an hour after noon the streets would be all wet and
the ground would be slushy, and men would look gloomy and speak of
speedy dissolution.  There were those who would always prophesy that
the next day would see the snow converted into one dull, dingy
river.  Such I regarded as seers of tribulation, and endeavored with
all my mind to disbelieve their interpretations of the signs.  That
sleighing was excellent fun.  For myself I must own that I hardly
saw the best of it at Boston, for the coming of the end was already
at hand when I arrived there, and the fresh beauty of the hard snow
was gone.  Moreover, when I essayed to show my prowess with a pair
of horses on the established course for such equipage, the beasts
ran away, knowing that I was not practiced in the use of snow
chariots, and brought me to grief and shame.  There was a lady with
me in the sleigh, whom, for awhile, I felt that I was doomed to
consign to a snowy grave--whom I would willingly have overturned
into a drift of snow, so as to avoid worse consequences, had I only
known how to do so.  But Providence, even though without curbs and
assisted only by simple snaffles, did at last prevail, and I brought
the sleigh horses, and lady alive back to Boston, whether with or
without permanent injury I have never yet ascertained.

At last the day of tribulation came, and the snow was picked up and
carted out of Boston.  Gangs of men, standing shoulder to shoulder,
were at work along the chief streets, picking, shoveling, and
disposing of the dirty blocks.  Even then the snow seemed to be
nearly a foot thick; but it was dirty, rough, half melted in some
places, though hard as stone in others.  The labor and cost of
cleansing the city in this way must be very great.  The people were
at it as I left, and I felt that the day of tribulation had in truth
come.

Farewell to thee, thou Western Athens!  When I have forgotten thee,
my right hand shall have forgotten its cunning, and my heart
forgotten its pulses.  Let us look at the list of names with which
Boston has honored itself in our days, and then ask what other town
of the same size has done more.  Prescott, Bancroft, Motley,
Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Dana, Agassiz, Holmes, Hawthorne!  Who
is there among us in England who has not been the better for these
men?  Who does not owe to some of them a debt of gratitude?  In
whose ears is not their names familiar?  It is a bright galaxy, and
far extended, for so small a city.  What city has done better than
this?  All these men, save one, are now alive and in the full
possession of their powers.  What other town of the same size has
done as well in the same short space of time?  It may be that this
is the Augustan era of Boston--its Elizabethan time.  If so, I am
thankful that my steps have wandered thither at such a period.

While I was at Boston I had the sad privilege of attending the
funeral of President Felton, the head of Harvard College.  A few
months before I had seen him a strong man, apparently in perfect
health and in the pride of life.  When I reached Boston I heard of
his death.  He also was an accomplished scholar, and as a Grecian
has left few behind him who were his equals.  At his installation as
president, four ex-presidents of Harvard College assisted.  Whether
they were all present at his funeral I do not know, but I do know
that they were all still living.  These are Mr. Quincy, who is now
over ninety; Mr. Sparks; Mr. Everett, the well-known orator; and Mr.
Walker.  They all reside in Boston or its neighborhood, and will
probably all assist at the installation of another president.



CHAPTER IX.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.


It is, I presume, universally known that the citizens of the Western
American colonies of Great Britain which revolted, declared
themselves to be free from British dominion by an act which they
called the Declaration of Independence.  This was done on the 4th of
July, 1776, and was signed by delegates from the thirteen colonies,
or States as they then called themselves.  These delegates in this
document declare themselves to be the representatives of the United
States of America in general Congress assembled.  The opening and
close of this declaration have in them much that is grand and
striking; the greater part of it, however, is given up to
enumerating, in paragraph after paragraph, the sins committed by
George III. against the colonies.  Poor George III.!  There is no
one now to say a good word for him; but of all those who have spoken
ill of him, this declaration is the loudest in its censure.

In the following year, on the 15th of November, 1777, were drawn up
the Articles of Confederation between the States, by which it was
then intended that a sufficient bond and compact should be made for
their future joint existence and preservation.  A reference to this
document will show how slight was the then intended bond of union
between the States.  The second article declares that each State
retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence.  The third
article avows that "the said States hereby severally enter into a
firm league of friendship with each other for their common defense,
the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general
welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force
offered to, or attacks made upon, them, or any of them, on account
of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretext whatever."
And the third article, "the better to secure and perpetuate mutual
friendship," declares that the free citizens of one State shall be
free citizens of another.  From this it is, I think, manifest that
no idea of one united nation had at that time been received and
adopted by the citizens of the States.  The articles then go on to
define the way in which Congress shall assemble and what shall be
its powers.  This Congress was to exercise the authority of a
national government rather than perform the work of a national
parliament.  It was intended to be executive rather than
legislative.  It was to consist of delegates, the very number of
which within certain limits was to be left to the option of the
individual States, and to this Congress was to be confided certain
duties and privileges, which could not be performed or exercised
separately by the governments of the individual States.  One special
article, the eleventh, enjoins that "Canada, acceding to the
Confederation, and joining in the measures of the United States,
shall be admitted into and entitled to all the advantages of this
Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same unless
such admission be agreed to by nine States."  I mention this to show
how strong was the expectation at that time that Canada also would
revolt from England.  Up to this day few Americans can understand
why Canada has declined to join her lot to them.

But the compact between the different States made by the Articles of
Confederation, and the mode of national procedure therein enjoined,
were found to be inefficient for the wants of a people who to be
great must be united in fact as well as in name.  The theory of the
most democratic among the Americans of that day was in favor of
self-government carried to an extreme.  Self-government was the
Utopia which they had determined to realize, and they were unwilling
to diminish the reality of the self-government of the individual
States by any centralization of power in one head, or in one
parliament, or in one set of ministers for the nation.  For ten
years, from 1777 to 1787, the attempt was made; but then it was
found that a stronger bond of nationality was indispensable, if any
national greatness was to be regarded as desirable.  Indeed, all
manner of failure had attended the mode of national action ordained
by the Articles of Confederation.  I am not attempting to write a
history of the United States, and will not therefore trouble my
readers with historic details, which are not of value unless put
forward with historic weight.  The fact of the failure is however
admitted, and the present written Constitution of the United States,
which is the splendid result of that failure, was "Done in
Convention by the unanimous consent of the States present."*  Twelve
States were present--Rhode Island apparently having had no
representative on the occasion--on the 17th of September, 1787, and
in the twelfth year of the Independence of the United States.


* It must not, however, be supposed that by this "doing in
convention," the Constitution became an accepted fact.  It simply
amounted to the adoption of a proposal of the Constitution.  The
Constitution itself was formally adopted by the people in
conventions held in their separate State capitals.  It was agreed to
by the people in 1788, and came into operation in 1789.


I call the result splendid, seeing that under this Constitution so
written a nation has existed for three-quarters of a century, and
has grown in numbers, power, and wealth till it has made itself the
political equal of the other greatest nations of the earth.  And it
cannot be said that it has so grown in spite of the Constitution, or
by ignoring the Constitution.  Hitherto the laws there laid down for
the national guidance have been found adequate for the great purpose
assigned to them, and have done all that which the framers of them
hoped that they might effect.  We all know what has been the fate of
the constitutions which were written throughout the French
Revolution for the use of France.  We all, here in England, have the
same ludicrous conception of Utopian theories of government framed
by philosophical individuals who imagine that they have learned from
books a perfect system of managing nations.  To produce such
theories is especially the part of a Frenchman; to disbelieve in
them is especially the part of an Englishman.  But in the States a
system of government has been produced, under a written
constitution, in which no Englishman can disbelieve, and which every
Frenchman must envy.  It has done its work.  The people have been
free, well educated, and politically great.  Those among us who are
most inclined at the present moment to declare that the institutions
of the United States have failed, can at any rate only declare that
they have failed in their finality; that they have shown themselves
to be insufficient to carry on the nation in its advancing strides
through all times.  They cannot deny that an amount of success and
prosperity, much greater than the nation even expected for itself,
has been achieved under this Constitution and in connection with it.
If it be so, they cannot disbelieve in it.  Let those who now say
that it is insufficient, consider what their prophecies regarding it
would have been had they been called on to express their opinions
concerning it when it was proposed in 1787.  If the future as it has
since come forth had then been foretold for it, would not such a
prophecy have been a prophecy of success?  That Constitution is now
at the period of its hardest trial, and at this moment one may
hardly dare to speak of it with triumph; but looking at the nation
even in its present position, I think I am justified in saying that
its Constitution is one in which no Englishman can disbelieve.  When
I also say that it is one which every Frenchman must envy, perhaps I
am improperly presuming that Frenchmen could not look at it with
Englishmen's eyes.

When the Constitution came to be written, a man had arisen in the
States who was peculiarly suited for the work in hand: he was one of
those men to whom the world owes much, and of whom the world in
general knows but little.  This was Alexander Hamilton, who alone on
the part of the great State of New York signed the Constitution of
the United States.  The other States sent two, three, four, or more
delegates; New York sent Hamilton alone; but in sending him New York
sent more to the Constitution than all the other States together.  I
should be hardly saying too much for Hamilton if I were to declare
that all those parts of the Constitution emanated from him in which
permanent political strength has abided.  And yet his name has not
been spread abroad widely in men's mouths.  Of Jefferson, Franklin,
and Madison we have all heard; our children speak of them, and they
are household words in the nursery of history.  Of Hamilton,
however, it may, I believe, be said that he was greater than any of
those.

Without going with minuteness into the early contests of democracy
in the United States, I think I may say that there soon arose two
parties, each probably equally anxious in the cause of freedom, one
of which was conspicuous for its French predilections and the other
for its English aptitudes.  It was the period of the French
Revolution--the time when the French Revolution had in it as yet
something of promise and had not utterly disgraced itself.  To many
in America the French theory of democracy not unnaturally endeared
itself and foremost among these was Thomas Jefferson.  He was the
father of those politicians in the States who have since taken the
name of Democrats, and in accordance with whose theory it has come
to pass that everything has been referred to the universal suffrage
of the people.  James Madison, who succeeded Jefferson as President,
was a pupil in this school, as indeed have been most of the
Presidents of the United States.  At the head of the other party,
from which through various denominations have sprung those who now
call themselves Republicans, was Alexander Hamilton.  I believe I
may say that all the political sympathies of George Washington were
with the same school.  Washington, however, was rather a man of
feeling and of action than of theoretical policy or speculative
opinion.  When the Constitution was written Jefferson was in France,
having been sent thither as minister from the United States, and he
therefore was debarred from concerning himself personally in the
matter.  His views, however, were represented by Madison; and it is
now generally understood that the Constitution as it stands is the
joint work of Madison and Hamilton.*  The democratic bias, of which
it necessarily contains much, and without which it could not have
obtained the consent of the people, was furnished by Madison; but
the conservative elements, of which it possesses much more than
superficial observers of the American form of government are wont to
believe, came from Hamilton.


* It should, perhaps, be explained that the views of Madison were
originally not opposed to those of Hamilton.  Madison, however,
gradually adopted the policy of Jefferson--his policy rather than
his philosophy.


The very preamble of the Constitution at once declares that the
people of the different States do hereby join themselves together
with the view of forming themselves into one nation.  "We, the
people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the
common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America."  Here
a great step was made toward centralization, toward one national
government, and the binding together of the States into one nation.
But from that time down to the present the contest has been going
on, sometimes openly and sometimes only within the minds of men,
between the still alleged sovereignty of the individual States and
the acknowledged sovereignty of the central Congress and central
government.  The disciples of Jefferson, even though they have not
known themselves to be his disciples, have been carrying on that
fight for State rights which has ended in secession; and the
disciples of Hamilton, certainly not knowing themselves to be his
disciples, have been making that stand for central government, and
for the one acknowledged republic, which is now at work in opposing
secession, and which, even though secession should to some extent be
accomplished, will, we may hope, nevertheless, and not the less on
account of such secession, conquer and put down the spirit of
democracy.

The political contest of parties which is being waged now, and which
has been waged throughout the history of the United States, has been
pursued on one side in support of that idea of an undivided
nationality of which I have spoken--of a nationality in which the
interests of a part should be esteemed as the interests of the
whole; and on the other side it has been pursued in opposition to
that idea.  I will not here go into the interminable question of
slavery--though it is on that question that the Southern or
democratic States have most loudly declared their own sovereign
rights and their aversion to national interference.  Were I to do so
I should fail in my present object of explaining the nature of the
Constitution of the United States.  But I protest against any
argument which shall be used to show that the Constitution has
failed because it has allowed slavery to produce the present
division among the States.  I myself think that the Southern or Gulf
States will go.  I will not pretend to draw the exact line or to say
how many of them are doomed; but I believe that South Carolina, with
Georgia and perhaps five or six others, will be extruded from the
Union.  But their very extrusion will be a political success, and
will in fact amount to a virtual acknowledgment in the body of the
Union of the truth of that system for which the conservative
Republican party has contended.  If the North obtain the power of
settling that question of boundary, the abandonment of those
Southern States will be a success, even though the privilege of
retaining them be the very point for which the North is now in arms.

The first clause of the Constitution declares that all the
legislative powers granted by the Constitution shall be vested in a
Congress, which shall consist of a Senate and of a House of
Representatives.  The House of Representatives is to be rechosen
every two years, and shall be elected by the people, such persons in
each State having votes for the national Congress as have votes for
the legislature of their own States.  If, therefore, South Carolina
should choose--as she has chosen--to declare that the electors of
her own legislature shall possess a property qualification, the
electors of members of Congress from South Carolina must also have
that qualification.  In Massachusetts universal suffrage now
prevails, although it is not long since a low property qualification
prevailed even in Massachusetts.  It therefore follows that members
of the House of Representatives in Congress need by no means be all
chosen on the same principle.  As a fact, universal suffrage* and
vote by ballot, that is by open voting papers, prevail in the
States, but they do not so prevail by virtue of any enactment of the
Constitution.  The laws of the States, however, require that the
voter shall have been a resident in the State for some period, and
generally either deny the right of voting to negroes, or so hamper
that privilege that practically it amounts to the same thing.


* Perhaps the better word would have been manhood suffrage; and even
that word should be taken with certain restrictions.  Aliens,
minors, convicts, and men who pay no taxes cannot vote.  In some
States none can vote unless they can read and write.  In some there
is a property qualification.  In all there are special restrictions
against negroes.  There is in none an absolutely universal suffrage.
But I keep the name as it best expresses to us in England the system
of franchise which has practically come to prevail in the United
States.


The Senate of the United States is composed of two Senators from
each State.  These Senators are chosen for six years, and are
elected in a manner which shows the conservative tendency of the
Constitution with more signification than perhaps any other rule
which it contains.  This branch of Congress, which, as I shall
presently endeavor to show, is by far the more influential of the
two, is not in any way elected by the people.  "The Senate of the
United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State,
CHOSEN BY THE LEGISLATURE THEREOF, for six years, and each senator
shall have one voice."  The Senate sent to Congress is therefore
elected by the State legislatures.  Each State legislature has two
Houses and the Senators sent from that State to Congress are either
chosen by vote of the two Houses voting together--which is, I
believe, the mode adopted in most States, or are voted for in the
two Houses separately--in which cases, when different candidates
have been nominated, the two Houses confer by committees and settle
the matter between them.  The conservative purpose of the
Constitution is here sufficiently evident.  The intention has been
to take the election of the Senators away from the people, and to
confide it to that body in each State which may be regarded as
containing its best trusted citizens.  It removes the Senators far
away from the democratic element, and renders them liable to the
necessity of no popular canvass.  Nor am I aware that the
Constitution has failed in keeping the ground which it intended to
hold in this matter.  On some points its selected rocks and chosen
standing ground have slipped from beneath its feet, owing to the
weakness of words in defining and making solid the intended
prohibitions against democracy.  The wording of the Constitution has
been regarded by the people as sacred; but the people has considered
itself justified in opposing the spirit as long as it revered the
letter of the Constitution.  And this was natural.  For the letter
of the Constitution can be read by all men; but its spirit can be
understood comparatively but by few.  As regards the election of the
Senators, I believe that it has been fairly made by the legislatures
of the different States.  I have not heard it alleged that members
of the State legislatures have been frequently constrained by the
outside popular voice to send this or that man as Senator to
Washington.  It was clearly not the intention of those who wrote the
Constitution that they should be so constrained.  But the Senators
themselves in Washington have submitted to restraint.  On subjects
in which the people are directly interested, they submit to
instructions from the legislatures which have sent them as to the
side on which they shall vote, and justify themselves in voting
against their convictions by the fact that they have received such
instructions.  Such a practice, even with the members of a House
which has been directly returned by popular election, is, I think,
false to the intention of the system.  It has clearly been intended
that confidence should be put in the chosen candidate for the term
of his duty, and that the electors are to be bound in the expression
of their opinion by his sagacity and patriotism for that term.  A
member of a representative House so chosen, who votes at the bidding
of his constituency in opposition to his convictions, is manifestly
false to his charge, and may be presumed to be thus false in
deference to his own personal interests, and with a view to his own
future standing with his constituents.  Pledges before election may
be fair, because a pledge given is after all but the answer to a
question asked.  A voter may reasonably desire to know a candidate's
opinion on any matter of political interest before he votes for or
against him.  The representative when returned should be free from
the necessity of further pledges.  But if this be true with a House
elected by popular suffrage, how much more than true must it be with
a chamber collected together as the Senate of the United States is
collected!  Nevertheless, it is the fact that many Senators,
especially those who have been sent to the House as Democrats, do
allow the State legislatures to dictate to them their votes, and
that they do hold themselves absolved from the personal
responsibility of their votes by such dictation.  This is one place
in which the rock which was thought to have been firm has slipped
away, and the sands of democracy have made their way through.  But
with reference to this it is always in the power of the Senate to
recover its own ground, and re-establish its own dignity; to the
people in this matter the words of the Constitution give no
authority, and all that is necessary for the recovery of the old
practice is a more conservative tendency throughout the country
generally.  That there is such a conservative tendency, no one can
doubt; the fear is whether it may not work too quickly and go too
far.

In speaking of these instructions given to Senators at Washington, I
should explain that such instructions are not given by all States,
nor are they obeyed by all Senators.  Occasionally they are made in
the form of requests, the word "instruct" being purposely laid
aside.  Requests of the same kind are also made to Representatives,
who, as they are not returned by the State legislatures, are not
considered to be subject to such instructions.  The form used is as
follows: "we instruct our Senators and request our representatives,"
etc. etc.

The Senators are elected for six years, but the same Senate does not
sit entire throughout that term.  The whole chamber is divided into
three equal portions or classes, and a portion goes out at the end
of every second year; so that a third of the Senate comes in afresh
with every new House of Representatives.  The Vice-President of the
United States, who is elected with the President, and who is not a
Senator by election from any State, is the ex-officio President of
the Senate.  Should the President of the United States vacate his
seat by death or otherwise, the Vice-President becomes President of
the United States; and in such case the Senate elects its own
President pro tempore.

In speaking of the Senate, I must point out a matter to which the
Constitution does not allude, but which is of the gravest moment in
the political fabric of the nation.  Each State sends two Senators
to Congress.  These two are sent altogether independently of the
population which they represent, or of the number of members which
the same State supplies to the Lower House.  When the Constitution
was framed, Delaware was to send one member to the House of
Representatives, and Pennsylvania eight; nevertheless, each of these
States sent two Senators.  It would seem strange that a young
people, commencing business as a nation on a basis intended to be
democratic, should consent to a system so directly at variance with
the theory of popular representation.  It reminds one of the old
days when Yorkshire returned two members, and Rutlandshire two also.
And the discrepancy has greatly increased as young States have been
added to the Union, while the old States have increased in
population.  New York, with a population of about 4,000,000, and
with thirty-three members in the House of Representatives, sends two
Senators to Congress.  The new State of Oregon, with a population of
50,000 or 60,000, and with one member in the House of
Representatives, sends also two Senators to Congress.  But though it
would seem that in such a distribution of legislative power the
young nation was determined to preserve some of the old fantastic
traditions of the mother country which it had just repudiated, the
fact, I believe, is that this system, apparently so opposed to all
democratic tendencies, was produced and specially insisted upon by
democracy itself.  Where would be the State sovereignty and
individual existence of Rhode Island and Delaware, unless they could
maintain, in at least one House of Congress, their State equality
with that of all other States in the Union?  In those early days,
when the Constitution was being framed, there was nothing to force
the small States into a union with those whose populations
preponderated.  Each State was sovereign in its municipal system,
having preserved the boundaries of the old colony, together with the
liberties and laws given to it under its old colonial charter.  A
union might be and no doubt was desirable; but it was to be a union
of sovereign States, each retaining equal privileges in that union,
and not a fusion of the different populations into one homogeneous
whole.  No State was willing to abandon its own individuality, and
least of all were the small States willing to do so.  It was,
therefore, ordained that the House of Representatives should
represent the people, and that the Senate should represent the
States.

From that day to the present time the arrangement of which I am
speaking has enabled the Democratic or Southern party to contend at
a great advantage with the Republicans of the North.  When the
Constitution was founded, the seven Northern States--I call those
Northern which are now free-soil States, and those Southern in which
the institution of slavery now prevails--were held to be entitled by
their population to send thirty-five members to the House of
Representatives, and they sent fourteen members to the Senate.  The
six Southern States were entitled to thirty members in the Lower
House, and to twelve Senators.  Thus the proportion was about equal
for the North and South.  But now--or rather in 1860, when secession
commenced--the Northern States, owing to the increase of population
in the North, sent one hundred and fifty Representatives to
Congress, having nineteen States, and thirty-eight Senators; whereas
the South, with fifteen States and thirty Senators, was entitled by
its population to only ninety Representatives, although by a special
rule in its favor, which I will presently explain, it was in fact
allowed a greater number of Representatives, in proportion to its
population, than the North.  Had an equal balance been preserved,
the South, with its ninety Representatives in the Lower House, would
have but twenty-three Senators, instead of thirty, in the Upper.*
But these numbers indicate to us the recovery of political influence
in the North, rather than the pride of the power of the South; for
the South, in its palmy days, had much more in its favor than I have
above described as its position in 1860.  Kansas had then just
become a free-soil State, after a terrible struggle, and shortly
previous to that Oregon and Minnesota, also free States, had been
added to the Union.  Up to that date the slave States sent thirty
Senators to Congress, and the free States only thirty-two.  In
addition to this, when Texas was annexed and converted into a State,
a clause was inserted into the act giving authority for the future
subdivision of that State into four different States as its
population should increase, thereby enabling the South to add
Senators to its own party from time to time, as the Northern States
might increase in number.


* It is worthy of note that the new Northern and Western States have
been brought into the Union by natural increase and the spread of
population.  But this has not been so with the new Southern States.
Louisiana and Florida were purchased, and Texas was--annexed.


And here I must explain, in order that the nature of the contest may
be understood, that the Senators from the South maintained
themselves ever in a compact body, voting together, true to each
other, disciplined as a party, understanding the necessity of
yielding in small things in order that their general line of policy
might be maintained.  But there was no such system, no such
observance of political tactics among the Senators of the North.
Indeed, they appear to have had no general line of politics, having
been divided among themselves on various matters.  Many had strong
Southern tendencies, and many more were willing to obtain official
power by the help of Southern votes.  There was no bond of union
among them, as slavery was among the Senators from the South.  And
thus, from these causes, the power of the Senate and the power of
the government fell into the hands of the Southern party.

I am aware that in going into these matters here I am departing
somewhat from the subject of which this chapter is intended to
treat; but I do not know that I could explain in any shorter way the
manner in which those rules of the Constitution have worked by which
the composition of the Senate is fixed.  That State basis, as
opposed to a basis of population in the Upper House of Congress, has
been the one great political weapon, both of offense and defense, in
the hands of the Democratic party.  And yet I am not prepared to
deny that great wisdom was shown in the framing of the constitution
of the Senate.  It was the object of none of the politicians then at
work to create a code of rules for the entire governance of a single
nation such as is England or France.  Nor, had any American
politician of the time so desired, would he have had reasonable hope
of success.  A federal union of separate sovereign States was the
necessity, as it was also the desire, of all those who were
concerned in the American policy of the day; and I think it way be
understood and maintained that no such federal union would have been
just, or could have been accepted by the smaller States, which did
not in some direct way recognize their equality with the larger
States.  It is moreover to be observed, that in this, as in all
matters, the claims of the minority were treated with indulgence.
No ordinance of the Constitution is made in a niggardly spirit.  It
would seem as though they who met together to do the work had been
actuated by no desire for selfish preponderance or individual
influence.  No ambition to bind close by words which shall be
exacting as well as exact is apparent.  A very broad power of
interpretation is left to those who were to be the future
interpreters of the written document.

It is declared that "representation and direct taxes shall be
apportioned among the several States which may be included within
this Union, according to their respective numbers," thereby meaning
that representation and taxation in the several States shall be
adjusted according to the population.  This clause ordains that
throughout all the States a certain amount of population shall
return a member to the Lower House of Congress--say one member to
100,000 persons, as is I believe about the present proportion--and
that direct taxation shall be levied according to the number of
representatives.  If New York return thirty-three members and Kansas
one, on New York shall be levied, for the purposes of the United
States revenue, thirty-three times as much direct taxation as on
Kansas.  This matter of direct taxation was not then, nor has it
been since, matter of much moment.  No direct taxation has hitherto
been levied in the United States for national purposes.  But the
time has now come when this proviso will be a terrible stumbling-
block in the way.

But before we go into that matter of taxation, I must explain how
the South was again favored with reference to its representation.
As a matter of course no slaves, or even negroes--no men of color--
were to vote in the Southern States.  Therefore, one would say, that
in counting up the people with reference to the number of the
representatives, the colored population should be ignored
altogether.  But it was claimed on behalf of the South that their
property in slaves should be represented, and in compliance with
this claim, although no slave can vote or in any way demand the
services of a representative, the colored people are reckoned among
the population.  When the numbers of the free persons are counted,
to this number is added "three-fifths of all other persons."  Five
slaves are thus supposed to represent three white persons.  From the
wording, one would be led to suppose that there was some other
category into which a man might be put besides that of free or
slave!  But it may be observed, that on this subject of slavery the
framers of the Constitution were tender-mouthed.  They never speak
of slavery or of a slave.  It is necessary that the subject should
be mentioned, and therefore we hear first of persons other than
free, and then of persons bound to labor!

Such were the rules laid down for the formation of Congress, and the
letter of those rules has, I think, been strictly observed.  I have
not thought it necessary to give all the clauses, but I believe I
have stated those which are essential to a general understanding of
the basis upon which Congress is founded.

The Constitution ordains that members of both the Houses shall be
paid for their time, but it does not decree the amount.  "The
Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their
services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of
the United States."  In the remarks which I have made as to the
present Congress I have spoken of the amount now allowed.  The
understanding, I believe, is that the pay shall be enough for the
modest support of a man who is supposed to have raised himself above
the heads of the crowd.  Much may be said in favor of this payment
of legislators, but very much may also be said against it.  There
was a time when our members of the House of Commons were entitled to
payment for their services, and when, at any rate, some of them took
the money.  It may be that with a new nation such an arrangement was
absolutely necessary.  Men whom the people could trust, and who
would have been able to give up their time without payment, would
not have probably been found in a new community.  The choice of
Senators and of Representatives would have been so limited that the
legislative power would have fallen into the hands of a few rich
men.  Indeed, it may be said that such payment was absolutely
necessary in the early days of the life of the Union.  But no one, I
think, will deny that the tone of both Houses would be raised by the
gratuitous service of the legislators.  It is well known that
politicians find their way into the Senate and into the chamber of
Representatives solely with a view to the loaves and fishes.  The
very word "politician" is foul and unsavory throughout the States,
and means rather a political blackleg than a political patriot.  It
is useless to blink this matter in speaking of the politics and
policy of the United States.  The corruption of the venal
politicians of the nation stinks aloud in the nostrils of all men.
It behoves the country to look to this.  It is time now that she
should do so.  The people of the nation are educated and clever.
The women are bright and beautiful.  Her charity is profuse; her
philanthropy is eager and true; her national ambition is noble and
honest--honest in the cause of civilization.  But she has soiled
herself with political corruption, and has disgraced the cause of
republican government by the dirt of those whom she has placed in
her high places.  Let her look to it now.  She is nobly ambitious of
reputation throughout the earth; she desires to be called good as
well as great; to be regarded not only as powerful, but also as
beneficent.  She is creating an army; she is forging cannon, and
preparing to build impregnable ships of war.  But all these will
fail to satisfy her pride, unless she can cleanse herself from that
corruption by which her political democracy has debased itself.  A
politician should be a man worthy of all honor, in that he loves his
country; and not one worthy of all contempt, in that he robs his
country.

I must not be understood as saying that every Senator and
Representative who takes his pay is wrong in taking it.  Indeed, I
have already expressed an opinion that such payments were at first
necessary, and I by no means now say that the necessity has as yet
disappeared.  In the minds of thorough democrats it will be
considered much that the poorest man of the people should be enabled
to go into the legislature, if such poorest man be worthy of that
honor.  I am not a thorough democrat, and consider that more would
be gained by obtaining in the legislature that education, demeanor,
and freedom from political temptation which easy circumstances
produce.  I am not, however, on this account inclined to quarrel
with the democrats--not on that account if they can so manage their
affairs that their poor and popular politicians shall be fairly
honest men.  But I am a thorough republican, regarding our own
English form of government as the most purely republican that I
know, and as such I have a close and warm sympathy with those
Transatlantic anti-monarchical republicans who are endeavoring to
prove to the world that they have at length founded a political
Utopia.  I for one do not grudge them all the good they can do, all
the honor they can win.  But I grieve over the evil name which now
taints them, and which has accompanied that wider spread of
democracy which the last twenty years has produced.  This longing
for universal suffrage in all things--in voting for the President,
in voting for judges, in voting for the Representatives, in
dictating to Senators--has come up since the days of President
Jackson, and with it has come corruption and unclean hands.
Democracy must look to it, or the world at large will declare her to
have failed.

One would say that at any rate the Senate might be filled with
unpaid servants of the public.  Each State might surely find two men
who could afford to attend to the public weal of their country
without claiming a compensation for their time.  In England we find
no difficulty in being so served.  Those cities among us in which
the democratic element most strongly abounds, can procure
representatives to their minds, even though the honor of filling the
position is not only not remunerative, but is very costly.  I cannot
but think that the Senate of the United States would stand higher in
the public estimation of its own country if it were an unpaid body
of men.

It is enjoined that no person holding any office under the United
States shall be a member of either House during his continuance in
office.  At first sight such a rule as this appears to be good in
its nature; but a comparison of the practice of the United States
government with that of our own makes me think that this embargo on
members of the legislative bodies is a mistake.  It prohibits the
President's ministers from a seat in either house, and thereby
relieves them from the weight of that responsibility to which our
ministers are subjected.  It is quite true that the United States
ministers cannot be responsible as are our ministers, seeing that
the President himself is responsible, and that the Queen is not so.
Indeed, according to the theory of the American Constitution, the
President has no ministers.  The Constitution speaks only of the
principal officers of the executive departments.  "He" (the
President) "may require the opinion in writing of the principal
officer in each of the executive departments."  But in practice he
has his cabinet, and the irresponsibility of that cabinet would
practically cease if the members of it were subjected to the
questionings of the two Houses.  With us the rule which prohibits
servants of the State from going into Parliament is, like many of
our constitutional rules, hard to be defined, and yet perfectly
understood.  It may perhaps be said, with the nearest approach to a
correct definition, that permanent servants of the State may not go
into Parliament, and that those may do so whose services are
political, depending for the duration of their term on the duration
of the existing ministry.  But even this would not be exact, seeing
that the Master of the Rolls and the officers of the army and navy
can sit in Parliament.  The absence of the President's ministers
from Congress certainly occasions much confusion, or rather
prohibits a more thorough political understanding between the
executive and the legislature than now exists.  In speaking of the
government of the United States in the next chapter, I shall be
constrained to allude again to this subject.*


* It will be alleged by Americans that the introduction into
Congress of the President's ministers would alter all the existing
relations of the President and of Congress, and would at once
produce that parliamentary form of government which England
possesses, and which the States have chosen to avoid.  Such a change
would elevate Congress and depress the President.  No doubt this is
true.  Such elevation, however, and such depression seemed to me to
be the two things needed.


The duties of the House of Representatives are solely legislative.
Those of the Senate are legislative and executive, as with us those
of the Upper House are legislative and judicial.  The House of
Representatives is always open to the public.  The Senate is so open
when it is engaged on legislative work; but it is closed to the
public when engaged in executive session.  No treaties can be made
by the President, and no appointments to high offices confirmed,
without the consent of the Senate; and this consent must be given--
as regards the confirmation of treaties--by two-thirds of the
members present.  This law gives to the Senate the power of debating
with closed doors upon the nature of all treaties, and upon the
conduct of the government as evinced in the nomination of the
officers of State.  It also gives to the Senate a considerable
control over the foreign relations of the government.  I believe
that this power is often used, and that by it the influence of the
Senate is raised much above that of the Lower House.  This influence
is increased again by the advantage of that superior statecraft and
political knowledge which the six years of the Senator gives him
over the two years of the Representative.  The tried Representative,
moreover, very frequently blossoms into a Senator but a Senator does
not frequently fade into a Representative.  Such occasionally is the
case, and it is not even unconstitutional for an ex-President to
reappear in either House.  Mr. Benton, after thirty years' service
in the Senate, sat in the House of Representatives.  Mr. Crittenden,
who was returned as Senator by Kentucky, I think seven times, now
sits in the Lower House; and John Quincy Adams appeared as a
Representative from Massachusetts after he had filled the
presidential chair.

And, moreover, the Senate of the United States is not debarred from
an interference with money bills, as the House of Lords is debarred
with us.  "All bills for raising revenue," says the seventh section
of the first article of the Constitution, "shall originate with the
House of Representatives, but the Senate may propose or concur with
amendments as on other bills."  By this the Senate is enabled to
have an authority in the money matters of the nation almost equal to
that held by the Lower House--an authority quite sufficient to
preserve to it the full influence of its other powers.  With us the
House of Commons is altogether in the ascendant, because it holds
and jealously keeps to itself the exclusive command of the public
purse.

Congress can levy custom duties in the United States, and always has
done so; hitherto the national revenue has been exclusively raised
from custom duties.  It cannot levy duties on exports.  It can levy
excise duties, and is now doing so; hitherto it has not done so.  It
can levy direct taxes, such as an income tax and a property tax; it
hitherto has not done so, but now must do so.  It must do so, I
think I am justified in saying; but its power of doing this is so
hampered by constitutional enactment, that it would seem that the
Constitution as regards this heading must be altered before any
scheme can be arranged by which a moderately just income tax can be
levied and collected.  This difficulty I have already mentioned, but
perhaps it will be well that I should endeavor to make the subject
more plain.  It is specially declared: "That all duties, imposts,
and excises shall be uniform throughout the united States."  And
again: "That no capitation or other direct tax shall be laid, unless
in proportion to the census or enumeration hereinbefore directed to
be taken."  And again, in the words before quoted: "Representatives
and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which
shall be included in this Union, according to their respective
numbers."  By these repeated rules it has been intended to decree
that the separate States shall bear direct taxation according to
their population and the consequent number of their Representatives;
and this intention has been made so clear that no direct taxation
can be levied in opposition to it without an evident breach of the
Constitution.  To explain the way in which this will work, I will
name the two States of Rhode Island and Iowa as opposed to each
other, and the two States of Massachusetts and Indiana as opposed to
each other.  Rhode Island and Massachusetts are wealthy Atlantic
States, containing, as regards enterprise and commercial success,
the cream of the population of the United States.  Comparing them in
the ratio of population, I believe that they are richer than any
other States.  They return between them thirteen Representatives,
Rhode Island sending two and Massachusetts eleven.  Iowa and Indiana
also send thirteen Representatives, Iowa sending two, and being thus
equal to Rhode Island; Indiana sending eleven, and being thus equal
to Massachusetts.  Iowa and Indiana are Western States; and though I
am not prepared to say that they are the poorest States of the
Union, I can assert that they are exactly opposite in their
circumstances to Rhode Island and Massachusetts.  The two Atlantic
States of New England are old established, rich, and commercial.
The two Western States I have named are full of new immigrants, are
comparatively poor, and are agricultural.  Nevertheless any direct
taxation levied on those in the East and on those in the West must
be equal in its weight.  Iowa must pay as much as Rhode Island;
Indiana must pay as much as Massachusetts.  But Rhode Island and
Massachusetts could pay, without the sacrifice of any comfort to its
people, without any sensible suffering, an amount of direct taxation
which would crush the States of Iowa and Indiana--which indeed no
tax gatherer could collect out of those States.  Rhode Island and
Massachusetts could with their ready money buy Iowa and Indiana; and
yet the income tax to be collected from the poor States is to be the
same in amount as that collected from the rich States.  Within each
individual State the total amount of income tax or of other direct
taxation to be levied from that State may be apportioned as the
State may think fit; but an income tax of two per cent. on Rhode
Island would probably produce more than an income tax of ten per
cent. in Iowa; whereas Rhode Island could pay an income tax of ten
per cent. easier than could Iowa one of two per cent.

It would in fact appear that the Constitution as at present framed
is fatal to all direct taxation.  Any law for the collection of
direct taxation levied under the Constitution would produce
internecine quarrel between the Western States and those which
border on the Atlantic.  The Western States would not submit to the
taxation.  The difficulty which one here feels is that which always
attends an attempt at finality in political arrangements.  One would
be inclined to say at once that the law should be altered, and that
as the money required is for the purposes of the Union and for State
purposes, such a change should be made as would enable Congress to
levy an income tax on the general income of the nation.  But
Congress cannot go beyond the Constitution.

It is true that the Constitution is not final, and that it contains
an express article ordaining the manner in which it may be amended.
And perhaps I may as well explain here the manner in which this can
be done, although by doing so I am departing from the order in which
the Constitution is written.  It is not final, and amendments have
been made to it.  But the making of such amendments is an operation
so ponderous and troublesome that the difficulty attached to any
such change envelops the Constitution with many of the troubles of
finality.  With us there is nothing beyond an act of Parliament.  An
act of Parliament with us cannot be unconstitutional.  But no such
power has been confided to Congress, or to Congress and the
President together.  No amendment of the Constitution can be made
without the sanction of the State legislatures.  Congress may
propose any amendments, as to the expediency of which two-thirds of
both Houses shall be agreed; but before such amendments can be
accepted they must be ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths
of the States, or by conventions in three-fourths of the States, "as
the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by
Congress."  Or Congress, instead of proposing the amendments, may,
on an application from the legislatures of two-thirds of the
different States, call a convention for the proposing of them.  In
which latter case the ratification by the different States must be
made after the same fashion as that required in the former case.  I
do not know that I have succeeded in making clearly intelligible the
circumstances under which the Constitution can be amended; but I
think I may have succeeded in explaining that those circumstances
are difficult and tedious.  In a matter of taxation why should
States agree to an alteration proposed with the very object of
increasing their proportion of the national burden?  But unless such
States will agree--unless Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York
will consent to put their own necks into the yoke--direct taxation
cannot be levied on them in a manner available for national
purposes.  I do believe that Rhode Island and Massachusetts at
present possess a patriotism sufficient for such an act.  But the
mode of doing the work will create disagreement, or at any rate,
tedious delay and difficulty.  How shall the Constitution be
constitutionally amended while one-third of the States are in
revolt?

In the eighth section of its first article the Constitution gives a
list of the duties which Congress shall perform--of things, in
short, which it shall do or shall have power to do: To raise taxes;
to regulate commerce and the naturalization of citizens; to coin
money, and protect it when coined; to establish postal
communication; to make laws for defense of patents and copyrights;
to constitute national courts of law inferior to the Supreme Court;
to punish piracies; to declare war; to raise, pay for, and govern
armies, navies, and militia; and to exercise exclusive legislation
in a certain district which shall contain the seat of government of
the United States, and which is therefore to be regarded as
belonging to the nation at large, and not to any particular State.
This district is now called the District of Columbia.  It is
situated on the Potomac, and contains the City of Washington.

Then the ninth section of the same article declares what Congress
shall not do.  Certain immigration shall not be prohibited; THE
PRIVILEGE OF THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS SHALL NOT BE SUSPENDED,
except under certain circumstances; no ex post facto law shall be
passed; no direct tax shall be laid unless in proportion to the
census; no tax shall be laid on exports; no money shall be drawn
from the treasury but by legal appropriation; no title of nobility
shall be granted.

The above are lists or catalogues of the powers which Congress has,
and of the powers which Congress has not--of what Congress may do,
and of what Congress may not do; and having given them thus
seriatim, I may here perhaps be best enabled to say a few words as
to the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in
the United States.  It is generally known that this privilege has
been suspended during the existence of the present rebellion very
many times; that this has been done by the Executive, and not by
Congress; and that it is maintained by the Executive and by those
who defend the conduct of the now acting Executive of the United
States that the power of suspending the writ has been given by the
Constitution to the President and not to Congress.  I confess that I
cannot understand how any man familiar either with the wording or
with the spirit of the Constitution should hold such an argument.
To me it appears manifest that the Executive, in suspending the
privilege of the writ without the authority of Congress, has
committed a breach of the Constitution.  Were the case one referring
to our British Constitution, a plain man, knowing little of
parliamentary usage and nothing of law lore, would probably feel
some hesitation in expressing any decided opinion on such a subject,
seeing that our constitution is unwritten.  But the intention has
been that every citizen of the United States should know and
understand the rules under which he is to live, and that he that
runs may read.

As this matter has been argued by Mr. Horace Binney, a lawyer of
Philadelphia--much trusted, of very great and of deserved eminence
throughout the States--in a pamphlet in which he defends the
suspension of the privilege of the writ by the President, I will
take the position of the question as summed up by him in his last
page, and compare it with that clause in the Constitution by which
the suspension of the privilege under certain circumstances is
decreed; and to enable me to do this I will, in the first place,
quote the words of the clause in question:--

"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended
unless when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may
require it."  It is the second clause of that section which states
what Congress shall not do.

Mr. Binney argues as follows: "The conclusion of the whole matter is
this--that the Constitution itself is the law of the privilege and
of the exception to it; that the exception is expressed in the
Constitution, and that the Constitution gives effect to the act of
suspension when the conditions occur; that the conditions consist of
two matters of fact--one a naked matter of fact; and the other a
matter-of-fact conclusion from facts: that is to say, rebellion and
the public danger, or the requirement of public safety."  By these
words Mr. Binney intends to imply that the Constitution itself gave
the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, and itself prescribes
the taking away of that privilege under certain circumstances.  But
this is not so.  The Constitution does not prescribe the suspension
of the privilege of the writ under any circumstances.  It says that
it shall not be suspended except under certain circumstances.  Mr.
Binney's argument, if I understand it, then goes on as follows: As
the Constitution prescribes the circumstances under which the
privilege of the writ shall be suspended--the one circumstance being
the naked matter of fact rebellion, and the other circumstance the
public safety supposed to have been endangered by such rebellion,
which Mr. Binney calls a matter-of-fact conclusion from facts--the
Constitution must be presumed itself to suspend the privilege of the
writ.  Whether the President or Congress be the agent of the
Constitution in this suspension, is not matter of moment.  Either
can only be an agent; and as Congress cannot act executively,
whereas the President must ultimately be charged with the executive
administration of the order for that suspension, which has in fact
been issued by the Constitution itself, therefore the power of
exercising the suspension of the writ may properly be presumed to be
in the hands of the President and not to be in the hands of
Congress.

If I follow Mr. Binney's argument, it amounts to so much.  But it
seems to me that Mr. Binney is wrong in his premises and wrong in
his conclusion.  The article of the Constitution in question does
not define the conditions under which the privilege of the writ
shall be suspended.  It simply states that this privilege shall
never be suspended except under certain conditions.  It shall not be
suspended unless when the public safety may require such suspension
on account of rebellion or invasion.  Rebellion or invasion is not
necessarily to produce such suspension.  There is, indeed, no naked
matter of fact to guide either President or Congress in the matter;
and therefore I say that Mr. Binney is wrong in his premises.
Rebellion or invasion might occur twenty times over, and might even
endanger the public safety, without justifying the suspension of the
privilege of the writ under the Constitution.  I say also that Mr.
Binney is wrong in his conclusion.  The public safety must require
the suspension before the suspension can be justified; and such
requirement must be a matter for judgment and for the exercise of
discretion.  Whether or no there shall be any suspension is a matter
for deliberation--not one simply for executive action, as though it
were already ordered.  There is no matter-of-fact conclusion from
facts.  Should invasion or rebellion occur, and should the public
safety, in consequence of such rebellion or invasion, require the
suspension of the privilege of the writ, then, and only then, may
the privilege be suspended.  But to whom is the power, or rather the
duty, of exercising this discretion delegated?  Mr. Binney says that
"there is no express delegation of the power in the Constitution?"
I maintain that Mr. Binney is again wrong, and that the Constitution
does expressly delegate the power, not to the President, but to
Congress.  This is done so clearly, to my mind, that I cannot
understand the misunderstanding which has existed in the States upon
the subject.  The first article of the Constitution treats "of the
legislature."  The second article treats "of the executive?"  The
third treats "of the judiciary."  After that there are certain
"miscellaneous articles" so called.  The eighth section of the first
article gives, as I have said before, a list of things which the
legislature or Congress shall do.  The ninth section gives a list of
things which the legislature or Congress shall not do.  The second
item in this list is the prohibition of any suspension of the
privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, except under certain
circumstances.  This prohibition is therefore expressly placed upon
Congress, and this prohibition contains the only authority under
which the privilege can be constitutionally suspended.  Then comes
the article on the executive, which defines the powers that the
President shall exercise.  In that article there is no word
referring to the suspension of the privilege of the writ.  He that
runs may read.

I say, therefore, that Mr. Lincoln's government has committed a
breach of the Constitution in taking upon itself to suspend the
privilege; a breach against the letter of the Constitution.  It has
assumed a power which the Constitution has not given it--which,
indeed, the Constitution, by placing it in the hands of another
body, has manifestly declined to put into the hands of the
Executive; and it has also committed a breach against the spirit of
the Constitution.  The chief purport of the Constitution is to guard
the liberties of the people, and to confide to a deliberative body
the consideration of all circumstances by which those liberties may
be affected.  The President shall command the army; but Congress
shall raise and support the army.  Congress shall declare war.
Congress shall coin money.  Congress, by one of its bodies, shall
sanction treaties.  Congress shall establish such law courts as are
not established by the Constitution.  Under no circumstances is the
President to decree what shall be done.  But he is to do those
things which the Constitution has decreed or which Congress shall
decree.  It is monstrous to suppose that power over the privilege of
the writ of habeas corpus would, among such a people, and under such
a Constitution, be given without limit to the chief officer, the
only condition being that there should be some rebellion.  Such
rebellion might be in Utah Territory; or some trouble in the
uttermost bounds of Texas would suffice.  Any invasion, such as an
inroad by the savages of Old Mexico upon New Mexico, would justify
an arbitrary President in robbing all the people of all the States
of their liberties!  A squabble on the borders of Canada would put
such a power into the hands of the President for four years; or the
presence of an English frigate in the St. Juan channel might be held
to do so.  I say that such a theory is monstrous.

And the effect of this breach of the Constitution at the present day
has been very disastrous.  It has taught those who have not been
close observers of the American struggle to believe that, after all,
the Americans are indifferent as to their liberties.  Such pranks
have been played before high heaven by men utterly unfitted for the
use of great power, as have scared all the nations.  Mr. Lincoln,
the President by whom this unconstitutional act has been done,
apparently delegated his assumed authority to his minister, Mr.
Seward.  Mr. Seward has reveled in the privilege of unrestrained
arrests, and has locked men up with reason and without.  He has
instituted passports and surveillance; and placed himself at the
head of an omnipresent police system with all the gusto of a Fouche,
though luckily without a Fouche's craft or cunning.  The time will
probably come when Mr. Seward must pay for this--not with his life
or liberty, but with his reputation and political name.  But in the
mean time his lettres de cachet have run everywhere through the
States.  The pranks which he played were absurd, and the arrests
which he made were grievous.  After awhile, when it became manifest
that Mr. Seward had not found a way to success, when it was seen
that he had inaugurated no great mode of putting down rebellion, he
apparently lost his power in the cabinet.  The arrests ceased, the
passports were discontinued, and the prison doors were gradually
opened.  Mr. Seward was deposed, not from the cabinet, but from the
premiership of the cabinet.  The suspension of the privilege of the
writ of habeas corpus was not countermanded, but the operation of
the suspension was allowed to become less and less onerous; and now,
in April, 1862, within a year of the commencement of the suspension,
it has, I think, nearly died out.  The object in hand now is rather
that of getting rid of political prisoners than of taking others.

This assumption by the government of an unconstitutional power has,
as I have said, taught many lookers on to think that the Americans
are indifferent to their liberties.  I myself do not believe that
such a conclusion would be just.  During the present crisis the
strong feeling of the people--that feeling which for the moment has
been dominant--has been one in favor of the government as against
rebellion.  There has been a passionate resolution to support the
nationality of the nation.  Men have felt that they must make
individual sacrifices, and that such sacrifices must include a
temporary suspension of some of their constitutional rights.  But I
think that this temporary suspension is already regarded with
jealous eyes; with an increasing jealousy which will have created a
reaction against such policy as that which Mr. Seward has attemped,
long before the close of Mr. Lincoln's Presidency.  I know that it
is wrong in a writer to commit himself to prophecies, but I find it
impossible to write upon this subject without doing so.  As I must
express a surmise on this subject, I venture to prophesy that the
Americans of the States will soon show that they are not indifferent
to the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.  On
that matter of the illegality of the suspension by the President, I
feel in my own mind that there is no doubt.

The second article of the Constitution treats of the executive, and
is very short.  It places the whole executive power in the hands of
the President, and explains with more detail the mode in which the
President shall be chosen than the manner after which the duties
shall be performed.  The first section states that the executive
shall be vested in a President, who shall hold his office for four
years.  With him shall be chosen a Vice-President.  I may here
explain that the Vice-President, as such, has no power either
political or administrative.  He is, ex-officio, the Speaker of the
Senate; and should the President die, or be by other cause rendered
unable to act as President, the Vice-President becomes President
either for the remainder of the presidential term or for the period
of the President's temporary absence.  Twice, since the Constitution
was written, the President has died and the Vice-President has taken
his place.  No President has vacated his position, even for a
period, through any cause other than death.

Then come the rules under which the President and Vice-President
shall be elected--with reference to which there has been an
amendment of the Constitution subsequent to the fourth Presidential
election.  This was found to be necessary by the circumstances of
the contest between John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr.
It was then found that the complications in the method of election
created by the original clause were all but unendurable, and the
Constitution was amended.

I will not describe in detail the present mode of election, as the
doing so would be tedious and unnecessary.  Two facts I wish,
however, to make specially noticeable and clear.  The first is, that
the President of the United States is now chosen by universal
suffrage; and the second is, that the Constitution expressly
intended that the President should not be chosen by universal
suffrage, but by a body of men who should enjoy the confidence and
fairly represent the will of the people.  The framers of the
Constitution intended so to write the words that the people
themselves should have no more immediate concern in the nomination
of the President than in that of the Senate.  They intended to
provide that the election should be made in a manner which may be
described as thoroughly conservative.  Those words, however, have
been inefficient for their purpose.  They have not been violated.
But the spirit has been violated, while the words have been held
sacred; and the presidential elections are now conducted on the
widest principles of universal suffrage.  They are essentially
democratic.

The arrangement, as written in the Constitution, is that each State
shall appoint a body of electors equal in number to the Senators and
Representatives sent by that State to Congress, and that thus a body
or college of electors shall be formed equal in number to the two
joint Houses of Congress, by which the President shall be elected.
No member of Congress, however, can be appointed an elector.  Thus
New York, with thirty-three Representatives in the Lower House,
would name thirty-five electors; and Rhode Island, with two members
in the Lower House, would name four electors--in each case two being
added for the two Senators.

It may, perhaps, be doubted whether this theory of an election by
electors has ever been truly carried out.  It was probably the case
even at the election of the first Presidents after Washington, that
the electors were pledged in some informal way as to the candidate
for whom they should vote; but the very idea of an election by
electors has been abandoned since the Presidency of General Jackson.
According to the theory of the Constitution, the privilege and the
duty of selecting a best man as President was to be delegated to
certain best men chosen for that purpose.  This was the intention of
those who framed the Constitution.  It may, as I have said, be
doubted whether this theory has ever availed for action; but since
the days of Jackson it has been absolutely abandoned.  The intention
was sufficiently conservative.  The electors to whom was to be
confided this great trust, were to be chosen in their own States as
each State might think fit.  The use of universal suffrage for this
purpose was neither enjoined nor forbidden in the separate States--
was neither treated as desirable or undesirable by the Constitution.
Each State was left to judge how it would elect its own electors.
But the President himself was to be chosen by those electors and not
by the people at large.  The intention is sufficiently conservative,
but the intention is not carried out.

The electors are still chosen by the different States in conformity
with the bidding of the Constitution.  The Constitution is exactly
followed in all its biddings, as far as the wording of it is
concerned; but the whole spirit of the document has been evaded in
the favor of democracy, and universal suffrage in the presidential
elections has been adopted.  The electors are still chosen, it is
true; but they are only chosen as the mouth-piece of the people's
choice, and not as the mind by which that choice shall be made.  We
have all heard of Americans voting for a ticket--for the Democratic
ticket, or the Republican ticket.  All political voting in the
States is now managed by tickets.  As regards these presidential
elections, each party decides on a candidate.  Even this primary
decision is a matter of voting among the party itself.  When Mr.
Lincoln was nominated as its candidate by the republican party, the
names of no less than thirteen candidates were submitted to the
delegates who were sent to a convention at Chicago, assembled for
the purpose of fixing upon a candidate.  At that convention Mr.
Lincoln was chosen as the Republican candidate and in that
convention was in fact fought the battle which was won in Mr.
Lincoln's favor, although that convention was what we may call a
private arrangement, wholly irrespective of any constitutional
enactment.  Mr. Lincoln was then proclaimed as the Republican
candidate, and all Republicans were held as bound to support him.
When the time came for the constitutional election of the electors,
certain names were got together in each State as representing the
Republican interest.  These names formed the Republican ticket, and
any man voting for them voted in fact for Lincoln.  There were three
other parties, each represented by a candidate, and each had its own
ticket in the different States.  It is not to be supposed that the
supporters of Mr. Lincoln were very anxious about their ticket in
Alabama, or those of Mr. Breckinridge as to theirs in Massachusetts.
In Alabama, a Democratic slave ticket would, of course, prevail.  In
Massachusetts, a Republican free-soil ticket would do so.  But it
may, I think, be seen that in this way the electors have in reality
ceased to have any weight in the elections--have in very truth
ceased to have the exercise of any will whatever.  They are mere
names, and no more.  Stat nominis umbra.  The election of the
President is made by universal suffrage, and not by a college of
electors.  The words as they are written are still obeyed; but the
Constitution in fact has been violated, for the spirit of it has
been changed in its very essence.

The President must have been born a citizen of the United States.
This is not necessary for the holder of any other office or for a
Senator or Representative; he must be thirty-four years old at the
time of his election.

His executive power is almost unbounded.  He is much more powerful
than any minister can be with us, and is subject to a much lighter
responsibility.  He may be impeached by the House of Representatives
before the Senate, but that impeachment only goes to the removal
from office and permanent disqualification for office.  But in these
days, as we all practically understand, responsibility does not mean
the fear of any great punishment, but the necessity of accounting
from day to day for public actions.  A leading statesman has but
slight dread of the axe, but is in hourly fear of his opponent's
questions.  The President of the United States is subject to no such
questionings, and as he does not even require a majority in either
House for the maintenance of his authority, his responsibility sets
upon him very slightly.  Seeing that Mr. Buchanan has escaped any
punishment for maladministration, no President need fear the anger
of the people.

The President is commander-in-chief of the army and of the navy.  He
can grant pardons--as regards all offenses committed against the
United States.  He has no power to pardon an offense committed
against the laws of any State, and as to which the culprit has been
tried before the tribunals of that State.  He can make treaties; but
such treaties are not valid till they have been confirmed by two-
thirds of the Senators present in executive session.  He appoints
all ambassadors and other public officers--but subject to the
confirmation of the Senate.  He can convene either or both Houses of
Congress at irregular times, and under certain circumstances can
adjourn them, his executive power is, in fact, almost unlimited; and
this power is solely in his own hands, as the Constitution knows
nothing of the President's ministers.  According to the Constitution
these officers are merely the heads of his bureaus.  An Englishman,
however, in considering the executive power of the President, and in
making any comparison between that and the executive power of any
officer or officers attached to the Crown in England, should always
bear in mind that the President's power, and even authority, is
confined to the Federal government, and that he has none with
reference to the individual States, religion, education, the
administration of the general laws which concern every man and
woman, and the real de facto government which comes home to every
house,--these things are not in any way subject to the President of
the United States.

His legislative power is also great.  He has a veto upon all acts of
Congress, This veto is by no means a dead letter, as is the veto of
the Crown with us; but it is not absolute.  The President, if he
refuses his sanction to a bill sent up to him from Congress, returns
it to that House in which it originated, with his objections in
writing.  If, after that, such bill shall again pass through both
the Senate and the House of Representatives, receiving in each House
the approvals of two-thirds of those present, then such bill becomes
law without the President's sanction.  Unless this be done, the
President's veto stops the bill.  This veto has been frequently
used, but no bill has yet been passed in opposition to it.

The third article of the Constitution treats of the judiciary of the
United States; but as I purpose to write a chapter devoted to the
law courts and lawyers of the States, I need not here describe at
length the enactments of the Constitution on this head.  It is
ordained that all criminal trials, except in cases of impeachment,
shall be by jury.

There are after this certain miscellaneous articles, some of which
belong to the Constitution as it stood at first, and others of which
have been since added as amendments.  A citizen of one State is to
be a citizen of every State.  Criminals from one State shall not be
free from pursuit in other States.  Then comes a very material
enactment: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under
the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of
any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or
labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such
service or labor may be due."  In speaking of a person held to labor
the Constitution intends to speak of a slave, and the article
amounts to a fugitive slave law.  If a slave run away out of South
Carolina and find his way into Massachusetts, Massachusetts shall
deliver him up when called upon to do so by South Carolina.  The
words certainly are clear enough.  But Massachusetts strongly
objects to the delivery of such men when so desired.  Such men she
has delivered up, with many groanings and much inward perturbation
of spirit.  But it is understood, not in Massachusetts only, but in
the free-soil States generally, that fugitive slaves shall not be
delivered up by the ordinary action of the laws.  There is a feeling
strong as that which we entertain with reference to the rendition of
slaves from Canada.  With such a clause in the Constitution as that,
it is hardly too much to say that no free-soil Slate will consent to
constitutional action.  Were it expunged from the Constitution, no
slave State would consent to live under it.  It is a point as to
which the advocates of slavery and the enemies of slavery cannot be
brought to act in union.  But on this head I have already said what
little I have to say.

New States may be admitted by Congress, but the bounds of no old
State shall be altered without the consent of such State.  Congress
shall have power to rule and dispose of the Territories and property
of the United States.  The United States guarantee every State a
republican form of government; but the Constitution does not define
that form of government.  An ordinary citizen of the United States,
if asked, would probably say that it included that description of
franchise which I have called universal suffrage.  Such, however,
was not the meaning of those who framed the Constitution.  The
ordinary citizen would probably also say that it excluded the use of
a king, though he would, I imagine, be able to give no good reason
for saying so.  I take a republican government to be that in which
the care of the people is in the hands of the people.  They may use
an elected president, a hereditary king, or a chief magistrate
called by any other name.  But the magistrate, whatever be his name,
must be the servant of the people and not their lord.  He must act
for them and at their bidding--not they at his.  If he do so, he is
the chief officer of a republic--as is our Queen with us.

The United States Constitution also guarantees to each State
protection against invasion, and, if necessary, against domestic
violence--meaning, I presume, internal violence.  The words domestic
violence might seem to refer solely to slave insurrections; but such
is not the meaning of the words.  The free State of New York would
be entitled to the assistance of the Federal government in putting
down internal violence, if unable to quell such violence by her own
power.

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States made in
pursuance of it, are to be held as the supreme law of the land.  The
judges of every State are to be bound thereby, let the laws or
separate constitution of such State say what they will to the
contrary.  Senators and others are to be bound by oath to support
the Constitution; but no religious test shall be required as a
qualification to any office.

In the amendments to the Constitution, it is enacted that Congress
shall make no law as to the establishment of any religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and also that it shall not
abridge the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of petition.  The
government, however, as is well known, has taken upon itself to
abridge the freedom of the press.  The right of the people to bear
arms shall not be infringed.  Then follow various clauses intended
for the security of the people in reference to the administration of
the laws.  They shall not be troubled by unreasonable searches.
They shall not be made to answer for great offenses except by
indictment of a grand jury.  They shall not be put twice in jeopardy
for the same offense.  They shall not be compelled to give evidence
against themselves.  Private property shall not be taken for public
use without compensation.  Accused persons in criminal proceedings
shall be entitled to speedy and public trial.  They shall be
confronted with the witnesses against them, and shall have
assistance of counsel.  Suits in which the value controverted is
above twenty dollars (4l.) shall be tried before juries.  Excessive
bail shall not be required, nor cruel and unusual punishments
inflicted.  In all which enactments we see, I think, a close
resemblance to those which have been time honored among ourselves.

The remaining amendments apply to the mode in which the President
and Vice-President shall be elected, and of them I have already
spoken.

The Constitution is signed by Washington as President--as President
and Deputy from Virginia.  It is signed by deputies from all the
other States, except Rhode Island.  Among the signatures is that of
Alexander Hamilton, from New York; of Franklin, heading a crowd in
Pennsylvania, in the capital of which State the convention was held;
and that of James Madison, the future President, from Virginia.

In the beginning of this chapter I have spoken of the splendid
results attained by those who drew up the Constitution; and then, as
though in opposition to the praise thus given to their work, I have
insisted throughout the chapter both on the insufficiency of the
Constitution and on the breaches to which it has been subjected.  I
have declared my opinion that it is inefficient for some of its
required purposes, and have said that, whether inefficient or
efficient, it has been broken and in some degree abandoned.  I
maintain, however, that in this I have not contradicted myself.  A
boy, who declares his purpose of learning the AEneid by heart, will
be held as being successful if at the end of the given period he can
repeat eleven books out of the twelve.  Nevertheless the reporter,
in summing up the achievement, is bound to declare that that other
book has not been learned.  Under this Constitution of which I have
been speaking, the American people have achieved much material
success and great political power.  As a people they have been happy
and prosperous.  Their freedom has been secured to them, and for a
period of seventy-five years they have lived and prospered without
subjection to any form of tyranny.  This in itself is much, and
should, I think, be held as a preparation for greater things to
follow.  Such, I think, should be our opinion, although the nation
is at the present burdened by so heavy a load of troubles.  That any
written constitution should serve its purposes and maintain its
authority in a nation for a dozen years is in itself much for its
framers.  Where are now the constitutions which were written for
France?  But this Constitution has so wound itself into the
affections of the people, has become a mark for such reverence and
love, has, after a trial of three-quarters of a century, so
recommended itself to the judgment of men, that the difficulty
consists in touching it, not in keeping it.  Eighteen or twenty
millions of people who have lived under it,--in what way do they
regard it?  Is not that the best evidence that can be had respecting
it?  Is it to them an old woman's story, a useless parchment, a
thing of old words at which all must now smile?  Heaven mend them,
if they reverence it more, as I fear they do, than they reverence
their Bible.  For them, after seventy-five years of trial, it has
almost the weight of inspiration.  In this respect, with reference
to this worship of the work of their forefathers, they may be in
error.  But that very error goes far to prove the excellence of the
code.  When a man has walked for six months over stony ways in the
same boots, he will be believed when he says that his boots are good
boots.  No assertion to the contrary from any by-stander will
receive credence, even though it be shown that a stitch or two has
come undone, and that some required purpose has not effectually been
carried out.  The boots have carried the man over his stony roads
for six months, and they must be good boots.  And so I say that the
Constitution must be a good constitution.

As to that positive breach of the Constitution which has, as I
maintain, been committed by the present government, although I have
been at some trouble to prove it, I must own that I do not think
very much of it.  It is to be lamented; but the evil admits, I
think, of easy repair.  It has happened at a period of unwonted
difficulty, when the minds of men were intent rather on the support
of that nationality which guarantees their liberties, than on the
enjoyment of those liberties themselves, and the fault may be
pardoned if it be acknowledged.  But it is essential that it should
be acknowledged.  In such a matter as that there should at any rate
be no doubt.  Now, in this very year of the rebellion, it may be
well that no clamor against government should arise from the people,
and thus add to the difficulties of the nation.  But it will be bad,
indeed, for the nation if such a fault shall have been committed by
this government and shall be allowed to pass unacknowledged,
unrebuked--as though it were a virtue and no fault.  I cannot but
think that the time will soon come in which Mr. Seward's reading of
the Constitution and Mr. Lincoln's assumption of illegal power under
that reading will receive a different construction in the States
than that put upon it by Mr. Binney.

But I have admitted that the Constitution itself is not perfect.  It
seems to me that it requires to be amended on two separate points--
especially on two; and I cannot but acknowledge that there would be
great difficulty in making such amendments.  That matter of direct
taxation is the first.  As to that I shall speak again in referring
to the financial position of the country.  I think, however, that it
must be admitted, in any discussion held on the Constitution of the
United States, that the theory of taxation as there laid down will
not suffice for the wants of a great nation.  If the States are to
maintain their ground as a great national power, they must agree
among themselves to bear the cost of such greatness.  While a custom
duty was sufficient for the public wants of the United States, this
fault in the Constitution was not felt.  But now that standing
armies have been inaugurated, that iron-clad ships are held as
desirable, that a great national debt has been founded, custom
duties will suffice no longer, nor will excise duties suffice.
Direct taxation must be levied, and such taxation cannot be fairly
levied without a change in the Constitution.  But such a change may
be made in direct accordance with the spirit of the Constitution,
and the necessity for such an alteration cannot be held as proving
any inefficiency in the original document for the purposes
originally required.

As regards the other point which seems to me to require amendment, I
must acknowledge that I am about to express simply my own opinion.
Should Americans read what I write, they may probably say that I am
recommending them to adopt the blunders made by the English in their
practice of government.  Englishmen, on the other hand, may not
improbably conceive that a system which works well here under a
monarchy, would absolutely fail under a presidency of four years'
duration.  Nevertheless I will venture to suggest that the
government of the United States would be improved in all respects if
the gentlemen forming the President's cabinet were admitted to seats
in Congress.  At present they are virtually irresponsible.  They are
constitutionally little more than head clerks.  This was all very
well while the government of the United States was as yet a small
thing; but now it is no longer a small thing.  The President himself
cannot do all, nor can he be in truth responsible for all.  A
cabinet, such as is our cabinet, is necessary to him.  Such a
cabinet does exist, and the members of it take upon themselves the
honors which are given to our cabinet ministers.  But they are
exempted from all that parliamentary contact which, in fact, gives
to our cabinet ministers their adroitness, their responsibility, and
their position in the country.  On this subject also I must say
another word or two farther on.

But how am I to excuse the Constitution on those points as to which
it has, as I have said, fallen through, in respect to which it has
shown itself to be inefficient by the weakness of its own words?
Seeing that all the executive power is intrusted to the President,
it is especially necessary that the choice of the President should
be guarded by constitutional enactments; that the President should
be chosen in such a manner as may seem best to the concentrated
wisdom of the country.  The President is placed in his seat for four
years.  For that term he is irremovable.  He acts without any
majority in either of the legislative houses.  He must state reasons
for his conduct, but he is not responsible for those reasons.  His
own judgment is his sole guide.  No desire of the people can turn
him out; nor need he fear any clamor from the press.  If an officer
so high in power be needed, at any rate the choice of such an
officer should be made with the greatest care.  The Constitution has
decreed how such care should be exercised, but the Constitution has
not been able to maintain its own decree.  The constituted electors
of the President have become a mere name; and that officer is chosen
by popular election, in opposition to the intention of those who
framed the Constitution.  The effect of this may be seen in the
characters of the men so chosen.  Washington, Jefferson, Madison,
the two Adamses, and Jackson were the owners of names that have
become known in history.  They were men who have left their marks
behind them.  Those in Europe who have read of anything, have read
of them.  Americans, whether as Republicans they admire Washington
and the Adamses, or as Democrats hold by Jefferson, Madison, and
Jackson, do not at any rate blush for their old Presidents.  But who
has heard of Polk, of Pierce, of Buchanan?  What American is proud
of them?  In the old days the name of a future President might be
surmised.  He would probably be a man honored in the nation; but who
now can make a guess as to the next President?  In one respect a
guess may be made with some safety.  The next President will be a
man whose name has as yet offended no one by its prominence.  But
one requisite is essential for a President; he must be a man whom
none as yet have delighted to honor.

This has come of universal suffrage; and seeing that it has come in
spite of the Constitution, and not by the Constitution, it is very
bad.  Nor in saying this am I speaking my own conviction so much as
that of all educated Americans with whom I have discussed the
subject.  At the present moment universal suffrage is not popular.
Those who are the highest among the people certainly do not love it.
I doubt whether the masses of the people have ever craved it.  It
has been introduced into the presidential elections by men called
politicians; by men who have made it a matter of trade to dabble in
State affairs, and who have gradually learned to see how the
constitutional law, with reference to the presidential electors,
could be set aside without any positive breach of the Constitution.*


* On this matter one of the best, and best-informed Americans that I
have known, told me that he differed from me.  "It introduced
itself," said he.  "It was the result of social and political
forces.  Election of the President by popular choice became a
necessity."  The meaning of this is, that in regard to their
presidential elections the United States drifted into universal
suffrage.  I do not know that his theory is one more comfortable for
his country than my own.


Whether or no any backward step can now be taken--whether these
elections can again be put into the hands of men fit to exercise a
choice in such a matter--may well be doubted.  Facilis descensus
Averni.  But the recovery of the downward steps is very difficult.
On that subject, however, I hardly venture here to give an opinion.
I only declare what has been done, and express my belief that it has
not been done in conformity with the wishes of the people, as it
certainly has not been done in conformity with the intention of the
Constitution.

In another matter a departure has been made from the conservative
spirit of the Constitution.  This departure is equally grave with
the other, but it is one which certainly does admit of correction.
I allude to the present position assumed by many of the Senators,
and to the instructions given to them by the State legislatures as
to the votes which they shall give in the Senate.  An obedience on
their part to such instructions is equal in its effects to the
introduction of universal suffrage into the elections.  It makes
them hang upon the people, divests them of their personal
responsibility, takes away all those advantages given to them by a
six years' certain tenure of office, and annuls the safety secured
by a conservative method of election.  Here again I must declare my
opinion that this democratic practice has crept into the Senate
without any expressed wish of the people.  In all such matters the
people of the nation has been strangely undemonstrative.  It has
been done as part of a system which has been used for transferring
the political power of the nation to a body of trading politicians
who have become known and felt as a mass, and not known and felt as
individuals.  I find it difficult to describe the present political
position of the States in this respect.  The millions of the people
are eager for the Constitution, are proud of their power as a
nation, and are ambitious of national greatness.  But they are not,
as I think, especially desirous of retaining political influences in
their own hands.  At many of the elections it is difficult to induce
them to vote.  They have among them a half-knowledge that politics
is a trade in the hands of the lawyers, and that they are the
capital by which those political tradesmen carry on their business.
These politicians are all lawyers.  Politics and law go together as
naturally as the possession of land and the exercise of magisterial
powers do with us.  It may be well that it should be so, as the
lawyers are the best-educated men of the country, and need not
necessarily be the most dishonest.  Political power has come into
their hands, and it is for their purposes and by their influences
that the spread of democracy has been encouraged.

As regards the Senate, the recovery of its old dignity and former
position is within its own power.  No amendment of the Constitution
is needed here, nor has the weakness come from any insufficiency of
the Constitution.  The Senate can assume to itself to-morrow its own
glories, and can, by doing so, become the saviour of the honor and
glory of the nation.  It is to the Senate that we must look for that
conservative element which may protect the United States from the
violence of demagogues on one side, and from the despotism of
military power on the other.  The Senate, and the Senate only, can
keep the President in check.  The Senate also has a power over the
Lower House with reference to the disposal of money, which deprives
the House of Representatives of that exclusive authority which
belongs to our House of Commons.  It is not simply that the House of
Representatives cannot do what is done by the House of Commons.
There is more than this.  To the Senate, in the minds of all
Americans, belongs that superior prestige, that acknowledged
possession of the greater power and fuller scope for action, which
is with us as clearly the possession of the House of Commons.  The
United States Senate can be conservative, and can be so by virtue of
the Constitution.  The love of the Constitution in the hearts of all
Americans is so strong that the exercise of such power by the Senate
would strengthen rather than endanger its position.  I could wish
that the Senators would abandon their money payments, but I do not
imagine that that will be done exactly in these days.

I have now endeavored to describe the strength of the Constitution
of the United States, and to explain its weakness.  The great
question is at this moment being solved, whether or no that
Constitution will still be found equal to its requirements.  It has
hitherto been the main-spring in the government of the people.  They
have trusted with almost childlike confidence to the wisdom of their
founders, and have said to their rulers--"There! in those words you
must find the extent and the limit of your powers.  It is written
down for you, so that he who runs may read."  That writing down, as
it were, at a single sitting, of a sufficient code of instructions
for the governors of a great nation, had not hitherto in the world's
history been found to answer.  In this instance it has, at any rate,
answered better than in any other, probably because the words so
written contained in them less pretense of finality in political
wisdom than other written constitutions have assumed.  A young tree
must bend, or the winds will certainly break it.  For myself I can
honestly express my hope that no storm may destroy this tree.



CHAPTER X.

THE GOVERNMENT.


In speaking of the American Constitution I have said so much of the
American form of government that but little more is left to me to
say under that heading.  Nevertheless, I should hardly go through
the work which I have laid out for myself if I did not endeavor to
explain more continuously, and perhaps more graphically, than I
found myself able to do in the last chapter, the system on which
public affairs are managed in the United States.

And here I must beg my readers again to bear in mind how moderate is
the amount of governing which has fallen to the lot of the
government of the United States; how moderate, as compared with the
amount which has to be done by the Queen's officers of state for
Great Britain, or by the Emperor, with such assistance as he may
please to accept from his officers of state, for France.  That this
is so must be attributed to more than one cause; but the chief cause
is undoubtedly to be found in the very nature of a federal
government.  The States are individually sovereign, and govern
themselves as to all internal matters.  All the judges in England
are appointed by the Crown; but in the United States only a small
proportion of the judges are nominated by the President.  The
greater number are servants of the different States.  The execution
of the ordinary laws for the protection of men and property does not
fall on the government of the United States, but on the executives
of the individual States--unless in some special matters, which will
be defined in the next chapter.  Trade, education, roads, religion,
the passing of new measures for the internal or domestic comfort of
the people,--all these things are more or less matters of care to
our government.  In the States they are matters of care to the
governments of each individual State, but are not so to the central
government at Washington.

But there are other causes which operate in the same direction, and
which have hitherto enabled the Presidents of the United States,
with their ministers, to maintain their positions without much
knowledge of statecraft, or the necessity for that education in
state matters which is so essential to our public men.  In the first
place, the United States have hitherto kept their hands out of
foreign politics.  If they have not done so altogether, they have so
greatly abstained from meddling in them that none of that thorough
knowledge of the affairs of other nations has been necessary to them
which is so essential with us, and which seems to be regarded as the
one thing needed in the cabinets of other European nations.  This
has been a great blessing to the United States, but it has not been
an unmixed blessing.  It has been a blessing because the absence of
such care has saved the country from trouble and from expense.  But
such a state of things was too good to last; and the blessing has
not been unmixed, seeing that now, when that absence of concern in
foreign matters has been no longer possible, the knowledge necessary
for taking a dignified part in foreign discussions has been found
wanting.  Mr. Seward is now the Minister for Foreign Affairs in the
States, and it is hardly too much to say that he has made himself a
laughing-stock among the diplomatists of Europe, by the mixture of
his ignorance and his arrogance.  His reports to his own ministers
during the single year of his office, as published by himself
apparently with great satisfaction, are a monument not so much of
his incapacity as of his want of training for such work.  We all
know his long state-papers on the "Trent" affair.  What are we to
think of a statesman who acknowledges the action of his country's
servant to have been wrong, and in the same breath declares that he
would have held by that wrong, had the material welfare of his
country been thereby improved?  The United States have now created a
great army and a great debt.  They will soon also have created a
great navy.  Affairs of other nations will press upon them, and they
will press against the affairs of other nations.  In this way
statecraft will become necessary to them; and by degrees their
ministers will become habile, graceful, adroit, and perhaps crafty,
as are the ministers of other nations.

And, moreover, the United States have had no outlying colonies or
dependencies, such as an India and Canada are to us, as Cuba is and
Mexico was to Spain, and as were the provinces of the Roman empire.
Territories she has had, but by the peculiar beneficence of her
political arrangements, these Territories have assumed the guise of
sovereign States, and been admitted into federal partnership on
equal terms, with a rapidity which has hardly left to the central
government the reality of any dominion of its own.  We are inclined
to suppose that these new States have been allowed to assume their
equal privileges and State rights because they have been contiguous
to the old States, as though it were merely an extension of
frontier.  But this has not been so.  California and Oregon have
been very much farther from Washington than the Canadas are from
London.  Indeed they are still farther, and I hardly know whether
they can be brought much nearer than Canada is to us, even with the
assistance of railways.  But nevertheless California and Oregon were
admitted as States, the former as quickly and the latter much more
quickly than its population would seem to justify Congress in doing,
according to the received ratio of population.  A preference in this
way has been always given by the United States to a young population
over one that was older.  Oregon with its 60,000 inhabitants has one
Representative.  New York with 4,000,000 inhabitants has thirty-
three.  But in order to be equal with Oregon, New York should have
sixty-six.  In this way the outlying populations have been
encouraged to take upon themselves their own governance, and the
governing power of the President and his cabinet has been kept
within moderate limits.

But not the less is the position of the President very dominant in
the eyes of us Englishmen by reason of the authority with which he
is endowed.  It is not that the scope of his power is great, but
that he is so nearly irresponsible in the exercise of that power.
We know that he can be impeached by the Representatives and expelled
from his office by the verdict of the Senate; but this in fact does
not amount to much.  Responsibility of this nature is doubtless very
necessary, and prevents ebullitions of tyranny such as those in
which a sultan or an emperor may indulge; but it is not that
responsibility which especially recommends itself to the minds of
free men.  So much of responsibility they take as a matter of
course, as they do the air which they breathe.  It would be nothing
to us to know that Lord Palmerston could be impeached for robbing
the treasury, or Lord Russell punished for selling us to Austria.
It is well that such laws should exist, but we do not in the least
suspect those noble lords of such treachery.  We are anxious to
know, not in what way they may be impeached and beheaded for great
crimes, but by what method they may be kept constantly straight in
small matters.  That they are true and honest is a matter of course.
But they must be obedient also, discreet, capable, and, above all
things, of one mind with the public.  Let them be that; or if not
they, then with as little delay as may be, some others in their
place.  That with us is the meaning of ministerial responsibility.
To that responsibility all the cabinet is subject.  But in the
government of the United States there is no such responsibility.
The President is placed at the head of the executive for four years,
and while he there remains no man can question him.  It is not that
the scope of his power is great.  Our own Prime Minister is
doubtless more powerful--has a wider authority.  But it is that
within the scope of his power the President is free from all check.
There are no reins, constitutional or unconstitutional, by which he
can be restrained.  He can absolutely repudiate a majority of both
Houses, and refuse the passage of any act of Congress even though
supported by those majorities.  He can retain the services of
ministers distasteful to the whole country.  He can place his own
myrmidons at the head of the army and navy, or can himself take the
command immediately on his own shoulders.  All this he can do, and
there is no one that can question him.

It is hardly necessary that I should point out the fundamental
difference between our king or queen, and the President of the
United States.  Our sovereign, we all know, is not responsible.
Such is the nature of our constitution.  But there is not on that
account any analogy between the irresponsibility of the Queen and
that of the President.  The Queen can do no wrong; but therefore, in
all matters of policy and governance, she must be ruled by advice.
For that advice her ministers are responsible; and no act of policy
or governance can be done in England as to which responsibility does
not immediately settle on the shoulders appointed to bear it.  But
this is not so in the States.  The President is nominally
responsible.  But from that every-day working responsibility, which
is to us so invaluable, the President is in fact free.

I will give an instance of this.  Now, at this very moment of my
writing, news has reached us that President Lincoln has relieved
General McClellan from the command of the whole army, that he has
given separate commands to two other generals--to General Halleck,
namely, and, alas! to General Fremont, and that he has altogether
altered the whole organization of the military command as it
previously existed.  This he did not only during war, but with
reference to a special battle, for the special fighting of which he,
as ex-officio commander-in-chief of the forces, had given orders.  I
do not hereby intend to criticise this act of the President's, or to
point out that that has been done which had better have been left
undone.  The President, in a strategetical point of view, may have
been, very probably has been, quite right.  I, at any rate, cannot
say that he has been wrong.  But then neither can anybody else say
so with any power of making himself heard.  Of this action of the
President's, so terribly great in its importance to the nation, no
one has the power of expressing any opinion to which the President
is bound to listen.  For four years he has this sway, and at the end
of four years he becomes so powerless that it is not then worth the
while of any demagogue in a fourth-rate town to occupy his voice
with that President's name.  The anger of the country as to the
things done both by Pierce and Buchanan is very bitter.  But who
wastes a thought upon either of these men?  A past President in the
United States is of less consideration than a past mayor in an
English borough.  Whatever evil he may have done during his office,
when out of office he is not worth the powder which would be
expended in an attack.

But the President has his ministers as our Queen has hers.  In one
sense he has such ministers.  He has high State servants who under
him take the control of the various departments, and exercise among
them a certain degree of patronage and executive power.  But they
are the President's ministers, and not the ministers of the people.
Till lately there has been no chief minister among them, nor am I
prepared to say that there is any such chief at present.  According
to the existing theory of the government these gentlemen have simply
been the confidential servants of the commonwealth under the
President, and have been attached each to his own department without
concerted political alliance among themselves, without any
acknowledged chief below the President, and without any combined
responsibility even to the President.  If one minister was in fault--
let us say the Postmaster-General--he alone was in fault, and it
did not fall to the lot of any other minister either to defend him,
or to declare that his conduct was indefensible.  Each owed his duty
and his defense to the President alone and each might be removed
alone, without explanation given by the President to the others.  I
imagine that the late practice of the President's cabinet has in
some degree departed from this theory; but if so, the departure has
sprung from individual ambition rather than from any pre-concerted
plan.  Some one place in the cabinet has seemed to give to some one
man an opportunity of making himself pre-eminent, and of this
opportunity advantage has been taken.  I am not now intending to
allude to any individual, but am endeavoring to indicate the way in
which a ministerial cabinet, after the fashion of our British
cabinet, is struggling to get itself righted.  No doubt the position
of Foreign Secretary has for some time past been considered as the
most influential under the President.  This has been so much the
case that many have not hesitated to call the Secretary of State the
chief minister.  At the present moment, May, l862, the gentleman who
is at the head of the War Department has, I think, in his own hands
greater power than any of his colleagues.

It will probably come to pass before long that one special minister
will be the avowed leader of the cabinet, and that he will be
recognized as the chief servant of the States under the President.
Our own cabinet, which now-a-days seems with us to be an institution
as fixed as Parliament and as necessary as the throne, has grown by
degrees into its present shape, and is not in truth nearly so old as
many of us suppose it to be.  It shaped itself, I imagine, into its
present form, and even into its present joint responsibility, during
the reign of George III.  It must be remembered that even with us
there is no such thing as a constitutional Prime Minister, and that
our Prime Minister is not placed above the other ministers in any
manner that is palpable to the senses.  He is paid no more than the
others; he has no superior title; he does not take the highest rank
among them; he never talks of his subordinates, but always of his
colleagues; he has a title of his own, that of First Lord of the
Treasury, but it implies no headship in the cabinet.  That he is the
head of all political power in the nation, the Atlas who has to bear
the globe, the god in whose hands rest the thunderbolts and the
showers, all men do know.  No man's position is more assured to him.
But the bounds of that position are written in no book, are defined
by no law, have settled themselves not in accordance with the
recorded wisdom of any great men, but as expediency and the fitness
of political things in Great Britain have seemed from time to time
to require.  This drifting of great matters into their proper places
is not as closely in accordance with the idiosyncrasies of the
American people as it is with our own.  They would prefer to define
by words, as the French do, what shall be the exact position of
every public servant connected with their government; or rather of
every public servant with whom the people shall be held as having
any concern.  But nevertheless, I think it will come to pass that a
cabinet will gradually form itself at Washington as it has done at
London, and that of that cabinet there will be some recognized and
ostensible chief.

But a Prime Minister in the United States can never take the place
there which is taken here by our Premier.  Over our Premier there is
no one politically superior.  The highest political responsibility
of the nation rests on him.  In the States this must always rest on
the President, and any minister, whatever may be his name or assumed
position, can only be responsible through the President.  And it is
here especially that the working of the United States system of
government seems to me deficient--appears as though it wanted
something to make it perfect and round at all points.  Our ministers
retire from their offices as do the Presidents; and indeed the
ministerial term of office with us, though of course not fixed, is
in truth much shorter than the presidential term of four years.  But
our ministers do not in fact ever go out.  At one time they take one
position, with pay, patronage, and power; and at another time
another position, without these good things; but in either position
they are acting as public men, and are in truth responsible for what
they say and do.  But the President, on whom it is presumed that the
whole of the responsibility of the United States government rests,
goes out at a certain day, and of him no more is heard.  There is no
future before him to urge him on to constancy; no hope of other
things beyond, of greater honors and a wider fame, to keep him
wakeful in his country's cause.  He has already enrolled his name on
the list of his country's rulers, and received what reward his
country can give him.  Conscience, duty, patriotism may make him
true to his place.  True to his place, in a certain degree, they
will make him.  But ambition and hope of things still to come are
the moving motives of the minds of most men.  Few men can allow
their energies to expand to their fullest extent in the cold
atmosphere of duty alone.  The President of the States must feel
that he has reached the top of the ladder, and that he soon will
have done with life.  As he goes out he is a dead man.  And what can
be expected from one who is counting the last lingering hours of his
existence?  "It will not be in my time," Mr. Buchanan is reported to
have said, when a friend spoke to him with warning voice of the
coming rebellion.  "It will not be in my time."  In the old days,
before democracy had prevailed in upsetting that system of
presidential election which the Constitution had intended to fix as
permanent, the Presidents were generally re-elected for a second
term.  Of the first seven Presidents five were sent back to the
White House for a second period of four years.  But this has never
been done since the days of General Jackson; nor will it be done,
unless a stronger conservative reaction takes place than the country
even as yet seems to promise.  As things have lately ordered
themselves, it may almost be said that no man in the Union would be
so improbable a candidate for the Presidency as the outgoing
President.  And it has been only natural that it should be so.
Looking at the men themselves who have lately been chosen, the fault
has not consisted in their non-re-election, but in their original
selection.  There has been no desire for great men; no search after
a man of such a nature that, when tried, the people should be
anxious to keep him.  "It will not be in my time," says the expiring
President.  And so, without dismay, he sees the empire of his
country slide away from him.

A President, with the possibility of re-election before him, would
be as a minister who goes out knowing that he may possibly come in
again before the session is over, and, perhaps, believing that the
chances of his doing so are in his favor.  Under the existing
political phase of things in the United States, no President has any
such prospect; but the ministers of the President have that chance.
It is no uncommon thing at present for a minister under one
President to reappear as a minister under another; but a statesman
has no assurance that he will do so because he has shown ministerial
capacity.  We know intimately the names of all our possible
ministers--too intimately as some of us think--and would be taken
much by surprise if a gentleman without an official reputation were
placed at the head of a high office.  If something of this feeling
prevailed as to the President's cabinet, if there were some
assurance that competent statesmen would be appointed as Secretaries
of State, a certain amount of national responsibility would by
degrees attach itself to them, and the President's shoulders would,
to that amount, be lightened.  As it is, the President pretends to
bear a burden which, if really borne, would indicate the possession
of Herculean shoulders.  But, in fact, the burden at present is
borne by no one.  The government of the United States is not in
truth responsible either to the people or to Congress.

But these ministers, if it be desired that they shall have weight in
the country, should sit in Congress either as Senators or as
Representatives.  That they cannot so sit without an amendment of
the Constitution, I have explained in the previous chapter; and any
such amendment cannot be very readily made.  Without such seats they
cannot really share the responsibility of the President, or be in
any degree amenable to public opinion for the advice which they give
in their public functions.  It will be said that the Constitution
has expressly intended that they should not be responsible, and
such, no doubt, has been the case.  But the Constitution, good as it
is, cannot be taken as perfect.  The government has become greater
than seems to have been contemplated when that code was drawn up.
It has spread itself as it were over a wider surface, and has
extended to matters which it was not necessary then to touch.  That
theory of governing by the means of little men was very well while
the government itself was small.  A President and his clerks may
have sufficed when there were from thirteen to eighteen States;
while there were no Territories, or none at least that required
government; while the population was still below five millions;
while a standing army was an evil not known and not feared; while
foreign politics was a troublesome embroglio in which it was quite
unnecessary that the United States should take a part.  Now there
are thirty-four States.  The territories populated by American
citizens stretch from the States on the Atlantic to those on the
Pacific.  There is a population of thirty million souls.  At the
present moment the United States are employing more soldiers than
any other nation, and have acknowledged the necessity of maintaining
a large army even when the present troubles shall be over.  In
addition to this the United States have occasion for the use of
statecraft with all the great kingdoms of Europe.  That theory of
ruling by little men will not do much longer.  It will be well that
they should bring forth their big men and put them in the place of
rulers.

The President has at present seven ministers.  They are the
Secretary of State, who is supposed to have the direction of foreign
affairs; the Secretary of the Treasury, who answers to our
Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Secretaries of the Army and of the
Navy; the Minister of the Interior; the Attorney-General; and the
Postmaster-General.  If these officers were allowed to hold seats in
one House or the other--or rather if the President were enjoined to
place in these offices men who were known as members of Congress,
not only would the position of the President's ministers be enhanced
and their weight increased, but the position also of Congress would
be enhanced and the weight of Congress would be increased.  I may,
perhaps, best exemplify this by suggesting what would be the effect
on our Parliament by withdrawing from it the men who at the present
moment--or at any moment--form the Queen's cabinet.  I will not say
that by adding to Congress the men who usually form the President's
cabinet, a weight would be given equal to that which the withdrawal
of the British cabinet would take from the British Parliament.  I
cannot pay that compliment to the President's choice of servants.
But the relationship between Congress and the President's ministers
would gradually come to resemble that which exists between
Parliament and the Queen's ministers.  The Secretaries of State and
of the Treasury would after awhile obtain that honor of leading the
Houses which is exercised by our high political officers, and the
dignity added to the positions would make the places worthy of the
acceptance of great men.  It is hardly so at present.  The career of
one of the President's ministers is not a very high career as things
now stand; nor is the man supposed to have achieved much who has
achieved that position.  I think it would be otherwise if the
ministers were the leaders of the legislative houses.  To Congress
itself would be given the power of questioning and ultimately of
controlling these ministers.  The power of the President would no
doubt be diminished as that of Congress would be increased.  But an
alteration in that direction is in itself desirable.  It is the
fault of the present system of government in the United States that
the President has too much of power and weight, while the Congress
of the nation lacks power and weight.  As matters now stand,
Congress has not that dignity of position which it should hold; and
it is without it because it is not endowed with that control over
the officers of the government which our Parliament is enabled to
exercise.

The want of this close connection with Congress and the President's
ministers has been so much felt that it has been found necessary to
create a medium of communication.  This has been done by a system
which has now become a recognized part of the machinery of the
government, but which is, I believe, founded on no regularly
organized authority; at any rate, no provision is made for it in the
Constitution, nor, as far as I am aware, has it been established by
any special enactment or written rule.  Nevertheless, I believe I am
justified in saying that it has become a recognized link in the
system of government adopted by the United States.  In each House
standing committees are named, to which are delegated the special
consideration of certain affairs of State.  There are, for instance,
Committees of Foreign Affairs, of Finance, the Judiciary Committee,
and others of a similar nature.  To these committees are referred
all questions which come before the House bearing on the special
subject to which each is devoted.  Questions of taxation are
referred to the Finance Committee before they are discussed in the
House; and the House, when it goes into such discussion, has before
it the report of the committee.  In this way very much of the work
of the legislature is done by branches of each House, and by
selected men whose time and intellects are devoted to special
subjects.  It is easy to see that much time and useless debate may
be thus saved; and I am disposed to believe that this system of
committees has worked efficiently and beneficially.  The mode of
selection of the members has been so contrived as to give to each
political party that amount of preponderance in each committee which
such party holds in the House.  If the Democrats have in the Senate
a majority, it would be within their power to vote none but
Democrats into the Committee on Finance; but this would be
manifestly unjust to the Republican party, and the injustice would
itself frustrate the object of the party in power; therefore the
Democrats simply vote to themselves a majority in each committee,
keeping to themselves as great a preponderance in the committee as
they have in the whole House, and arranging also that the chairman
of the committee shall belong to their own party.  By these
committees the chief legislative measures of the country are
originated and inaugurated, as they are with us by the ministers of
the Crown; and the chairman of each committee is supposed to have a
certain amicable relation with that minister who presides over the
office with which his committee is connected.  Mr. Sumner is at
present chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and he is
presumed to be in connection with Mr. Seward, who, as Secretary of
State, has the management of the foreign relations of the
government.

But it seems to me that this supposed connection between the
committees and the ministers is only a makeshift, showing by its
existence the absolute necessity of close communication between the
executive and the legislative, but showing also by its imperfections
the great want of some better method of communication.  In the first
place, the chairman of the committee is in no way bound to hold any
communication with the minister.  He is simply a Senator, and as
such has no ministerial duties and can have none.  He holds no
appointment under the President, and has no palpable connection with
the executive.  And then, it is quite as likely that he may be
opposed in politics to the minister as that he may agree with him.
If the two be opposed to each other on general politics, it may be
presumed that they cannot act together in union on one special
subject; nor, whether they act in union or do not so act, can either
have any authority over the other.  The minister is not responsible
to Congress, nor is the chairman of the committee in any way bound
to support the minister.  It is presumed that the chairman must know
the minister's secrets; but the chairman may be bound by party
considerations to use those secrets against the minister.

The system of committees appears to me to be good as regards the
work of legislation.  It seems well adapted to effect economy of
time and the application of special men to special services.  But I
am driven to think that that connection between the chairmen of the
committees and the ministers which I have attempted to describe is
an arrangement very imperfect in itself, but plainly indicating the
necessity of some such close relation between the executive and the
legislature of the United States as does exist in the political
system of Great Britain.  With us the Queen's minister has a greater
weight in Parliament than the President's minister could hold in
Congress, because the Queen is bound to employ a minister in whom
the Parliament has confidence.  As soon as such confidence ceases,
the minister ceases to be minister.  As the Crown has no politics of
its own, it is simply necessary that the minister of the day should
hold the politics of the people as testified by their
representatives.  The machinery of the President's government cannot
be made to work after this fashion.  The President himself is a
political officer, and the country is bound to bear with his
politics for four years, whatever those politics may be.  The
ministry which he selects, on coming to his seat, will probably
represent a majority in Congress, seeing that the same suffrages
which have elected the President will also have elected the
Congress.  But there exists no necessity on the part of the
President to employ ministers who shall carry with them the support
of Congress.  If, however, the minister sat in Congress--if it were
required of each minister that he should have a seat either in one
House or in the other--the President would, I think, find himself
constrained to change a ministry in which Congress should decline to
confide.  It might not be so at first, but there would be a tendency
in that direction.

The governing powers do not rest exclusively with the President or
with the President and his ministers; they are shared in a certain
degree with the Senate, which sits from time to time in executive
session, laying aside at such periods its legislative character.  It
is this executive authority which lends so great a dignity to the
Senate, gives it the privilege of preponderating over the other
House, and makes it the political safeguard of the nation.  The
questions of government as to which the Senate is empowered to
interfere are soon told.  All treaties made by the President must be
sanctioned by the Senate; and all appointments made by the President
must be confirmed by the Senate.  The list is short; and one is
disposed to think, when first hearing it, that the thing itself does
not amount to much.  But it does amount to very much; it enables the
Senate to fetter the President, if the Senate should be so inclined,
both as regards foreign politics and home politics.  A Secretary for
Foreign Affairs at Washington may write what dispatches he pleases
without reference to the Senate; but the Senate interferes before
those dispatches can have resulted in any fact which may be
detrimental to the nation.  It is not only that the Senate is
responsible for such treaties as are made, but that the President is
deterred from the making of treaties for which the Senate would
decline to make itself responsible.  Even though no treaty should
ever be refused its sanction by the Senate, the protecting power of
the Senate in that matter would not on that account have been less
necessary or less efficacious.  Though the bars with which we
protect our house may never have been tried by a thief, we do not
therefore believe that our house would have been safe if such bars
had been known to be wanting.  And then, as to that matter of State
appointments, is it not the fact that all governing power consists
in the selection of the agents by whom the action of government
shall be carried on?  It must come to this, I imagine, when the
argument is pushed home.  The power of the most powerful man depends
only on the extent of his authority over his agents.  According to
the Constitution of the United States, the President can select no
agent either at home or abroad, for purposes either of peace or war,
or to the employment of whom the Senate does not agree with him.
Such a rule as this should save the nation from the use of
disreputable agents as public servants.  It might perhaps have done
much more toward such salvation than it has as yet effected, and it
may well be hoped that it will in future do more.

Such are the executive powers of the Senate; and it is, I think,
remarkable that the Senate has always used these powers with extreme
moderation.  It has never shown a factious inclination to hinder
government by unnecessary interference, or a disposition to clip the
President's wings by putting itself altogether at variance with him.
I am not quite sure whether some fault may not have lain on the
other side; whether the Senate may not have been somewhat slack in
exercising the protective privileges given to it by the
Constitution.  And here I cannot but remark how great is the
deference paid to all governors and edicts of government throughout
the United States.  One would have been disposed to think that such
a feeling would be stronger in an old country such as Great Britain
than in a young country such as the States.  But I think that it is
not so.  There is less disposition to question the action of
government either at Washington or at New York, than there is in
London.  Men in America seem to be content when they have voted in
their governors, and to feel that for them all political action is
over until the time shall come for voting for others.  And this
feeling, which seems to prevail among the people, prevails also in
both Houses of Congress.  Bitter denunciations against the
President's policy or the President's ministers are seldom heard.
Speeches are not often made with the object of impeding the action
of government.  That so small and so grave a body as the Senate
should abstain from factious opposition to the government when
employed on executive functions, was perhaps to be expected.  It is
of course well that it should be so.  I confess, however, that it
has appeared to me that the Senate has not used the power placed in
its hands as freely as the Constitution has intended, But I look at
the matter as an Englishman, and as an Englishman I can endure no
government action which is not immediately subject to parliamentary
control.

Such are the governing powers of the United States.  I think it will
be seen that they are much more limited in their scope of action
than with us; but within that scope of action much more independent
and self-sufficient.  And, in addition to this, those who exercise
power in the United States are not only free from immediate
responsibility, but are not made subject to the hope or fear of
future judgment.  Success will bring no award, and failure no
punishment.  I am not aware that any political delinquency has ever
yet brought down retribution on the head of the offender in the
United States, or that any great deed has been held as entitling the
doer of it to his country's gratitude.  Titles of nobility they have
none; pensions they never give; and political disgrace is unknown.
The line of politics would seem to be cold and unalluring.  It is
cold; and would be unalluring, were it not that as a profession it
is profitable.  In much of this I expect that a change will
gradually take place.  The theory has been that public affairs
should be in the hands of little men.  The theory was intelligible
while the public affairs were small; but they are small no longer,
and that theory, I fancy, will have to alter itself.  Great men are
needed for the government, and in order to produce great men a
career of greatness must be opened to them.  I can see no reason why
the career and the men should not be forthcoming.



CHAPTER XI.

THE LAW COURTS AND LAWYERS OF THE UNITED STATES.


I do not propose to make any attempt to explain in detail the
practices and rules of the American courts of law.  No one but a
lawyer should trust himself with such a task, and no lawyer would be
enabled to do so in the few pages which I shall here devote to the
subject.  My present object is to explain, as far as I may be able
to do so, the existing political position of the country.  As this
must depend more or less upon the power vested in the hands of the
judges, and upon the tenure by which those judges hold their
offices, I shall endeavor to describe the circumstances of the
position in which the American judges are placed; the mode in which
they are appointed; the difference which exists between the National
judges and the State judges, and the extent to which they are or are
not held in high esteem by the general public whom they serve.

It will, I think, be acknowledged that this last matter is one of
almost paramount importance to the welfare of a country.  At home in
England we do not realize the importance to us in a political as
well as social view of the dignity and purity of our judges, because
we take from them all that dignity and purity can give as a matter
of course.  The honesty of our bench is to us almost as the honesty
of heaven.  No one dreams that it can be questioned or become
questionable, and therefore there are but few who are thankful for
its blessings.  Few Englishmen care to know much about their own
courts of law, or are even aware that the judges are the protectors
of their liberties and property.  There are the men, honored on all
sides, trusted by every one, removed above temptation, holding
positions which are coveted by all lawyers.  That it is so is enough
for us; and as the good thence derived comes to us so easily, we
forget to remember that we might possibly be without it.  The law
courts of the States have much in their simplicity and the general
intelligence of their arrangements to recommend them.  In all
ordinary causes justice is done with economy, with expedition, and I
believe with precision.  But they strike an Englishman at once as
being deficient in splendor and dignity, as wanting that reverence
which we think should be paid to words falling from the bench, and
as being in danger as to that purity without which a judge becomes a
curse among a people, a chief of thieves, and an arch-minister of
the Evil One.  I say as being in danger; not that I mean to hint
that such want of purity has been shown, or that I wish it to be
believed that judges with itching palms do sit upon the American
bench; but because the present political tendency of the State
arrangements threatens to produce such danger.  We in England trust
implicitly in our judges--not because they are Englishmen, but
because they are Englishmen carefully selected for their high
positions.  We should soon distrust them if they were elected by
universal suffrage from all the barristers and attorneys practicing
in the different courts; and so elected only for a period of years,
as is the case with reference to many of the State judges in
America.  Such a mode of appointment would, in our estimation, at
once rob them of their prestige.  And our distrust would not be
diminished if the pay accorded to the work were so small that no
lawyer in good practice could afford to accept the situation.  When
we look at a judge in court, venerable beneath his wig and adorned
with his ermine, we do not admit to ourselves that that high officer
is honest because he is placed above temptation by the magnitude of
his salary.  We do not suspect that he, as an individual, would
accept bribes and favor suitors if he were in want of money.  But,
still, we know as a fact that an honest man, like any other good
article, must be paid for at a high price.  Judges and bishops
expect those rewards which all men win who rise to the highest steps
on the ladder of their profession.  And the better they are paid,
within measure, the better they will be as judges and bishops.  Now,
the judges in America are not well paid, and the best lawyers cannot
afford to sit upon the bench.

With us the practice of the law and the judicature of our law courts
are divided.  We have chancery barristers and common law barristers;
and we have chancery courts and courts of common law.  In the States
there is no such division.  It prevails neither in the National or
Federal courts of the United States, nor in the courts of any of the
separate States.  The code of laws used by the Americans is taken
almost entirely from our English laws--or rather, I should say, the
Federal code used by the nation is so taken, and also the various
codes of the different States--as each State takes whatever laws it
may think fit to adopt.  Even the precedents of our courts are held
as precedents in the American courts, unless they chance to jar
against other decisions given specially in their own courts with
reference to cases of their own.  In this respect the founders of
the American law proceedings have shown a conservation bias and a
predilection for English written and traditional law which are much
at variance with that general democratic passion for change by which
we generally presume the Americans to have been actuated at their
Revolution.  But though they have kept our laws, and still respect
our reading of those laws, they have greatly altered and simplified
our practice.  Whether a double set of courts of law and equity are
or are not expedient, either in the one country or in the other, I
do not pretend to know.  It is, however, the fact that there is no
such division in the States.

Moreover, there is no division in the legal profession.  With us we
have barristers and attorneys.  In the States the same man is both
barrister and attorney; and--which is perhaps in effect more
startling--every lawyer is presumed to undertake law cases of every
description.  The same man makes your will, sells your property,
brings an action for you of trespass against your neighbor, defends
you when you are accused of murder, recovers for you two and
sixpence, and pleads for you in an argument of three days' length
when you claim to be the sole heir to your grandfather's enormous
property.  I need not describe how terribly distinct with us is the
difference between an attorney and a barrister, or how much farther
than poles asunder is the future Lord Chancellor, pleading before
the Lords Justices at Lincoln's Inn, from the gentleman who, at the
Old Bailey, is endeavoring to secure the personal liberty of the
ruffian who, a week or two since, walked off with all your silver
spoons.  In the States no such differences are known.  A lawyer
there is a lawyer, and is supposed to do for any client any work
that a lawyer may be called on to perform.  But though this is the
theory--and as regards any difference between attorney and barrister
is altogether the fact--the assumed practice is not, and cannot be,
maintained as regards the various branches of a lawyer's work.  When
the population was smaller, and the law cases were less complicated,
the theory and the practice were no doubt alike.  As great cities
have grown up, and properties large in amount have come under
litigation, certain lawyers have found it expedient and practicable
to devote themselves to special branches of their profession.  But
this, even up to the present time, has not been done openly, as it
were, or with any declaration made by a man as to his own branch of
his calling.  I believe that no such declaration on his part would
be in accordance with the rules of the profession.  He takes a
partner, however, and thus attains his object; or more than one
partner, and then the business of the house is divided among them
according to their individual specialties.  One will plead in court,
another will give chamber counsel, and a third will take that lower
business which must be done, but which first-rate men hardly like to
do.

It will easily be perceived that law in this way will be made
cheaper to the litigant.  Whether or no that may be an unadulterated
advantage, I have my doubts.  I fancy that the united professional
incomes of all the lawyers in the States would exceed in amount
those made in England.  In America every man of note seems to be a
lawyer; and I am told that any lawyer who will work may make a sure
income.  If it be so, it would seem that Americans per head pay as
much (or more) for their law as men do in England.  It may be
answered that they get more law for their money.  That may be
possible, and even yet they may not be gainers.  I have been
inclined to think that there was an unnecessarily slow and expensive
ceremonial among us in the employment of barristers through a third
party; it has seemed that the man of learning, on whose efforts the
litigant really depends, is divided off from his client and employer
by an unfair barrier, used only to enhance his own dignity and give
an unnecessary grandeur to his position.  I still think that the
fault with us lies in this direction.  But I feel that I am less
inclined to demand an immediate alteration in our practice than I
was before I had seen any of the American courts of law.

It should be generally understood that lawyers are the leading men
in the States, and that the governance of the country has been
almost entirely in their hands ever since the political life of the
nation became full and strong.  All public business of importance
falls naturally into their hands, as with us it falls into the hands
of men of settled wealth and landed property.  Indeed, the fact on
which I insist is much more clear and defined in the States than it
is with us.  In England the lawyers also obtain no inconsiderable
share of political and municipal power.  The latter is perhaps more
in the hands of merchants and men in trade than of any other class;
and even the highest seats of political greatness are more open with
us to the world at large than they seem to be in the States to any
that are not lawyers.  Since the days of Washington every President
of the United States has, I think, been a lawyer, excepting General
Taylor.  Other Presidents have been generals, but then they have
also been lawyers.  General Jackson was a successful lawyer.  Almost
all the leading politicians of the present day are lawyers.  Seward,
Cameron, Welles, Stanton, Chase, Sumner, Crittenden, Harris,
Fessenden, are all lawyers.  Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and Cass were
lawyers.  Hamilton and Jay were lawyers.  Any man with an ambition
to enter upon public life becomes a lawyer as a matter of course.
It seems as though a study and practice of the law were necessary
ingredients in a man's preparation for political life.  I have no
doubt that a very large proportion of both houses of legislature
would be found to consist of lawyers.  I do not remember that I know
of the circumstance of more than one Senator who is not a lawyer.
Lawyers form the ruling class in America, as the landowners do with
us.  With us that ruling class is the wealthiest class; but this is
not so in the States.  It might be wished that it were so.

The great and ever-present difference between the National or
Federal affairs of the United States government and the affairs of
the government of each individual State, should be borne in mind at
all times by those who desire to understand the political position
of the States.  Till this be realized no one can have any correct
idea of the bearings of politics in that country.  As a matter of
course we in England have been inclined to regard the government and
Congress of Washington as paramount throughout the States, in the
same way that the government of Downing Street and the Parliament of
Westminster are paramount through the British isles.  Such a mistake
is natural; but not the less would it be a fatal bar to any correct
understanding of the Constitution of the United States.  The
National and State governments are independent of each other, and so
also are the National and State tribunals.  Each of these separate
tribunals has its own judicature, its own judges, its own courts,
and its own functions.  Nor can the supreme tribunal at Washington
exercise any authority over the proceedings of the courts in the
different States, or influence the decision of their judges.  For
not only are the National judges and State judges independent of
each other, but the laws in accordance with which they are bound to
act may be essentially different.  The two tribunals--those of the
nation and of the State--are independent and final in their several
spheres.  On a matter of State jurisprudence no appeal lies from the
supreme tribunal of New York or Massachusetts to the supreme
tribunal of the nation at Washington.

The National tribunals are of two classes.  First, there is the
Supreme Court specially ordained by the Constitution.  And then
there are such inferior courts as Congress may from time to time see
fit to establish.  Congress has no power to abolish the Supreme
Court, or to erect another tribunal superior to it.  This court sits
at Washington, and is a final court of appeal from the inferior
national courts of the Federal empire.  A system of inferior courts,
inaugurated by Congress, has existed for about sixty years.  Each
State for purposes of national jurisprudence is constituted as a
district; some few large States, such as New York, Pennsylvania, and
Illinois, being divided into two districts.  Each district has one
district court, presided over by one judge.  National causes in
general, both civil and criminal, are commenced in these district
courts, and those involving only small amounts are ended there.
Above these district courts are the National circuit courts, the
districts or States having been grouped into circuits as the
counties are grouped with us.  To each of these circuits is assigned
one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Washington, who is the ex-
officio judge of that circuit, and who therefore travels as do our
common law judges.  In each district he sits with the judge of that
district, and they two together form the circuit court.  Appeals
from the district court lie to the circuit court in cases over a
certain amount, and also in certain criminal cases.  It follows
therefore that appeals lie from one judge to the same judge when
sitting with another--an arrangement which would seem to be fraught
with some inconvenience.  Certain causes, both civil and criminal,
are commenced in the circuit courts.  From the circuit courts the
appeal lies to the Supreme Court at Washington; but such appeal
beyond the circuit court is not allowed in cases which are of small
magnitude or which do not involve principles of importance.  If
there be a division of opinion in the circuit court the case goes to
the Supreme Court; from whence it might be inferred that all cases
brought from the district court to the circuit court would be sent
on to the Supreme Court, unless the circuit judge agreed with the
district judge; for the district judge having given his judgment in
the inferior court, would probably adhere to it in the superior
court.  No appeal lies to the Supreme Court at Washington in
criminal cases.

All questions that concern more than one State, or that are
litigated between citizens of different States, or which are
international in their bearing, come before the national judges.
All cases in which foreigners are concerned, or the rights of
foreigners, are brought or may be brought into the national courts.
So also are all causes affecting the Union itself, or which are
governed by the laws of Congress and not by the laws of any
individual State.  All questions of admiralty law and maritime
jurisdiction, and cases affecting ambassadors or consuls, are there
tried.  Matters relating to the post-office, to the customs, the
collection of national taxes, to patents, to the army and navy, and
to the mint, are tried in the national courts.  The theory is, that
the national tribunals shall expound and administer the national
laws and treaties, protect national offices and national rights; and
that foreigners and citizens of other States shall not be required
to submit to the decisions of the State tribunals; in fact, that
national tribunals shall take cognizance of all matters as to which
the general government of the nation is responsible.  In most of
such cases the national tribunals have exclusive jurisdiction.  In
others it is optional with the plaintiff to select his tribunal.  It
is then optional with the defendant, if brought into a State court,
to remain there or to remove his cause into the national tribunal.
The principle is, that either at the beginning, or ultimately, such
questions shall or may be decided by the national tribunals.  If in
any suit properly cognizable in a State court the decision should
turn on a clause in the Constitution, or on a law of the United
States, or on the act of a national offense, or on the validity of a
national act, an appeal lies to the Supreme Court of the United
States and to its officers.  The object has been to give to the
national tribunals of the nation full cognizance of its own laws,
treaties, and congressional acts.

The judges of all the national tribunals, of whatever grade or rank,
hold their offices for life, and are removable only on impeachment.
They are not even removable on an address of Congress; thus holding
on a firmer tenure even than our own judges, who may, I believe, be
moved on an address by Parliament.  The judges in America are not
entitled to any pension or retiring allowances; and as there is not,
as regards the judges of the national courts, any proviso that they
shall cease to sit after a certain age, they are in fact immovable
whatever may be their infirmities.  Their position in this respect
is not good, seeing that their salaries will hardly admit of their
making adequate provision for the evening of life.  The salary of
the Chief Justice of the United States is only 1300l. per annum.
All judges of the national courts, of whatever rank, are appointed
by the President, but their appointments must be confirmed by the
Senate.  This proviso, however, gives to the Senate practically but
little power, and is rarely used in opposition to the will of the
President.  If the President name one candidate, who on political
grounds is distasteful to a majority of the Senate, it is not
probable that a second nomination made by him will be more
satisfactory.  This seems now to be understood, and the nomination
of the cabinet ministers and of the judges, as made by the
President, are seldom set aside or interfered with by the Senate,
unless on grounds of purely personal objection.

The position of the national judges as to their appointments and
mode of tenure is very different from that of the State judges, to
whom in a few lines I shall more specially allude.  This should, I
think, be specially noticed by Englishmen when criticising the
doings of the American courts.  I have observed statements made to
the effect that decisions given by American judges as to
international or maritime affairs affecting English interests could
not be trusted, because the judges so giving them would have been
elected by popular vote, and would be dependent on the popular voice
for reappointment.  This is not so.  Judges are appointed by popular
vote in very many of the States.  But all matters affecting shipping
and all questions touching foreigners are tried in the national
courts before judges who have been appointed for life.  I should not
myself have had any fear with reference to the ultimate decision in
the affair of Slidell and Mason had the "Trent" been carried into
New York.  I would, however, by no means say so much had the cause
been one for trial before the tribunals of the State of New York.

I have been told that we in England have occasionally fallen into
the error of attributing to the Supreme Court at Washington a quasi
political power which it does not possess.  This court can give no
opinion to any department of the government, nor can it decide upon
or influence any subject that has not come before it as a regularly
litigated case in law.  Though especially founded by the
Constitution, it has no peculiar power under the Constitution, and
stands in no peculiar relation either to that or to acts of
Congress.  It has no other power to decide on the constitutional
legality of an act of Congress or an act of a State legislature, or
of a public officer, than every court, State and National, high and
low, possesses and is bound to exercise.  It is simply the national
court of last appeal.

In the different States such tribunals have been established as each
State by its constitution and legislation has seen fit to adopt.
The States are entirely free on this point.  The usual course is to
have one Supreme Court, sometimes called by that name, sometimes the
Court of Appeals, and sometimes the Court of Errors.  Then they have
such especial courts as their convenience may dictate.  The State
jurisprudence includes all causes not expressly or by necessary
implication secured to the national courts.  The tribunals of the
States have exclusive control over domestic relations, religion,
education, the tenure and descent of land, the inheritance of
property, police regulations, municipal economy, and all matters of
internal trade.  In this category, of course, come the relations of
husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant, owner and
slave, guardian and ward, tradesman and apprentice.  So also do all
police and criminal regulations not external in their character--
highways, railroads, canals, schools, colleges, the relief of
paupers, and those thousand other affairs of the world by which men
are daily surrounded in their own homes and their own districts.  As
to such subjects Congress can make no law, and over them Congress
and the national tribunals have no jurisdiction.  Congress cannot
say that a man shall be hung for murder in New York, nor if a man be
condemned to be hung in New York can the President pardon him.  The
legislature of New York must say whether or no hanging shall be the
punishment adjudged to murder in that State; and the Governor of the
State of New York must pronounce the man's pardon--if it be that he
is to be pardoned.  But Congress must decide whether or no a man
shall be hung for murder committed on the high seas, or in the
national forts or arsenals; and in such a case it is for the
President to give or to refuse the pardon.

The judges of the States are appointed as the constitution or the
laws of each State may direct in that matter.  The appointments, I
think, in all the old States, were formerly vested in the governor.
In some States such is still the case.  In some, if I am not
mistaken, the nomination is now made, directly, by the legislature.
But in most of the States the power of appointing has been claimed
by the people, and the judges are voted in by popular election, just
as the President of the Union and the Governors of the different
States are voted in.  There has for some years been a growing
tendency in this direction, and the people in most of the States
have claimed the power--or rather the power has been given to the
people by politicians who have wished to get into their hands, in
this way, the patronage of the courts.  But now, at the present
moment, there is arising a strong feeling of the inexpediency of
appointing judges in such a manner.  An anti-democratic bias is
taking possession of men's minds, causing a reaction against that
tendency to universal suffrage in everything which prevailed before
the war began.  As to this matter of the mode of appointing judges,
I have heard but one opinion expressed; and I am inclined to think
that a change will be made in one State after another, as the
constitutions of the different States are revised.  Such revisions
take place generally at periods of about twenty-five years'
duration.  If, therefore, it be acknowledged that the system be bad,
the error can be soon corrected.

Nor is this mode of appointment the only evil that has been adopted
in the State judicatures.  The judges in most of the States are not
appointed for life, nor even during good behavior.  They enter their
places for a certain term of years, varying from fifteen down, I
believe, to seven.  I do not know whether any are appointed for a
term of less than seven years.  When they go out they have no
pensions; and as a lawyer who has been on the bench for seven years
can hardly recall his practice, and find himself at once in receipt
of his old professional income, it may easily be imagined how great
will be the judge's anxiety to retain his position on the bench.
This he can do only by the universal suffrages of the people, by
political popularity, and a general standing of that nature which
enables a man to come forth as the favorite candidate of the lower
orders.  This may or may not be well when the place sought for is
one of political power--when the duties required are political in
all their bearings.  But no one can think it well when the place
sought for is a judge's seat on the bench--when the duties required
are solely judicial.  Whatever hitherto may have been the conduct of
the judges in the courts of the different States, whether or no
impurity has yet crept in, and the sanctity of justice has yet been
outraged, no one can doubt the tendency of such an arrangement.  At
present even a few visits to the courts constituted in this manner
will convince an observer that the judges on the bench are rather
inferior than superior to the lawyers who practice before them.  The
manner of address, the tone of voice, the lack of dignity in the
judge, and the assumption by the lawyer before him of a higher
authority than his, all tell this tale.  And then the judges in
these courts are not paid at a rate which will secure the services
of the best men.  They vary in the different States, running from
about 600l. to about 1000l. per annum.  But a successful lawyer,
practicing in the courts in which these judges sit, not unfrequently
earns 3000l. a year.  A professional income of 2000l. a year is not
considered very high.  When the different conditions of the bench
are considered, when it is remembered that the judge may lose his
place after a short term of years, and that during that short term
of years he receives a payment much less than that earned by his
successful professional brethren, it can hardly be expected that
first-rate judges should be found.  The result is seen daily in
society.  You meet Judge This and Judge That, not knowing whether
they are ex-judges or in-judges; but you soon learn that your
friends do not hold any very high social position on account of
their forensic dignity.

It is, perhaps, but just to add that in Massachusetts, which I
cannot but regard as in many respects the noblest of the States, the
judges are appointed by the Governor, and are appointed for life.



CHAPTER XII.

THE FINANCIAL POSITION.


The Americans are proud of much that they have done in this war, and
indeed much has been done which may justify pride; but of nothing
are they so proud as of the noble dimensions and quick growth of
their government debt.  That Mr. Secretary Chase, the American
Chancellor of the Exchequer, participates in this feeling I will not
venture to say; but if he do not, he is well-nigh the only man in
the States who does not do so.  The amount of expenditure has been a
subject of almost national pride, and the two millions of dollars a
day, which has been roughly put down as the average cost of the war,
has always been mentioned by Northern men in a tone of triumph.
This feeling is, I think, intelligible; and although we cannot
allude to it without a certain amount of inward sarcasm, a little
gentle laughing in the sleeve, at the nature of this national joy, I
am not prepared to say that it is altogether ridiculous.  If the
country be found able and willing to pay the bill, this triumph in
the amount of the cost will hereafter be regarded as having been
anything but ridiculous.  In private life an individual will
occasionally be known to lavish his whole fortune on the
accomplishment of an object which he conceives to be necessary to
his honor.  If the object be in itself good, and if the money be
really paid, we do not laugh at such a man for the sacrifices which
he makes.

For myself, I think that the object of the Northern States in this
war has been good.  I think that they could not have avoided the war
without dishonor, and that it was incumbent on them to make
themselves the arbiters of the future position of the South, whether
that future position shall or shall not be one of secession.  This
they could only do by fighting.  Had they acceded to secession
without a civil war, they would have been regarded throughout Europe
as having shown themselves inferior to the South, and would for many
years to come have lost that prestige which their spirit and energy
had undoubtedly won for them; and in their own country such
submission on their part would have practically given to the South
the power of drawing the line of division between the two new
countries.  That line, so drawn, would have given Virginia,
Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri to the Southern Republic.  The
great effect of the war to the North will be, that the Northern men
will draw the line of secession, if any such line be drawn.  I still
think that such line will ultimately be drawn, and that the Southern
States will be allowed to secede.  But if it be so, Virginia,
Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri will not be found among these
seceding States; and the line may not improbably be driven south of
North Carolina and Tennessee.  If this can be so, the object of the
war will, I think, hereafter be admitted to have been good.
Whatever may be the cost in money of joining the States which I have
named to a free-soil Northern people, instead of allowing them to be
buried in that dismal swamp which a confederacy of Southern slave
States will produce, that cost can hardly be too much.  At the
present moment there exists in England a strong sympathy with the
South, produced partly by the unreasonable vituperation with which
the North treated our government at the beginning of the war, and by
the capture of Mason and Slidell; partly also by that feeling of
good-will which a looker on at a combat always has for the weaker
side.  But, although this sympathy does undoubtedly exist, I do not
imagine that many Englishmen are of opinion that a confederacy of
Southern slave States will ever offer to the general civilization of
the world very many attractions.  It cannot be thought that the
South will equal the North in riches, in energy, in education, or
general well-being.  Such has not been our experience of any slave
country; such has not been our experience of any tropical country;
and such especially has not been our experience of the Southern
States of the North American Union.  I am no abolitionist, but to me
it seems impossible that any Englishman should really advocate the
cause of slavery against the cause of free soil.  There are the
slaves, and I know that they cannot be abolished--neither they nor
their chains; but, for myself, I will not willingly join my lot with
theirs.  I do not wish to have dealings with the African negro,
either as a free man or as a slave, if I can avoid them, believing
that his employment by me in either capacity would lead to my own
degradation.*  Such, I think, are the feelings of Englishmen
generally on this matter.  And if such be the case, will it not be
acknowledged that the Northern men have done well to fight for a
line which shall add five or six States to that Union which will in
truth be a union of free men, rather than to that confederacy which,
even if successful, must owe its success to slavery?


* In saying this I fear that I shall be misunderstood, let me use
what foot note or other mode of protestation I may to guard myself.
In thus speaking of the African negro, I do not venture to despise
the work of God's hands.  That He has made the negro, for His own
good purposes, as He has the Esquimaux, I am aware.  And I am aware
that it is my duty, as it is the duty of us all, to see that no
injury be done to him, and, if possible, to assist him in his
condition.  When I declare that I desire no dealings with the negro,
I speak of him in the position in which I now find him, either as a
free servant or a slave.  In either position he impedes the
civilization and the progress of the white man.


In considering this matter it must be remembered that the five or
six States of which we are speaking are at present slave States, but
that, with the exception of Virginia--of part only of Virginia--they
are not wedded to slavery.  But even in Virginia--great as has been
the gain which has accrued to that unhappy State from the breeding
of slaves for the Southern market--even in Virginia slavery would
soon die out if she were divided from the South and joined to the
North.  In those other States, in Maryland, in Kentucky, and in
Missouri, there is no desire to perpetuate the institution.  They
have been slave States, and as such have resented the rabid
abolition of certain Northern orators.  Had it not been for those
orators, and their oratory, the soil of Kentucky would now have been
free.  Those five or six States are now slave States; but a line of
secession drawn south of them will be the line which cuts off
slavery from the North.  If those States belong to the North when
secession shall be accomplished, they will belong to it as free
States; but if they belong to the South, they will belong to the
South as slave States.  If they belong to the North, they will
become rich as the North is, and will share in the education of the
North.  If they belong to the South, they will become poor as the
South is, and will share in the ignorance of the South.  If we
presume that secession will be accomplished--and I for one am of
that opinion--has it not been well that a war should be waged with
such an object as this?  If those five or six States can be gained,
stretching east and west from the Atlantic to the center of the
continent, hundreds of miles beyond the Mississippi, and north and
south over four degrees of latitude--if that extent of continent can
be added to the free soil of the Northern territory, will not the
contest that has done this have been worth any money that can have
been spent on it?

So much as to the object to be gained by the money spent on the war!
And I think that in estimating the nature of the financial position
which the war has produced it was necessary that we should consider
the value of the object which has been in dispute.  The object, I
maintain, has been good.  Then comes the question whether or no the
bill will be fairly paid--whether they who have spent the money will
set about that disagreeable task of settling the account with a true
purpose and an honest energy.  And this question splits itself into
two parts.  Will the Americans honestly wish to pay the bill; and if
they do so wish, will they have the power to pay it?  Again that
last question must be once more divided.  Will they have the power
to pay, as regards the actual possession of the means, and if
possessing them, will they have the power of access to those means?

The nation has obtained for itself an evil name for repudiation.  We
all know that Pennsylvania behaved badly about her money affairs,
although she did at last pay her debts.  We all know that
Mississippi has behaved very badly about her money affairs, and has
never paid her debts, nor does she intend to pay them.  And, which
is worse than this, for it applies to the nation generally and not
to individual States, we all know that it was made a matter of boast
in the States that in the event of a war with England the enormous
amount of property held by Englishmen in the States should be
confiscated.  That boast was especially made in the mercantile City
of New York; and when the matter was discussed it seemed as though
no American realized the iniquity of such a threat.  It was not
apparently understood that such a confiscation on account of a war
would be an act of national robbery justified simply by the fact
that the power of committing it would be in the hands of the
robbers.  Confiscation of so large an amount of wealth would be a
smart thing, and men did not seem to perceive that any disgrace
would attach to it in the eyes of the world at large.  I am very
anxious not to speak harsh words of the Americans; but when
questions arise as to pecuniary arrangements, I find myself forced
to acknowledge that great precaution is at any rate necessary.

But, nevertheless, I am not sure that we shall be fair if we allow
ourselves to argue as to the national purpose in this matter from
such individual instances of dishonesty as those which I have
mentioned.  I do not think it is to be presumed that the United
States as a nation will repudiate its debts because two separate
States may have been guilty of repudiation.  Nor am I disposed to
judge of the honesty of the people generally from the dishonest
threatenings of New York, made at a moment in which a war with
England was considered imminent.  I do believe that the nation, as a
nation, will be as ready to pay for the war as it has been ready to
carry on the war.  That "ignorant impatience of taxation," to which
it is supposed that we Britons are subject, has not been a complaint
rife among the Americans generally.  We, in England, are inclined to
believe that hitherto they have known nothing of the merits and
demerits of taxation, and have felt none of its annoyances, because
their entire national expenditure has been defrayed by light custom
duties; but the levies made in the separate States for State
purposes, or chiefly for municipal purposes, have been very heavy.
They are, however, collected easily, and, as far as I am aware,
without any display of ignorant impatience.  Indeed, an American is
rarely impatient of any ordained law.  Whether he be told to do
this, or to pay for that, or to abstain from the other, he does do
and pay and abstain without grumbling, provided that he has had a
hand in voting for those who made the law and for those who carry
out the law.  The people generally have, I think, recognized the
fact that they will have to put their necks beneath the yoke, as the
peoples of other nations have put theirs, and support the weight of
a great national debt.  When the time comes for the struggle, for
the first uphill heaving against the terrible load which they will
henceforth have to drag with them in their career, I think it will
be found that they are not ill inclined to put their shoulders to
the work.

Then as to their power of paying the bill!  We are told that the
wealth of a nation consists in its labor, and that that nation is
the most wealthy which can turn out of hand the greatest amount of
work.  If this be so, the American States must form a very wealthy
nation, and as such be able to support a very heavy burden.  No one,
I presume, doubts that that nation which works the most, or works
rather to the best effect, is the richest.  On this account England
is richer than other countries, and is able to bear, almost without
the sign of an effort, a burden which would crush any other land.
But of this wealth the States own almost as much as Great Britain
owns.  The population of the Northern States is industrious,
ambitious of wealth, and capable of work as is our population.  It
possesses, or is possessed by, that restless longing for labor which
creates wealth almost unconsciously.  Whether this man be rich or be
a bankrupt, whether the bankers of that city fail or make their
millions, the creative energies of the American people will not
become dull.  Idleness is impossible to them, and therefore poverty
is impossible.  Industry and intellect together will always produce
wealth; and neither industry nor intellect is ever wanting to an
American.  They are the two gifts with which the fairy has endowed
him.  When she shall have added honesty as a third, the tax-gatherer
can desire no better country in which to exercise his calling.

I cannot myself think that all the millions that are being spent
would weigh upon the country with much oppression, if the weight
were once properly placed upon the muscles that will have to bear
it.  The difficulty will be in the placing of the weight.  It has, I
know, been argued that the circumstances under which our national
debt has extended itself to its present magnificent dimensions
cannot be quoted as parallel to those of the present American debt,
because we, while we were creating the debt, were taxing ourselves
very heavily, whereas the Americans have gone ahead with the
creation of their debt before they have levied a shilling on
themselves toward the payment of those expenses for which the debt
has been encountered.  But this argument, even if it were true in
its gist, goes no way toward proving that the Americans will be
unable to pay.  The population of the present free-soil States is
above eighteen millions; that of the States which will probably
belong to the Union if secession be accomplished is about twenty-two
millions.  At a time when our debt had amounted to six hundred
millions sterling we had no population such as that to bear the
burden.  It may be said that we had more amassed wealth than they
have.  But I take it that the amassed wealth of any country can go
but a very little way in defraying the wants or in paying the debts
of a people.  We again come back to the old maxim, that the labor of
a country is its wealth; and that a country will be rich or poor in
accordance with the intellectual industry of its people.

But the argument drawn from that comparison between our own conduct
when we were creating our debt, and the conduct of the Americans
while they have been creating their debt--during the twelve months
from April 1, 1861, to March 31, 1862, let us say--is hardly a fair
argument.  We, at any rate, knew how to tax ourselves--if only the
taxes might be forthcoming.  We were already well used to the work;
and a minister with a willing House of Commons had all his material
ready to his hand.  It has not been so in the United States.  The
difficulty has not been with the people who should pay the taxes,
but with the minister and the Congress which did not know how to
levy them.  Certainly not as yet have those who are now criticising
the doings on the other side of the water a right to say that the
American people are unwilling to make personal sacrifices for the
carrying out of this war.  No sign has as yet been shown of an
unwillingness on the part of the people to be taxed.  But wherever a
sign could be given, it has been given on the other side.  The
separate States have taxed themselves very heavily for the support
of the families of the absent soldiers.  The extra allowances made
to maimed men, amounting generally to twenty-four shillings a month,
have been paid by the States themselves, and have been paid almost
with too much alacrity.

I am of opinion that the Americans will show no unwillingness to pay
the amount of taxation which must be exacted from them; and I also
think that as regards their actual means they will have the power to
pay it.  But as regards their power of obtaining access to those
means, I must confess that I see many difficulties in their way.  In
the first place they have no financier, no man who by natural
aptitude and by long-continued contact with great questions of
finance, has enabled himself to handle the money affairs of a nation
with a master's hand.  In saying this I do not intend to impute any
blame to Mr. Chase, the present Secretary of the Treasury.  Of his
ability to do the work properly had he received the proper training,
I am not able to judge.  It is not that Mr. Chase is incapable.  He
may be capable or incapable.  But it is that he has not had the
education of a national financier, and that he has no one at his
elbow to help him who has had that advantage.

And here we are again brought to that general absence of statecraft
which has been the result of the American system of government.  I
am not aware that our Chancellors of the Exchequer have in late
years always been great masters of finance; but they have at any
rate been among money men and money matters, and have had financiers
at their elbows if they have not deserved the name themselves.  The
very fact that a Chancellor of the Exchequer sits in the house of
Commons and is forced in that House to answer all questions on the
subject of finance, renders it impossible that he should be ignorant
of the rudiments of the science.  If you put a white cap on a man's
head and place him in a kitchen, he will soon learn to be a cook.
But he will never be made a cook by standing in the dining-room and
seeing the dishes as they are brought up.  The Chancellor of the
Exchequer is our cook; and the House of Commons, not the Treasury
chambers, is his kitchen.  Let the Secretary of the United States
Treasury sit in the House of Representatives!  He would learn more
there by contest with opposing members than he can do by any amount
of study in his own chamber.

But the House of Representatives itself has not as yet learned its
own lesson with reference to taxation.  When I say that the United
States are in want of a financier, I do not mean that the deficiency
rests entirely with Mr. Chase.  This necessity for taxation, and for
taxation at so tremendous a rate, has come suddenly, and has found
the representatives of the people unprepared for such work.  To us,
as I conceive, the science of taxation, in which we certainly ought
to be great, has come gradually.  We have learned by slow lessons
what taxes will be productive, under what circumstances they will be
most productive, and at what point they will be made unproductive by
their own weight.  We have learned what taxes may be levied so as to
afford funds themselves, without injuring the proceeds of other
taxes, and we know what taxes should be eschewed as being specially
oppressive to the general industry and injurious to the well-being
of the nation.  This has come of much practice, and even we, with
all our experience, have even got something to learn.  But the
public men in the States who are now devoting themselves to this
matter of taxing the people have, as yet, no such experience.  That
they have inclination enough for the work is, I think, sufficiently
demonstrated by the national tax bill, the wording of which is now
before me, and which will have been passed into law before this
volume can be published.  It contains a list of every taxable
article on the earth or under the earth.  A more sweeping catalogue
of taxation was probably never put forth.  The Americans, it has
been said by some of us, have shown no disposition to tax themselves
for this war; but before the war has as yet been well twelve months
in operation, a bill has come out with a list of taxation so
oppressive that it must, as regards many of its items, act against
itself and cut its own throat.  It will produce terrible fraud in
its evasion, and create an army of excise officers who will be as
locusts over the face of the country.  Taxes are to be laid on
articles which I should have said that universal consent had
declared to be unfit for taxation.  Salt, soap, candles, oil, and
other burning fluids, gas, pins, paper, ink, and leather, are to be
taxed.  It was at first proposed that wheat flour should be taxed,
but that item has, I believe, been struck out of the bill in its
passage through the House.  All articles manufactured of cotton,
wool, silk, worsted, flax, hemp, jute, India-rubber, gutta-percha,
wood (?), glass, pottery wares, leather, paper, iron, steel, lead,
tin, copper, zinc, brass, gold and silver, horn, ivory, bone,
bristles, wholly or in part, or of other materials, are to be taxed--
provided always that books, magazines, pamphlets, newspapers, and
reviews shall not be regarded as manufactures.  It will be said that
the amount of taxation to be levied on the immense number of
manufactured articles which must be included in this list will be
light, the tax itself being only 3 per cent. ad valorem.  But with
reference to every article, there will be the necessity of
collecting this 3 per cent.  As regards each article that is
manufactured, some government official must interfere to appraise
its value and to levy the tax.  Who shall declare the value of a
barrel of wooden nutmegs; or how shall the excise officer get his
tax from every cobbler's stall in the country?  And then tradesmen
are to pay licenses for their trades--a confectioner 2l., a tallow-
chandler 2l., a horse dealer 2l.  Every man whose business it is to
sell horses shall be a horse dealer.  True.  But who shall say
whether or no it be a man's business to sell horses?  An apothecary
2l., a photographer 2l., a peddler 4l., 3l., 2l., or 1l., according
to his mode of traveling.  But if the gross receipts of any of the
confectioners, tallow-chandlers, horse dealers, apothecaries,
photographers, peddlers, or the like do not exceed 200l. a year,
then such tradesmen shall not be required to pay for any license at
all.  Surely such a proviso can only have been inserted with the
express view of creating fraud and ill blood!  But the greatest
audacity has, I think, been shown in the levying of personal taxes,--
such taxes as have been held to be peculiarly disagreeable among
us, and have specially brought down upon us the contempt of lightly-
taxed people, who, like the Americans, have known nothing of
domestic interference.  Carriages are to be taxed, as they are with
us.  Pianos also are to be taxed, and plate.  It is not signified by
this clause that such articles shall pay a tax, once for all, while
in the maker's hands, which tax would no doubt fall on the future
owner of such piano or plate; in such case the owner would pay, but
would pay without any personal contact with the tax-gatherer.  But
every owner of a piano or of plate is to pay annually according to
the value of the articles he owns.  But perhaps the most audacious
of all the proposed taxes is that on watches.  Every owner of a
watch is to pay 4s. a year for a gold watch and 2s. a year for a
silver watch!  The American tax-gatherers will not like to be
cheated.  They will be very keen in searching for watches.  But who
can say whether they or the carriers of watches will have the best
of it in such a hunt.  The tax-gatherers will be as hounds ever at
work on a cold scent.  They will now be hot and angry, and then dull
and disheartened.  But the carriers of watches who do not choose to
pay will generally, one may predict, be able to make their points
good.

With such a tax bill--which I believe came into action on the 1st of
May, 1862--the Americans are not fairly open to the charge of being
unwilling to tax themselves.  They have avoided none of the
irritating annoyances of taxation, as also they have not avoided, or
attempted to lighten for themselves, the dead weight of the burden.
The dead weight they are right to endure without flinching; but
their mode of laying it on their own backs justifies me, I think, in
saying that they do not yet know how to obtain access to their own
means.  But this bill applies simply to matters of excise.  As I
have said before, Congress, which has hitherto supported the
government by custom duties, has also the power of levying excise
duties, and now, in its first session since the commencement of the
war, has begun to use that power without much hesitation or
bashfulness.  As regards their taxes levied at the custom-house, the
government of the United States has always been inclined to high
duties, with the view of protecting the internal trade and
manufactures of the country.  The amount required for national
expenses was easily obtained; and these duties were not regulated,
as I think, so much with a view to the amount which might be
collected as to that of the effect which the tax might have in
fostering native industry.  That, if I understand it, was the
meaning of Mr. Morrill's bill, which was passed immediately on the
secession of the Southern members of Congress, and which instantly
enhanced the price of all foreign manufactured goods in the States.
But now the desire for protection, simply as protection, has been
swallowed up in the acknowledged necessity for revenue; and the only
object to be recognized in the arrangement of the custom duties is
the collection of the greatest number of dollars.  This is fair
enough.  If the country can, at such a crisis, raise a better
revenue by claiming a shilling a pound on coffee than it can by
claiming sixpence, the shilling may be wisely claimed, even though
many may thus be prohibited from the use of coffee.  But then comes
the great question, What duty will really give the greatest product?
At what rate shall we tax coffee so as to get at the people's money?
If it be so taxed that people won't use it, the tax cuts its own
throat.  There is some point at which the tax will be most
productive; and also there is a point up to which the tax will not
operate to the serious injury of the trade.  Without the knowledge
which should indicate these points, a Chancellor of the Exchequer,
with his myrmidons, would be groping in the dark.  As far as we can
yet see, there is not much of such knowledge either in the Treasury
chambers or the House of Representatives at Washington.

But the greatest difficulty which the States will feel in obtaining
access to their own means of taxation is that which is created by
the Constitution itself, and to which I alluded when speaking of the
taxing powers which the Constitution had given to Congress and those
which it had denied to Congress.  As to custom duties and excise
duties, Congress can do what it pleases, as can the House of
Commons.  But Congress cannot levy direct taxation according to its
own judgment.  In those matters of customs and excise Congress and
the Secretary of the Treasury will probably make many blunders; but,
having the power, they will blunder through, and the money will be
collected.  But direct taxation in an available shape is beyond the
power of Congress under the existing rule of the Constitution.  No
income tax, for instance, can be laid on the general incomes of the
United States that shall be universal throughout the States.  An
income tax can be levied, but it must be levied in proportion to the
representation.  It is as though our Chancellor of the Exchequer, in
collecting an income tax, were obliged to demand the same amount of
contribution from the town of Chester as from the town of Liverpool,
because both Chester and Liverpool return two members to Parliament.
In fitting his tax to the capacity of Chester, he would be forced to
allow Liverpool to escape unscathed.  No skill in money matters on
the part of the Treasury Secretary, and no aptness for finance on
the part of the Committee of Ways and Means, can avail here.  The
Constitution must apparently be altered before any serviceable
resort can be had to direct taxation.  And yet, at such an emergency
as that now existing, direct taxation would probably give more ready
assistance than can be afforded either by the customs or the excise.

It has been stated to me that this difficulty in the way of direct
taxation can be overcome without any change in the Constitution.
Congress could only levy from Rhode Island the same amount of income
tax that it might levy from Iowa; but it will be competent to the
legislature of Rhode Island itself to levy what income tax it may
please on itself, and to devote the proceeds to National or Federal
purposes.  Rhode Island may do so, and so may Massachusetts, New
York, Connecticut, and the other rich Atlantic States.  They may tax
themselves according to their riches, while Iowa, Illinois,
Wisconsin, and such like States are taxing themselves according to
their poverty.  I cannot myself think that it would be well to trust
to the generosity of the separate States for the finances needed by
the national government.  We should not willingly trust to Yorkshire
or Sussex to give us their contributions to the national income,
especially if Yorkshire and Sussex had small Houses of Commons of
their own in which that question of giving might be debated.  It may
be very well for Rhode Island or New York to be patriotic!  But what
shall be done with any State that declines to evince such
patriotism?  The legislatures of the different States may be invited
to impose a tax of five per cent. on all incomes in each State; but
what will be done if Pennsylvania, for instance, should decline, or
Illinois should hesitate?  What if the legislature of Massachusetts
should offer six per cent., or that of New Jersey decide that four
per cent. was sufficient?  For awhile the arrangement might possibly
be made to answer the desired purpose.  During the first ebullition
of high feeling the different States concerned might possibly vote
the amount of taxes required for Federal purposes.  I fear it would
not be so, but we may allow that the chance is on the card.  But it
is not conceivable that such an arrangement should be continued
when, after a year or two, men came to talk over the war with calmer
feelings and a more critical judgment.  The State legislatures would
become inquisitive, opinionative, and probably factious.  They would
be unwilling to act, in so great a matter, under the dictation of
the Federal Congress; and, by degrees, one and then another would
decline to give its aid to the central government.  However broadly
the acknowledgment may have been made that the levying of direct
taxes was necessary for the nation, each State would be tempted to
argue that a wrong mode and a wrong rate of levying had been
adopted, and words would be forthcoming instead of money.  A resort
to such a mode of taxation would be a bad security for government
stock.

All matters of taxation, moreover, should be free from any taint of
generosity.  A man who should attempt to lessen the burdens of his
country by gifts of money to its exchequer would be laying his
country under an obligation for which his country would not thank
him.  The gifts here would be from States, and not from individuals
but the principle would be the same.  I cannot imagine that the
United States government would be willing to owe its revenue to the
good-will of different States, or its want of revenue to their
caprice.  If under such an arrangement the Western States were to
decline to vote the quota of income tax or property tax to which the
Eastern States had agreed--and in all probability they would
decline--they would in fact be seceding.  They would thus secede
from the burdens of their general country; but in such event no one
could accuse such States of unconstitutional secession.

It is not easy to ascertain with precision what is the present
amount of debt due by the United States; nor probably has any
tolerably accurate guess been yet given of the amount to which it
may be extended during the present war.  A statement made in the
House of Representatives by Mr. Spaulding, a member of the Committee
of Ways and Means, on the 29th of January last, may perhaps be taken
as giving as trustworthy information as any that can be obtained.  I
have changed Mr. Spaulding's figures from dollars into pounds, that
they may be more readily understood by English readers:--


There was due up to July 1, 1861                  18,173,566 pounds.
   "      added in July and August                 5,379,357   "
   "      borrowed in August                      10,000,000   "
   "      borrowed in October                     10,000,000   "
   "      borrowed in November                    10,000,000   "
   "      amount of Treasury Demand Notes issued   7,800,000   "
                                                  ----------
                                                  61,352,923   "


This was the amount of the debt due up to January 15th, 1862.  Mr.
Spaulding then calculates that the sum required to carry on the
government up to July 1st, 1862, will be 68,647,077l.  And that a
further sum of 110,000,000l. will be wanted on or before the 1st of
July, 1863.  Thus the debt at that latter date would stand as
follows:--


Amount of debt up to January, 1862                61,352,923 pounds.
Added by July 1st, 1862                           68,647,077   "
Again added by July 1st, 1803                    110,000,000   "
                                                 -----------
                                                 240,000,000   "


The first of these items may no doubt be taken as accurate.  The
second has probably been founded on facts which leave little doubt
as to its substantial truth.  The third, which professes to give the
proposed expense of the war for the forthcoming year, viz., from
July 1st, 1862, to June 30th, 1863, must necessarily have been
obtained by a very loose estimate.  No one can say what may be the
condition of the country during the next year--whether the war may
then be raging throughout the Southern States, or whether the war
may not have ceased altogether.  The North knows little or nothing
of the capacity of the South.  How little it knows may be surmised
from the fact that the whole Southern army of Virginia retreated
from their position at Manassas before the Northern generals knew
that they were moving; and that when they were gone no word whatever
was left of their numbers.  I do not believe that the Northern
government is even yet able to make any probable conjecture as to
the number of troops which the Southern Confederacy is maintaining;
and if this be so, they can certainly make no trustworthy estimates
as to their own expenses for the ensuing year.

Two hundred and forty millions is, however, the sum named by a
gentleman presumed to be conversant with the matter, as the amount
of debt which may be expected by midsummer, 1863; and if the war be
continued till then, it will probably be found that he has not
exceeded the mark.  It is right, however, to state that Mr. Chase in
his estimate does not rate the figures so high.  He has given it as
his opinion that the debt will be about one hundred and four
millions in July, 1862, and one hundred and eighty millions in July,
1863.  As to the first amount, with reference to which a tolerably
accurate calculation may probably be made, I am inclined to prefer
the estimate as given by the member of the committee; and as to the
other, which hardly, as I think, admits of any calculation, his
calculation is at any rate as good as that made in the Treasury.

But it is the immediate want of funds, and not the prospective debt
of the country, which is now doing the damage.  In this opinion Mr.
Chase will probably agree with me; but readers on this side of the
water will receive what I say with a smile.  Such a state of affairs
is certainly one that has not uncommonly been reached by financiers;
it has also often been experienced by gentlemen in the management of
their private affairs.  It has been common in Ireland, and in London
has created the wealth of the pawnbrokers.  In the States at the
present time the government is very much in this condition.  The
prospective wealth of the country is almost unbounded, but there is
great difficulty in persuading any pawnbroker to advance money on
the pledge.  In February last Mr. Chase was driven to obtain the
sanction of the legislature for paying the national creditors by
bills drawn at twelve months' date, and bearing 6 per cent.
interest.  It is the old story of the tailor who calls with his
little account, and draws on his insolvent debtor at ninety days.
If the insolvent debtor be not utterly gone as regards solvency he
will take up the bill when due, even though he may not be able to
pay a simple debt.  But, then, if he be utterly insolvent, he can do
neither the one nor the other!  The Secretary of the Treasury, when
he asked for permission to accept these bills--or to issue these
certificates, as he calls them--acknowledged to pressing debts of
over five millions sterling which he could not pay; and to further
debts of eight millions which he could not pay, but which he termed
floating; debts, if I understand him, which were not as yet quite
pressing.  Now I imagine that to be a lamentable condition for any
Chancellor of an Exchequer--especially as a confession is at the
same time made that no advantageous borrowing is to be done under
the existing circumstances.  When a Chancellor of the Exchequer
confesses that he cannot borrow on advantageous terms, the terms
within his reach must be very bad indeed.  This position is indeed a
sad one, and at any rate justifies me in stating that the immediate
want of funds is severely felt.

But the very arguments which have been used to prove that the
country will be ultimately crushed by the debt, are those which I
should use to prove that it will not be crushed.  A comparison has
more than once been made between the manner in which our debt was
made and that in which the debt of the United States is now being
created; and the great point raised in our favor is, that while we
were borrowing money we were also taxing ourselves, and that we
raised as much by taxes as we did by loans.  But it is too early in
the day to deny to the Americans the credit which we thus take to
ourselves.  We were a tax-paying nation when we commenced those wars
which made our great loans necessary, and only went on in that
practice which was habitual to us.  I do not think that the
Americans could have taxed themselves with greater alacrity than
they have shown.  Let us wait, at any rate, till they shall have had
time for the operation, before we blame them for not making it.  It
is then argued that we in England did not borrow nearly so fast as
they have borrowed in the States.  That is true.  But it must be
remembered that the dimensions and proportions of wars now are
infinitely greater than they were when we began to borrow.  Does any
one imagine that we would not have borrowed faster, if by faster
borrowing we could have closed the war more speedily?  Things go
faster now than they did then.  Borrowing for the sake of a war may
be a bad thing to do, as also it may be a good thing; but if it be
done at all, it should be so done as to bring the war to the end
with what greatest dispatch may be possible.

The only fair comparison, as it seems to me, which can be drawn
between the two countries with reference to their debts, and the
condition of each under its debt, should be made to depend on the
amount of the debt and probable ability of the country to bear that
burden.  The amount of the debt must be calculated by the interest
payable on it rather than by the figures representing the actual sum
due.  If we debit the United States government with seven per cent.
on all the money borrowed by them, and presume that amount to have
reached in July, 1863, the sum named by Mr. Spaulding, they will
then have loaded themselves with an annual charge of 16,800,000
pounds sterling.  It will have been an immense achievement to have
accomplished in so short a time, but it will by no means equal the
annual sum with which we are charged.  And, moreover, the comparison
will have been made in a manner that is hardly fair to the
Americans.  We pay our creditors three per cent. now that we have
arranged our affairs, and have settled down into the respectable
position of an old gentleman whose estates, though deeply mortgaged,
are not over mortgaged.  But we did not get our money at three per
cent. while our wars were on hand and there yet existed some doubt
as to the manner in which they might be terminated.

This attempt, however, at guessing what may be the probable amount
of the debt at the close of the war is absolutely futile.  No one
can as yet conjecture when the war may be over, or what collateral
expenses may attend its close.  It may be the case that the
government, in fixing some boundary between the future United States
and the future Southern Confederacy, will be called on to advance a
very large sum of money as compensation for slaves who shall have
been liberated in the border States, or have been swept down South
into the cotton regions with the retreating hordes of the Southern
army.  The total of the bill cannot be reckoned up while the work is
still unfinished.  But, after all, that question as to the amount of
the bill is not to us the question of the greatest interest.
Whether the debt shall amount to two, or three, or even to four
hundred millions sterling; whether it remain fixed at its present
modest dimensions, or swell itself out to the magnificent
proportions of our British debt; will the resources of the country
enable it to bear such a burden?  Will it be found that the
Americans share with us that elastic power of endurance which has
enabled us to bear a weight that would have ruined any other people
of the same number?  Have they the thews and muscles, the energy and
endurance, the power of carrying which we possess?  They have got
our blood in their veins, and have these qualities gone with the
blood?  It is of little avail either to us or to the truth that we
can show some difference between our position and their position
which may seem to be in our favor.  They doubtless could show other
points of difference on the other side.  With us, in the early years
of this century, it was a contest for life and death, in which we
could not stop to count the cost--in which we believed that we were
fighting for all that we cared to call our own, and in which we were
resolved that we would not be beaten as long as we had a man to
fight and a guinea to spend.  Fighting in this mind we won.  Had we
fought in any other mind I think I may say that we should not have
won.  To the Americans of the Northern States this also is a contest
for life and death.  I will not here stay to argue whether this need
have been so.  I think they are right; but this at least must be
accorded to them--that, having gone into this matter of civil war,
it behoves them to finish it with credit to themselves.  There are
many Englishmen who think that we were wrong to undertake the French
war; but there is, I take it, no Englishman who thinks that we ought
to have allowed ourselves to be beaten when we had undertaken it.
To the Americans it is now a contest of life and death.  They also
cannot stop to count the cost, They also will go on as long as they
have a dollar to spend or a man to fight.

It appears that we were paying fourteen millions a year interest on
our national debt in the year 1796.  I take this statement from an
article in The Times, in which the question of the finances of the
United States is handled.  But our population in 1796 was only
sixteen millions.  I estimate the population of the Northern section
of the United States, as the States will be after the war, at
twenty-two millions.  In the article alluded to, these Northern
Americans are now stated to be twenty millions.  If then we, in
1796, could pay fourteen millions a year with a population of
sixteen millions, the United States, with a population of twenty or
twenty-two millions, will be able to pay the sixteen or seventeen
millions sterling of interest which will become due from them, if
their circumstances of payment are as good as were ours.  They can
do that, and more than that, if they have the same means per man as
we had.  And as the means per man resolves itself at last into the
labor per man, it may be said that they can pay what we could pay,
if they can and will work as hard as we could and did work.  That
which did not crush us will not crush them, if their future energy
be equal to our past energy.

And on this question of energy I think that there is no need for
doubt.  Taking man for man and million for million, the Americans
are equal to the English in intellect and industry.  They create
wealth, at any rate, as fast as we have done.  They develop their
resources, and open out the currents of trade, with an energy equal
to our own.  They are always at work--improving, utilizing, and
creating.  Austria, as I take it, is succumbing to monetary
difficulties, not because she has been extravagant, but because she
has been slow at progress; because it has been the work of her
rulers to repress rather than encourage the energies of her people;
because she does not improve, utilize, and create.  England has
mastered her monetary difficulties because the genius of her
government and her people has been exactly opposite to the genius of
Austria.  And the States of America will master their money
difficulties, because they are born of England, and are not born of
Austria.  What!  Shall our eldest child become bankrupt in its first
trade difficulty; be utterly ruined by its first little commercial
embarrassment!  The child bears much too strong a resemblance to its
parent for me to think so.



CHAPTER XIII.

THE POST-OFFICE.


Any Englishman or Frenchman residing in the American States cannot
fail to be struck with the inferiority of the post-office
arrangements in that country to those by which they are accommodated
in their own country.  I have not been a resident in the country,
and as a traveler might probably have passed the subject without
special remark, were it not that the service of the post-office has
been my own profession for many years.  I could therefore hardly
fail to observe things which to another man would have been of no
material moment.  At first I was inclined to lean heavily in my
judgment upon the deficiencies of a department which must be of
primary importance to a commercial nation.  It seemed that among a
people so intelligent, and so quick in all enterprises of trade, a
well-arranged post-office would have been held to be absolutely
necessary, and that all difficulties would have been made to succumb
in their efforts to put that establishment, if no other, upon a
proper footing.  But as I looked into the matter, and in becoming
acquainted with the circumstances of the post-office learned the
extent of the difficulties absolutely existing, I began to think
that a very great deal had been done, and that the fault, as to that
which had been left undone, rested not with the post-office
officials, but was attributable partly to political causes
altogether outside the post-office, and partly--perhaps chiefly--to
the nature of the country itself.

It is I think undoubtedly true that the amount of accommodation
given by the post-office of the States is small, as compared with
that afforded in some other countries, and that that accommodation
is lessened by delays and uncertainty.  The point which first struck
me was the inconvenient hours at which mails were brought in and
dispatched.  Here in England it is the object of our post-office to
carry the bulk of our letters at night; to deliver them as early as
possible in the morning, and to collect them and take them away for
dispatch as late as may be in the day; so that the merchant may
receive his letters before the beginning of his day business, and
dispatch them after its close.  The bulk of our letters is handled
in this manner, and the advantage of such an arrangement is
manifest.  But it seemed that in the States no such practice
prevailed.  Letters arrived at any hour in the day miscellaneously,
and were dispatched at any hour, and I found that the postmaster at
one town could never tell me with certainty when letters would
arrive at another.  If the towns were distant, I would be told that
the conveyance might take about two or three days; if they were
near, that my letter would get to hand "some time to-morrow."  I
ascertained, moreover, by painful experience that the whole of a
mail would not always go forward by the first dispatch.  As regarded
myself this had reference chiefly to English letters and newspapers.
"Only a part of the mail has come," the clerk would tell me.  With
us the owners of that part which did not "come," would consider
themselves greatly aggrieved and make loud complaint.  But in the
States complaints made against official departments are held to be
of little moment.

Letters also in the States are subject to great delays by
irregularities on railways.  One train does not hit the town of its
destination before another train, to which it is nominally fitted,
has been started on its journey.  The mail trains are not bound to
wait; and thus, in the large cities, far distant from New York,
great irregularity prevails.  It is I think owing to this--at any
rate partly to this--that the system of telegraphing has become so
prevalent.  It is natural that this should be so between towns which
are in the due course of post perhaps forty-eight hours asunder; but
the uncertainty of the post increases the habit, to the profit of
course of the companies which own the wires, but to the manifest
loss of the post-office.

But the deficiency which struck me most forcibly in the American
post-office, was the absence of any recognized official delivery of
letters.  The United States post-office does not assume to itself
the duty of taking letters to the houses of those for whom they are
intended, but holds itself as having completed the work for which
the original postage has been paid, when it has brought them to the
window of the post-office of the town to which they are addressed.
It is true that in most large towns--though by no means in all--a
separate arrangement is made by which a delivery is afforded to
those who are willing to pay a further sum for that further service;
but the recognized official mode of delivery is from the office
window.  The merchants and persons in trade have boxes at the
windows, for which they pay.  Other old-established inhabitants in
town, and persons in receipt of a considerable correspondence,
receive their letters by the subsidiary carriers and pay for them
separately.  But the poorer classes of the community, those persons
among which it is of such paramount importance to increase the
blessing of letter writing, obtain their letters from the post-
office windows.

In each of these cases the practice acts to the prejudice of the
department.  In order to escape the tax on delivery, which varies
from two cents to one cent a letter, all men in trade, and many who
are not in trade, hold office boxes; consequently immense space is
required.  The space given at Chicago, both to the public without
and to the official within, for such delivery, is more than four
times that required at Liverpool for the same purpose.  But
Liverpool is three times the size of Chicago.  The corps of clerks
required for the window delivery is very great, and the whole affair
is cumbrous in the extreme.  The letters at most offices are given
out through little windows, to which the inquirer is obliged to
stoop.  There he finds himself opposite to a pane of glass with a
little hole, and when the clerk within shakes his head at him, he
rarely believes but what his letters are there if he could only
reach them.  But in the second case, the tax on the delivery, which
is intended simply to pay the wages of the men who take them out, is
paid with a bad grace; it robs the letter of its charm, and forces
it to present itself in the guise of a burden: it makes that
disagreeable which for its own sake the post-office should strive in
every way to make agreeable.  This practice, moreover, operates as a
direct prevention to a class of correspondence which furnishes in
England a large proportion of the revenue of the post-office.
Mercantile houses in our large cities send out thousands of trade
circulars, paying postage on them; but such circulars would not be
received, either in England or elsewhere, if a demand for postage
were made on their delivery.  Who does not receive these circulars
in our country by the dozen, consigning them generally to the waste-
paper basket, after a most cursory inspection?  As regards the
sender, the transaction seems to us often to be very vain; but the
post-office gets its penny.  So also would the American post-office
get its three cents.

But the main objection in my eyes to the American post-office system
is this, that it is not brought nearer to the poorer classes.
Everybody writes or can write in America, and therefore the
correspondence of their millions should be, million for million, at
any rate equal to ours.  But it is not so; and this I think comes
from the fact that communication by post-office is not made easy to
the people generally.  Such communication is not found to be easy by
a man who has to attend at a post-office window on the chance of
receiving a letter.  When no arrangement more comfortable than that
is provided, the post-office will be used for the necessities of
letter writing, but will not be esteemed as a luxury.  And thus not
only do the people lose a comfort which they might enjoy, but the
post-office also loses that revenue which it might make.

I have said that the correspondence circulating in the United States
is less than that of the United Kingdom.  In making any comparison
between them, I am obliged to arrive at facts, or rather at the
probabilities of facts, in a somewhat circuitous mode, as the
Americans have kept no account of the number of letters which pass
through their post-offices in a year; we can, however, make an
estimate, which, if incorrect, shall not at any rate be incorrect
against them.  The gross postal revenue of the United States for the
year ended June 30th, 1861, was in round figures 1,700,000l.  This
was the amount actually cashed, exclusive of a sum of 140,000l. paid
to the post-office by the government for the carriage of what is
called in that country free mail matter; otherwise, books, letters,
and parcels franked by members of Congress.  The gross postal
revenue of the United Kingdom was in the last year, in round
figures, 3,358,000l., exclusive of a sum of 179,000l. claimed as
earned for carrying official postage, and also exclusive of
127,866l., that being the amount of money order commissions, which
in this country is considered a part of the post-office revenue.  In
the United States there is at present no money order office.  In the
United Kingdom the sum of 3,358,000l. was earned by the conveyance
and delivery of 593,000,000 of letters, 73,000,000 of newspapers,
12,000,000 of books.  What number of each was conveyed through the
post in the United States we have no means of knowing; but presuming
the average rate of postage on each letter in the States to be the
same as it is in England, and presuming also that letters,
newspapers, and books circulated in the same proportion there as
they do with us, the sum above named of 1,700,000l. will have been
earned by carrying about 300,000,000 of letters.  But the average
rate of postage in the States is in fact higher than it is in
England.  The ordinary single rate of postage there is three cents,
or three half-pence, whereas with us it is a penny; and if three
half-pence might be taken as the average rate in the United States,
the number of letters would be reduced from 300,000,000 to
200,000,000 a year.  There is, however, a class of letters which in
the States are passed through the post-office at the rate of one
half-penny a letter, whereas there is no rate of postage with us
less than a penny.  Taking these half-penny letters into
consideration, I am disposed to regard the average rate of American
postage at about five farthings, which would give the number of
letters at 250,000,000.  We shall at any rate be safe in saying that
the number is considerably less than 300,000,000, and that it does
not amount to half the number circulated with us.  But the
difference between our population and their population is not great.
The population of the States during the year in question was about
27,000,000, exclusive of slaves, and that of the British Isles was
about 29,000,000.  No doubt in the year named the correspondence of
the States had been somewhat disturbed by the rebellion; but that
disturbance, up to the end of June, 1861, had been very trifling.
The division of the Southern from the Northern States, as far as the
post-office was concerned, did not take place till the end of May,
l861; and therefore but one month in the year was affected by the
actual secession of the South.  The gross postal revenue of the
States which have seceded was, for the year prior to secession,
1,200,500 dollars, and for that one month of June it would therefore
have been a little over 100,000 dollars, or 20,000l.  That sum may
therefore be presumed to have been abstracted by secession from the
gross annual revenue of the post-office.  Trade, also, was no doubt
injured by the disturbance in the country, and the circulation of
letters was, as a matter of course, to some degree affected by this
injury; but it seems that the gross revenue of 1861 was less than
that of 1860 by only one thirty-sixth.  I think, therefore, that we
may say, making all allowance that can be fairly made, that the
number of letters circulating in the United Kingdom is more than
double that which circulates, or ever has circulated, in the United
States.

That this is so, I attribute not to any difference in the people of
the two countries, not to an aptitude for letter writing among us
which is wanting with the Americans, but to the greater convenience
and wider accommodation of our own post-office.  As I have before
stated, and will presently endeavor to show, this wider
accommodation is not altogether the result of better management on
our part.  Our circumstances as regards the post-office have had in
them less of difficulties than theirs.  But it has arisen in great
part from better management; and in nothing is their deficiency so
conspicuous as in the absence of a free delivery for their letters.

In order that the advantages of the post-office should reach all
persons, the delivery of letters should extend not only to towns,
but to the country also.  In France all letters are delivered free.
However remote may be the position of a house or cottage, it is not
too remote for the postman.  With us all letters are not delivered,
but the exceptions refer to distant solitary houses and to
localities which are almost without correspondence.  But in the
United States there is no free delivery, and there is no delivery at
all except in the large cities.  In small towns, in villages, even
in the suburbs of the largest cities, no such accommodation is
given.  Whatever may be the distance, people expecting letters must
send for them to the post-office; and they who do not expect them,
leave their letters uncalled for.  Brother Jonathan goes out to fish
in these especial waters with a very large net.  The little fish
which are profitable slip through; but the big fish, which are by no
means profitable, are caught--often at an expense greater than their
value.

There are other smaller sins upon which I could put my finger--and
would do so were I writing an official report upon the subject of
the American post-office.  In lieu of doing so, I will endeavor to
explain how much the States office has done in this matter of
affording post-office accommodation, and how great have been the
difficulties in the way of post-office reformers in that country.

In the first place, when we compare ourselves to them we must
remember that we live in a tea-cup, and they in a washing-tub.  As
compared with them we inhabit towns which are close to each other.
Our distances, as compared with theirs, are nothing.  From London to
Liverpool the line of railway I believe traverses about two hundred
miles, but the mail train which conveys the bags for Liverpool
carries the correspondence of probably four or five millions of
persons.  The mail train from New York to Buffalo passes over about
four hundred miles, and on its route leaves not one million.  A
comparison of this kind might be made with the same effect between
any of our great internal mail routes and any of theirs.
Consequently the expense of conveyance to them is, per letter, very
much greater than with us, and the American post-office is, as a
matter of necessity, driven to an economy in the use of railways for
the post-office service which we are not called on to practice.
From New York to Chicago is nearly 1000 miles.  From New York to St.
Louis is over 1400.  From New York to New Orleans is 1600 miles.  I
need not say that in England we know nothing of such distances, and
that therefore our task has been comparatively easy.  Nevertheless
the States have followed in our track, and have taken advantage of
Sir Rowland's Hill's wise audacity in the reduction of postage with
greater quickness than any other nation but our own.  Through all
the States letters pass for three cents over a distance less than
3000 miles.  For distances above 3000 miles the rate is ten cents,
or five pence.  This increased rate has special reference to the
mails for California, which are carried daily across the whole
continent at a cost to the States government of two hundred thousand
pounds a year.

With us the chief mail trains are legally under the management of
the Postmaster-General.  He fixes the hours at which they shall
start and arrive, being of course bound by certain stipulations as
to pace.  He can demand trains to run over any line at any hour, and
can in this way secure the punctuality of mail transportation.  Of
course such interference on the part of a government official in the
working of a railway is attended with a very heavy expense to the
government.  Though the British post-office can demand the use of
trains at any hour, and as regards those trains can make the
dispatch of mails paramount to all other matters, the British post-
office cannot fix the price to be paid for such work.  This is
generally done by arbitration, and of course for such services the
payment is very high.  No such practice prevails in the States.  The
government has no power of using the mail lines as they are used by
our post-office, nor could the expense of such a practice be borne
or nearly borne by the proceeds of letters in the States.
Consequently the post-office is put on a par with ordinary
customers, and such trains are used for mail matter as the directors
of each line may see fit to use for other matter.  Hence it occurs
that no offense against the post-office is committed when the
connection between different mail trains is broken.  The post-office
takes the best it can get, paying as other customers pay, and
grumbling as other customers grumble when the service rendered falls
short of that which has been promised.

It may, I think, easily be seen that any system, such as ours,
carried across so large a country, would go on increasing in cost at
an enormous ratio.  The greater is the distance, the greater is the
difficulty in securing the proper fitting of fast-running trains.
And moreover, it must be remembered that the American lines have
been got up on a very different footing from ours, at an expense per
mile of probably less than a fifth of that laid out on our railways.
Single lines of rail are common, even between great towns with large
traffic.  At the present moment, February, 1862, the only railway
running into Washington, that namely from Baltimore, is a single
line over the greater distance.  The whole thing is necessarily
worked at a cheaper rate than with us; not because the people are
poorer, but because the distances are greater.  As this is the case
throughout the whole railway system of the country, it cannot be
expected that such dispatch and punctuality should be achieved in
America as are achieved here in England, or in France.  As
population and wealth increase it will come.  In the mean time that
which has been already done over the extent of the vast North
American continent is very wonderful.  I think, therefore, that
complaint should not be made against the Washington post-office,
either on account of the inconvenience of the hours or on the head
of occasional irregularity.  So much has been done in reducing the
rate to three cents, and in giving a daily mail throughout the
States, that the department should be praised for energy, and not
blamed for apathy.

In the year ended June 30, 1861, the gross revenue of the post-
office of the States was, as I have stated, 1,700,000l.  In the same
year its expenditure was in round figures 2,720,000l.; consequently
there was an actual loss, to be made up out of general taxation,
amounting to 1,020,000l.  In the accounts of the American officers
this is lessened by 140,000l.  That sum having been arbitrarily
fixed by the government as the amount earned by the post-office in
carrying free mail matter.  We have a similar system in computing
the value of the service rendered by our post-office to the
government in carrying government dispatches; but with us the amount
named as the compensation depends on the actual weight carried.  If
the matter so carried be carried solely on the government service,
as is, I believe, the case with us, any such claim on behalf of the
post-office is apparently unnecessary.  The Crown works for the
Crown, as the right hand works for the left.  The post-office pays
no rates or taxes, contributes nothing to the poor, runs its mails
on turnpike roads free of toll, and gives receipts on unstamped
paper.  With us no payment is in truth made, though the post-office
in its accounts presumes itself to have received the money; but in
the States the sum named is handed over by the State Treasury to the
Post-office Treasury.  Any such statement of credit does not in
effect alter the real fact that over a million sterling is required
as a subsidy by the American post-office, in order that it may be
enabled to pay its way.  In estimating the expenditure of the office
the department at Washington debits itself with the sums paid for
the ocean transit of its mails, amounting to something over one
hundred and fifty thousand pounds.  We also now do the same, with
the much greater sum paid by us for such service, which now amounts
to 949,228l., or nearly a million sterling.  Till lately this was
not paid out of the post-office moneys, and the post-office revenue
was not debited with the amount.

Our gross post-office revenue is, as I have said, 3,358,250l.  As
before explained, this is exclusive of the amount earned by the
money order department, which, though managed by the authorities of
the post-office, cannot be called a part of the post-office; and
exclusive also of the official postage, which is, in fact, never
received.  The expenditure of our British post-office, inclusive of
the sum paid for the ocean mail service, is 3,064,527l.; we
therefore make a net profit of 293,723l. out of the post-office, as
compared with a loss of 1,020,000l. on the part of the United
States.

But perhaps the greatest difficulty with which the American post-
office is burdened is that "free mail matter" to which I have
alluded, for carrying which the post-office claims to earn
140,000l., and for the carriage of which it might as fairly claim to
earn 1,350,000l., or half the amount of its total expenditure, for I
was informed by a gentleman whose knowledge on the subject could not
be doubted, that the free mail matter so carried equaled in bulk and
weight all that other matter which was not carried free.  To such an
extent has the privilege of franking been carried in the States!
All members of both Houses frank what they please--for in effect the
privilege is stretched to that extent.  All Presidents of the Union,
past and present, can frank, as also, all Vice-Presidents, past and
present; and there is a special act, enabling the widow of President
Polk to frank.  Why it is that widows of other Presidents do not
agitate on the matter, I cannot understand.  And all the Secretaries
of State can frank; and ever so many other public officers.  There
is no limit in number to the letters so franked, and the nuisance
has extended itself to so huge a size that members of Congress, in
giving franks, cannot write the franks themselves.  It is illegal
for them to depute to others the privilege of signing their names
for this purpose, but it is known at the post-office that it is
done.  But even this is not the worst of it.  Members of the House
of Representatives have the power of sending through the post all
those huge books which, with them as with us, grow out of
parliamentary debates and workings of committees.  This, under
certain stipulations, is the case also in England; but in England,
luckily, no one values them.  In America, however, it is not so.  A
voter considers himself to be noticed if he gets a book; he likes to
have the book bound, and the bigger the book may be, the more the
compliment is relished.  Hence it comes to pass that an enormous
quantity of useless matter is printed and bound, only that it may be
sent down to constituents and make a show on the parlor shelves of
constituents' wives.  The post-office groans and becomes insolvent
and the country pays for the paper, the printing, and the binding.
While the public expenses of this nation were very small, there was,
perhaps, no reason why voters should not thus be indulged; but now
the matter is different, and it would be well that the conveyance by
post of these congressional libraries should be brought to an end.
I was also assured that members very frequently obtain permission
for the printing of a speech which has never been delivered--and
which never will be delivered--in order that copies may be
circulated among their constituents.  There is in such an
arrangement an ingenuity which is peculiarly American in its nature.
Everybody concerned is no doubt cheated by the system.  The
constituents are cheated; the public, which pays, is cheated; and
the post-office is cheated.  But the House is spared the hearing of
the speech, and the result on the whole is perhaps beneficial.

We also, within the memory of many of us, had a franking privilege,
which was peculiarly objectionable, inasmuch as it operated toward
giving a free transmission of their letters by post to the rich,
while no such privilege was within reach of the poor.  But with us
it never stretched itself to such an extent as it has now achieved
in the States.  The number of letters for members was limited.  The
whole address was written by the franking member himself, and not
much was sent in this way that was bulky.  I am disposed to think
that all government and congressional jobs in the States bear the
same proportion to government and parliamentary jobs which have been
in vogue among us.  There has been an unblushing audacity in the
public dishonesty--what I may perhaps call the State dishonesty--at
Washington, which I think was hardly ever equaled in London.
Bribery, I know, was disgracefully current in the days of Walpole,
of Newcastle, and even of Castlereagh; so current, that no
Englishman has a right to hold up his own past government as a model
of purity; but the corruption with us did blush and endeavor to hide
itself.  It was disgraceful to be bribed, if not so to offer bribes.
But at Washington corruption has been so common that I can hardly
understand how any honest man can have held up his head in the
vicinity of the Capitol or of the State office.

But the country has, I think, become tired of this.  Hitherto it has
been too busy about its more important concerns, in extending
commerce, in making railways, in providing education for its youth,
to think very much of what was being done at Washington.  While the
taxes were light, and property was secure, while increasing
population gave daily increasing strength to the nation, the people
as a body were content with that theory of being governed by their
little men.  They gave a bad name to politicians, and allowed
politics, as they say, to "slide."  But all this will be altered
now.  The tremendous expenditure of the last twelve months has
allowed dishonesty of so vast a grasp to make its ravages in the
public pockets that the evil will work its own cure.  Taxes will be
very high, and the people will recognize the necessity of having
honest men to look after them.  The nation can no longer afford to
be indifferent about its government, and will require to know where
its money goes, and why it goes.  This franking privilege is already
doomed, if not already dead.  When I was in Washington, a bill was
passed through the Lower House by which it would be abolished
altogether.  When I left America, its fate in the Senate was still
doubtful, and I was told by many that that bill would not be allowed
to become law without sundry alterations.  But, nevertheless, I
regard the franking privilege as doomed, and offer to the Washington
post-office officials my best congratulations on their coming
deliverance.

The post-office in the States is also burdened by another terrible
political evil, which in itself is so heavy that one would at first
sight declare it to be enough to prevent anything like efficiency.
The whole of its staff is removable every fourth year--that is to
say, on the election of every new President; and a very large
proportion of its staff is thus removed periodically to make way for
those for whom a new President is bound to provide, by reason of
their services in sending him to the White House.  They have served
him, and he thus repays them by this use of his patronage in their
favor.  At four hundred and thirty-four post-offices in the States--
those being the offices to which the highest salaries are attached--
the President has this power, and exercises it as a matter of
course.  He has the same power with reference, I believe, to all the
appointments held in the post-office at Washington.  This practice
applies by no means to the post-office only.  All the government
clerks--clerks employed by the central government at Washington--are
subject to the same rule.  And the rule has also been adopted in the
various States with reference to State offices.

To a stranger this practice seems so manifestly absurd that he can
hardly conceive it possible that a government service should be
conducted on such terms.  He cannot, in the first place, believe
that men of sufficient standing before the world could be found to
accept office under such circumstances; and is led to surmise that
men of insufficient standing must be employed, and that there are
other allurements to the office beyond the very moderate salaries
which are allowed.  He cannot, moreover, understand how the duties
can be conducted, seeing that men must be called on to resign their
places as soon as they have learned to make themselves useful.  And,
finally, he is lost in amazement as he contemplates this barefaced
prostitution of the public employ to the vilest purposes of
political manoeuvring.  With us also patronage has been used for
political purposes, and to some small extent is still so used.  We
have not yet sufficiently recognized the fact that in selecting a
public servant nothing should be regarded but the advantage of the
service for which he is to be employed.  But we never, in the lowest
times of our political corruption, ventured to throw over the
question of service altogether, and to declare publicly that the one
and only result to be obtained by government employment was
political support.  In the States, political corruption has become
so much a matter of course that no American seems to be struck with
the fact that the whole system is a system of robbery.

From sheer necessity some of the old hands are kept on when these
changes are made.  Were this not done, the work would come
absolutely to a dead lock.  But as it is, it may be imagined how
difficult it must be for men to carry through any improvements in a
great department, when they have entered an office under such a
system, and are liable to be expelled under the same.  It is greatly
to the praise of those who have been allowed to grow old in the
service that so much has been done.  No men, however, are more apt
at such work than Americans, or more able to exert themselves at
their posts.  They are not idle.  Independently of any question of
remuneration, they are not indifferent to the well-being of the work
they have in hand.  They are good public servants, unless corruption
come in their way.

While speaking on the subject of patronage, I cannot but allude to
two appointments which had been made by political interest, and with
the circumstances of which I became acquainted.  In both instances a
good place had been given to a gentleman by the incoming President--
not in return for political support, but from motives of private
friendship--either his own friendship or that of some mutual friend.
In both instances I heard the selection spoken of with the warmest
praise, as though a noble act had been done in the selection of a
private friend instead of a political partisan.  And yet in each
case a man was appointed who knew nothing of his work; who, from age
and circumstances, was not likely to become acquainted with his
work; who, by his appointment, kept out of the place those who did
understand the work, and had earned a right to promotion by so
understanding it.  Two worthy gentlemen--for they were both worthy--
were pensioned on the government for a term of years under a false
pretense.  That this should have been done is not perhaps
remarkable; but it did seem remarkable to me that everybody regarded
such appointments as a good deed--as a deed so exceptionably good as
to be worthy of great praise.  I do not allude to these selections
on account of the political view shown by the Presidents in making
them, but on account of the political virtue; in order that the
nature of political virtue in the States may be understood.  It had
never occurred to any one to whom I spoke on the subject, that a
President in the bestowing of such places was bound to look for
efficient work in return for the public money which was to be paid.

Before I end this chapter I must insert a few details respecting the
post-office of the States, which, though they may not be specially
interesting to the general reader, will give some idea of the extent
of the department.  The total number of post-offices in the States
on June 30th, 1861, was 28,586.  With us the number in England,
Scotland, and Ireland, at the same period, was about 11,400.  The
population served may be regarded as nearly the same.  Our lowest
salary is 3l. per annum.  In the States the remuneration is often
much lower.  It consist in a commission on the letters, and is
sometimes less than ten shillings.  The difficulty of obtaining
persons to hold these offices, and the amount of work which must
thereby be thrown on what is called the "appointment branch," may be
judged by the fact that 9235 of these offices were filled up by new
nominations during the last year.  When the patronage is of such a
nature it is difficult to say which give most trouble, the places
which nobody wishes to have, or those which everybody wishes to
have.

The total amount of postage on European letters, i.e. letters
passing between the States and Europe, in the last year, as to which
accounts were kept between Washington and the European post-offices,
was 275,000l.  Of this over 150,000l. was on letters for the United
Kingdom; and 130,000l. was on letters carried by the Cunard packets.

According to the accounts kept by the Washington office, the letters
passing from the States to Europe and from Europe to the States are
very nearly equal in number, about 101 going to Europe for every 100
received from Europe.  But the number of newspapers sent from the
States is more than double the number received in the States from
Europe.

On June 30th, 1861, mails were carried through the then loyal States
of the Union over 140,400 miles daily.  Up to 31st May preceding, at
which time the government mails were running all through the united
States, 96,000 miles were covered in those States which had then
virtually seceded, and which in the following month were taken out
from the post-office accounts--making a total of 236,400 miles
daily.  Of this mileage something less than one-third is effected by
railways, at an average cost of about six pence a mile.  Our total
mileage per day is 151,000 miles, of which 43,823 are done by
railway, at a cost of about seven pence half-penny per mile.

As far as I could learn, the servants of the post-office are less
liberally paid in the States than with us, excepting as regards two
classes.  The first of these is that class which is paid by weekly
wages, such as letter-carriers and porters.  Their remuneration is
of course ruled by the rate of ordinary wages in the country; and as
ordinary wages are higher in the States than with us, such men are
paid accordingly.  The other class is that of postmasters at second-
rate towns.  They receive the same compensation as those at the
largest towns--unless indeed there be other compensations than those
written in the books at Washington.  A postmaster is paid a certain
commission on letters, till it amounts to 400l. per annum: all above
that going back to the government.  So also out of the fees paid for
boxes at the window he receives any amount forthcoming not exceeding
400l. a year; making in all a maximum of 800l.  The postmaster of
New York can get no more; but any moderately large town will give as
much, and in this way an amount of patronage is provided which in a
political view is really valuable.

But with all this the people have made their way, because they have
been intelligent, industrious, and in earnest.  And as the people
have made their way, so has the post-office.  The number of its
offices, the mileage it covers, its extraordinary cheapness, the
rapidity with which it has been developed, are all proofs of great
things done; and it is by no means standing still even in these evil
days of war.  Improvements are even now on foot, copied in a great
measure from ourselves.  Hitherto the American office has not taken
upon itself the task of returning to their writers undelivered and
undeliverable letters.  This it is now going to do.  It is, as I
have said, shaking off from itself that terrible incubus, the
franking privilege.  And the expediency of introducing a money-order
office into the States, connected with the post-office as it is with
us, is even now under consideration.  Such an accommodation is much
needed in the country; but I doubt whether the present moment,
looking at the fiscal state of the country, is well adapted for
establishing it.

I was much struck by the great extravagance in small things
manifested by the post-office through the States, and have reason to
believe that the same remark would be equally true with regard to
other public establishments.  They use needless forms without end--
making millions of entries which no one is ever expected to regard.
Their expenditure in stationery might I think be reduced by one-
half, and the labor might be saved which is now wasted in the abuse
of that useless stationery.  Their mail bags are made in a costly
manner, and are often large beyond all proportion or necessity.  I
could greatly lengthen this list if I were addressing myself solely
to post-office people; but as I am not doing so, I will close these
semi-official remarks with an assurance to my colleagues in post-
office work on the other side of the water that I greatly respect
what they have done, and trust that before long they may have
renewed opportunities for the prosecution of their good work.



CHAPTER XIV.

AMERICAN HOTELS.


I find it impossible to resist the subject of inns.  As I have gone
on with my journey, I have gone on with my book, and have spoken
here and there of American hotels as I have encountered them.  But
in the States the hotels are so large an institution, having so much
closer and wider a bearing on social life than they do in any other
country, that I feel myself bound to treat them in a separate
chapter as a great national arrangement in themselves.  They are
quite as much thought of in the nation as the legislature, or
judicature, or literature of the country; and any falling off in
them, or any improvement in the accommodation given, would strike
the community as forcibly as any change in the Constitution or
alteration in the franchise.

Moreover, I consider myself as qualified to write a chapter on
hotels--not only on the hotels of America, but on hotels generally.
I have myself been much too frequently a sojourner at hotels.  I
think I know what a hotel should be, and what it should not be; and
am almost inclined to believe, in my pride, that I could myself fill
the position of a landlord with some chance of social success,
though probably with none of satisfactory pecuniary results.

Of all hotels known to me, I am inclined to think that the Swiss are
the best.  The things wanted at a hotel are, I fancy, mainly as
follows: a clean bed-room, with a good and clean bed, and with it
also plenty of water.  Good food, well dressed and served at
convenient hours, which hours should on occasions be allowed to
stretch themselves.  Wines that shall be drinkable.  Quick
attendance.  Bills that shall not be absolutely extortionate,
smiling faces, and an absence of foul smells.  There are many who
desire more than this--who expect exquisite cookery, choice wines,
subservient domestics, distinguished consideration, and the
strictest economy; but they are uneducated travelers, who are going
through the apprenticeship of their hotel lives; who may probably
never become free of the travelers' guild, or learn to distinguish
that which they may fairly hope to attain from that which they can
never accomplish.

Taking them as a whole, I think that the Swiss hotels are the best.
They are perhaps a little close in the matter of cold water, but
even as to this they generally give way to pressure.  The pressure,
however, must not be violent, but gentle rather, and well continued.
Their bed-rooms are excellent.  Their cookery is good, and to the
outward senses is cleanly.  The people are civil.  The whole work of
the house is carried on upon fixed rules which tend to the comfort
of the establishment.  They are not cheap, and not always quite
honest.  But the exorbitance or dishonesty of their charges rarely
exceeds a certain reasonable scale, and hardly ever demands the
bitter misery of a remonstrance.

The inns of the Tyrol are, I think, the cheapest I have known--
affording the traveler what he requires for half the price, or less
than half demanded in Switzerland.  But the other half is taken out
in stench and nastiness.  As tourists scatter themselves more
profusely, the prices of the Tyrol will no doubt rise.  Let us hope
that increased prices will bring with them besoms, scrubbing-
brushes, and other much-needed articles of cleanliness.

The inns of the north of Italy are very good; and, indeed, the
Italian inns throughout, as far as I know them, are much better than
the name they bear.  The Italians are a civil, kindly people, and do
for you, at any rate, the best they can.  Perhaps the unwary
traveler may be cheated.  Ignorant of the language, he may be called
on to pay more than the man who speaks it and who can bargain in the
Italian fashion as to price.  It has often been my lot, I doubt not,
to be so cheated; but then I have been cheated with a grace that has
been worth all the money.  The ordinary prices of Italian inns are
by no means high.

I have seldom thoroughly liked the inns of Germany which I have
known.  They are not clean, and water is very scarce.  Smiles, too,
are generally wanting, and I have usually fancied myself to be
regarded as a piece of goods out of which so much profit was to be
made.

The dearest hotels I know are the French--and certainly not the
best.  In the provinces they are by no means so cleanly as those of
Italy.  Their wines are generally abominable, and their cookery
often disgusting.  In Paris grand dinners may no doubt be had, and
luxuries of every description--except the luxury of comfort.
Cotton-velvet sofas and ormolu clocks stand in the place of
convenient furniture; and logs of wood, at a franc a log, fail to
impart to you the heat which the freezing cold of a Paris winter
demands.  They used to make good coffee in Paris, but even that is a
thing of the past.  I fancy that they import their brandy from
England and manufacture their own cigars.  French wines you may get
good at a Paris hotel; but you would drink them as good and much
cheaper if you bought them in London and took them with you.

The worst hotels I know are in the Havana.  Of course I do not speak
here of chance mountain huts, or small, far-off roadside hostels, in
which the traveler may find himself from time to time.  All such are
to be counted apart, and must be judged on their merits by the
circumstances which surround them.  But with reference to places of
wide resort, nothing can beat the hotels of the Havana in filth,
discomfort, habits of abomination, and absence of everything which
the traveler desires.  All the world does not go to the Havana, and
the subject is not therefore one of general interest.  But in
speaking of hotels at large, so much I find myself bound to say.

In all the countries to which I have alluded the guests of the house
are expected to sit down together at one table.  Conversation is at
any rate possible; and there is the show, if not the reality, of
society.

And now one word as to English inns.  I do not think that we
Englishmen have any great right to be proud of them.  The worst
about them is that they deteriorate from year to year, instead of
becoming better.  We used to hear much of the comfort of the old
English wayside inn, but the old English wayside inn has gone.  The
railway hotel has taken its place; and the railway hotel is too
frequently gloomy, desolate, comfortless, and almost suicidal.  In
England, too, since the old days are gone, there are wanting the
landlord's bow and the kindly smile of his stout wife.  Who now
knows the landlord of an inn, or cares to inquire whether or no
there be a landlady?  The old welcome is wanting; and the cheery,
warm air, which used to atone for the bad port and tough beef, has
passed away--while the port is still bad and the beef too often
tough.

In England, and only in England as I believe, is maintained in hotel
life the theory of solitary existence.  The sojourner at an English
inn--unless he be a commercial traveler, and as such a member of a
universal, peripatetic tradesman's club--lives alone.  He has his
breakfast alone, his dinner alone, his pint of wine alone, and his
cup of tea alone.  It is not considered practicable that two
strangers should sit at the same table or cut from the same dish.
Consequently his dinner is cooked for him separately, and the hotel
keeper can hardly afford to give him a good dinner.  He has two
modes of life from which to choose.  He either lives in a public
room--called a coffee-room--and there occupies, during his
comfortless meal, a separate small table, too frequently removed
from fire and light, though generally exposed to draughts, or else
he indulges in the luxury of a private sitting-room, and endeavors
to find solace on an old horse-hair sofa, at the cost of seven
shillings a day.  His bed-room is not so arranged that he can use it
as a sitting-room.  Under either phase of life he can rarely find
himself comfortable, and therefore he lives as little at a hotel as
the circumstances of his business or of his pleasure will allow.  I
do not think that any of the requisites of a good inn are habitually
to be found in perfection at our Kings' Heads and White Horses,
though the falling off is not so lamentably distressing as it
sometimes is in other countries.  The bed-rooms are dingy rather
than dirty.  Extra payment to servants will generally produce a tub
of cold water.  The food is never good, but it is usually eatable,
and you may have it when you please.  The wines are almost always
bad, but the traveler can fall back upon beer.  The attendance is
good, provided always that the payment for it is liberal.  The cost
is generally too high, and unfortunately grows larger and larger
from year to year.  Smiling faces are out of the question unless
specially paid for; and as to that matter of foul smells, there is
often room for improvement.  An English inn to a solitary traveler
without employment is an embodiment of dreary desolation.  The
excuse to be made for this is that English men and women do not live
much at inns in their own country.

The American inn differs from all those of which I have made
mention, and is altogether an institution apart, and a thing of
itself.  Hotels in America are very much larger and more numerous
than in other countries.  They are to be found in all towns, and I
may almost say in all villages.  In England and on the Continent we
find them on the recognized routes of travel and in towns of
commercial or social importance.  On unfrequented roads and in
villages there is usually some small house of public entertainment
in which the unexpected traveler may obtain food and shelter, and in
which the expected boon companions of the neighborhood smoke their
nightly pipes and drink their nightly tipple.  But in the States of
America the first sign of an incipient settlement is a hotel five
stories high, with an office, a bar, a cloak room, three gentlemen's
parlors, two ladies' parlors, and a ladies' entrance, and two
hundred bedrooms.

These of course are all built with a view to profit, and it may be
presumed that in each case the originators of the speculation enter
into some calculation as to their expected guests.  Whence are to
come the sleepers in those two hundred bed-rooms, and who is to pay
for the gaudy sofas and numerous lounging chairs of the ladies'
parlors?  In all other countries the expectation would extend itself
simply to travelers--to travelers or to strangers sojourning in the
land.  But this is by no means the case as to these speculations in
America.  When the new hotel rises up in the wilderness, it is
presumed that people will come there with the express object of
inhabiting it.  The hotel itself will create a population, as the
railways do.  With us railways run to the towns; but in the States
the towns run to the railways.  It is the same thing with the
hotels.

Housekeeping is not popular with young married people in America,
and there are various reasons why this should be so.  Men there are
not fixed in their employment as they are with us.  If a young
Benedict cannot get along as a lawyer at Salem, perhaps he may
thrive as a shoemaker at Thermopylae.  Jefferson B. Johnson fails in
the lumber line at Eleutheria, but hearing of an opening for a
Baptist preacher at Big Mud Creek moves himself off with his wife
and three children at a week's notice.  Aminadab Wiggs takes an
engagement as a clerk at a steamboat office on the Pongowonga River,
but he goes to his employment with an inward conviction that six
months will see him earning his bread elsewhere.  Under such
circumstances even a large wardrobe is a nuisance, and a collection
of furniture would be as appropriate as a drove of elephants.  Then
again young men and women marry without any means already collected
on which to commence their life.  They are content to look forward
and to hope that such means will come.  In so doing they are guilty
of no imprudence.  It is the way of the country, and, if the man be
useful for anything, employment will certainly come to him.  But he
must live on the fruits of that employment, and can only pay his way
from week to week and from day to day.  And as a third reason, I
think I may allege that the mode of life found in these hotels is
liked by the people who frequent them.  It is to their taste.  They
are happy, or at any rate contented, at these hotels, and do not
wish for household cares.  As to the two first reasons which I have
given, I can agree as to the necessity of the case, and quite concur
as to the expediency of marriage under such circumstances.  But as
to that matter of taste, I cannot concur at all.  Anything more
forlorn than a young married woman at an American hotel, it is
impossible to conceive.

Such are the guests expected for those two hundred bedrooms.  The
chance travelers are but chance additions to these, and are not
generally the mainstay of the house.  As a matter of course the
accommodation for travelers which these hotels afford increases and
creates traveling.  Men come because they know they will be fed and
bedded at a moderate cost, and in an easy way, suited to their
tastes.  With us, and throughout Europe, inquiry is made before an
unaccustomed journey is commenced, on that serious question of
wayside food and shelter.  But in the States no such question is
needed.  A big hotel is a matter of course, and therefore men
travel.  Everybody travels in the States.  The railways and the
hotels between them have so churned up the people that an untraveled
man or woman is a rare animal.  We are apt to suppose that travelers
make roads, and that guests create hotels; but the cause and effect
run exactly in the other way.  I am almost disposed to think that we
should become cannibals if gentlemen's legs and ladies arms were
hung up for sale in purveyors' shops.

After this fashion and with these intentions hotels are built.  Size
and an imposing exterior are the first requisitions.  Everything
about them must be on a large scale.  A commanding exterior, and a
certain interior dignity of demeanor, is more essential than comfort
or civility.  Whatever a hotel may be it must not be "mean."  In the
American vernacular the word mean is very significant.  A mean white
in the South is a man who owns no slaves.  Men are often mean, but
actions are seldom so called.  A man feels mean when the bluster is
taken out of him.  A mean hotel, conducted in a quiet unostentatious
manner, in which the only endeavor made had reference to the comfort
of a few guests, would find no favor in the States.  These hotels
are not called by the name of any sign, as with us in our provinces.
There are no "Presidents' Heads" or "General Scotts."  Nor by the
name of the landlord, or of some former landlord, as with us in
London, and in many cities of the Continent.  Nor are they called
from some country or city which may have been presumed at some time
to have had special patronage for the establishment.  In the
nomenclature of American hotels the specialty of American hero
worship is shown, as in the nomenclature of their children.  Every
inn is a house, and these houses are generally named after some
hero, little known probably in the world at large, but highly
estimated in that locality at the moment of the christening.

They are always built on a plan which to a European seems to be most
unnecessarily extravagant in space.  It is not unfrequently the case
that the greater portion of the ground floor is occupied by rooms
and halls which make no return to the house whatever.  The visitor
enters a great hall by the front door, and almost invariably finds
it full of men who are idling about, sitting round on stationary
seats, talking in a listless manner, and getting through their time
as though the place were a public lounging-room.  And so it is.  The
chances are that not half the crowd are guests at the hotel.  I will
now follow the visitor as he makes his way up to the office.  Every
hotel has an office.  To call this place the bar, as I have done too
frequently, is a lamentable error.  The bar is held in a separate
room appropriated solely to drinking.  To the office, which is in
fact a long open bar, the guest walks up, and there inscribes his
name in a book.  This inscription was to me a moment of misery which
I could never go through with equanimity.  As the name is written,
and as the request for accommodation is made, half a dozen loungers
look over your name and listen to what you say.  They listen
attentively, and spell your name carefully, but the great man behind
the bar does not seem to listen or to heed you; your destiny is
never imparted to you on the instant.  If your wife or any other
woman be with you--the word "lady" is made so absolutely distasteful
in American hotels that I cannot bring myself to use it in writing
of them--she has been carried off to a lady's waiting room, and
there remains in august wretchedness till the great man at the bar
shall have decided on her fate.  I have never been quite able to
fathom the mystery of these delays.  I think they must have
originated in the necessity of waiting to see what might be the
influx of travelers at the moment, and then have become exaggerated
and brought to their present normal state by the gratified feeling
of almost divine power with which for the time it invests that
despotic arbiter.  I have found it always the same, though arriving
with no crowd, by a conveyance of my own, when no other expectant
guests were following me.  The great man has listened to my request
in silence, with an imperturbable face, and has usually continued
his conversation with some loafing friend, who at the time is
probably scrutinizing my name in the book.  I have often suffered in
patience, but patience is not specially the badge of my tribe, and I
have sometimes spoken out rather freely.  If I may presume to give
advice to my traveling countrymen how to act under such
circumstances, I should recommend to them freedom of speech rather
than patience.  The great man, when freely addressed, generally
opens his eyes, and selects the key of your room without further
delay.  I am inclined to think that the selection will not be made
in any way to your detriment by reason of that freedom of speech.
The lady in the ballad who spoke out her own mind to Lord Bateman,
was sent to her home honorably in a coach and three.  Had she held
her tongue, we are justified in presuming that she would have been
returned on a pillion behind a servant.

I have been greatly annoyed by that want of speech.  I have
repeatedly asked for room, and received no syllable in return.  I
have persisted in my request, and the clerk has nodded his head at
me.  Until a traveler is known, these gentlemen are singularly
sparing of speech, especially in the West.  The same economy of
words runs down from the great man at the office all through the
servants of the establishment.  It arises, I believe, entirely from
that want of courtesy which democratic institutions create.  The man
whom you address has to make a battle against the state of
subservience presumed to be indicated by his position, and he does
so by declaring his indifference to the person on whose wants he is
paid to attend.  I have been honored on one or two occasions by the
subsequent intimacy of these great men at the hotel offices, and
have then found them ready enough at conversation.

That necessity of making your request for room before a public
audience is not in itself agreeable, and sometimes entails a
conversation which might be more comfortably made in private.  "What
do you mean by a dressing-room, and why do you want one?"  Now that
is a question which an Englishman feels awkward at answering before
five and twenty Americans, with open mouths and eager eyes; but it
has to be answered.  When I left England, I was assured that I
should not find any need for a separate sitting-room, seeing that
drawing-rooms more or less sumptuous were prepared for the
accommodation of "ladies."  At first we attempted to follow the
advice given to us, but we broke down.  A man and his wife traveling
from town to town, and making no sojourn on his way, may eat and
sleep at a hotel without a private parlor.  But an English woman
cannot live in comfort for a week, or even in comfort for a day, at
any of these houses, without a sitting-room for herself.  The
ladies' drawing-room is a desolate wilderness.  The American women
themselves do not use it.  It is generally empty, or occupied by
some forlorn spinster, eliciting harsh sounds from the wretched
piano which it contains.

The price at these hotels throughout the union is nearly always the
same, viz., two and a half dollars a day, for which a bed-room is
given and as many meals as the guest can contrive to eat.  This is
the price for chance guests.  The cost to monthly boarders is, I
believe, not more than the half of this.  Ten shillings a day,
therefore, covers everything that is absolutely necessary, servants
included; and this must be said in praise of these inns--that the
traveler can compute his expenses accurately, and can absolutely
bring them within that daily sum of ten shillings.  This includes a
great deal of eating, a great deal of attendance, the use of
reading-room and smoking-room--which, however, always seem to be
open to the public as well as to the guests--and a bed-room, with
accommodation which is at any rate as good as the average
accommodation of hotels in Europe.  In the large Eastern towns baths
are attached to many of the rooms.  I always carry my own, and have
never failed in getting water.  It must be acknowledged that the
price is very cheap.  It is so cheap that I believe it affords, as a
rule, no profit whatsoever.  The profit is made upon extra charges,
and they are higher than in any other country that I have visited.
They are so high that I consider traveling in America, for an
Englishman with his wife or family, to be more expensive than
traveling in any part of Europe.  First in the list of extras comes
that matter of the sitting-room, and by that for a man and his wife
the whole first expense is at once doubled.  The ordinary charge is
five dollars, or one pound a day!  A guest intending to stay for two
or three weeks at a hotel, or perhaps for one week, may, by
agreement, have this charge reduced.  At one inn I stayed a
fortnight, and having made no such agreement, was charged the full
sum.  I felt myself stirred up to complain, and did in that case
remonstrate.  I was asked how much I wished to have returned--for
the bill had been paid--and the sum I suggested was at once handed
to me.  But even with such reduction, the price is very high, and at
once makes the American hotel expensive.  Wine also at these houses
is very costly, and very bad.  The usual price is two dollars (or
eight shillings) a bottle.  The people of the country rarely drink
wine at dinner in the hotels.  When they do so, they drink
champagne; but their normal drinking is done separately, at the bar,
chiefly before dinner, and at a cheap rate.  "A drink," let it be
what it may, invariably costs a dime, or five pence.  But if you
must have a glass of sherry with your dinner, it costs two dollars;
for sherry does not grow into pint bottles in the States.  But the
guest who remains for two days can have his wine kept for him.
Washing also is an expensive luxury.  The price of this is
invariable, being always four pence for everything washed.  A
cambric handkerchief or muslin dress all come out at the same price.
For those who are cunning in the matter this may do very well; but
for men and women whose cuffs and collars are numerous it becomes
expensive.  The craft of those who are cunning is shown, I think, in
little internal washings, by which the cambric handkerchiefs are
kept out of the list, while the muslin dresses are placed upon it.
I am led to this surmise by the energetic measures taken by the
hotelkeepers to prevent such domestic washings, and by the
denunciations which in every hotel are pasted up in every room
against the practice.  I could not at first understand why I was
always warned against washing my own clothes in my own bed-room, and
told that no foreign laundress could on any account be admitted into
the house.  The injunctions given on this head are almost frantic in
their energy, and therefore I conceive that hotel-keepers find
themselves exposed to much suffering in the matter.  At these hotels
they wash with great rapidity, sending you back your clothes in four
or five hours if you desire it.

Another very stringent order is placed before the face of all
visitors at American hotels, desiring them on no account to have
valuable property in their rooms.  I presume that there must have
been some difficulty in this matter in bygone years; for in every
State a law has been passed declaring that hotel-keepers shall not
be held responsible for money or jewels stolen out of rooms in their
houses, provided that they are furnished with safes for keeping such
money and give due caution to their guests on the subject.  The due
caution is always given, but I have seldom myself taken any notice
of it.  I have always left my portmanteau open, and have kept my
money usually in a traveling-desk in my room; but I never to my
knowledge lost anything.  The world, I think, gives itself credit
for more thieves than it possesses.  As to the female servants at
American inns, they are generally all that is disagreeable.  They
are uncivil, impudent, dirty, slow--provoking to a degree.  But I
believe that they keep their hands from picking and stealing.

I never yet made a single comfortable meal at an American hotel, or
rose from my breakfast or dinner with that feeling of satisfaction
which should, I think, be felt at such moments in a civilized land
in which cookery prevails as an art.  I have had enough, and have
been healthy, and am thankful.  But that thankfulness is altogether
a matter apart, and does not bear upon the question.  If need be, I
can eat food that is disagreeable to my palate and make no
complaint.  But I hold it to be compatible with the principles of an
advanced Christianity to prefer food that is palatable.  I never
could get any of that kind at an American hotel.  All meal-times at
such houses were to me periods of disagreeable duty; and at this
moment, as I write these lines at the hotel in which I am still
staying, I pine for an English leg of mutton.  But I do not wish it
to be supposed that the fault of which I complain--for it is a
grievous fault--is incidental to America as a nation.  I have stayed
in private houses, and have daily sat down to dinners quite as good
as any my own kitchen could afford me.  Their dinner parties are
generally well done, and as a people they are by no means
indifferent to the nature of their comestibles.  It is of the hotels
that I speak; and of them I again say that eating in them is a
disagreeable task--a painful labor.  It is as a schoolboy's lesson,
or the six hours' confinement of a clerk at his desk.

The mode of eating is as follows: Certain feeding hours are named,
which generally include nearly all the day.  Breakfast from six till
ten.  Dinner from one till five.  Tea from six till nine.  Supper
from nine till twelve.  When the guest presents himself at any of
these hours, he is marshaled to a seat, and a bill is put into his
hand containing the names of all the eatables then offered for his
choice.  The list is incredibly and most unnecessarily long.  Then
it is that you will see care written on the face of the American
hotel liver, as he studies the programme of the coming performance.
With men this passes off unnoticed, but with young girls the
appearance of the thing is not attractive.  The anxious study, the
elaborate reading of the daily book, and then the choice proclaimed
with clear articulation: "Boiled mutton and caper sauce, roast duck,
hashed venison, mashed potatoes, poached eggs and spinach, stewed
tomatoes.  Yes--and, waiter, some squash!"  There is no false
delicacy in the voice by which this order is given, no desire for a
gentle whisper.  The dinner is ordered with the firm determination
of an American heroine; and in some five minutes' time all the
little dishes appear at once, and the lady is surrounded by her
banquet.

How I did learn to hate those little dishes and their greasy
contents!  At a London eating-house things are often not very nice,
but your meat is put on a plate and comes before you in an edible
shape.  At these hotels it is brought to you in horrid little oval
dishes, and swims in grease; gravy is not an institution in American
hotels, but grease has taken its place.  It is palpable, undisguised
grease, floating in rivers--not grease caused by accidental bad
cookery, but grease on purpose.  A beef-steak is not a beef-steak
unless a quarter of a pound of butter be added to it.  Those horrid
little dishes!  If one thinks of it, how could they have been made
to contain Christian food?  Every article in that long list is
liable to the call of any number of guests for four hours.  Under
such circumstances how can food be made eatable?  Your roast mutton
is brought to you raw; if you object to that, you are supplied with
meat that has been four times brought before the public.  At hotels
on the Continent of Europe different dinners are cooked at different
hours; but here the same dinner is kept always going.  The house
breakfast is maintained on a similar footing.  Huge boilers of tea
and coffee are stewed down and kept hot.  To me those meals were
odious.  It is of course open to any one to have separate dinners
and separate breakfasts in his own rooms; but by this little is
gained and much is lost.  He or she who is so exclusive pays twice
over for such meals--as they are charged as extras on the bill--and,
after all, receives the advantage of no exclusive cooking.
Particles from the public dinners are brought to the private room,
and the same odious little dishes make their appearance.

But the most striking peculiarity of the American hotels is in their
public rooms.  Of the ladies' drawing-room I have spoken.  There are
two, and sometimes three, in one hotel, and they are generally
furnished at any rate expensively.  It seems to me that the space
and the furniture are almost thrown away.  At watering-places and
sea-side summer hotels they are, I presume, used; but at ordinary
hotels they are empty deserts.  The intention is good, for they are
established with the view of giving to ladies at hotels the comforts
of ordinary domestic life; but they fail in their effect.  Ladies
will not make themselves happy in any room, or with ever so much
gilded furniture, unless some means of happiness are provided for
them.  Into these rooms no book is ever brought, no needle-work is
introduced; from them no clatter of many tongues is ever heard.  On
a marble table in the middle of the room always stands a large
pitcher of iced water; and from this a cold, damp, uninviting air is
spread through the atmosphere of the ladies' drawing-room.

Below, on the ground floor, there is, in the first place, the huge
entrance hall, at the back of which, behind a bar, the great man of
the place keeps the keys and holds his court.  There are generally
seats around it, in which smokers sit--or men not smoking but
ruminating.  Opening off from this are reading-rooms, smoking-rooms,
shaving-rooms, drinking-rooms, parlors for gentlemen in which
smoking is prohibited and which are generally as desolate as ladies'
sitting-rooms above.  In those other more congenial chambers is
always gathered together a crowd apparently belonging in no way to
the hotel.  It would seem that a great portion of an American Inn is
as open to the public as an Exchange or as the wayside of the
street.  In the West, during the early months of this war, the
traveler would always see many soldiers among the crowd--not only
officers, but privates.  They sit in public seats, silent but
apparently contented, sometimes for an hour together.  All Americans
are given to gatherings such as these.  It is the much-loved
institution to which the name of "loafing" has been given.

I do not like the mode of life which prevails in the American
hotels.  I have come across exceptions, and know one or two that are
very comfortable--always excepting that matter of eating and
drinking.  Taking them as a whole, I do not like their mode of life;
but I feel bound to add that the hotels of Canada, which are kept I
think always after the same fashion, are infinitely worse than those
of the United States.  I do not like the American hotels; but I must
say in their favor that they afford an immense amount of
accommodation.  The traveler is rarely told that a hotel is full, so
that traveling in America is without one of those great perils to
which it is subject in Europe.



CHAPTER XV.

LITERATURE.


In speaking of the literature of any country we are, I think, too
much inclined to regard the question as one appertaining exclusively
to the writers of books--not acknowledging as we should do that the
literary character of a people will depend much more upon what it
reads than upon what it writes.  If we can suppose any people to
have an intimate acquaintance with the best literary efforts of
other countries, we should hardly be correct in saying that such a
people had no literary history of their own because it had itself
produced nothing in literature.  And, with reference to those
countries which have been most fertile in the production of good
books, I doubt whether their literary histories should not have more
to tell of those ages in which much has been read than of those in
which much has been written.

The United States have been by no means barren in the production of
literature.  The truth is so far from this that their literary
triumphs are perhaps those which of all their triumphs are the most
honorable to them, and which, considering their position as a young
nation, are the most permanently satisfactory.  But though they have
done much in writing, they have done much more in reading.  As
producers they are more than respectable, but as consumers they are
the most conspicuous people on the earth.  It is impossible to speak
of the subject of literature in America without thinking of the
readers rather than of the writers.  In this matter their position
is different from that of any other great people, seeing that they
share the advantages of our language.  An American will perhaps
consider himself to be as little like an Englishman as he is like a
Frenchman.  But he reads Shakspeare through the medium of his own
vernacular, and has to undergo the penance of a foreign tongue
before he can understand Moliere.  He separates himself from England
in politics and perhaps in affection; but he cannot separate himself
from England in mental culture.  It may be suggested that an
Englishman has the same advantages as regards America; and it is
true that he is obtaining much of such advantage.  Irving, Prescott,
and Longfellow are the same to England as though she herself had
produced them.  But the balance of advantage must be greatly in
favor of America.  We gave her the work of four hundred years, and
received back in return the work of fifty.

And of this advantage the Americans have not been slow to avail
themselves.  As consumers of literature they are certainly the most
conspicuous people on the earth.  Where an English publisher
contents himself with thousands of copies, an American publisher
deals with ten thousand.  The sale of a new book, which in numbers
would amount to a considerable success with us, would with them be a
lamentable failure.  This of course is accounted for, as regards the
author and the publisher, by the difference of price at which the
book is produced.  One thousand in England will give perhaps as good
a return as the ten thousand in America.  But as regards the readers
there can be no such equalization: the thousand copies cannot spread
themselves as do the ten thousand.  The one book at a guinea cannot
multiply itself, let Mr. Mudie do what he will, as do the ten books
at a dollar.  Ultimately there remain the ten books against the one;
and if there be not the ten readers against the one, there are five,
or four, or three.  Everybody in the States has books about his
house.  "And so has everybody in England," will say my English
reader, mindful of the libraries, or book-rooms, or book-crowded
drawing-rooms of his friends and acquaintances.  But has my English
reader who so replies examined the libraries of many English cabmen,
of ticket porters, of warehousemen, and of agricultural laborers?  I
cannot take upon myself to say that I have done so with any close
search in the States; but when it has been in my power I have done
so, and I have always found books in such houses as I have entered.
The amount or printed matter which is poured forth in streams from
the printing presses of the great American publishers is, however, a
better proof of the truth of what I say than anything that I can
have seen myself.

But of what class are the books that are so read?  There are many
who think that reading in itself is not good unless the matter read
is excellent.  I do not myself quite agree with this, thinking that
almost any reading is better than none; but I will of course admit
that good matter is better than bad matter.  The bulk of the
literature consumed in the States is no doubt composed of novels--as
it is also, now-a-days, in this country.  Whether or no an unlimited
supply of novels for young people is or is not advantageous, I will
not here pretend to say.  The general opinion with ourselves, I take
it, is that novels are bad reading if they be bad of their kind.
Novels that are not bad are now-a-days accepted generally as
indispensable to our households.  Whatever may be the weakness of
the American literary taste in this respect, it is I think a
weakness which we share.  There are more novel readers among them
than with us, but only I think in the proportion that there are more
readers.

I have no hesitation in saying that works by English authors are
more popular in the States than those written by Americans; and,
among English authors of the present day, readers by no means
confine themselves to the novelists.  The English names of whom I
heard most during my sojourn in the States were perhaps those of
Dickens, Tennyson, Buckle, Tom Hughes, Martin Tupper, and Thackeray.
As the owners of all these names are still living, I am not going to
take upon myself the delicate task of criticising the American
taste.  I may not perhaps coincide with them in every respect.  But
if I be right as to the names which I have given, such a selection
shows that they do get beyond novels.  I have little doubt but that
many more copies of Dickens's novels have been sold, during the last
three years, than of the works either of Tennyson or Buckle; but
such also has been the case in England.  It will probably be
admitted that one copy of the "Civilization" should be held as being
equal to five and twenty of "Nicholas Nickleby," and that a single
"In Memoriam" may fairly weigh down half a dozen "Pickwicks."  Men
and women after their day's work are not always up to the
"Civilization."  As a rule, they are generally up to "Proverbial
Philosophy," and this, perhaps, may have had something to do with
the great popularity of that very popular work.

I would not have it supposed that American readers despise their own
authors.  The Americans are very proud of having a literature of
their own, and among the literary names which they honor, there are
none more honorable than those of Cooper and Irving.  They like to
know that their modern historians are acknowledged as great authors,
and as regards their own poets, will sometimes demand your
admiration for strains with which you hardly find yourself to be
familiar.  But English books are, I think, the better loved: even
the English books of the present day.  And even beyond this--with
those who choose to indulge in the luxuries of literature--books
printed in England are more popular than those which are printed in
their own country; and yet the manner in which the American
publishers put out their work is very good.  The book sold there at
a dollar, or a dollar and a quarter, quite equals our ordinary five
shilling volume.  Nevertheless, English books are preferred, almost
as strongly as are French bonnets.  Of books absolutely printed and
produced in England, the supply in the States is of course small.
They must necessarily be costly, and as regards new books, are
always subjected to the rivalry of a cheaper American copy.  But of
the reprinted works of English authors the supply is unlimited, and
the sale very great.  Almost everything is reprinted: certainly
everything which can be said to attain any home popularity.  I do
not know how far English authors may be aware of the fact; but it is
undoubtedly a fact that their influence as authors is greater on the
other side of the Atlantic than on this one.  It is there that they
have their most numerous school of pupils.  It is there that they
are recognized as teachers by hundreds of thousands.  It is of these
thirty millions that they should think, at any rate in part, when
they discuss within their own hearts that question which all authors
do discuss, whether that which they write shall in itself be good or
bad, be true or false.  A writer in England may not, perhaps, think
very much of this with reference to some trifle of which his English
publisher proposes to sell some seven or eight hundred copies.  But
he begins to feel that he should have thought of it when he learns
that twenty or thirty thousand copies of the same have been
scattered through the length and breadth of the United States.  The
English author should feel that he writes for the widest circle of
readers ever yet obtained by the literature of any country.  He
provides not only for his own country and for the States, but for
the readers who are rising by millions in the British colonies.
Canada is supplied chiefly from the presses of Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia, but she is supplied with the works of the mother
country.  India, as I take it, gets all her books direct from
London, as do the West Indies.  Whether or no the Australian
colonies have as yet learned to reprint our books I have never
learned, but I presume that they cannot do so as cheaply as they can
import them.  London with us, and the three cities which I have
named on the other side of the Atlantic, are the places at which
this literature is manufactured; but the demand in the Western
hemisphere is becoming more brisk than that which the Old World
creates.  There are, I have no doubt, more books printed in London
than in all America put together.  A greater extent of letter-press
is put up in London than in the three publishing cities of the
States; but the number of copies issued by the American publishers
is so much greater than those which ours put forth that the greater
bulk of literature is with them.  If this be so, the demand with
them is of course greater than it is with us.

I have spoken here of the privilege which an English author enjoys
by reason of the ever-widening circle of readers to whom he writes.
I should have said the writers of English literature, seeing that
the privilege is of course shared by the American writer.  I profess
my belief that in the States an English author has an advantage over
one of that country merely in the fact of his being English, as a
French milliner has undoubtedly an advantage in her nationality, let
her merits or demerits as a milliner be what they may.  I think that
English books are better liked because they are English.  But I do
not know that there is any feeling with us either for or against an
author because he is American.  I believe that Longfellow stands in
our judgment exactly where he would have stood had he been a tutor
at a college in Oxford instead of a Professor at Cambridge in
Massachusetts.  Prescott is read among us as a historian without any
reference as to his nationality, and by many, as I take it, in
absolute ignorance of his nationality.  Hawthorne, the novelist, is
quite as well known in England as he is in his own country.  But I
do not know that to either of these three is awarded any favor or is
denied any justice because he is an American.  Washington Irving
published many of his works in this country, receiving very large
sums for them from Mr. Murray, and I fancy that in dealing with his
publisher he found neither advantage nor disadvantage in his
nationality; that is, of course, advantage or disadvantage as
respected the light in which his works would be regarded.  It must
be admitted that there is no jealousy in the States against English
authors.  I think that there is a feeling in their favor, but no one
can at any rate allege that there is a feeling against them: I think
I may also assert on the part of my own country that there is no
jealousy here against American authors.  As regards the tastes of
the people, the works of each country flow freely through the other.
That is as it should be.  But when we come to the mode of supply,
things are not exactly as they should be; and I do not believe that
any one will contradict me when I say that the fault is with the
Americans.

I presume that all my readers know the meaning of the word
copyright.  A man's copyright is right in his copy; is that amount
of legal possession in the production of his brains which has been
secured to him by the law of his own country and of others.  Unless
an author were secured by such law, his writings would be of but
little pecuniary value to him, as the right of printing and selling
them would be open to all the world.  In England and in America, and
as I conceive in all countries possessing a literature, there is
such a law, securing to authors and to their heirs, for a term of
years, the exclusive right over their own productions.  That this
should be so in England, as regards English authors, appears to be
so much a matter of course that the copyright of an author seems to
be as naturally his own as a gentleman's deposit at his bank, or his
little investment in the three per cents.  The right of an author to
the value of his own productions in other countries than his own is
not so much a matter of course; but nevertheless, if such
productions have any value in other countries, that value should
belong to him.  This has been felt to be the case between England
and France, and an international copyright now exists.  The fact
that the languages of England and France are different, makes the
matter one of comparatively small moment.  But it has been found to
be for the honor and profit of the two countries that there should
be such a law, and an international copyright does exist.  But if
such an arrangement be needed between two such countries as France
and England--between two countries which do not speak the same
language, or share the same literature--how much more necessary must
it be between England and the United States!  The literature of the
one country is the literature of the other.  The poem that is
popular in London will certainly be popular in New York.  The novel
that is effective among American ladies will be equally so with
those of England.  There can be no doubt as to the importance of
having or of not having a law of copyright between the two
countries.  The only question can be as to the expediency and the
justice.  At present there is no international copyright between
England and the United States, and there is none because the States
have declined to sanction any such law.  It is known by all who are
concerned in the matter on either side of the water that as far as
Great Britain is concerned such a law would meet with no impediment.

Therefore it is to be presumed that the legislators of the States
think it expedient and just to dispense with any such law.  I have
said that there can be no doubt as to the importance of the
question, seeing that the price of English literature in the States
must be most materially affected by it.  Without such law the
Americans are enabled to import English literature without paying
for it.  It is open to any American publisher to reprint any work
from an English copy, and to sell his reprints without any
permission obtained from the English author or from the English
publisher.  The absolute material which the American publisher
sells, he takes, or can take, for nothing.  The paper, ink, and
composition he supplies in the ordinary way of business; but the
very matter which he professes to sell--of the book which is the
object of his trade--he is enabled to possess himself of for
nothing.  If you, my reader, be a popular author, an American
publisher will take the choicest work of your brain, and make
dollars out of it, selling thousands of copies of it in his country,
whereas you can perhaps only sell hundreds of it in your own; and
will either give you nothing for that he takes, or else will explain
to you that he need give you nothing, and that in paying you he
subjects himself to the danger of seeing the property which he has
bought taken again from him by other persons.  If this be so, that
question whether or no there shall be a law of international
copyright between the two countries cannot be unimportant.

But it may be inexpedient that there shall be such a law.  It may be
considered well that, as the influx of English books into America is
much greater than the influx of American books back to England, the
right of obtaining such books for nothing should be reserved,
although the country in doing so robs its own authors of the
advantage which should accrue to them from the English market.  It
might perhaps be thought anything but smart to surrender such an
advantage by the passing of an international copyright bill.  There
are not many trades in which the tradesman can get the chief of his
goods for nothing; and it may be thought that the advantage arising
to the States from such an arrangement of circumstances should not
be abandoned.  But how then about the justice?  It would seem that
the less said upon that subject the better.  I have heard no one say
that an author's property in his own works should not, in accordance
with justice, be insured to him in the one country as well as in the
other.  I have seen no defense of the present position of affairs,
on the score of justice.  The price of books would be enhanced by an
international copyright law, and it is well that books should be
cheap.  That is the only argument used.  So would mutton be cheap if
it could be taken out of a butcher's shop for nothing.

But I absolutely deny the expediency of the present position of the
subject, looking simply to the material advantage of the American
people in the matter, and throwing aside altogether that question of
justice.  I must here, however, explain that I bring no charge
whatsoever against the American publishers.  The English author is a
victim in their hands, but it is by no means their fault that he is
so.  As a rule, they are willing to pay something for the works of
popular English writers; but in arranging as to what payments they
can make, they must of course bear in mind the fact that they have
no exclusive right whatsoever in the things which they purchase.  It
is natural also that they should bear in mind, when making their
purchases and arranging their prices, that they can have the very
thing they are buying without any payment at all, if the price asked
do not suit them.  It is not of the publishers that I complain, or
of any advantage which they take, but of the legislators of the
country, and of the advantage which accrues, or is thought by them
to accrue, to the American people from the absence of an
international copyright law.  It is mean on their part to take such
advantage if it existed; and it is foolish in them to suppose that
any such advantage can accrue.  The absence of any law of copyright
no doubt gives to the American publisher the power of reprinting the
works of English authors without paying for them, seeing that the
English author is undefended.  But the American publisher who brings
out such a reprint is equally undefended in his property; when he
shall have produced his book, his rival in the next street may
immediately reprint it from him, and destroy the value of his
property by underselling him.  It is probable that the first
American publisher will have made some payment to the English author
for the privilege of publishing the book honestly, of publishing it
without recurrence to piracy; and in arranging his price with his
customers he will be of course obliged to debit the book with the
amount so paid.  If the author receive ten cents a copy on every
copy sold, the publisher must add that ten cents to the price he
charges.  But he cannot do this with security, because the book can
be immediately reprinted and sold without any such addition to the
price.  The only security which the American publisher has against
the injury which may be so done to him is the power of doing other
injury in return.  The men who stand high in the trade, and who are
powerful because of the largeness of their dealings, can, in a
certain measure, secure themselves in this way.  Such a firm would
have the power of crushing a small tradesman who should interfere
with him.  But if the large firm commits any such act of injustice,
the little men in the trade have no power of setting themselves
right by counter-injustice.  I need hardly point out what must be
the effect of such a state of things upon the whole publishing
trade; nor need I say more to prove that some law which shall
regulate property in foreign copyrights would be as expedient with
reference to America as it would be just toward England.  But the
wrong done by America to herself does not rest here.  It is true
that more English books are read in the States than American books
in England, but it is equally true that the literature of America is
daily gaining readers among us.  That injury to which English
authors are subjected from the want of protection in the States,
American authors suffer from the want of protection here.  One can
hardly believe that the legislators of the States would willingly
place the brightest of their own fellow-countrymen in this position,
because, in the event of a copyright bill being passed, the balance
of advantage would seem to accrue to England.

Of the literature of the United States, speaking of literature in
its ordinary sense, I do not know that I need say much more.  I
regard the literature of a country as its highest produce, believing
it to be more powerful in its general effect, and more beneficial in
its results, than either statesmanship, professional ability,
religious teaching, or commerce.  And in no part of its national
career have the United States been so successful as in this.  I need
hardly explain that I should commit a monstrous injustice were I to
make a comparison in this matter between England and America.
Literature is the child of leisure and wealth.  It is the produce of
minds which by a happy combination of circumstances have been
enabled to dispense with the ordinary cares of the world.  It can
hardly be expected to come from a young country, or from a new and
still struggling people.  Looking around at our own magnificent
colonies, I hardly remember a considerable name which they have
produced, except that of my excellent old friend Sam Slick.
Nothing, therefore, I think, shows the settled greatness of the
people of the States more significantly than their firm
establishment of a national literature.  This literature runs over
all subjects: American authors have excelled in poetry, in science,
in history, in metaphysics, in law, in theology, and in fiction.
They have attempted all, and failed in none.  What Englishman has
devoted a room to books, and devoted no portion of that room to the
productions of America?

But I must say a word of literature in which I shall not speak of it
in its ordinary sense, and shall yet speak of it in that sense which
of all, perhaps, in the present day should be considered the most
ordinary; I mean the every-day periodical literature of the press.
Most of those who can read, it is to be hoped, read books; but all
who can read do read newspapers.  Newspapers in this country are so
general that men cannot well live without them; but to men and to
women also in the United States they may be said to be the one chief
necessary of life; and yet in the whole length and breadth of the
United States there is not published a single newspaper which seems
to me to be worthy of praise.

A really good newspaper--one excellent at all points--would indeed
be a triumph of honesty and of art.  Not only is such a publication
much to be desired in America, but it is still to be desired in
Great Britain also.  I used, in my younger days, to think of such a
newspaper as a possible publication, and in a certain degree to look
for it; now I expect it only in my dreams.  It should be powerful
without tyranny, popular without triumph, political without party
passion, critical without personal feeling, right in its statements
and just in its judgments, but right and just without pride; it
should be all but omniscient, but not conscious of its omnipotence;
it should be moral, but never strait-laced; it should be well
assured but yet modest; though never humble, it should be free from
boastings.  Above all these things it should be readable, and above
that again it should be true.  I used to think that such a newspaper
might be produced, but I now sadly acknowledge to myself the fact
that humanity is not capable of any work so divine.

The newspapers of the States generally may not only be said to have
reached none of the virtues here named, but to have fallen into all
the opposite vices.  In the first place, they are never true.  In
requiring truth from a newspaper the public should not be anxious to
strain at gnats.  A statement setting forth that a certain
gooseberry was five inches in circumference, whereas in truth its
girth was only two and a half, would give me no offense.  Nor would
I be offended at being told that Lord Derby was appointed to the
premiership, while in truth the Queen had only sent to his lordship,
having as yet come to no definite arrangement.  The demand for truth
which may reasonably be made upon a newspaper amounts to this, that
nothing should be stated not believed to be true, and that nothing
should be stated as to which the truth is important without adequate
ground for such belief.  If a newspaper accuse me of swindling, it
is not sufficient that the writer believe me to be a swindler.  He
should have ample and sufficient ground for such belief, or else in
making such a statement he will write falsely.  In our private life
we all recognize the fact that this is so.  It is understood that a
man is not a whit the less a slanderer because he believes the
slander which he promulgates.  But it seems to me that this is not
sufficiently recognized by many who write for the public press.
Evil things are said, and are probably believed by the writers; they
are said with that special skill for which newspaper writers have in
our days become so conspicuous, defying alike redress by law or
redress by argument; but they are said too often falsely.  The words
are not measured when they are written, and they are allowed to go
forth without any sufficient inquiry into their truth.  But if there
is any ground for such complaint here in England, that ground is
multiplied ten times--twenty times--in the States.  This is not only
shown in the abuse of individuals, in abuse which is as violent as
it is perpetual, but in the treatment of every subject which is
handled.  All idea of truth has been thrown overboard.  It seems to
be admitted that the only object is to produce a sensation, and that
it is admitted by both writer and reader that sensation and veracity
are incompatible.  Falsehood has become so much a matter of course
with American newspapers that it has almost ceased to be falsehood.
Nobody thinks me a liar because I deny that I am at home when I am
in my study.  The nature of the arrangement is generally understood.
So also is it with the American newspapers.

But American newspapers are also unreadable.  It is very bad that
they should be false, but it is very surprising that they should be
dull.  Looking at the general intelligence of the people, one would
have thought that a readable newspaper, put out with all pleasant
appurtenances of clear type, good paper, and good internal
arrangement, would have been a thing specially within their reach.
But they have failed in every detail.  Though their papers are
always loaded with sensation headings, there are seldom sensation
paragraphs to follow.  The paragraphs do not fit the headings.
Either they cannot be found, or if found, they seem to have escaped
from their proper column to some distant and remote portion of the
sheet.  One is led to presume that no American editor has any plan
in the composition of his newspaper.  I never know whether I have as
yet got to the very heart's core of the daily journal, or whether I
am still to go on searching for that heart's core.  Alas! it too
often happens that there is no heart's core.  The whole thing seems
to have been put out at hap-hazard.  And then the very writing is in
itself below mediocrity; as though a power of expression in properly
arranged language was not required by a newspaper editor, either as
regards himself or as regards his subordinates.  One is driven to
suppose that the writers for the daily press are not chosen with any
view to such capability.  A man ambitious of being on the staff of
an American newspaper should be capable of much work, should be
satisfied with small pay, should be indifferent to the world's good
usage, should be rough, ready, and of long sufferance; but, above
all, he should be smart.  The type of almost all American newspapers
is wretched--I think I may say of all--so wretched that that alone
forbids one to hope for pleasure in reading them.  They are ill
written, ill printed, and ill arranged, and in fact are not
readable.  They are bought, glanced at, and thrown away.

They are full of boastings, not boastings simply as to their
country, their town, or their party, but of boastings as to
themselves.  And yet they possess no self-assurance.  It is always
evident that they neither trust themselves, nor expect to be
trusted.  They have made no approach to that omniscience which
constitutes the great marvel of our own daily press; but finding it
necessary to write as though they possessed it, they fall into
blunders which are almost as marvelous.  Justice and right judgment
are out of the question with them.  A political party end is always
in view, and political party warfare in America admits of any
weapons.  No newspaper in America is really powerful or popular; and
yet they are tyrannical and overbearing.  The New York Herald has, I
believe, the largest sale of any daily newspaper; but it is
absolutely without political power, and in these times of war has
truckled to the government more basely than any other paper.  It has
an enormous sale, but so far is it from having achieved popularity
that no man on any side ever speaks a good word for it.  All
American newspapers deal in politics as a matter of course; but
their politics have ever regard to men and not to measures.
Vituperation is their natural political weapon; but since the
President's ministers have assumed the power of stopping newspapers
which are offensive to them, they have shown that they can descend
below vituperation to eulogy.

I shall be accused of using very strong language against the
newspaper press of America.  I can only say that I do not know how
to make that language too strong.  Of course there are newspapers as
to which the editors and writers may justly feel that my remarks, if
applied to them, are unmerited.  In writing on such a subject, I can
only deal with the whole as a whole.  During my stay in the country,
I did my best to make myself acquainted with the nature of its
newspapers, knowing in how great a degree its population depends on
them for its daily store of information; for newspapers in the
States of America have a much wider, or rather closer circulation,
than they do with us.  Every man and almost every woman sees a
newspaper daily.  They are very cheap, and are brought to every
man's hand, without trouble to himself, at every turn that he takes
in his day's work.  It would be much for the advantage of the
country that they should be good of their kind; but, if I am able to
form any judgment on the matter, they are not good.



CHAPTER XVI.

CONCLUSION.


In one of the earlier chapters of this volume--now some seven or
eight chapters past--I brought myself on my travels back to Boston.
It was not that my way homeward lay by that route, seeing that my
fate required me to sail from New York; but I could not leave the
country without revisiting my friends in Massachusetts.  I have told
how I was there in the sleighing time, and how pleasant were the
mingled slush and frost of the snowy winter.  In the morning the
streets would be hard and crisp and the stranger would surely fall
if he were not prepared to walk on glaciers.  In the afternoon he
would be wading through rivers, and, if properly armed at all points
with India-rubber, would enjoy the rivers as he waded.  But the air
would be always kindly, and the east wind there, if it was east as I
was told, had none of that power of dominion which makes us all so
submissive to its behests in London.  For myself, I do not believe
that the real east wind blows elsewhere.

And when the snow went in Boston I went with it.  The evening before
I left I watched them as they carted away the dirty uncouth blocks
which had been broken up with pickaxes in Washington Street, and was
melancholy as I reflected that I too should no longer be known in
the streets.  My weeks in Boston had not been very many, but
nevertheless there were haunts there which I knew as though my feet
had trodden them for years.  There were houses to which I could have
gone with my eyes blindfold; doors of which the latches were
familiar to my hands; faces which I knew so well that they had
ceased to put on for me the fictitious smiles of courtesy.  Faces,
houses, doors, and haunts,--where are they now?  For me they are as
though they had never been.  They are among the things which one
would fain remember as one remembers a dream.  Look back on it as a
vision and it is all pleasant; but if you realize your vision and
believe your dream to be a fact, all your pleasure is obliterated by
regret.

I know that I shall never again be at Boston, and that I have said
that about the Americans which would make me unwelcome as a guest if
I were there.  It is in this that my regret consists; for this
reason that I would wish to remember so many social hours as though
they had been passed in sleep.  They who will expect blessings from
me, will say among themselves that I have cursed them.  As I read
the pages which I have written, I feel that words which I intended
for blessings when I prepared to utter them have gone nigh to turn
themselves into curses.

I have ever admired the United States as a nation.  I have loved
their liberty, their prowess, their intelligence, and their
progress.  I have sympathized with a people who themselves have had
no sympathy with passive security and inaction.  I have felt
confidence in them, and have known, as it were, that their industry
must enable them to succeed as a people while their freedom would
insure to them success as a nation.  With these convictions I went
among them wishing to write of them good words--words which might be
pleasant for them to read, while they might assist perhaps in
producing a true impression of them here at home.  But among my good
words there are so many which are bitter, that I fear I shall have
failed in my object as regards them.  And it seems to me, as I read
once more my own pages, that in saying evil things of my friends I
have used language stronger than I intended; whereas I have omitted
to express myself with emphasis when I have attempted to say good
things.  Why need I have told of the mud of Washington, or have
exposed the nakedness of Cairo?  Why did I speak with such eager
enmity of those poor women in the New York cars, who never injured
me, now that I think of it?  Ladies of New York, as I write this,
the words which were written among you are printed and cannot be
expunged; but I tender to you my apologies from my home in England.
And that Van Wyck Committee--might I not have left those contractors
to be dealt with by their own Congress, seeing that that Congress
committee was by no means inclined to spare them?  I might have kept
my pages free from gall, and have sent my sheets to the press unhurt
by the conviction that I was hurting those who had dealt kindly by
me!  But what then?  Was any people ever truly served by eulogy; or
an honest cause furthered by undue praise?

O my friends with thin skins--and here I protest that a thick skin
is a fault not to be forgiven in a man or a nation, whereas a thin
skin is in itself a merit, if only the wearer of it will be the
master and not the slave of his skin--O my friends with thin skins,
ye whom I call my cousins and love as brethren, will ye not forgive
me these harsh words that I have spoken?  They have been spoken in
love--with a true love, a brotherly love, a love that has never been
absent from the heart while the brain was coining them.  I had my
task to do, and I could not take the pleasant and ignore the
painful.  It may perhaps be that as a friend I had better not have
written either good or bad.  But no!  To say that would indeed be to
speak calumny of your country.  A man may write of you truly, and
yet write that which you would read with pleasure; only that your
skins are so thin.  The streets of Washington are muddy and her ways
are desolate.  The nakedness of Cairo is very naked.  And those
ladies of New York--is it not to be confessed that they are somewhat
imperious in their demands?  As for the Van Wyck Committee, have I
not repeated the tale which you have told yourselves?  And is it not
well that such tales should be told?

And yet ye will not forgive me; because your skins are thin, and
because the praise of others is the breath of your nostrils.

I do not know that an American as an individual is more thin skinned
than an Englishman; but as the representative of a nation it may
almost be said of him that he has no skin at all.  Any touch comes
at once upon the net-work of his nerves and puts in operation all
his organs of feeling with the violence of a blow.  And for this
peculiarity he has been made the mark of much ridicule.  It shows
itself in two ways: either by extreme displeasure when anything is
said disrespectful of his country, or by the strong eulogy with
which he is accustomed to speak of his own institutions and of those
of his countrymen whom at the moment he may chance to hold in high
esteem.  The manner in which this is done is often ridiculous.
"Sir, what do you think of Mr. Jefferson Brick?  Mr. Jefferson
Brick, sir, is one of our most remarkable men."  And again: "Do you
like our institutions, sir?  Do you find that philanthropy,
religion, philosophy and the social virtues are cultivated on a
scale commensurate with the unequaled liberty and political
advancement of the nation?"  There is something absurd in such a
mode of address when it is repeated often.  But hero worship and
love of country are not absurd; and do not these addresses show
capacity for hero worship and an aptitude for the love of country?
Jefferson Brick may not be a hero; but a capacity for such worship
is something.  Indeed the capacity is everything, for the need of a
hero will produce a hero.  And it is the same with that love of
country.  A people that are proud of their country will see that
there is something in their country to justify their pride.  Do we
not all of us feel assured by the intense nationality of an American
that he will not desert his nation in the hour of her need?  I feel
that assurance respecting them; and at those moments in which I am
moved to laughter by the absurdities of their addresses to me I feel
it the strongest.

I left Boston with the snow, and returning to New York found that
the streets there were dry and that the winter was nearly over.  As
I had passed through New York to Boston the streets had been by no
means dry.  The snow had lain in small mountains over which the
omnibuses made their way down Broadway, till at the bottom of that
thoroughfare, between Trinity Church and Bowling Green, alp became
piled upon alp, and all traffic was full of danger.  The cursed love
of gain still took men to Wall Street, but they had to fight their
way thither through physical difficulties which must have made even
the state of the money market a matter of indifference to them.
They do not seem to me to manage the winter in New York so well as
they do in Boston.  But now, on my last return thither, the alps
were gone, the roads were clear, and one could travel through the
city with no other impediment than those of treading on women's
dresses if one walked, or having to look after women's band-boxes
and pay their fares and take their change if one used the omnibuses.

And now had come the end of my adventure, and as I set my foot once
more upon the deck of the Cunard steamer, I felt that my work was
done; whether it were done ill or well, or whether indeed any
approach to the doing of it had been attained, all had been done
that I could accomplish.  No further opportunity remained to me of
seeing, hearing, or of speaking.  I had come out thither, having
resolved to learn a little that I might if possible teach that
little to others; and now the lesson was learned, or must remain
unlearned.  But in carrying out my resolution I had gradually risen
in my ambition, and had mounted from one stage of inquiry to
another, till at last I had found myself burdened with the task of
ascertaining whether or no the Americans were doing their work as a
nation well or ill; and now, if ever, I must be prepared to put
forth the result of my inquiry.  As I walked up and down the deck of
the steamboat I confess I felt that I had been somewhat arrogant.

I had been a few days over six months in the States, and I was
engaged in writing a book of such a nature that a man might well
engage himself for six years, or perhaps for sixty, in obtaining the
materials for it.  There was nothing in the form of government, or
legislature, or manners of the people as to which I had not taken
upon myself to say something.  I was professing to understand their
strength and their weakness; and was daring to censure their faults
and to eulogize their virtues.  "Who is he," an American would say,
"that he comes and judges us?  His judgment is nothing."  "Who is
he," an Englishman would say, "that he comes and teaches us?  His
teaching is of no value."

In answer to this I have but a small plea to make--I have done my
best.  I have nothing "extenuated, and have set down naught in
malice."  I do feel that my volumes have blown themselves out into
proportions greater than I had intended; greater not in mass of
pages, but in the matter handled.  I am frequently addressing my own
muse, who I am well aware is not Clio, and asking her whither she is
wending.  "Cease, thou wrong-headed one, to meddle with these
mysteries."  I appeal to her frequently, but ever in vain.  One
cannot drive one's muse, nor yet always lead her.  Of the various
women with which a man is blessed, his muse is by no means the least
difficult to manage.

But again I put in my slight plea.  In doing as I have done, I have
at least done my best.  I have endeavored to judge without
prejudice, and to hear with honest ears and to see with honest eyes.
The subject, moreover, on which I have written is one which, though
great, is so universal in its bearings that it may be said to admit,
without impropriety, of being handled by the unlearned as well as
the learned; by those who have grown gray in the study of
constitutional lore, and by those who have simply looked on at the
government of men as we all look on at those matters which daily
surround us.  There are matters as to which a man should never take
a pen in hand unless he has given to them much labor.  The botanist
must have learned to trace the herbs and flowers before he can
presume to tell us how God has formed them.  But the death of Hector
is a fit subject for a boy's verses, though Homer also sang of it.
I feel that there is scope for a book on the United States form of
government as it was founded, and as it has since framed itself,
which might do honor to the life-long studies of some one of those
great constitutional pundits whom we have among us; but,
nevertheless, the plain words of a man who is no pundit need not
disgrace the subject, if they be honestly written, and if he who
writes them has in his heart an honest love of liberty.  Such were
my thoughts as I walked the deck of the Cunard steamer.  Then I
descended to my cabin, settled my luggage, and prepared a table for
the continuance of my work.  It was fourteen days from that time
before I reached London, but the fourteen days to me were not
unpleasant.  The demon of sea-sickness spares me always, and if I
can find on board one or two who are equally fortunate--who can eat
with me, drink with me, and talk with me--I do not know that a
passage across the Atlantic is by any means a terrible evil to me.

In finishing these volumes after the fashion in which they have been
written throughout, I feel that I am bound to express a fixed
opinion on two or three points, and that if I have not enabled
myself to do so, I have traveled through the country in vain.  I am
bound by the very nature of my undertaking to say whether, according
to such view as I have enabled myself to take of them, the Americans
have succeeded as a nation politically and socially; and in doing
this I ought to be able to explain how far slavery has interfered
with such success.  I am bound also, writing at the present moment,
to express some opinion as to the result of this war, and to declare
whether the North or the South may be expected to be victorious--
explaining in some rough way what may be the results of such
victory, and how such results will affect the question of slavery;
and I shall leave my task unfinished if I do not say what may be the
possible chances of future quarrel between England and the States.
That there has been and is much hot blood and angry feeling, no man
doubts; but such angry feeling has existed among many nations
without any probability of war.  In this case, with reference to
this ill will that has certainly established itself between us and
that other people, is there any need that it should be satisfied by
war and allayed by blood?

No one, I think, can doubt that the founders of the great American
Commonwealth made an error in omitting to provide some means for the
gradual extinction of slavery throughout the States.  That error did
not consist in any liking for slavery.  There was no feeling in
favor of slavery on the part of those who made themselves prominent
at the political birth of the nation.  I think I shall be justified
in saying that at that time the opinion that slavery is itself a
good thing, that it is an institution of divine origin and fit to be
perpetuated among men as in itself excellent, had not found that
favor in the Southern States in which it is now held.  Jefferson,
who has been regarded as the leader of the Southern or Democratic
party, has left ample testimony that he regarded slavery as an evil.
It is, I think, true that he gave such testimony much more freely
when he was speaking or writing as a private individual than he ever
allowed himself to do when his words were armed with the weight of
public authority.  But it is clear that on the whole he was opposed
to slavery, and I think there can be little doubt that he and his
party looked forward to a natural death for that evil.  Calculation
was made that slavery when not recruited afresh from Africa could
not maintain its numbers, and that gradually the negro population
would become extinct.  This was the error made.  It was easier to
look forward to such a result and hope for such an end of the
difficulty, than to extinguish slavery by a great political
movement, which must doubtless have been difficult and costly.  The
Northern States got rid of slavery by the operation of their
separate legislatures, some at one date and some at others.  The
slaves were less numerous in the North than in the South, and the
feeling adverse to slaves was stronger in the North than in the
South.  Mason and Dixon's line, which now separates slave soil from
free soil, merely indicates the position in the country at which the
balance turned.  Maryland and Virginia were not inclined to make
great immediate sacrifices for the manumission of their slaves; but
the gentlemen of those States did not think that slavery was a
divine institution destined to flourish forever as a blessing in
their land.

The maintenance of slavery was, I think, a political mistake--a
political mistake, not because slavery is politically wrong, but
because the politicians of the day made erroneous calculations as to
the probability of its termination.  So the income tax may be a
political blunder with us--not because it is in itself a bad tax,
but because those who imposed it conceived that they were imposing
it for a year or two, whereas, now, men do not expect to see the end
of it.  The maintenance of slavery was a political mistake; and I
cannot think that the Americans in any way lessen the weight of
their own error by protesting, as they occasionally do, that slavery
was a legacy made over to them from England.  They might as well say
that traveling in carts without springs, at the rate of three miles
an hour, was a legacy made over to them by England.  On that matter
of traveling they have not been contented with the old habits left
to them, but have gone ahead and made railroads.  In creating those
railways the merit is due to them; and so also is the demerit of
maintaining those slaves.

That demerit and that mistake have doubtless brought upon the
Americans the grievances of their present position; and will, as I
think, so far be accompanied by ultimate punishment that they will
be the immediate means of causing the first disintegration of their
nation.  I will leave it to the Americans themselves to say whether
such disintegration must necessarily imply that they have failed in
their political undertaking.  The most loyal citizens of the
Northern States would have declared a month or two since--and for
aught I know would declare now--that any disintegration of the
States implied absolute failure.  One stripe erased from the banner,
one star lost from the firmament, would entail upon them all the
disgrace of national defeat!  It had been their boast that they
would always advance, never retreat.  They had looked forward to add
ever State upon State, and Territory to Territory, till the whole
continent should be bound together in the same union.  To go back
from that now, to fall into pieces and be divided, to become smaller
in the eyes of the nations, to be absolutely halfed, as some would
say of such division, would be national disgrace, and would amount
to political failure.  "Let us fight for the whole," such men said,
and probably do say.  "To lose anything is to lose all!"

But the citizens of the States who speak and think thus, though they
may be the most loyal, are perhaps not politically the most wise.
And I am inclined to think that that defiant claim of every star,
that resolve to possess every stripe upon the banner, had become
somewhat less general when I was leaving the country than I had
found it to be at the time of my arrival there.  While things were
going badly with the North, while there was no tale of any battle to
be told except of those at Bull's Run and Springfield, no Northern
man would admit a hint that secession might ultimately prevail in
Georgia or Alabama.  But the rebels had been driven out of Missouri
when I was leaving the States, they had retreated altogether from
Kentucky, having been beaten in one engagement there, and from a
great portion of Tennessee, having been twice beaten in that State.
The coast of North Carolina, and many points of the Southern coast,
were in the hands of the Northern army, while the army of the South
was retreating from all points into the center of their country.
Whatever may have been the strategetical merits or demerits of the
Northern generals, it is at any rate certain that their apparent
successes were greedily welcomed by the people, and created an idea
that things were going well with the cause.  And as all this took
place, it seemed to me that I heard less about the necessary
integrity of the old flag.  While as yet they were altogether
unsuccessful, they were minded to make no surrender.  But with their
successes came the feeling, that in taking much they might perhaps
allow themselves to yield something.  This was clearly indicated by
the message sent to Congress by the President, in February, 1862, in
which he suggested that Congress should make arrangements for the
purchase of the slaves in the border States; so that in the event of
secession--accomplished secession--in the Gulf States, the course of
those border States might be made clear for them.  They might
hesitate as to going willingly with the North, while possessing
slaves, as to sitting themselves peaceably down as a small slave
adjunct to a vast free-soil nation, seeing that their property would
always be in peril.  Under such circumstances a slave adjunct to the
free-soil nation would not long be possible.  But if it could be
shown to them that in the event of their adhering to the North
compensation would be forthcoming, then, indeed, the difficulty in
arranging an advantageous line between the two future nations might
be considerably modified.  This message of the President's was
intended to signify that secession on favorable terms might be
regarded by the North as not undesirable.  Moderate men were
beginning to whisper that, after all, the Gulf States were no source
either of national wealth or of national honor.  Had there not been
enough at Washington of cotton lords and cotton laws?  When I have
suggested that no Senator from Georgia would ever again sit in the
United States Senate, American gentlemen have received my remark
with a slight demur, and have then proceeded to argue the case.  Six
months before they would have declared against me and not have
argued.

I will leave it to Americans themselves to say whether that
disintegration of the States will, should it ever be realized, imply
that they have failed in their political undertaking.  If they do
not protest that it argues failure, I do not think that their
feelings will be hurt by such protestations on the part of others.
I have said that the blunder made by the founders of the nation with
regard to slavery has brought with it this secession as its
punishment.  But such punishments come generally upon nations as
great mercies.  Ireland's famine was the punishment of her
imprudence and idleness, but it has given to her prosperity and
progress.  And indeed, to speak with more logical correctness, the
famine was no punishment to Ireland, nor will secession be a
punishment to the Northern States.  In the long result, step will
have gone on after step, and effect will have followed cause, till
the American people will at last acknowledge that all these matters
have been arranged for their advantage and promotion.  It may be
that a nation now and then goes to the wall, and that things go from
bad to worse with a large people.  It has been so with various
nations, and with many people since history was first written.  But
when it has been so, the people thus punished have been idle and
bad.  They have not only done evil in their generation, but have
done more evil than good, and have contributed their power to the
injury rather than to the improvement of mankind.  It may be that
this or that national fault may produce or seem to produce some
consequent calamity.  But the balance of good or evil things which
fall to a people's share will indicate with certainty their average
conduct as a nation.  The one will be the certain sequence of the
other.  If it be that the Americans of the Northern States have done
well in their time, that they have assisted in the progress of the
world, and made things better for mankind rather than worse, then
they will come out of this trouble without eventual injury.  That
which came in the guise of punishment for a special fault, will be a
part of the reward resulting from good conduct in the general.  And
as to this matter of slavery, in which I think that they have
blundered both politically and morally, has it not been found
impossible hitherto for them to cleanse their hands of that taint?
But that which they could not do for themselves the course of events
is doing for them.  If secession establish herself, though it be
only secession of the Gulf States, the people of the United States
will soon be free from slavery.

In judging of the success or want of success of any political
institutions or of any form of government, we should be guided, I
think, by the general results, and not by any abstract rules as to
the right or wrong of those institutions or of that form.  It might
be easy for a German lawyer to show that our system of trial by jury
is open to the gravest objections, and that it sins against common
sense.  But if that system gives us substantial justice, and
protects us from the tyranny of men in office, the German will not
succeed in making us believe that it is a bad system.  When looking
into the matter of the schools at Boston, I observed to one of the
committee of management that the statements with which I was
supplied, though they told me how many of the children went to
school, did not tell me how long they remained at school.  The
gentleman replied that that information was to be obtained from the
result of the schooling of the population generally.  Every boy and
girl around him could read and write, and could enjoy reading and
writing.  There was therefore evidence to show that they remained at
school sufficiently long for the required purposes.  It was fair
that I should judge of the system from the results.  Here, in
England, we generally object to much that the Americans have adopted
into their form of government, and think that many of their
political theories are wrong.  We do not like universal suffrage.
We do not like a periodical change in the first magistrate; and we
like quite as little a periodical permanence in the political
officers immediately under the chief magistrate; we are, in short,
wedded to our own forms, and therefore opposed by judgment to forms
differing from our own.  But I think we all acknowledge that the
United States, burdened as they are with these political evils--as
we think them--have grown in strength and material prosperity with a
celerity of growth hitherto unknown among nations.  We may dislike
Americans personally, we may find ourselves uncomfortable when
there, and unable to sympathize with them when away.  We may believe
them to be ambitious, unjust, self-idolatrous, or irreligious; but
unless we throw our judgment altogether overboard, we cannot believe
them to be a weak people, a poor people, a people with low spirits
or with idle hands.  Now to what is it that the government of a
country should chiefly look?  What special advantages do we expect
from our own government?  Is it not that we should be safe at home
and respected abroad--that laws should be maintained, but that they
should be so maintained that they should not be oppressive?  There
are, doubtless, countries in which the government professes to do
much more than this for its people--countries in which the
government is paternal; in which it regulates the religion of the
people, and professes to enforce on all the national children
respect for the governors, teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters.
But that is not our idea of a government.  That is not what we
desire to see established among ourselves or established among
others.  Safety from foreign foes, respect from foreign foes and
friends, security under the law and security from the law, this is
what we expect from our government; and if I add to this that we
expect to have these good things provided at a fairly moderate cost,
I think I have exhausted the list of our requirements.  I hardly
think that we even yet expect the government to take the first steps
in the rudimentary education of the people.  We certainly do not
expect it to make the people religious, or to keep them honest.

And if the Americans with their form of government have done for
themselves all that we expect our government to do for us; if they
have with some fair approach to general excellence obtained respect
abroad and security at home from foreign foes; if they have made
life, liberty, and property safe under their laws, and have also so
written and executed their laws as to secure their people from legal
oppression,--I maintain that they are entitled to a verdict in their
favor, let us object as we may to universal suffrage, to four years'
Presidents and four years' presidential cabinets.  What, after all,
matters the theory or the system, whether it be king or president,
universal suffrage or ten-pound voter, so long as the people be free
and prosperous?  King and president, suffrage by poll and suffrage
by property, are but the means.  If the end be there, if the thing
has been done, king and president, open suffrage and close suffrage,
may alike be declared to have been successful.  The Americans have
been in existence as a nation for seventy-five years, and have
achieved an amount of foreign respect during that period greater
than any other nation ever obtained in double the time.  And this
has been given to them, not in deference to the statesmanlike craft
of their diplomatic and other officers, but on grounds the very
opposite of those.  It has been given to them because they form a
numerous, wealthy, brave, and self-asserting nation.  It is, I
think, unnecessary to prove that such foreign respect has been given
to them; but were it necessary, nothing would prove it more strongly
than the regard which has been universally paid by European
governments to the blockade placed during this war on the Southern
ports by the government of the United States.  Had the nation been
placed by general consent in any class of nations below the first,
England, France, and perhaps Russia would have taken the matter into
their own hands, and have settled for the States, either united or
disunited, at any rate that question of the blockade.  And the
Americans have been safe at home from foreign foes; so safe, that no
other strong people but ourselves have enjoyed anything approaching
to their security since their foundation.  Nor has our security been
at all equal to theirs, if we are to count our nationality as
extending beyond the British Isles.  Then as to security under their
laws and from their laws!  Those laws and the system of their
management have been taken almost entirely from us, and have so been
administered that life and property have been safe, and the subject
also has been free, under the law.  I think that this may be taken
for granted, seeing that they who have been most opposed to American
forms of government have never asserted the reverse.  I may be told
of a man being lynched in one State, or tarred and feathered in
another, or of a duel in a third being "fought at sight."  So I may
be told also of men garroted in London, and of tithe proctors buried
in a bog without their ears in Ireland.  Neither will seventy years
of continuance, nor will seven hundred, secure such an observance of
laws as will prevent temporary ebullition of popular feeling, or
save a people from the chance disgrace of occasional outrage.
Taking the general, life and limb and property have been as safe in
the States as in other civilized countries with which we are
acquainted.

As to their personal liberty under their laws, I know it will be
said that they have surrendered all claim to any such precious
possession by the facility with which they have now surrendered the
privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.  It has been taken from
them, as I have endeavored to show, illegally, and they have
submitted to the loss and to the illegality without a murmur!  But
in such a matter I do not think it fair to judge them by their
conduct in such a moment as the present.  That this is the very
moment in which to judge of the efficiency of their institutions
generally, of the aptitude of those institutions for the security of
the nation, I readily acknowledge; but when a ship is at sea in a
storm, riding out through all that the winds and waves can do to
her, one does not condemn her because a yard-arm gives way, nor even
though the mainmast should go by the board.  If she can make her
port, saving life and cargo, she is a good ship, let her losses in
spars and rigging be what they may.  In this affair of the habeas
corpus we will wait awhile before we come to any final judgment.  If
it be that the people, when the war is over, shall consent to live
under a military or other dictatorship, that they shall quietly
continue their course as a nation without recovery of their rights
of freedom, then we shall have to say that their institutions were
not founded in a soil of sufficient depth, and that they gave way
before the first high wind that blew on them.  I myself do not
expect such a result.

I think we must admit that the Americans have received from their
government, or rather from their system of policy, that aid and
furtherance which they required from it; and, moreover, such aid and
furtherance as we expect from our system of government.  We must
admit that they have been great, and free, and prosperous, as we
also have become.  And we must admit also that in some matters they
have gone forward in advance of us.  They have educated their
people, as we have not educated ours.  They have given to their
millions a personal respect, and a standing above the abjectness of
poverty, which with us are much less general than with them.  These
things, I grant, have not come of their government, and have not
been produced by their written Constitution.  They are the happy
results of their happy circumstances.  But so also are not those
evil attributes which we sometimes assign to them the creatures of
their government or of their Constitution.  We acknowledge them to
be well educated, intelligent, philanthropic, and industrious; but
we say that they are ambitious, unjust, self-idolatrous, and
irreligious.  If so, let us at any rate balance the virtues against
the vices.  As to their ambition, it is a vice that leans so to
virtue's side that it hardly needs an apology.  As to their
injustice, or rather dishonesty, I have said what I have to say on
that matter.  I am not going to flinch from the accusation I have
brought, though I am aware that in bringing it I have thrown away
any hope that I might have had of carrying with me the good-will of
the Americans for my book.  The love of money--or rather of making
money--carried to an extreme, has lessened that instinctive respect
for the rights of meum and tuum, which all men feel more or less,
and which, when encouraged within the human breast, finds its result
in perfect honesty.  Other nations, of which I will not now stop to
name even one, have had their periods of natural dishonesty.  It may
be that others are even now to be placed in the same category.  But
it is a fault which industry and intelligence combined will after
awhile serve to lessen and to banish.  The industrious man desires
to keep the fruit of his own industry, and the intelligent man will
ultimately be able to do so.  That the Americans are self-idolaters
is perhaps true--with a difference.  An American desires you to
worship his country, or his brother; but he does not often, by any
of the usual signs of conceit, call upon you to worship himself; as
an American, treating of America, he is self-idolatrous; that is a
self-idolatry which I can endure.  Then, as to his want of religion--
and it is a very sad want--I can only say of him that I, as an
Englishman, do not feel myself justified in flinging the first stone
at him.  In that matter of religion, as in the matter of education,
the American, I think, stands on a level higher than ours.  There is
not in the States so absolute an ignorance of religion as is to be
found in some of our manufacturing and mining districts, and also,
alas! in some of our agricultural districts; but also, I think,
there is less of respect and veneration for God's word among their
educated classes than there is with us; and, perhaps, also less
knowledge as to God's word.  The general religious level is, I
think, higher with them; but there is, if I am right in my
supposition, with us a higher eminence in religion, as there is also
a deeper depth of ungodliness.

I think, then, that we are bound to acknowledge that the Americans
have succeeded as a nation, politically and socially.  When I speak
of social success, I do not mean to say that their manners are
correct according to this or that standard; I will not say that they
are correct or are not correct.  In that matter of manners I have
found those with whom it seemed to me natural that I should
associate very pleasant according to my standard.  I do not know
that I am a good critic on such a subject, or that I have ever
thought much of it with the view of criticising; I have been happy
and comfortable with them, and for me that has been sufficient.  In
speaking of social success I allude to their success in private life
as distinguished from that which they have achieved in public life;
to their successes in commerce, in mechanics, in the comforts and
luxuries of life, in physic and all that leads to the solace of
affliction, in literature, and I may add also, considering the youth
of the nation, in the arts.  We are, I think, bound to acknowledge
that they have succeeded.  And if they have succeeded, it is vain
for us to say that a system is wrong which has, at any rate,
admitted of such success.  That which was wanted from some form of
government, has been obtained with much more than average
excellence; and therefore the form adopted has approved itself as
good.  You may explain to a farmer's wife, with indisputable logic,
that her churn is a bad churn; but as long as she turns out butter
in greater quantity, in better quality, and with more profit than
her neighbors, you will hardly induce her to change it.  It may be
that with some other churn she might have done even better; but,
under such circumstances, she will have a right to think well of the
churn she uses.

The American Constitution is now, I think, at the crisis of its
severest trial.  I conceive it to be by no means perfect, even for
the wants of the people who use it; and I have already endeavored to
explain what changes it seems to need.  And it has had this defect--
that it has permitted a falling away from its intended modes of
action, while its letter has been kept sacred.  As I have endeavored
to show, universal suffrage and democratic action in the Senate were
not intended by the framers of the Constitution.  In this respect
the Constitution has, as it were, fallen through, and it is needed
that its very beams should be restrengthened.  There are also other
matters as to which it seems that some change is indispensable.  So
much I have admitted.  But, not the less, judging of it by the
entirety of the work that it has done, I think that we are bound to
own that it has been successful.

And now, with regard to this tedious war, of which from day to day
we are still, in this month of May, 1862, hearing details which
teach us to think that it can hardly as yet be near its end.  To
what may we rationally look as its result?  Of one thing I myself
feel tolerably certain, that its result will not be nothing, as some
among us have seemed to suppose may be probable.  I cannot believe
that all this energy on the part of the North will be of no avail,
more than I suppose that Southern perseverance will be of no avail.
There are those among us who say that a secession will at last be
accomplished; the North should have yielded to the South at once,
and that nothing will be gained by their great expenditure of life
and treasure.  I can by no means bring myself to agree with these.
I also look to the establishment of secession.  Seeing how essential
and thorough are the points of variance between the North and the
South, how unlike the one people is to the other, and how necessary
it is that their policies should be different; seeing how deep are
their antipathies, and how fixed is each side in the belief of its
own rectitude and in the belief also of the other's political
baseness, I can not believe that the really Southern States will
ever again be joined in amicable union with those of the North.
They, the States of the Gulf, may be utterly subjugated, and the
North may hold over them military power.  Georgia and her sisters
may for awhile belong to the Union, as one conquered country belongs
to another.  But I do not think that they will ever act with the
Union; and, as I imagine, the Union before long will agree to a
separation.  I do not mean to prophesy that the result will be thus
accomplished.  It may be that the South will effect their own
independence before they lay down their arms.  I think, however,
that we may look forward to such independence, whether it be
achieved in that way, or in this, or in some other.

But not on that account will the war have been of no avail to the
North.  I think it must be already evident to all those who have
looked into the matter, that had the North yielded to the first call
made by the South for secession all the slave States must have gone.
Maryland would have gone, carrying Delaware in its arms; and if
Maryland, all south of Maryland.  If Maryland had gone, the capital
would have gone.  If the government had resolved to yield, Virginia
to the east would assuredly have gone, and I think there can be no
doubt that Missouri, to the west, would have gone also.  The feeling
for the Union in Kentucky was very strong, but I do not think that
even Kentucky could have saved itself.  To have yielded to the
Southern demands would have been to have yielded everything.  But no
man now presumes, let the contest go as it will, that Maryland and
Delaware will go with the South.  The secessionists of Baltimore do
not think so, nor the gentlemen and ladies of Washington, whose
whole hearts are in the Southern cause.  No man thinks that Maryland
will go, and few, I believe, imagine that either Missouri or
Kentucky will be divided from the North.  I will not pretend what
may be the exact line, but I myself feel confident that it will run
south both of Virginia and of Kentucky.

If the North do conquer the South, and so arrange their matters that
the Southern States shall again become members of the Union, it will
be admitted that they have done all that they ought to do.  If they
do not do this--if instead of doing this, which would be all that
they desire, they were in truth to do nothing; to win finally not
one foot of ground from the South--a supposition which I regard as
impossible--I think that we should still admit after awhile that
they had done their duty in endeavoring to maintain the integrity of
the empire.  But if, as a third and more probable alternative, they
succeed in rescuing from the South and from slavery four or five of
the finest States of the old Union--and a vast portion of the
continent to be beaten by none other in salubrity, fertility,
beauty, and political importance--will it not then be admitted that
the war has done some good, and that the life and treasure have not
been spent in vain?

That is the termination of the contest to which I look forward.  I
think that there will be secession, but that the terms of secession
will be dictated by the North, not by the South; and among these
terms I expect to see an escape from slavery for those border States
to which I have alluded.  In that proposition which in February last
(1862) was made by the President, and which has since been
sanctioned by the Senate, I think we may see the first step toward
this measure.  It may probably be the case that many of the slaves
will be driven South; that as the owners of those slaves are driven
from their holdings in Virginia they will take their slaves with
them, or send them before them.  The manumission, when it reaches
Virginia, will not probably enfranchise the half million of slaves
who, in 1860, were counted among its population.  But as to that I
confess myself to be comparatively careless; it is not the concern
which I have now at heart.  For myself, I shall feel satisfied if
that manumission shall reach the million of whites by whom Virginia
is populated; or if not that million in its integrity, then that
other million by which its rich soil would soon be tenanted.  There
are now about four million of white men and women inhabiting the
slave States which I have described, and I think it will be
acknowledged that the Northern States will have done something with
their armies if they succeed in rescuing those four millions from
the stain and evil of slavery.

There is a third question which I have asked myself, and to which I
have undertaken to give some answer.  When this war be over between
the Northern and Southern States, will there come upon us a
necessity of fighting with the Americans?  If there do come such
necessity, arising out of our conduct to the States during the
period of their civil war, it will indeed be hard upon us, as a
nation, seeing the struggle that we as a nation have made to be just
in our dealings toward the States generally, whether they be North
or South.  To be just in such a period, and under such
circumstances, is very difficult.  In that contest between Sardinia
and Austria it was all but impossible to be just to the Italians
without being unjust to the Emperor of Austria.  To have been
strictly just at the moment one should have begun by confessing the
injustice of so much that had gone before!  But in this American
contest such justice, though difficult, was easier.  Affairs of
trade rather than of treaties chiefly interfered; and these affairs,
by a total disregard of our own pecuniary interests, could be so
managed that justice might be done.  This I think was effected.  It
may be, of course, that I am prejudiced on the side of my own
nation; but striving to judge of the matter as best I may without
prejudice, I cannot see that we, as a nation, have in aught offended
against the strictest justice in our dealings with America during
this contest.  But justice has not sufficed.  I do not know that our
bitterest foes in the Northern States have accused us of acting
unjustly.  It is not justice which they have looked for at our
hands, and looked for in vain--not justice, but generosity!  We have
not, as they say, sympathized with them in their trouble.  It seems
to me that such a complaint is unworthy of them as a nation, as a
people, or as individuals.  In such a matter generosity is another
name for injustice, as it too often is in all matters.  A generous
sympathy with the North would have been an ostensible and crushing
enmity to the South.  We could not have sympathized with the North
without condemning the South, and telling to the world that the
South were our enemies.  In ordering his own household a man should
not want generosity or sympathy from the outside; and if not a man,
then certainly not a nation.  Generosity between nations must in its
very nature be wrong.  One nation may be just to another, courteous
to another, even considerate to another with propriety.  But no
nation can be generous to another without injustice either to some
third nation or to itself.

But though no accusation of unfairness has, as far as I am aware,
ever been made by the government of Washington against the
government of England, there can be no doubt that a very strong
feeling of antipathy to England has sprung up in America during this
war, and that it is even yet so intense in its bitterness that, were
the North to become speedily victorious in their present contest,
very many Americans would be anxious to turn their arms at once
against Canada.  And I fear that that fight between the Monitor and
the Merrimac has strengthened this wish by giving to the Americans
an unwarranted confidence in their capability of defending
themselves against any injury from British shipping.  It may be said
by them, and probably would be said by many of them, that this
feeling of enmity had not been engendered by any idea of national
injustice on our side; that it might reasonably exist, though no
suspicion of such injustice had arisen in the minds of any.  They
would argue that the hatred on their part had been engendered by
scorn on ours--by scorn and ill words heaped upon them in their
distress.

They would say that slander, scorn, and uncharitable judgments
create deeper feuds than do robbery and violence, and produce deeper
enmity and worse rancor.  "It is because we have been scorned by
England, that we hate England.  We have been told from week to week,
and from day to day, that we were fools, cowards, knaves, and
madmen.  We have been treated with disrespect, and that disrespect
we will avenge."  It is thus that they speak of England, and there
can be no doubt that the opinion so expressed is very general.  It
is not my purpose here to say whether in this respect England has
given cause of offense to the States, or whether either country has
given cause of offense to the other.  On both sides have many hard
words been spoken, and on both sides also have good words been
spoken.  It is unfortunately the case that hard words are pregnant,
and as such they are read, digested, and remembered; while good
words are generally so dull that nobody reads them willingly, and
when read, they are forgotten.  For many years there have been hard
words bandied backward and forward between England and the United
States, showing mutual jealousies, and a disposition on the part of
each nation to spare no fault committed by the other.  This has
grown of rivalry between the two, and in fact proves the respect
which each has for the other's power and wealth.  I will not now
pretend to say with which side has been the chiefest blame, if there
has been chiefest blame on either side.  But I do say that it is
monstrous in any people or in any person to suppose that such
bickerings can afford a proper ground for war.  I am not about to
dilate on the horrors of war.  Horrid as war may be, and full of
evil, it is not so horrid to a nation, nor so full of evil, as
national insult unavenged or as national injury unredressed.  A blow
taken by a nation and taken without atonement is an acknowledgment
of national inferiority, than which any war is preferable.  Neither
England nor the States are inclined to take such blows.  But such a
blow, before it can be regarded as a national insult, as a wrong
done by one nation to another, must be inflicted by the political
entity of the one or the political entity of the other.  No angry
clamors of the press, no declamations of orators, no voices from the
people, no studied criticisms from the learned few, or unstudied
censures from society at large, can have any fair weight on such a
creation or do aught toward justifying a national quarrel.  They
cannot form a casus belli.  Those two Latin words, which we all
understand, explain this with the utmost accuracy.  Were it not so,
the peace of the world would indeed rest upon sand.  Causes of
national difference will arise--for governments will be unjust as
are individuals.  And causes of difference will arise because
governments are too blind to distinguish the just from the unjust.
But in such cases the government acts on some ground which it
declares.  It either shows or pretends to show some casus belli.
But in this matter of threatened war between the States and England
it is declared openly that such war is to take place because the
English have abused the Americans, and because consequently the
Americans hate the English.  There seems to exist an impression that
no other ostensible ground for fighting need be shown, although such
an event as that of war between the two nations would, as all men
acknowledge, be terrible in its results.  "Your newspapers insulted
us when we were in our difficulties.  Your writers said evil things
of us.  Your legislators spoke of us with scorn.  You exacted from
us a disagreeable duty of retribution just when the performance of
such a duty was most odious to us.  You have shown symptoms of joy
at our sorrow.  And, therefore, as soon as our hands are at liberty,
we will fight you."  I have known school-boys to argue in that way,
and the arguments have been intelligible; but I cannot understand
that any government should admit such an argument.

Nor will the American government willingly admit it.  According to
existing theories of government the armies of nations are but the
tools of the governing powers.  If at the close of the present civil
war the American government--the old civil government consisting of
the President with such checks as Congress constitutionally has over
him--shall really hold the power to which it pretends, I do not fear
that there will be any war.  No President, and I think no Congress,
will desire such a war.  Nor will the people clamor for it, even
should the idea of such a war be popular.  The people of America are
not clamorous against their government.  If there be such a war it
will be because the army shall have then become more powerful than
the government.  If the President can hold his own, the people will
support him in his desire for peace.  But if the President do not
hold his own--if some general, with two or three hundred thousand
men at his back, shall then have the upper hand in the nation--it is
too probable that the people may back him.  The old game will be
played again that has so often been played in the history of
nations, and some wretched military aspirant will go forth to flood
Canada with blood, in order that the feathers of his cap may flaunt
in men's eyes and that he may be talked of for some years to come as
one of the great curses let loose by the Almighty on mankind.

I must confess that there is danger of this.  To us the danger is
very great.  It cannot be good for us to send ships laden outside
with iron shields instead of inside with soft goods and hardware to
these thickly thronged American ports.  It cannot be good for us to
have to throw millions into these harbors instead of taking millions
out from them.  It cannot be good for us to export thousands upon
thousands of soldiers to Canada of whom only hundreds would return.
The whole turmoil, cost, and paraphernalia of such a course would be
injurious to us in the extreme, and the loss of our commerce would
be nearly ruinous.  But the injury of such a war to us would be as
nothing to the injury which it would inflict upon the States.  To
them for many years it would be absolutely ruinous.  It would entail
not only all those losses which such a war must bring with it, but
that greater loss which would arise to the nation from the fact of
its having been powerless to prevent it.  Such a war would prove
that it had lost the freedom for which it had struggled, and which
for so many years it has enjoyed.  For the sake of that people as
well as for our own--and for their sakes rather than for our own--
let us, as far as may be, abstain from words which are needlessly
injurious.  They have done much that is great and noble, ever since
this war has begun, and we have been slow to acknowledge it.  They
have made sacrifices for the sake of their country which we have
ridiculed.  They have struggled to maintain a good cause, and we
have disbelieved in their earnestness.  They have been anxious to
abide by their Constitution, which to them has been as it were a
second gospel, and we have spoken of that Constitution as though it
had been a thing of mere words in which life had never existed.
This has been done while their hands are very full and their back
heavily laden.  Such words coming from us, or from parties among us,
cannot justify those threats of war which we hear spoken; but that
they should make the hearts of men sore and their thoughts bitter
against us, can hardly be matter of surprise.

As to the result of any such war between us and them, it would
depend mainly, I think, on the feelings of the Canadians.  Neither
could they annex Canada without the good-will of the Canadians, nor
could we keep Canada without that good-will.  At present the feeling
in Canada against the Northern States is so strong and so universal
that England has little to fear on that head.

I have now done my task, and may take leave of my readers on either
side of the water with a hearty hope that the existing war between
the North and the South may soon be over, and that none other may
follow on its heels to exercise that new-fledged military skill
which the existing quarrel will have produced on the other side of
the Atlantic.  I have written my book in obscure language if I have
not shown that to me social successes and commercial prosperity are
much dearer than any greatness that can be won by arms.  The
Americans had fondly thought that they were to be exempt from the
curse of war--at any rate from the bitterness of the curse.  But the
days for such exemption have not come as yet.  While we are hurrying
on to make twelve-inch shield plates for our men-of-war, we can
hardly dare to think of the days when the sword shall be turned into
the plowshare.  May it not be thought well for us if, with such work
on our hands, scraps of iron shall be left to us with which to
pursue any of the purposes of peace?  But at least let us not have
war with these children of our own.  If we must fight, let us fight
the French "for King George upon the throne."  The doing so will be
disagreeable, but it will not be antipathetic to the nature of an
Englishman.  For my part, when an American tells me that he wants to
fight with me, I regard his offense, as compared with that of a
Frenchman under the same circumstances, as I would compare the
offense of a parricide or a fratricide with that of a mere
commonplace murderer.  Such a war would be plus quam civile bellum.
Which of us two could take a thrashing from the other and afterward
go about our business with contentment?

On our return to Liverpool, we stayed for a few hours at Queenstown,
taking in coal, and the passengers landed that they might stretch
their legs and look about them.  I also went ashore at the dear old
place which I had known well in other days, when the people were not
too grand to call it Cove, and were contented to run down from Cork
in river steamers, before the Passage railway was built.  I spent a
pleasant summer there once in those times: God be with the good old
days!  And now I went ashore at Queenstown, happy to feel that I
should be again in a British isle, and happy also to know that I was
once more in Ireland.  And when the people came around me as they
did, I seemed to know every face and to be familiar with every
voice.  It has been my fate to have so close an intimacy with
Ireland, that when I meet an Irishman abroad I always recognize in
him more of a kinsman than I do in your Englishman.  I never ask an
Englishman from what county he comes, or what was his town.  To
Irishmen I usually put such questions, and I am generally familiar
with the old haunts which they name.  I was happy therefore to feel
myself again in Ireland, and to walk round, from Queenstown to the
river at Passage, by the old way that had once been familiar to my
feet.

Or rather I should have been happy if I had not found myself
instantly disgraced by the importunities of my friends.  A legion of
women surrounded me, imploring alms, begging my honor to bestow my
charity on them for the love of the Virgin, using the most holy
names in their adjurations for half-pence, clinging to me with that
half-joking, half-lachrymose air of importunity which an Irish
beggar has assumed as peculiarly her own.  There were men, too, who
begged as well as women.  And the women were sturdy and fat, and,
not knowing me as well as I knew them, seemed resolved that their
importunities should be successful.  After all, I had an old world
liking for them in their rags.  They were endeared to me by certain
memories and associations which I cannot define.  But then what
would those Americans think of them--of them and of the country
which produced them?  That was the reflection which troubled me.  A
legion of women in rags clamorous for bread, protesting to heaven
that they are starving, importunate with voices and with hands,
surrounding the stranger when he puts his foot on the soil, so that
he cannot escape, does not afford to the cynical American who then
first visits us--and they all are cynical when they visit us--a bad
opportunity for his sarcasm.  He can at any rate boast that he sees
nothing of that at home.  I myself am fond of Irish beggars.  It is
an acquired taste, which comes upon one as does that for smoked
whisky or Limerick tobacco.  But I certainly did wish that there
were not so many of them at Queenstown.

I tell all this here not to the disgrace of Ireland--not for the
triumph of America.  The Irishman or American who thinks rightly on
the subject will know that the state of each country has arisen from
its opportunities.  Beggary does not prevail in new countries, and
but few old countries have managed to exist without it.  As to
Ireland, we may rejoice to say that there is less of it now than
there was twenty years since.  Things are mending there.  But though
such excuses may be truly made--although an Englishman, when he sees
this squalor and poverty on the quays at Queenstown, consoles
himself with reflecting that the evil has been unavoidable, but will
perhaps soon be avoided--nevertheless he cannot but remember that
there is no such squalor and no such poverty in the land from which
he has returned.  I claim no credit for the new country.  I impute
no blame to the old country.  But there is the fact.  The Irishman
when he expatriates himself to one of those American States loses
much of that affectionate, confiding, master-worshiping nature which
makes him so good a fellow when at home.  But he becomes more of a
man.  He assumes a dignity which he never has known before.  He
learns to regard his labor as his own property.  That which he earns
he takes without thanks, but he desires to take no more than he
earns.  To me personally, he has, perhaps, become less pleasant than
he was;--but to himself!  It seems to me that such a man must feel
himself half a god, if he has the power of comparing what he is with
what he was.

It is right that all this should be acknowledged by us.  When we
speak of America and of her institutions, we should remember that
she has given to our increasing population rights and privileges
which we could not give--which as an old country we probably can
never give.  That self-asserting, obtrusive independence which so
often wounds us is, if viewed aright, but an outward sign of those
good things which a new country has produced for its people.  Men
and women do not beg in the States; they do not offend you with
tattered rags; they do not complain to heaven of starvation; they do
not crouch to the ground for half-pence.  If poor, they are not
abject in their poverty.  They read and write.  They walk like human
beings made in God's form.  They know that they are men and women,
owing it to themselves and to the world that they should earn their
bread by their labor, but feeling that when earned it is their own.
If this be so, if it be acknowledged that it is so, should not such
knowledge in itself be sufficient testimony of the success of the
country and of her institutions?


END OF VOL. II.





End of Project Gutenberg Etext North America, V. II by Anthony Trollope

