The Western World; or Travels in the United States in 1846-47, exhibiting them in their latest development, social, political and industrial

Front matter

THE WESTERN WORLD; OB, TRAVELS IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1846-47 : EXHIBITING THEM IN THEIR LATEST DEVELOPMENT, SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND INDUSTRIAL; INCLUDING A CHAPTER OS CALIFORNIA. WITH A NEW MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, SHOWING THEIR RECENT TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS, AND A MAP OF CALIFORNIA. BY ALEX. MACKAY, ESQ. OP THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER AT LAW. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, $u6Iisf)er in ©rtiinarp to !&}et ÆlajtBtg. 1849. LONDON : R. CLAT, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL. CONTENTS. Chapter I. PAGE The Valley of the Mississippi. — From New Orleans to Vicksburg 1 Chapter II. The Valley of the Mississippi 39 Chapter III. From St. Louis to Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg. — Mining interests of the United States 67 Chapter IV. From Pittsburg to Niagara 97 Chapter V. Artificial Irrigation of the United States. — Rivalry between Canada and New York for the Carrying-trade of the North-west. — The Navigation Laws 132 Chapter VI.

From Buffalo to Utica, and thence to Montreal by the St. Lawrence 161 Chapter VII From Montreal to Saratoga, Albany, and West Point. — Military- Spirit and Military Establishments of the United States . .130 CONTENTS. IV Chapter VIII. PAGE Education and Literature in the United States 223 Chapter IX. Religion in the United States 249 Chapter X. Lowell. — Manufactures and Manufacturing Interest of the United States 279 Chapter XI. American Character. — Physical Condition of Society in America 317 Chapter XII. A Peep into the Future 343 A Chapter on California , ; OR, TRAVELS IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1846-7. — ♦ —

Chapter I. The Valley Of The Mississippi

FROM NEW ORLEANS TO VICKSBURG. Al unexpected Meeting. — Departure from New Orleans. — The — Its Dimensions. — Part which it will yet play in the Drama of Civilization. — Scenery on its Banks. — A Mississippi Steamer. — Fellow-travellers. — Gamblers again. — An Incident. — The State of Mississippi. — Repudiation Case of Mississippi. — The Insolvent States. — The Solvent States. — The Unindebted States. — Responsibility of the States. — Natches. — Vicksburg. — A summary Trial and Execution. — Lynch Law. — Administration of the Law throughout the Union.— Position of the People of the West and South-west. — Allowances which should be made for them. On the day previous to that on which, after more than a week's sojourn, I quitted New Orleans, I was delighted, on taking my seat at the table d'hote of the St. Charles, in company with about 500 otherguests, to find a valued friend, Mr. D from Baltimore, seated next to me on the right.

He was an Englishman in the prime of life, but had been so long resident in VOL. III. B America, and had made it the scene of such extensive business operations, that he now combined with an ineradicable affection for his native country a very great partiality for that of his adoption, and with the feelings and sentiments of an Englishman, much that is characteristic of the American. He had never been naturalized, but he was now beginning to reconcile himself to the idea of transferring his allegiance, as he was of becoming a Benedict; his object in con templating the process of naturalization having less reference to himself than to those who might yet surround him in an endearing relationship. My advice to him was to take no step that he was not certain was necessary; but if he was tired #of being sole monarch of himself, to many first, and wait the tide of events.

The process of naturalization was a brief and a sure one when entered upon ; the necessity for it in his case had not yet become obvious. After we had interchanged the ordinary salutations to which such unexpected meetings invariably give rise I learnt from him that he had arrived in New Orleans but the preceding day, and that the next was that fixed for his departure. He had just taken a run to the South, he said, to " do a bit of business," which, by giving his personal attention to it, he could accomplish more satisfactorily in a single day than by the correspondence of a month. By the time he reached home his journey would have considerably exceeded in length two thousand miles; but he thought nothing of it, having thoroughly contracted the American aptitude for locomotion, and the indifference which the Americans manifest to distances.

It was his intention to return, as he had come, by the route over which I had just passed; but as we had both decided on the same time for departure, I deemed it worth while to try if our routes could not be got to coincide. I therefore proposed to him to ascend the Mississippi and the Ohio with me, a course which would not take him much out of his way, as from the latter stream he could reach home by the Baltimore and Ohio railway. He readily consented to the change, at which I was exceedingly rejoiced, both because he was excellent company, and his knowledge of the country and people would be of great advantage to me. Next morning at an early hour we left New Or leans for St. Louis. Our journey was confined to the Mississippi, which we were to ascend for upwards of 1,200 miles. We were on board a first-class steamer, and as we receded from the town, and before the first curve of the river had hid it from our view, I thought it, as the morning sun shone brightly upon its spires and cupolas, its massive piles of warehouses, its Levee already swarming with busy thousands, and the spars and rigging and multitudinous funnels which lined its semicircular harbour, one of the finest views of the kind I had ever beheld.

In itself the southern capital is in every respect a most interesting town. But it has little that is interesting around it, for it stands, as it were, alone in the wilderness, a city without any immediate environs, to attract the stranger, or to recreate its inhabitants. The Mississippi ! It was with indescribable emo tions that I first felt myself afloat upon its waters. How often in my schoolboy dreams, and in my waking visions afterwards, had my imagination pictured to itself the lordly stream, rolling with tumultuous cur rent through the boundless region to which it has b2 given its name, and gathering into itself, in its course to the ocean, the tributary waters of almost every latitude in the temperate zone ! Here it was then, in its reality, and I, at length, steaming against its tide.

I looked upon it with that reverence with which every one must regard a great feature of exter nal nature. The lofty mountain, the illimitable plain, and the seemingly shoreless lake, are all objects which strike the mind with awe. But second to none of them in the sublime emotions which it inspires, is the mighty river ; and badly constituted must that mind be, which could contemplate for the first time with a feeling of indifference a stream which, in its resist less flow, passes through so many climes, and traverses so many latitudes, rising amid perpetual smvvs, and debouching under an almost tropical sun, and drain ing into itself the surplus waters of about two millions of square miles ! But the grandeur of the Mississippi consists less in the majestic proportions of its physical aspect than in the part which it is yet destined to play in the great drama of civilized life.

It was grand, whilst it yet rolled silently and unknown through the unbroken solitudes of the primeval forest — it was grand, when the indomitable but unfortunate Soto first gazed upon its waters, and when they opened to receive at the hands of his disconsolate band, the corpse of its discoverer — and it was grand, when no sound was heard along its course but the scream of the eagle and the war-whoop of the savage — when no smoke curled and wreathed amid the foliage on its banks but such as arose from the wigwam, and when nothing was afloat upon its surface but the canoe and the tree torn from its roots by the flood. But grander will it yet be, aye far grander, when civilization has tracked it from its mouths to its sources ; when indus try has converted its sides into a garden, and speckled them with lively towns and glittering cities ; and when busy populations line its shores, and teem along the banks of all its tributaries.

Then, and then only, will the Mississippi fulfil its destiny. Already, with but nine millions of people in the valley, its whole aspect is changed ; the wilderness has been successfully invaded ; the hum of busy in dustry is heard along its shores ; towns have sprung up, as if by magic, upon its banks ; the combined banner of science and art waves over its waters ; and hundreds of steamers, with a multitude of other craft, are afloat upon its tide. What scene will it present when the present population of the valley is multiplied by ten, and when, serving as a bond of perpetual union, stronger than treaties, protocols, or the other appliances of diplomacy between more than a dozen sovereign and independent commonwealths, it is the common highway, along which will be borne the accumulated products of their united industry to the ocean !

Viewed in the double light of what it is and what it is to be, it is marvellous how some can look upon the Mississippi as nothing more than a " muddy ditch." Muddy it undoubtedly is, but that which renders its current so turgid is but the material torn from distant regions, with which it comes laden to construct new territories in more accessible positions. The opaqueness of its volume is thus but one of the means by which is gradually accomplished a great physical phenomenon. Regarded in connexion with the purposes to which it will yet be applied when civilization has risen to full tide around it, the Mississippi must be equally an object of interest to the Englishman as to the American — for what English man can look with indifference upon that which is yet destined to be the principal medium of commu nication between the great world and the region which is rapidly becoming the chief theatre for Anglo- Saxon enterprise, and will yet witness the greatest triumphs of Anglo-Saxon energy and skill ?

He takes, then, but a vulgar view of it who treats as merely so much muddy water running through an unpicturesque country, a stream which, ere many more heads are grey, will exercise so important an influence upon the commercial and political relations of the world. Nowhere has the Mississippi the majesty of ap pearance presented, throughout most of its course, by the St. Lawrence. At New Orleans it is scarcely a mile in width, expanding somewhat a short distance above the city, and continuing of an average width of a little more than a mile as far up as its confluence with the Missouri. For a long way beyond that point its size diminishes but little, although its depth is not nearly so great as after the junction. Its depth increases as its volume is enhanced by the contributions of one tributary after another, which accounts for the absence of any apparent enlargement of its size for the last fifteen hundred miles of its course, during which it receives most of its great tributary streams.

The current flows at the average rate of three miles an hour, and its increasing volume is accommodated by its increasing depth as it proceeds through the soft alluvial deposit in which it has its bed. As it approaches its outlet, the current gradually diminishes, and will continue still further to diminish, for reasons already explained, until it is forced to seek a new channel through the Delta. We steamed famously on against the voluminous current, and had not proceeded far ere the country on either side began to look firmer, higher, drier, and richer. The banks were lined with cotton and sugar plantations, the former now rapidly giving way to the latter in Louisiana. For some way above the city, the mansions and villas of wealthy proprietors were visible, embosomed in foliage, and surrounded with luxuriant gardens.

Further up, these gave way to the residences of the overseers, and the buildings erected for the accommodation of the slaves. The one fre quently looked elegant, the other generally clean, neat, and comfortable, judging from the distance. Gradually the banks began to attain some elevation above the level of the stream. Whether they rose a few feet or many above it, they were almost invariably precipitous, and in many instances impending, the alluvial soil of which they were composed being par tially undermined by the current, and ready to drop into the stream with the trees, bushes, grass and flowers with which it was covered. It is thus that the banks of the Mississippi are undergoing per petual change. Where its course is straight for any length, it is gradually widening its channel, but diminishing it in depth ; whereas, where it is winding, which is generally the case, the weight of the current bears upon the outer circumference of the curve, on which it is constantly encroaching, whilst it recedes to an equal extent from the opposite bank.

The higher up we proceeded the richer and more varied became the forest on either hand, which came some times sweeping down to the margiu of the river, and had at others receded for miles to make way for the plantation. Occasionally we passed through reaches of the stream, which forced their way through the thick and tangled cane-brake, where the cold, oozy, and sedgy appearance of the soil made me appreciate my dry and firm footing upon the promenade deck. This reminds me of our steamer, of which I have as yet given no description. As we were to be from six to eight days on board, we took care to scrutinize her well before engaging a passage, and it may not be uninteresting to the reader to know what kind of ark it was that we were to inhabit for that time. As already said, she was a first-class, and high-pressure of course.

One might reason himself into the belief that she had a hull, knowing how necessary such things are to steam-boats ; but, viewing her from an ordinary position, the eye could detect none ; all that was visible for her to rest upon being her paddle-wheels, which were very large. She was of immense width, the enormous protrusion of her lower deck on either side being the cause of the in visibility of her hull. This was so constructed as to accommodate in front the greatest possible quantity of cotton and other merchandise which she could carry without sinking her ; whilst above it, resting on very slender pillars, rose the promenade decks, covered abaft the engine with an awning. She was named the "Niobe," and was like Niobe, all tiers. The saloon, which was between decks, occupied nearly the latter half of the vessel, the state rooms lining it, being enteredboth from within, and by means of a door, with which each was provided, entering from the walk between decks, which completely surrounded the saloon, the latter part of which was divided off into a cabin for the ladies.

She carried a prodigious quantity of white and black paint upon her ; had two enormous funnels, as most American boats have; and consumed a tre mendous supply of wood, shooting up flame at night, and leaving a double train of brilliant sparks behind her, which, together with the lights which occasionally gleamed faintly from the shore, contrasted curiously with the bright starlight overhead. The captain had no positive qualities about him, either good or evil, attending to his chief duties, and letting his passengers look after themselves. We found the table exceedingly good the whole way. The weather was very hot, but we were supplied with fresh meat at the different stations. We had a large company on board, most of whom looked respectable, and were agreeable enough as travelling companions.

Having sufficient company, however, in my friend, I did not mingle with them as much as I should otherwise have done. There was one group of very suspicious looking characters, who kept constantly together, for the very good reason that they were shunned by everybody else. I noticed them shortly after coming on board, as they were standing near the engine, examining a couple of seven barrelled pistols, and another " revolver " of a less formidable description, which a long-haired and long headed Yankee was offering them for sale. These weapons, together with the bowie knife, et id genus omne, are generally well made and highly finished. The best of them have some motto or other etched upon them. A story was once told of a collision to which a sudden quarrel on board a steamer was about to give rise, having been averted by the singular coincidence of b the mottos on the weapons about to be employed.

The party offended drew his bowie knife, and directed the attention of the other to the motto which it bore upon its broad burnished blade, which was, "Hark, from the tombs!" The other coolly drew a pistol from his breast, on the gleaming barrel of which was etched, " A doleful sound ! " — the two weapons thus completing between them the first line of a well-known hymn. So curious a coincidence drew forth a hearty laugh from all parties, and the offence was forgotten. It is a pity that some effective stop could not be put to the carrying of these weapons, as the very possession of them frequently precipitates fatal collisions. The group of gamblers adverted to left us at Natches. They had intended to proceed higher up, and had paid their fare to a greater distance ; but there being no prospect of their successfully plying their vocation on board, they went ashore at the place which was once notorious as their chief resort, and is still grievously infested with them.

The fiery blood of the South is easily excited, and a slight incident occurred on board which gave me an opportunity of witnessing the readiness to take offence, which is a marked feature in southern character. Four or five young men were standing together conversing on the promenade deck, when one of them, a Virginian, gave an elaborate descrip tion of a young horse which he had lately purchased. After dwelling upon his different excellences, and par ticularly describing his action, he asked the company in general how much they thought he gave for him. "Your note, what else?" said one of those ad dressed, in the driest possible tone. In a moment the young man's eyes flashed fire — and, had he possessed a weapon, a fatal colbsion might have been the result, for the other was armed. " A joke, a joke !" cried the rest of the company, " nothing more ; no offence meant."

And after some further interposition on their part, the storm was strangled in its cradle. " A joke that came too near the truth, I fancy," said one over his shoulder, in an under-tone to another, as they immediately afterwards separated. When about two-thirds of the way to Natches, we passed the line dividing, on the east bank of the river, the State of Louisiana from that of Mississippi ; the former continuing upon the west bank for nearly two degrees further to the north. On passing the boundary, and having the State of Mississippi on our right, my mind very naturally reverted to a subject with which the name of that State has for some years been most unfavourably identified. My thoughts at length found vent in expression, and I observed to my companion, that it was a matter of astonishment to me that a State possessed of resources like those of Mississippi, could remain for one hour longer than it could avoid it under the stigma which now rested upon its character.

" The subject with which your mind is now occu pied," said he, " is one on which there is much mis conception abroad. It is misunderstood both through ignorance and prejudice. Some cannot, and others will not, give it an impartial consideration." " I have heard the same thing more than once advanced during my peregrinations through the country," I replied, " and am inclined to believe that abroad the case is very much prejudged. I should much like to know the sentiments regarding it entertained by one occupying a position in the country so favourable to a proper appreciation of the subject as is yours." " I have no objections to giving you my views," said Mr. D , " but I must first stipulate, that you will carefully discriminate between my endea vours to place the subject in its proper light, and any approval on my part of the principle or practice of repudiation.

I demand this, not because I think that you would willingly misconstrue my motives, or attribute to me principles which every honourable mind would scorn to entertain ; but because our countrymen, full of preconceived opinions upon the subject, are but too ready to denounce every effort at eliciting the real merits of the case, as nothing short of a direct advocacy of repudiation." I readily promised to comply, assuring him that my object was not to confirm any preconceived notion of my own, but to get at the truth, no matter to what inference or conclusion it might lead. " As to the villainy of repudiation," said he, "naked, absolute, and unequivocal, there can be no fwo opinions amongst honourable men." To such a proposition I could not but assent. " If any member of this Confederacy," he observed, continuing, " or any other community, no matter where situated, were guilty of such, no man who valued his own reputation could attempt to raise his voice in its defence."

I acknowledged the risk any one would run in doing so. " Now," continued he, " whilst this is the crime with which some States are directly charged, and in which the whole Union is more or less involved, in the opinion of so many abroad ; it is a crime of which no member of this Confederacy has as yet been guilty, and of which, I trust, no member of it ever will be guilty." "For my own part," I observed in reply, "I always discriminated widely between the case of Mississippi and that of the other States, which are either wholly or have been but temporarily insolvent, and have certainly never, even in word or thought, attempted to involve the innocent with the guilty." " You select," said he, " the case of Mississippi, no doubt, as the worst in the catalogue. So it is; but even Mississippi is not guilty of the enormities with which she stands charged.

Repudiation, in its simple acceptation, is the refusal to pay a debt acknowledged to be justly due. Now-, as thus con strued, even Mississippi has not been guilty of repu diation. The debt which she has refused to pay is a debt which she does not acknowledge to be justly due. If not fraudulently, she insists that it was, at least, illegally contracted, so that she regards it as a debt which she may, but which she is not bound to pay. Whilst this is the real state of the case, she gets credit for cherishing a conviction of the justice of their claims, at the same time that she sets her creditors at defiance. Her language to them is supposed to be this : — ' I owe you the money, and can have no possible objection to your claim ; but you may whistle for it, for not one farthing of what I justly owe you shall you receive from me.' What ever community or individual would hold such lan guage to its or his creditors, must have previously sounded the deepest depths of infamy.

It is consoling to know that even the Mississippians have not done this, for even they have the grace left to seek to shelter themselves behind an excuse for their conduct." " There is certainly some sense of honour left," I observed, " in those who care for explaining away or extenuating their disgraceful conduct, provided the endeavour to do so be not solely with a view to escape the punishment which might otherwise attach to it. The man who tries to excuse himself for the commission of a wrong, testifies, to some extent, in favour of what is right. If the Mississippians are not the graceless and unblushing repudiators which they are supposed to be, I should like to know the nature oi their excuse, for upon that depends altogether the extent to which it can palliate their conduct." " I by no means wish," replied Mr. D , " to screen the State of Mississippi from any obloquy which may justly attach to her in what I have already said ; my sole object has been to show that even she has not gone the length to which many suppose or wish to believe that several of the States have gone; for even she is, in her own eyes, not without excuse for what she has done.

Whether that excuse be valid or not is another question. It may not be of a nature to rescue her from all blame, but the very fact that she tenders one is sufficient to relieve her from the grosser charge which is so very generally hurled against her." "But her excuse?" said I. " The entire debt of Mississippi," said he, " has not been repudiated. It is only a portion of it, though certainly the greater portion, that has been thus dealt with. Her excuse for refusing to pay that portion rests upon the alleged illegality of the transactions which made her a debtor to that amount. The debt, she asserts, was unconstitutionally con tracted ; and was, therefore, never binding upon her, so as to give her creditors any. legal claim upon her for its repayment." " But how," I asked, " was the foreign capitalist to know whether the constitutional forms of the State of Mississippi were or were not complied with, in the conduct, by her accredited officers, of the transactions which resulted in their becoming her creditors ?

" " They should, for their own sakes," said he, " have seen that they were. The debt was contracted by virtue of a law of the State. The form of the bonds was prescribed. They should have satisfied themselves, before advancing their money, that the law was, in every respect, complied with. It was not in a mere non-essential that the prescribed form of the bonds was departed from. The variation was both as to the place of payment, and the currency in which payment was to be made. Who are more interested in the correctness of such transactions than they who are advancing their money upon them ? The means of knowledge were within their reach, had they cared for making use of them. But it is the opinion of some, that whilst many lent their money upon securities which they never suspected of being faulty, there were not a few amongst those who dealt very largely in them, who connived at the flaws which were intro duced into them, greedily anxious to invest theirmoney at a rate of interest unattainable at home, and trust ing to the honour of the people of the State to stand by their bonds, whether they were faulty or otherwise."

" I confess," said I, ," that could such a suspicion be brought home to any of the creditors of the State, if their fate would not be pronounced a just one, few would sympathize with them in their misfortunes. But until the charge be proved, it must be taken as a mere suspicion, and the original holders of the vitiated bonds must stand, without exception, in the category of Una fide creditors. This being so, it behoved the State to adopt as its own the acts of its agents, and to exact satisfaction from these agents for deviating from their powers, instead of visiting its creditors with the penalty of their misconduct. And this the State was more particularly bound to do, seeing that it has had the benefit of the money, and that its securities have long since passed into the hands of bona fide and innocent holders."

" I quite agree with you," observed Mr. D ; " this would have been giving effect to the moral obligation, and waiving the mere legal technicality. But this is the case on which Mississippi grounds what she considers to be her legal exoneration from the payment of her debt. This, in short, is her excuse. I did not undertake to prove it a valid one, nor do I now express any opinion upon that subject. All that I wished to show was, that whether valid or not, the fact that she tenders an excuse redeems her, improper and impolitic though her conduct has been, from the charge so constantly brought against her, of having unblushingly set at defiance every legal as well as every moral obligation. Had Mississippi acted prudently, she would have paid her debt and impeached her agents. The truth is, she is at present unable to pay, and takes shelter behind a legal flaw, as is done every day between man and man, when agents deviate from their patent instructions, and a flaw the validity of which the mere legalist may recognise.