Letters from the slave states;

Contents

PAGE

Inteoduction vii

LETTEE I.

Letter II

The Prairie — Prairie Eailways — Prairie Difficulties . . lo LETTEE III.

Emigration to the West — Long Winters 17 «

LETTEE IV.

Henry Ward Beecher — Lecture on Patriotism — Spurious Democracy — Sovereignty of the People — False Equality — True Democracy 23

LETTEE Y.

Future Dangers — American Industry — Kentucky — Stagnation — Social Contrasts 36

LETTEE VI.

Slavery — Slave Physiognomy — Slave Agitation — Pree Negroes — Difficulties of the Free Negroes — The Slave's love of England 46

LETTEE VII.

State of the South — The JSTorth is Democratic — The South is Aristocratic — The Line of Division — State Eights — Cause of Whig Failure — The Slavery Dispute— Aggression of the South — Spirit of Disunion ■ — Spirit of the North — Southern Fanatics .... 58 iv

CONTENTS.

LETTEE VIII.

Presidential Election — The Republican Party — The Democratic Party — The Fillmore Party — Virtual Defeat of the South — Democratic Differences , . 80

LETTEE IX.

Union or Disunion — Desire for Territory — The Secret of Power — Moral Disunion — Love of Social Distinctions— Social Progress 94

LETTEE X.

Cuba — Slavery in Cuba — What Cuba may be — Socialism and Slavery — Serfdom and Freedom — Bledsoe's Defence of Slavery — Slavery Sophisms — West India Emancipation — Doubts of the Slaveholder . . . 106

LETTEE XL

Louisiana — Longing for Cuba — Universal Suffrage — Mob -government — English Ambassad ors — What our Ambassadors should be — Duty of the English Press 124

LETTEE XII.

Thuggism in New Orleans — Lynch-law — The London PoHceraan — Pohco in America — Hotel Life: its Causes ; its Effects — American Domestic Affection — Extravagance in Dress — Southern Friends — Texas 139

LETTEE XIIL

Mob-taxation — Pauper Suffrage — General Walker — Cotton — Essential to the South — Cotton produced by Free Labour 16,^

li:ttee XIV.

Backwardness of the Soutli — Sparsencss of Population

—Cliancea of Sugar Planting 177

CONTENTS.

V

LETTEE XV.

English Tliorougliness — American Superficiality — ^Want of a Leisure Class — Loss and Gain — Protectionist Fallacies — Evils of Protection in America — Economical Ignorance in America — The Example of England 184

LETTEE XVI.

A Slave's View of Slavery — Illinois and Georgia — Stagnation in the South — Nat. Lewis — The American AlUance — American Nevt spapers 200

LETTEE XVII.

Florida — The Seminole War — A Yankee in the South — White Trash — Progressiveness of Pree Society — Florida Squatters — Florida and Minnesota . . . 213

LETTEE XVIII.

Street Obstructions — Free and Slave Labour — Slaves unfit for High Farming — Slavery ruinous to the South . 228

LETTEE XIX.

Liberia a Failure — Difficulties of Emancipation — Elevation of the Slave — Self-Emancipation — Antipathy to the Free Negro — Gain of Emancipation — Decline of South Carolina — Charleston 237

. LETTEE XX.

Orphan Hospital — Military Academy — A Southern Lecturer— A Slave Sale — A Converted Abolitionist . . 252

LETTEE XXI.

Sandhillers — Duelling — Affrays — Habit of Carrying

Arms 261 vi

CONTENTS.

PAGE

LETTER XXII.

American Capitals — The Post Office — Abuses and Mismanagement— Private Enterprise the Eemedy — Lynch-law 274

LETTER XXIIL

Condition of the Slaves — House Servants — Field Hands — Farm Servants — Slave Trade — Slave Disaffection — Causes of Disaffection — Insurrectionary Movements— The Eemedy 284

LETTER XXIV.

Prospects of Slavery — Economical Influences — Demand for Labour — The South divided — The Frontier Slave States — Loss and Gain of Slave Breeding — Arkansas and Texas — Lowlands and Uplands — Abolitionism in the South 302

LETTER XXV.

West Virginia — Abolition Sentiments — The Scotch in AVest Virginia — Revivals — Climate of West Virginia — East Virginia 323

LETTER XXVI.

North and South — The Slave Power — Slavery doomed — Appeal for the South — Improbability of Disunion — Strength of National Feeling — Disunion a Bugbear 337

LETTER XXVII.

Future of America — England and America — New York

Press — Dollar-worship 353

LETTER XXVIII.

Scarcity of Food — Paper Money — Manifest Destiny —

American Physiognomy 362

LETTER XXIX.

The Success of America — Its Causes and Limits . . . 370

Introduction

It may be proper to give some explanation of the form in whicli the following pages appear, as well as of the abrupt commencement of the ' Letters' at a distant point in the interior of America.

On the 2oth August, 1856, the Author landed at New York, with the intention of making a somewhat extended tour in the United States. During the autumn months he visited the principal points of interest in New England, the State of New York, and Upper and Lower Canada, returning to New York by Lake Champlain and the Hudson. Passing then by Philadelphia, he crossed the Alleghanies to Pittsburg and Cleveland, arriving about the middle of October at Chicago, the Key of the Far West. From this point his course was to the North-West, and subsequently to the South, as indicated in the ' Letters.'

During his journey, the Author was in the habit of writing to a friend at home remarks on the people and country he was visiting. This was particularly the case in the South, where the social and political viii

INTEODUCTION.

circumstances of the country forced on his attention topics of great importance. It was afterwards suggested that some portions of these communications might be interesting to the public; and in accordance with that suggestion these 'Letters^ are now published.

In preparing a private correspondence for the press, much matter of merely personal and temporary interest has of course been suppressed. All that part also which referred to the North-East portion of the States has been excluded, as relating to subjects made familiar to English readers by many recent publications. Accordingly the first letter inserted in this volume is one that speaks of Chicago and the Far West.

It has been thought desirable, however, to retain as nearly as possible the original form in which the letters were written, and it is hoped that the greater freshness of an actual correspondence will more than compensate the fragmentary nature of the treatment.

The title, ' Letters from the Slave States,' has been adopted, both because the great bulk of the letters were written from the South, and because the most important topics treated of relate more immediately to the interests and institutions of the Slave States.

LETTER I.

St. Paul, Minnesota, 25th October, 1856.

Ever since I came into the States, I have been hearing of Chicago, as the great feature of the new Western world, and was therefore prepared for a wonderful city. But the reality exceeded my expectations. It is a city, not in growth, but in revolution ; growth is much too slow a word for the transformation of a hamlet of log-huts into a western New York, in the space of a few years. Ten years ago Chicago had 4000 or 5000 inhabitants ; now it has 100,000 : some say 120,000. Property has risen in proportion, and fabulous fortunes have been made. You hear of a man being forced to take a few acres for a bad debt, and finding himself in a year or two a millionaire ; another selling by the lineal foot what he bought the other day by the acre. The proprietor of the Tremont House, where I lodged, was a poor tailor, who, when travelling westward a few years ago, stopped at Chicago. Presently he built a log-

B tavern, and called it the ' Tremont this was burned down, and he built another on the opposite side of the street. This, too, was burned down ; and he then built the present ' Tremont House ' on its site. It is an immense pile, and people thought him mad at the time ; but Snip had an eye for futurity. He let his hotel unfurnished for 12,000 dollars, and now gets 24,000 dollars, and when the lease is out he will probably rebuild it, and have the finest hotel in the States.

There were about a dozen new churches building when we were at Chicago and some streets formed quite an avenue of spires. Let us hope that the exhortations of the kirks will be of sufficient weight to counterbalance the corruptions of the stores. I fear, however, that here, as in old Scotland, the church or meeting-house is too often but a place where the sharp trader throws off, as he thinks, the week's accumulation of sin, and starts afresh on Monday morning for six days more worldliness.

The situation of Chicago was originally so low that there could be no proper drainage. They are, therefore, j|^ow raising the whole town some three feet. This gives the town at present a most peculiar look. When you walk along even the principal streets, you pass perhaps a block of fine stone-built stores, with splendid plate-glass

CHICAGO. 3

windows (finer than any in New York), with a good granite pavement in front : a few steps on you descend by three or four wooden steps to the old level of the street, and find a wooden pavement in front of low, shabby-looking wooden houses. The opposite side of the street presents probably the reverse. In some places the wooden causeway of the street may be raised, while the foot-pavement is low ; or the granite pavement may be raised to the new level while the middle of the street is still the old plankroad, two or three feet below. At the Tremont House both are on the old low level, and only the high granite curb-stone, over which you have to clamber, reminds you of the reform yet to come. On every side magnificent blocks, stores, hotels, and churches are rising, many of them built of a beautiful white stone, that is very hard, and seems to me a kind of limestone. Along the shore of the Lake there is a terrace of private dwellings of this white stone, that in size and architectural effect will bear comparison with the newest and best houses in Be]ofravia.

From Chicago we crossed over to Dunleith (opposite Dabucque), by the Chicago and Galena Railway. From Dunleith we came up to )St. Paul by steamer. The Upper Mississippi is very picturesque ; the bluffs are bold, and their craggy summits have often castellated forms. The foliage of the trees at the time of our passage was chiefly a rich brown, varied by a bright yellow, which harmonize well together ; the ground is also covered with a reddish herbage, something like our heather ; and as the woods are not close, but admit of the ground being seen through the trees, the bluffs altogether had a most beautiful russet hue, at once rich and harmonious. The river runs much in narrow channels formed by islands, and we were frequently sailing close by these islands, finely timbered, and with here and there a woodcutter's cabin. The river, as a stream, has not in this part the magnificent steady roll of the St. Lawrence, but this, to my mind, is amply compensated by the greater variety and beauty of its marginal bluffs.

St. Paul is one of the five great cities to he, of the Mississippi — New Orleans, Memphis, Cairo, St. Louis, and St. Paul. I believe in the two Saints, one heading the lower, and the other the upper navigation of the Mississippi, and both backed by large districts of fertile land ; but the three other greatnesses I must take leave to doubt By a recent enumeration St. Paul counts 9975 inhabitants ; and at this (lay probably exceeds 10,000. The situation of tlic town is beautiful. It stands on a plateau, ri.sing some eighty feet above the river, and behind rises an am])hitheatre of heights, which will afford a magnificent site for the coming city. On the

ST. PAUL.

s opposite side of the river are still more beautifully wooded heights, where the eye of the land speculator, in *fine frenzy rolling/ already discerns the splendid villas of the ' merchant-princes of St. Paul.' Meanwhile St. Paul is a city of mud ; and when you attempt to traverse it you are at once brought down from the gorgeous Future to a very splashy Present.

As an instance of the rise in the value of real estate in these countries, I may give you the experiences of a canny Yorkshire watchmaker whose acquaintance I made at St. Paul. He landed here four years ago (when, he says, there were more Indians than white men), and bought a town lot for 250 dollars. For the neighbouring lot 7,500 dollars have been offered and refused; and as my friend's principal lot stands on the street leading from the steam- boat wharf to the hotel, (showing the sagacity of his original choice,) he may well look for a further advance. To the thinking man, who has witnessed this sudden rise in values, and this immense rush of emigrants and speculators, the question naturally occurs, is all this progress sound ? or is it built on a sandy foundation? Speaking of Minnesota alone, I should say that her success, to the whole extent predicted by sanguine men, is somewhat problematical. The four great elements of success in such new countries seem to me to be, — ist, an energetic population ; 2nd, a fertile soil ; 3rd, a favourable climate ; 4th, easy means of communication. The first element Minnesota possesses in perfection ; the second she also possesses in an eminent degree. Her soil in great part is, I believe, superior to that of Canada West, though not, perhaps, equal to the western portions of Illinois. Still the soil is quite capable of bearing good crops of wheat, the grand criterion of success, under favourable circumstances.

This brings us to the question of climate ; and that, I beheve, from all I have heard, is as yet a moot point. To grow good winter wheat, with such regularity as wil] make it an average paying crop, you must either have such a degree of warmth in winter as will dispense with the necessity of a covering of snow, as in central Illinois, or you must have a sufficient coating of snow to protect the plant during the winter, as in Western Canada, without having such a depth as prevents the admission of air, and so ' chokes ' the young plant, as to a certain extent occurs in Lower Canada. Such I believe to be the theory of the thing. But the facts arc difficult to ascertain, partly because there lias not yet b(M'n sufficient experience of tln^ climate to pronounce definitely on its average nature, and

MINNESOTA.

partly because one cannot rely on the interested statements which are made to you.

My own impression is, that there will not be sufficient snow, as the climate is decidedly drier than that of Canada West, and there is less rain. If so, the wind sweeping over the prairies, which in general are lightly timbered, would destroy the covering necessary to protect the wheat. In answer to this, you are told that there are no such winds in winter ; but this I doubt. Time must show. At all events, however, they may grow good spring wheat and other grains. The climate, in point of health, is said to be admirable, and many invalids come hither to be restored, even such as are suffering from pulmonary complaints. The dryness of the climate is very favourable to them ; and I have even heard of haemorrhage of the lungs being stopped by a residence here. But to return. — The fourth element of success, or easy communication, is, I fear, wanting to Minnesota. The only natural means of external communication, of any value, is the Mississippi, and that is closed some five months in the year. So soon, therefore, as the settlers can supply themselves, and the internal or local demand ceases, and they have to cast about for an external market, I fear that Minnesota will be somewhat in the predicament of Robinson Crusoe's boat. The ready answer to this objection is, that they will by that time have railways.

LETTERS FROM THE SLAVE STATES.

But railways to this country will take a loDg time to make. The country is not so favourable as in the Southern prairies, where an ' air-line' costs little more than the price of iron. They count much on the projected line to Superior City ; but the road is to make — the country is to settle — and the city is to build.

Such are some of the doubts which occur to a cautious Scotch intellect; but such scruples are here passed by with a shrug or a pshaw. The folks here have no time to doubt ; and they have a faith which can remove mountains, and build cities and railways in their place. Only such hopeful, undoubting men, can pioneer civilization. We must follow quietly in the rear, lending them a little money, and giving them a little advice. The former they will readily take — the latter not quite so readily. This territory will probably apply this winter for admission as a State. They have sufficient numbers, perhaps 130,000 or 140,000. They are rather divided between two feelings, a wish to enjoy the honour of being a State, and a reluctance to incur the burden of paying tlieir own government. Ambition will probably triumph over economy ; and I presume there will be no objection made to their admission. The territorial Legislature meets at St. Paul tliis winter, when the matter will probably be settled

A LOCAL LEGISLATURE.

Some of the members of this body must be curious specimens. The present representative from one of the Northern districts is an Indian half-breed, and journeys to St. Paul on a sledge drawn by dogs, camping out o' night, and living on pemmican. So nearly does American civilization border on savagery.

LETTER II.

Columbus, Ohio, 4tli November, 1856.

I HAVE now travelled about 1000 miles over prairie, and begin to have some idea of the nature of the country and the course of its development. For practical purposes, you may divide the Northern States into three divisions — that east of the Alleghanies ; that between the Alleghanies and the Wabash; and that west of the Wabash. The middle division consists mainly of the northern portion of Ohio and Indiana. Now the first and second divisions were originally all under forest. The first division has been in great part subjected to culture, and only stumps remind you of its ancient state. In the highly-cultivated parts, such as the neighbourhood of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, stumps are rare ; but in New York State they are yet abundant, and in many parts of New England. The nortiiern part of Ohio and most of Indiana are yet in great pan under forest. The cultivated portions

THE PRAIRIE.

are spaces cleared and reclaimed by the labour of the backwoodsman. Finally, the prairies are open land, cleared by nature, if ever they were forest, and all ready for the plough of the husbandman. Here the pioneer is not the backwoodsman with his axe, but the ' prairie-breaker' with his team and plough. You turn up the soil, and at once you are a producer of corn and wheat.

But there is compensation in everything; and these teeming wildernesses, especially those east of the Mississippi, had one great want, they had no natural means of communication. Illinois, in particular, the most fertile of all, had few rivers, and those of small account. While the lands to the east of her had, besides the Lakes, the Hudson, the Ohio, the St. Lawrence, the Delaware, &c., with all their magnificent tributaries, the prairie lands were for hundreds of miles inaccessible by internal navigation. Communication, the great means of exchange, and so of civilization, was wanting. Man could produce, but he could not trade ; he had no market, and so could only live an isolated, and, therefore, unprogressive life. But civilization gave what nature denied; thus providing for her own advance. The railway supplied a cheap and easy means of communication ; it gave the producer a market, and so gave value to his labour. The railway is the soul of

Western civilization. The result is seen in the astonishing tide of emigration that of late years has set westward, and in the rapid settlement which is taking place all over this region.

There seems a natural, pre-ordained fitness between the railway and the prairie ; for the prairie is as eminently suited to the formation of railways, as railways are essential to the development of prairies. For hundreds of miles you have only to raise the turf, and lay your sleepers; for hundreds of miles you need neither grading nor bridging; no engineering ; hardly any surveying. In one long, unwavering line your iron road passes over the level plain. And that plain, remember, costs nothing ; or at most a dollar and a quarter per acre. The artificial hindrances are still fewer than the natural ones. There are no cities to be circumvented, or bridged over, at enormous cost ; no gentlemen's seats whose ' amenity' is to be preserved at the cost of the plundered proprietors; no pig-headed opponents or greedy rivals to ruin you with parliamentary expenses. Absolutely, the rails and labour are your sole expense. And, in passing, let me express my astonishment, and, I may say, disgust, that, under such circumstances, a people, boasting itself first among civilized peoples, should ignorantly and suicidally cramp their enterprise by

PRAIRIE RAILWAYS. 1 3

an antediluvian protective duty. Such a duty is a tax on progress. Is it not lamentable, nay, provoking to see a young nation, while putting on its < shoes of swiftness,^ thus recklessly clog itself with the cast-off absurdities of the Old World ? It is a blunder which, I believe, can only be explained by supposing a want of thorough education in the American people. The very notion of this folly stings me like a mosquito every time it crosses my mind.

But, again: the prairies absolutely make their own railways without cost to any one. The development of the country by means of a railway is such, that what was yesterday waste land is to-day a valuable district. There is thus action and reaction : the railway improves the land; the improvement pays for the railway. Latterly grants of land have been made to railway companies for the purpose of forming new lines, the Government reserving alternate sections with the railway. In this way the Government loses nothing: for the price of the land it gives away is more than made up by the enhanced price of what they retain. The Illinois Central expects to have the line clear, and some million acres to boot. That is their story; I do not endorse it; but still the principle remains as I have stated. Lands have been granted in Iowa and Wisconsin for the same purpose. If you look at a railway map of

America, and calculate the immense extent of land which their roads, completed and projected, must bring into practical operation as food-producing countries, you can yourself estimate the amount of social and political development which is here in progress. De Tocqueville calculated the rate of Western progress at nineteen miles per annum. At this moment it must be reckoned by hundreds of miles. Nebraska will be settled immediately. Cities are already rising on the Missouri. ' I believe there is nothing in history to compare with this seven-league progress of civilization. For the first time in the world we see a highly-civilized people quietly spreading itself over a vast untenanted solitude, and at one wave of its wand converting the wilderness into a cultivated and fruitful region.

It is, indeed, the peculiarity and high privilege of the American people that it began its history with all the means and appliances of high civilization. It had not to grow out of barbarism ; it had only to give new development to the civilization of the Old World. Hence one reason of its remarkable progress. This truth is brought home to you when you find in the Far West all the most recent adaptations of engineering and other sciences. Think, for one item, of 22,coo miles of railway and 40,000 miles of telegraph in America I It is to me a satisfaction to think that

PRAIRIE DIFFICULTIES. 1 5

we Englishmen are aiding, by our capital, in this great work. We, too, are putting our hand to the * prairie-plough/ whose furrow is the path of human progress. The day is gone by for narrow selfishness and national rivalries. The wise, at least, rejoice at progress wherever it exists, and sink national jealousies in a cosmopolitan unity of occupations, ideas, and aspirations.

The prairies, then, are becoming settled ; but here, as elsewhere, man's lot is not without its trials and troubles. Two great necessaries, wood and water, are scarce. The former can be brought at a moderate expense by railway ; but the want of water, and especially good water, is a more serious evil. All over the prairies, except in some favoured spots, they have to dig from twenty to forty feet for water ; and when they get it, it is hard, and much impregnated with lime. It seems to me that, from this cause, Illinois, and such prairie land as is similarly situated, can never be densely populated, but must be used in large sections for agricultural, and, perhaps, pastoral purposes, while towns and cities of any magnitude must be situated on the rivers. Another evil is the unhealthiness of the prairie. Illinois has a particularly bad name in this respect. Some say that it arises greatly from the progress of cultivation ; that the turning up of vast masses of decaying vegetable matter produces miasma ; and they point to New York State, and Ohio, where formerly disease existed to a degree now unknown. There is probably truth in this, but I fear it will be long before Illinois will be really healthy. An intelligent physician, who has resided twenty years in the country, told me he perceived no improvement as yet.

LETTER III . Cincinnati, loth November, 1856

Chambers, if I remember well, recommends Canada West for British emigrants of the poorer classes. In this I cannot agree. The climate of Canada, though healthy, is very severe ; but a stronger objection to me would be the unsatisfactory state of Canadian politics. A colony, at best, is but a provisional political organization ; but in Canada there is, besides, the element of discord and perplexity arising from the division of the Provinces. This difficulty will not be easily surmounted. And there seems corruption in their government quite as great as in the States. Then, considering the matter economically, Canada is a forest land, which requires the labour and cost of clearing; and the poor man who sits down in such a wilderness generally finds that the most he can do is to have his land cleared and productive when l8 LETTERS FROM THE SLAVE STATES.

he has spent a lifetime's labour on it, and is about to hide his bones in it.

On political and economical grounds, therefore, I should consider a prairie farm in the States a much • more eligible venture. Here the emigrant has, at least, a settled government, and can at once proceed to put the plough into his land. Suppose he settles in Iowa State, some fifty miles west of Iowa city ; he can have an improved farm, i.e., with house, fences, &c., all ready for occupation, so that the settler can proceed at once to cultivate the soil, at from ten to fifteen dollars an acre. This is better, if he can afford it, than buying raw prairie at five to eight dollars. Here he finds a fruitful soil ready for the plough, a tolerably healthy climate, water for the digging, and, in some districts, running streams ; while some of the coarser woods, such as black walnut and hickory, are at hand, and fir can be had at moderate cost from the Mississippi. The emigration itself furnishes him a local market, and by the time that fails, railways will secure him a more permanent, though perhaps less profitable, market. There is probably not snow enough to make winter wheat a sure crop, but spring wheat and Indian corn, or as they call it here simply 'corn,* will ensure him a fair return for his labour. At the start he hires a * i^rairie-breaker,' to break up his

EMIGRATION TO THE WEST. 1 9

land, which will cost him from two and a half to three dollars per acre ; between the furrows made by the heavy prairie-plough he drops corn-seed, and will probably have nearly thirty-six bushels per acre, w^iich, at twenty-five cents, gives him nine dollars, and this will pay all expenses of ' breaking,' reaping, &c., and leave him something handsome over. The corn is sometimes sold ' on foot,' at five and six dollars per acre ; so that the settler need have no trouble about want of labour, &c. In this w-ay, you see, an emigrant would very soon have his land clear; whereas, in Canada, he must be years before he can call the land his own, or have any practical use of it.

In Indiana, I am told, it is common, after felling the timber, to let it lie for three years to rot, before commencing to clear the ground. By that time the prairie settler would be in full swing on a free farm, with a railway at his elbow. A man would need to land in New York with 200I. in his pocket; with that he might, with sobriety and industry, soon realize a fair competence. At this moment the rush of emigration is towards Minnesota; but this, I believe, is greatly because the government land offices in Wisconsin and Iowa are shut till the railway companies claim the lands which have been granted to them. On the whole, a poor man would probably do best in Iowa. The lands are cheap, the