Life and Liberty in America: or, sketches of a tour in the United States and Canada, in 1857-8, etc

Preface

. In pursuance of a long-cherished desire, the author of the following pages left London in October, 1857, for a tour in the United States and Canada. He traversed the Union from Boston to New Orleans, by St. Louis and the Mississippi, and returned to New York by land, through the Slave States. He afterwards visited Canada; and published, from time to time, in the Illustrated London News, a few of the results of his observations, under the title of " Trans atlantic Sketches." These sketches, after having received careful revision, have been included in the present work, and form about one third of its bulk. The remaining portions are now published for the

PREFACE.

. IV first time, and include not only the chapters on the great social and political questions, which more than any mere records of travel are of interest to the lovers of human liberty and progress ; but nearly the whole of the Canadian tour. It is not to be expected that in a residence of less than a twelvemonth in America, the author can have acquired a thorough acquaintance with the institutions of the country, or with the operations of social causes, which the Americans themselves do not always comprehend. He makes no pretence at being oracular, but has contented himself with describing "Life" as he saw it, and " Liberty " as he studied it, to the extent of his opportunities, both in the North and in the South. He went to America, neither to carp, to sneer, nor to caricature, but with an honest love of liberty, and a sincere desire to judge for himself, and to tell the truth, as to the results of the great experiment in self-government, which the Anglo- Saxon and Anglo-Celtic races are making in America, under the most favourable circumstances, and with nothing, not springing from themselves, to impede or fetter their progress. He returned from America

PREFACE.

. V with a greater respect for the people than when he first set foot upon the soil. And if with his Euro pean notions that a man's colour makes no difference in his natural rights, he has come to the same con clusion as previous travellers, that " Liberty " in the New World is not yet exactly what the founders of the Union intended it to be, he trusts that he has expressed his opinions without bitterness, and that while he can admire the political virtues of the Re public, he is not obliged to shut his eyes to its defects or its vices. It is on American soil that the highest destinies of civilization will be wrought out to their conclusions, and the record of what is there doing, however often the story may be told, will be always interesting and novel. Progress crawls in Europe, but gallops in America.

The record of European travel may be fresh ten or twenty years after it is written, but that of America becomes obsolete in four or five. It took our England nearly a thousand years, from the days of the Heptarchy to those of William III., to become of as much account in the world as the United States have become in the lifetime of old men who still linger

PREFACE.

. VI amongst us. Those who bear this fact in mind will not concur in the opinion that books of Ame rican travel are likely to lose their interest — even amid the turmoil of European wars, and the com plications created by the selfish ambition of rulers, whose pretensions and titles are alike anachronisms in the nineteenth century. London, May 185'J. CONTENTS Chap. P_,_e I. The Voyage out . . . j H. New Yoek . . . ..12 HI. Beoadwat by Night . 24 IV. Hotel Life . . . 37 V. American Firemen . . 47 VI. From New York to Boston . 56 VII. To the Falls of Niagara . . .69 VIII. Niagara . . . 79 IX. Newport and Rhode Island . . .100 X. Philadelphia . . . . ..Ill XI. Washington . . . . .122 XH Interview of Indians with their " Great Father " . . . . . . 133 XIII. Americanisms and American Slang . 15+ XIV.

The Irish en America . . . . 175 XV. From Washington to Cincinnati . . 184 XVI. The Queen City of the West . . .197 XVH. St. Louis, Missouri .... 216 XVUI. The Mormons . . . . 233 XIX. From St. Louis to New Orleans . 240 XX. "The Crescent City" . . . 254 XXI. From Louisiana to Alabama . . .278 XXII. South Carolina . . . . . 293 XXIII. South Carolina — continued . . . 303 XXIV. A Eice Plantation . . . . 315 XXV. Savannah and the Sea Islands . . LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. VOL. PAGE The Levee at New Orleans {Frontispiece of vol. i.) Torch-light Procession of Firemen at New York i. 28 American Indians waiting for the President . 133 The Banks of the Ohio. — Mr. Longworth's Vine- TAKI>S „ 208 The Mississippi Steam-boat " Philadelphia." . 240 The Cemetery of Bonaventura, — Savannah . . 337 The Capitol at Washington {Frontispiece of vol. ii.)

Break-up of the Ice on the St. Lawrence . . n. 201 The Victoria Tubular Bridge, Montreal . . „ 208 Toronto, Canada West . . . LIFE AO LIBERTY IN AMERICA.

Chapter I. The Voyage Out

At ten o'clock on the morning of Saturday the 3rd of October, 1857, the fine steamship Asia, Captain Lott, bearing the mails and about 150 passengers, left Liverpool for New York. The weather was the reverse of cheering. The rain fell, the wind blew, the Mersey showed its white teeth, and every thing betokened a rough voyage, and a vigorous demand for the steward's basin. The passengers were mostly Americans. Planters, cotton-brokers, and bankers from the South ; merchants and manu facturers from the New England States; Ameri cans from Virginia, South Carolina, and Alabama, who used the word " Yankee " as a term, if not of VOL. I. E contempt, of depreciation, as we sometimes use it in England ; and Americans from Connecticut, Massa chusetts, and Vermont, who gloried in the appellation as the highest compliment that could be bestowed upon them ; courtly gentlemen who would have graced any society in the world; and rough tykes and horsedealers from the Ear West ; with about forty ladies and children, and five Englishmen, three of whom crossed the Atlantic for the first time ; formed our company.

It was not until the second day, when we were steaming along the southern shores of Ireland, that we began to grow social, to learn each other's names, to form ourselves into little cliques, coteries, and gossiping parties, and to receive and communicate information upon the pleasures and the perils of the Atlantic, upon the state of Europe and of America, upon the probable effects of the great Indian mutiny on the cotton trade of Charles ton, Mobile, and New Orleans, upon the great com mercial crash and panic at New York, upon the feelings of Englishmen towards Americans and of Americans towards Englishmen, or, in one phrase, " upon things in general." The weather suddenly became mild and genial, and on Sunday morning, as we skirted the coast of Waterford and Cork, there was scarcely more motion in the sea or in our ship than if we had been steam ing from London to Greenwich, or threading our way amid the beautiful lochs of the Caledonian Canal.

The breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, and supper tables were regularly crowded ; there was not a single absentee from the five too frequent and too copious meals provided for us by our bountiful and urbane chief steward. The monotony of a long sea voyage is such that people eat for pastime. The sound of the bell for luncheon is an event ; and dinner is a consummation of good things, as well as a consumption of them, to which all who arc not smitten by sea-sickness look forward as the very crown and climax of the day, which the gour mand and the gourmet alike contemplate with pleasur able anticipations, and which nothing can impair but a stiff breeze. And such a breeze sprung up on the second day. Experienced travellers who had crossed the Atlantic scores of times — who spoke jauntily of our noble ship as a ferry-boat, and of the mighty Atlantic as " the Ferry," no larger, in their magnilo quence, than that from Liverpool to Birkenhead — bade us " look out for squalls," and for the swell and roll of the ocean, as soon as we should pass Cape Clear and the Fassnett Lighthouse.

They proved themselves true prophets. We had not left the B rugged shores of the county of Kerry half an hour behind us before we made a most unpleasant acquaintanceship with the heaving billows of the Atlantic, and felt the Asia pitching in a heavy sea, with her bowsprit one moment running atilt at the clouds, and the next sinking as if it would poke a hole tlu-ough the bottom of the ocean. In a few minutes our decks were cleared of all the fairer portion of the passengers ; the crinolines disappeared ; and for seven long and weary days the ruder and stronger half of creation were left in undisturbed but melancholy possession of the decks and the dining tables. Nor did the greater number of the gentle men fare, for a day or two, much better than the ladies. On the wings of the gale there rode a fiend — the fiercest, most unrelenting demon ever imagined, invented, or depicted — the arch-fiend Sea-Sickness, in whose unwelcome presence life, nature, and humanity lose their charm — "the sun's eye hath a sickly glare " — and death itself seems among the most trivial of the afflictions that can befall us.

One of our English friends from Manchester, who was very sick and utterly miserable, created some amusement among those less miserable than himself. There was but one place on deck which afforded shelter from the beating rain and the spray that washed over us in plenteous cataracts. This place was the general resort not only of the smokers, but of all those sufficiently convalescent to loathe and abhor the confined air of their state-rooms. The name originally given to this resort was the Gridiron, but the more significant application of the Spit was applied to it by a " Britisher" whom modesty forbids me to name, who detested tobacco and the streams of saliva which, whether "chawed" or smoked, it incited some portion of the Yankee passengers, and more especially a long, lean, leathery, unhealthy boy from Philadelphia, to discharge upon the floor.

Seated in the " Spit " was our Manchester friend as comfort less and as hopeless as man could look. We had been five days out, and it was impossible to walk the deck for the heavy seas and blinding spray that at every pitch or roll of the vessel came spouting over us. To eat was perilous, to drink was to invite sickness, to read was impossible, to talk was but vanity and vexation of spirit; and the sole resource was to woo the slumber which would not come, or to form deep though unspoken vows never again to cross the ocean in the expecta tion of deriving either pleasure or comfort from the trip. The vessel rolled heavily ; and a " sea " bursting over the bulwarks deluged the " Spit " and all within it till we stood six inches deep in water. " I'll be hanged," said the man of Manchester, " if I'll stand this any longer !

Steward, call a cab ! " We all smiled ; and doubtless our smiles were ghastly enough, at the earnest jocosity of our friend's misery. It had, however, a good effect — homœopathi cally; it made us forget our sea-sickness for the better part of five minutes. On the eighth night it blew a gale of wind, an indubitable storm, about which there could be no mistake. Our average rate of speed against the strong head wind since leaving Liverpool had been upwards of eight knots an hour ; but on that fear ful night we did not exceed two and a half. The vessel groaned and creaked through all her timbers. The dull, heavy " thuds " or thumps of the roaring, raging seas staggered the Asia through the whole of her sturdy framework. It seemed at times as if, endowed with reason, she had made up her mind to resist the cruel aggression of the billows, and had stopped in mid career to deliberate in wThat manner she should, with the most power and dig nity, show her sense of the insult ; and then, as if learning wisdom in adversity, she resolved to hold on her course and show herself superior to the bufferings of fortune.

To me, as to others, every minute of that night appeared to be as long as a day, and every hour was an age of suffering. To sleep in such a conflict of the elements was impossible. Even to remain in the berth, without being pitched head foremost out of it on to the cabin floor, and running the risk of broken limbs, was a matter of the utmost difficulty, and only to be accomplished by main strength and fruitful ingenuity of invention, and of adaptation to the unusual circumstances. Feet and hands were alike in requisition, and a hard grip of the sides of the berth was scarcely sufficient for security, unless aided by the knees and the elbows, and by a con stant agony of watchfulness, lest a sudden sea should take the vessel unawares and spill the hapless traveller, like a potato out of a sack.

And amid the riot of the winds and waves there was ever and anon a sound more fearful and distressing to hear — the moan of a sick lady, and the loud and querulous cry of a young child that refused to be comforted. For twelve unhappy and most doleful hours we ploughed our way through the storm, praying for the daylight and the calm. At the first blink of morning, every one capable of the exertion was dressed and upon deck, exchanging condolences with his fellow-travellers on the miseries of the night, or inquiring of the officers on watch what hopes there were of the moderating of the gale. For six-and-twenty hours the storm raged, and for twelve hours after its cessation the ocean, with its long uneasy swell, bore traces on its white crested waves of the perturbation that had been caused in it.

On the tenth and eleventh days the sea was calm enough to admit of sports upon the lower deck, and several matches were made at shuffle-board, the marine substitute for the game of skittles. It was played with the greatest spirit, sometimes Ohio being matched against Kentucky, sometimes Charleston against New York, and fre quently England against America. And, while this was the amusement on deck, cards, back gammon, and chess afforded relaxation to those who took no pleasure in robuster sport. Among other pastimes, a kind of masquerade was got up by the sailors, two of whom made a very respect able elephant between them, and one a very supe rior shaggy bear. On the back of the elephant rode the boatswain. The first part of the fun was that the elephant should continually throw him ; and the second part was, that he should continually remount — per fas aut nefas ; all of which was effected according to the programme, and to the great amusement of the passengers, and especially of one little boy, eight years old, who laughed so immoderately as to suggest a fear that his mirth would end in convulsions.

The bear also contributed his due share to the frolic ; and the broad farce created as much hilarity among our hundred and fifty travellers as ever was excited on the London boards by Buckstone or Harley in the present day, or by Liston and John Reeve in the days of old. At the conclusion of the performances two of the passengers volunteered to go round with the hat, and nearly five pounds were the result of their solicitations. But the chief amusements of the younger and " faster " voyagers — smoking always excepted — were bets and lotteries. How many knots we should run in the next twenty-four hours ; what latitude and longitude we should be in when our excellent captain made his noonday observa tion; with what letter of the alphabet would com mence the name of the pilot whom he should take on board on approaching New York ; and how mauy miles, or scores of miles, we should be from shore when the pilot-boat first made its appearance — were but a few of the subjects of speculation on which ingenuity was displayed to kill time and to have something to think of.

Ten to one was offered that on a certain day we should run 258 miles or upwards. We ran 257 by the captain's calculation : and an amount of money changed hands on this question which was variously estimated in the ship at from 1501 to 2002. It soon became evident that the adverse winds and rough weather would make our passage a longer one than the average, and that we should not reach New York under fourteen days. We passed over 1,500 miles of ocean without having seen a sail but our own ; affording no opportunity for the old maritime joke always palmed off upon landsmen, " sometimes we ship a sea — and sometimes we see a ship." After the twelfth day sailing-vessels and steam-ships were frequently met with, and we had abundant proofs that we were on the great high way of the nations, and in the most crowded part of the " Ferry."

On Friday, the 16th, at eight o'clock in the morn ing, a pilot, who had been on the look-out for us for four days, came on board, and informed us that we were 180 miles from land. He brought at the same time the news, distressing to very many of our company, that the commercial panic in New York had increased in intensity ; that nearly if not all the banks had suspended payment; and that there never had been a financial crisis of such severity in the whole history of the United States. At ten o'clock that night we were off Sandy Hook. The navigation being intricate, our entrance into the harbour was deferred until daylight ; and at seven in the morning of Saturday, the 17th, having nearly com pleted our fourteenth day, we steamed for eighteen miles into the beautiful bay at the end of which stands New York, the Queen of the Western World, with New Jersey on the one side, and Brooklyn on the other.

The three form but one city in fact, though differing in name, like London and West minster, and occupy a situation worthy in every respect of a metropolis that has no commercial rival or superior in the world — except London.

Chapter II. New York

New York, Nov. 25th, 1857. In one of his famous letters to the Pennsylvanians the late Rev. Sydney Smith accused the whole American people of pride, conceit, and presumption. Smarting under a sense of injuries inflicted upon him, not by the State or City of New York, which had not the remotest connection with his grievances, real or supposed, he hurled this sweeping denun ciation against all the States — declaring, among other odd things, in his own odd way, " that this new and vain people could never forgive England because Broadway was inferior to Bond Street." It is four teen years since the Rev. Sydney Smith thus dis burdened his mind — prompted to do so by the fact, disagreeable to him — that his pockets had been pre viously disburdened by his own desire of making more than five per cent, by the transatlantic invest ment of his money.

The lapse of years has made a great difference in the aspect of Broadway, as BROADWAY. 13 well as in that of New York generally. But, what ever may have been the appearance of this great artery of New York in that remote period of its history — a period when, as travellers told us, pigs prowled about the principal thoroughfares, and lay down at night on the marble door-steps of marble palaces in snug and affectionate familiarity with Irish immigrants — Sydney Smith's assertion of the infe riority of Broadway to Bond Street is ludicrously untrue at the present time. Bond Street! quotha? Bond Street is no more to be compared to Broad way for beauty, extent, life, bustle, and wealth, than a dingy old farthing of the reign of George III. to a bright new sovereign of the days of Queen Victoria.

There is no street in London that can be declared superior or even equal, all things considered, to Broadway. It is a street sui generis, combining in itself the characteristics of the Boulevard des Italiens at Paris, and of Cheapside or Fleet Street in London, with here and there a dash of Whitechapel or the Minories ; and here and there a clash of Liverpool and Dublin. It is longer, more crowded, and fuller of fine buildings than the Boulevard des Italiens ; it is as bustling as Cheapside ; and, more than all, it has a sky above it as bright as the sky of Venice. Its aspect is thoroughly Parisian. Were it not for the BROADWAY. old familiar names of Smith, Jones, and Brown over the doors of the stores and warehouses, and the Eng lish placards and advertisements that everywhere meet the eye, the stranger might fancy himself under the maximized government and iron grip of Napo leon III., instead of being under that of the minim ized and mild government of an American Republic — a government so infinitesimally light in its weight, and carried on by persons so little known, that strangers in this, the " Empire State," as it is called, and even the citizens themselves, are scarcely more cognisant of the name of the Governor, than a Lon doner is of the name of the High Sheriff of Flintshire or of the Lord Lieutenant of Merioneth.

England has given names to the people in Broad way, but France and Continental Europe seem to have given them their manners. Flagstaffs on the roof of every third or fourth house, banners flaunt ing from the windows, a constant rat-tat-too of drums as detachments of the militia regiments (and very fine regiments they are, and very splendidly ac coutred,) pass to and fro, all add to the illusion ; and it is only the well-known vernacular of the city of St. Paul's, spiced occasionally with the still more piquant vernacular of the city of St. Patrick's, that bring the cheated fancy back to the reality, and BROADWAY. 15 prove to the Englishman that he is among his own people. Were there anything like uniformity in the design of its long lines of buildings, Broadway would be one of the three or four most magnificent streets in the world.

Even without any general design — for each man builds exactly as he pleases — the street, in its details, surpasses any single street that Eng land or the British Isles can show. From the Battery facing the sea, where Broadway has a very ignoble commencement, to Trinity Church, there is nothing remarkable about it; but from Trinity Church, of brown stone, with its elegant spire, to Grace Church, built entirely of white marble, a distance in a straight line of nearly three miles, and thence on to Union-square and the statue of Washington, Broadway offers one grand succession of commercial palaces. Formerly, — and perhaps when Sydney Smith wrote — the houses were for the most part of brick gaily coloured, with here and there a house of brown stone or granite. But the brick is in gradual process of extirpation ; and white marble — pure, glittering, brilliant, with out speck or flaw — is rapidly taking its place.

The St. Nicholas Hotel, one of the most sump tuous bivudings in New York, is a palace of white BROADWAY. marble, with upwards of one hundred windows fronting Broadway. To the right, and to the left, and in front, are other palaces of the same material, pure as Parian — larger than the largest warehouse in St. Paul's Churchyard, and devoted to the same or similiar purposes : some for the wholesale, but the great majority for the retail, trade. " Dry goods " or linendrapers' stores compete with each other in the use of this costly stone ; and such has been, and is, the rage for it, that in a few years hence a house of any other material than marble, granite, or iron will be the exception to the rule in Broadway and in the main thoroughfares leading from it to the east and the west. Most of these buildings, taken separately, are fine specimens of architecture, but the general effect is not striking, from the total absence of plan and method, already alluded to, and which seems to be inevitable in a country where every man is a portion of the Government and of the Sovereignty, and considers himself bound to consult nobody's taste but his own.

But this peculiarity is not confined to America, or St. Paul's Churchyard would not be what it is, and the noble proportions of the Cathedral would not be marred as they are by the too close proximity of the hideous warehouses that have been gradually piled up around BROADWAY HOTELS. 17 it — monuments alike of commercial pride and bad taste. Brown stone edifices rank next in size and number to the marble palaces ; and a few of cast iron, with elegant Corinthian pillars, add to the variety of architecture in the Broadway. Conspi cuous among the edifices that give its most imposing character to this busy and beautiful street are Stewart's dry-goods store, the iron palace of Messrs. Haughwoot and Co., such hotels as the St. Nicholas, the Metropolitan, the Laffarge House, the St. Denis, the Clarendon, the New York, and the Astor House.

The-last mentioned was some years ago the boast and pride of New York, and the wonder of strangers ; but the city has outgrown its southern limits, and stretched itself far away into the north and north west, and new hotels like the St. Nicholas and the Metropolitan have dwarfed the Astor House in size and eclipsed it in splendour. The St. Nicholas makes up from 500 to 700 beds, and the Metro politan nearly as many. Both of these, as well as the others mentioned, represent the magnificent scale on which the New Yorkers do business, as well as the more than Parisian publicity with which families eat and drink and pass the day. Enough for the present on the street architecture of Broadway. A few words on its physical and VOL. i. c BROADWAY. moral aspects are necessary to complete the picture.

On each side of the street are rows of American elm, with here and there a willow, or a mountain ash. At this date all the trees are leafless, except the willows, which still droop in green beauty, though somewhat shrivelled in their leaves by the frosts of the last three nights. The roadway is excellently paved with granite, and the foot pave ments are equally good. But let not the traveller be deceived into the idea that the part is a specimen of the whole. Broadway monopolises nearly all the good pavement as well as cleanliness of New York ; and the streets that branch off from it on each side are uneven, dirty, and full of deep holes and ruts, through which carriage-driving is far from being agreeable. If there be any exception it is in the Fifth Avenue — the Tyburnia, or Belgravia of New York — where the richest people live, in marble and stone palaces, not quite so large as the business palaces of Broadway, but sufficiently luxurious and imposing.

The street swarms with omnibuses, some what smaller and more inconvenient than the omnibuses of London. Nearly the whole of them are painted white. No one rides outside, for the satisfactory reason that there are no seats. They have no conductors. The passenger, on entering, is BROADWAY OMNIBUSES. 19 expected to pay his fare to the driver through a hole in the roof; and, if he neglect to do so, the driver begins to drum with liis fist on the top, to attract attention, and forthwith pokes his hand through the aforesaid hole for the money, with an objurgation against the passenger more emphatic than polite, and often in the choicest brogue of the county of Cork. When the passenger wants to descend he pulls a cord, the vehicle stops, and he opens the door for himself, and goes about his business.

The New Yorkers consider themselves, and are considered by others, to be a fast people ; but they have no Hansom and, indeed, no cabs of any description. They have not yet advanced beyond the lumbering old hackney coach with two horses, which disappeared from the streets of London more than five-and-twenty years ago. A few cabs, it appears, were recently introduced, but Cabbie, being in a free country, where municipalities make good laws, but are not strong enough to enforce them, insisted upon fixing the fares himself, at something like a dollar a mile. As might have been predicted, the scheme did not work, and Cabbie, instead of lowering his price, disappeared altogether, and betook himself to other schemes and projects for making an easy living, or emigrated to the Far West. The hackney-coaches C HACKNEY-COACHES. with two horses are conducted upon such a system of extortion that one job per diem may be considered tolerably good pay.