North America

Chapter II

Boston — Proposed Termination of the War — Command of the Mississippi — Newport — Rhode Island 15

Chapter III

Railway Cars — Portland — The White Mountains — American Hotels — New Hampshire 23

Chapter IV

L O W E E , G A y A D A.

Canada — Quebec — Roman Catholics^Mentnaiirency — Lower Canada — Canadian Mails — The Owl's Head — Canadian Inn — Canada Grand Trunk RaUwav— Montreal ..T. .^ 43

CHAPTER y.

UPPEB CAXADA.

Seat of Government for the Canadas — Ottawa — Lumbering — Free and Equal — Toronto CO

CHAPTER VI. THE CON"SEXIOX OF THE CAXADAS WITH GEEAT BEITAnr

British Troops in Canada — Colonial Dependence — Federal Government — "Why does Great Britain keep her Colonies ? — What shall Canada do with herself? 73

CHAPTER ^1L

XIAGABA.

CHAPTER Vni.

Division of the States — Population — General Fremont — The Northern Armv— General Maclellan— The Morrill Tariff 99

IV CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IX.

FROM NIAGARA TO THE MISSISSIPPI.

PAGE

Railway Beds — Railway Luggage — Detroit — Grand Haven — Milwaukee — American Cities — American Laborers — Frontier Men — Soldiers at Milwaukee — Settlement of New Lands— The Frontier Man Ill

CHAPTER X.

THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.

Soldiers from Minnesota — Boats on the Mississippi — The Upper Mississippi — St. Paul — St. Anthony — Wood-cutters on the Mississippi 12D

CHAPTER XL

CERES AMERICANA.

English Vegetables — Price of Corn — Breadstuffs at Buffalo — Chicago — An Illinois Prairie — American Patriotism — Chicago — Cleveland — Buflfalo — Grain Elevators 145

CHAPTER XII.

BUFFALO TO NEW YORK.

Trenton Falls— West Point 162

CHAPTER XIII.

AN APOLOGY FOR THE WAR.

CHAPTER XIV.

NEW YORK.

New York — American Physiognomy — Omnibuses — American Women — American Men — Institutions of New York — New York Schools — New York — The Central Park — Railways 182

CHAPTER XV.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.

Constitutions of different States — The Constitution of New York — The Legislature of New York — The Executive — Absence of Responsibility — State Legislatures 209

CHAPTER XVI.

BOSTON.

Connecticut — Mr. Emerson — American Lectures — Mr. Everett — Mr. Wendell Phillips — Lexington and Concord — The Boston^ibrary — Social Life in Boston — Anger against England— Masoned Slidell — Mr. Seward 217

CHAPTER XVII.

CAMBRIDGE AND LOWELL.

Harvard College — Cambridge — Lowell 240

Contents

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN.

i'AQE

Introduction

It has been the ambition of my literary life to write a book about the United States, and I had made u]) my mind to visit the country with this object before the intestine troubles of the United States Government had commenced. I have not allowed the division among the States and the breaking out of civil war to interfere with my intention ; but I should not purposely have chosen this period either for my book or for my visit. I say so much, in order that it may not be supposed that it is my special purpose to write an account of the struggle as far as it has yet been carried. My wish is to describe as well as I can the present social and political state of the country. This I should have attempted, with more personal satisfaction in the work, had there been no disruption between the N'orth and South ; but I have not allowed that disruption to deter me from an object which, if it were delayed, might probably never be carried out. I am therefore forced to take the subject in its present condition, and being so forced I must write of the war, of the causes which have led to it, and of its probable termination. Bat I wish it to be understood that it was not my selected task to do so, and is not now my primary object.

Thirty years ago my mother wrote a book about the Americans, to which I believe I may allude as a well known and successful work without being guilty of any undue family conceit. That was essentially a woman's book. She saw with a woman's keen eye, and described with a Avoman's light but graphic pen, the social defects and absurdities which our near relatives had adopted into their domestic life. All that she told was worth the telling, and the telling, if done successfully, was sure to produce a good result. I am satisfied that it did so. But she did not regard it as a part of her work to dilate on the nature and operation of those political arrangements which had produced the social absurdities which she saw, or to explain that though such absurdities were the natural result of those arrangements

A in their newness, the defects would certainly pass away, while the political arrangements, if good, would remain. Such a work is fitter for a man than for a woman. I am very far from thinking that it is a task which I can perform with satisfaction either to myself or to others. It is a work which some man will do who has earned a right by education, study, and success to rank himself among the political sages of his age. But I may perhaps be able to add something to the familiarity of Englishmen with Americans. The writings which have been most popular in England on the subject of the United States have hitherto dealt chiefly with social details ; and though in most cases true and useful, have created laughter on one side of the Atlantic, and soreness on the other. If I could do anything to mitigate the soreness, if I could in any small degree add to the good feeling which should exist between two nations which ought to love each other so well, and which do hang upon each other so constantly, I should think that I had cause to be proud of my Avork. But it is very hard to write about any country a book that does not represent the country described in a more or less ridiculous point of view. It is hard at least to do so in such a book as I must write. A De Tocqueville may do it. It may be done by any philosophico-political or politico-statistical, or statistico-scientitic writer ; but it can hardly be done by a man who professes to use a light pen, and to manufacture his article for the use of general readers. Such a writer may tell all that he sees of the beautiful ; but he must also tell, if not all that he sees of the ludicrous, at any rate the most piquant part of it. How to do this without being offensive is the problem which a man with such a task before him has to solve. His first duty is owed to his readers, and consists mainly in this : that he shall tell the truth, and shall so tell that truth that what he has written may be readable. But a second duty is due to those of whom he writes ; and he does not perform that duty Avell if he gives offence to those, as to whom, on the summing up of the whole evidence for and against them in his own mind, he intends to give a favourable verdict. There are of course those against whom a writer does not intend to give a favourable verdict; — people and places whom he desires to describe on the peril of his own judgment, as bad, ill-educated, ugly, and odious. In such cases his course is straightforward enough. His judgment may be in great peril, but his volume or chapter will be easily written. Ridicule and censure run glibly from the pen, and form, themselves into sharp paragraphs which are pleasant to the reader. Whereas eulogy is commonly dull, and

INTEODUCTION. 3

too frequently sounds as though it were false. There is much difficulty in expressing a verdict which is intended to be favourable ; but which, though favourable, shall not be falsely eulogistic ; and though true, not offensive.

Who has ever travelled in foreign countries without meeting excellent stories against the citizens of such countries ? And how few can travel without hearing such stories against themselves ? It is impossible for me to avoid telling of a very excellent gentleman whom I met before I had been in the United States a week, and who asked me whether lords in England ever spoke to men who were not lords. Nor can I omit the opening address of another gentleman to my wife. " You like our institutions, ma'am ?" " Yes, indeed," said my Avife, — not with all that eagerness of assent which the occasion perhaps required. "Ah," said he, "I never yet met the down-trodden subject of a despot who did not hug his chains." The first gentleman was certainly somewhat ignorant of our customs, and tlie second was rather abrupt in his condemnation of the political principles of a person whom he only first saw at that moment. It comes to me in the way of my trade to repeat such incidents ; but I can tell stories which are quite as good against Englishmen. As for instance, when I was tapped on the back in one of the galleries of Florence by a countryman of mine, and asked to show him where stood the medical Venus. Nor is anything that one can say of the inconveniences attendant upon travel in the United States to be beaten by what foreigners might truly say of us. I shall never forget the look of a Frenchman whom I found on a wet afternoon in the best inn of a provincial town in the west of England. He was seated on- a horsehair-covered chair in the middle of a small dingy illfurnished private sitting-room. No eloquence of mine could make intelligible to a Frenchman or an American the utter desolation of such an apartment. The world as then seen by that Frenchman offered him solace of no description. The air without Avas heavy, dull, and thick. The street beyond the window was dark and narrow. The room contained mahogany chairs covered with horsehair, a mahogany table ricketty in its legs, and a mahogany sideboard ornamented with inverted glasses and old cruet-stands. The Frenchman had come to the house for shelter and food, and had been asked whether he was commercial. Whereupon he shook his head. "Did he want a sitting-room ?" Yes, he did. " He was a leetle tired and vanted to sect." Whereupon he was presumed to have ordered a private room, and was shown up to the Eden I have

NORTH AMERICA.

described. I found him there at death's door. Nothing that I can say with reference to the social habits of the Americans can tell more against them than the story of that Frenchman's fate tells against those of our country.

From which remarks I would wish to be understood as deprecating offence from my American friends, if in the course of my book should be found aught which may seem to argue against the excellence of their institutions, and the grace of their social life. Of this at any rate I can assure them in sober earnestness that I admire what they have done in the Avorld and for the world with a true and hearty admiration ; and that whether or no all their institutions be at present excellent, and their social life all graceful, my wishes are that they should be so, and my convictions are that that improvement will come for which there may perhaps even yet be some little room.

And now touching this war Avhich had broken out between the North and South before I left England. I would wish to explain what my feelings Avere ; or rather what I believe the general feelings of England to have been, before I found myself among the people by whom it was being waged. It is very difficult for the people of any one nation to realize the political relations of another, and to chew the cud and digest the bearings of those external politics. But it is unjust in the one to decide upon the political aspirations and doings of that other without such understanding. Constantly as the name of France is in our mouth, comparatively few Englishmen understand the way in Avhich France is governed ; — that is, how far absolute despotism prevails, and how far the power of the one ruler is tempered, or, as it may be, hampered by the voices and influence of others. And as regards England, how seldom is it that in common society a foreigner is met who comprehends the nature of her political arrangements ! To a Frenchman, — I do not of course include great men who have made the subject a study, — but to the ordinary intelligent Frenchman the thing is altogether incomprehensible. Language, it may be said, "has much to do with that. But an American speaks English ; and how often is an American met, who has combined in his mind the idea of a monarch so called, with that of a republic, properly so named ; — a combination of ideas which I take to be necessary to the understanding of English politics? The gentleman who scorned my wife for hugging her chains had certainly not done so, and yet he conceived that he had studied the subject. The matter is one most difficult of comprehension. How many Englishmen have failed to understand accurately their own constitution, or the true bearing of their own politics ! But when this knowledge has been attained, it has generally been filtered into the mind slowly, and has come from the unconscious study of many years. An Englishman handles a newspaper for a quarter of an hour daily, and daily exchanges some few words in politics with those around him, till drop by drop the pleasant springs of his liberty creep into his mind and water his heart ; and thus, earlier or later in life according to the nature of his intelligence, he understands why it is that he is at all points a free man. But if this be so of our own politics ; if it be so rare a thing to find a foreigner who understands them in all their niceties, why is it that we are so confident in our remarks on all the niceties of those of other nations ?

I hope that I may not be misunderstood as saying that we should not discuss foreign politics in our press, our parliament, our public meetings, or our private houses. No man could be mad enough to preach such a doctrine. As regards our Parliament, that is probably the best British school of foreign politics, seeing that the subject is not there often taken up by men who are absolutely ignorant, and that mistakes when made are subject to a correction which is both rough and ready. The press, though very liable to error, labours hard at its vocation in teaching foreign politics, and spares no expense in letting in daylight. If the light let in be sometimes moonshine, excuse may easily be made. Where so much is attempted, there must necessarily be some failure. But even the moonshine does good, if it be not ofiensive moonshine. What I would deprecate is, that aptness at reproach which we assume ; — the readiness with scorn, the quiet words of insult, the instant judgment and condemnation with which we are so inclined to visit, not the great outward acts, but the smaller inward politics of our neighbours.

And do others spare us, will be the instant reply of all who may read this. In my counter reply I make bold to place myself and my country on very high ground, and to say that we, the older and therefore more experienced people as regards the United States, and the better governed as regards France, and the stronger as regards all the world beyond, should not throw mud again even though mud be thrown at us. I yield the path to a small chimney-sweeper as readily as to a lady ; and forbear from an interchange of courtesies with a Billingsgate heroine, even though at heart I may have a proud consciousness that I should not altogether go to the wall in such an encounter.

I left England in August last — August 1861. At that time, and for some months previous, I think that the general English feeling on the American question Avas as follows. " This wide-spread nationality of the United States, with its enormous territorial possessions and increasing population, has fallen asunder, torn to pieces by the weight of its own discordant parts, — ao a congregation when its size has become unwieldy will separate, and reform itself into two wholesome wholes. It is well that this should be so, for the people are not homogeneous, as a people should be who are called to live together as one nation. They have attempted to combine free-soil sentiments with the practice of slavery, and to make these two antagonists live together in peace and unity imder the same roof; but, as we have long expected, they have failed. Now has come the period for separation ; and if the people would only see this, and act in accordance with the circumstances which Providence and the inevitable hand of the world's ruler has prepared for them, all would be well. But they will not do this. They will go to war with each other. The South will make her demands for secession with an arrogance and instant pressure which exasperates the North ; and the North, forgetting that an equable temper in such matters is the most powerful of all weapons, will not recognize the strength of its own position. It allows itself to be exasperated, and goes to war for that which if regained would only be injurious to it. Thus millions on millions sterling Avill be spent. A heavy debt will be incurred ; and the North, which divided from the South might take its place among the greatest of nations, will throw itself back for half a century, and perhaps injure the splendour of its ultimate prospects. If only they would be Avise, throw down their arms, and agree to part ! But they Avill not."

This was, I think, the general opinion when I left England. It would not, however, be necessary to go back many months to reach the time when Enghshmen were saying hoAv impossible it was that so great a national power should ignore its own greatness, and destroy its own power by an internecine separation. But in August last all that had gone by, and we in England had realized the probability of actual secession.

To these feelings on the subject may be added another, which w^as natural enough though perhaps not noble. " These western cocks have crowed loudly," we said, " too loudly for the comfort of those who live after all at no such great distance from them. It is well that their combs should be clipped. Cocks who crow so very loudly are a nuisance. It might have

INTEODUCTION. 7

gone so far that the clipping would become a work necessarily to be done from without. But it is ten times better for all parties that it should be done from within ; and as the cocks are now clipping their own combs, in God's name let them do it and the whole world will be the quieter." That, I say, was not a very noble idea ; but it was natural enough, and certainly has done somewhat in mitigating that grief which the horrors of civil war and the want of cotton have caused to us in England.

Such certainly had been my belief as to the coimtry. I speak here of my opinion as to the ultimate success of secession and the folly of the war, — repudiating any concurrence of my own in the ignoble but natural sentiment alluded to in the last paragraph. I certainly did think that the Northern States, if wise, would have let the Southern States go. I had blamed Buchanan as a traitor for allowing the germ of secession to make any growth ; — and as I thoug-ht him a traitor then, so do I think him a traitor now. But I had also blamed Lincoln, or rather the government of which Mr. Lincoln in this matter is no more than the exponent, for his eiforts to avoid that which is inevitable. Li this I think that I — ov as I believe I may say we, we Englishmen — were wrong. I do not see how the North, treated as it was and had been, could have submitted to secession without resistance. We all remember what Shakespere says of the great armies which were led out to fight for a piece of ground not large enough to cover the bodies of those who would be slain in the battle ; but I do not remember that Shakespere says that the battle was on this account necessarily unreasonable. It is the old point of honour, which, till it had been made absurd by certain changes of circumstances, was always grand and usually beneficent. These changes of circumstances have altered the manner in which appeal may be made, but have not altered the point of honour. Had the Southern States sought to obtain secession by constitutional means, they might or might not have been successful; but if successful there would have been no war. . I do not mean to brand all the Southern States Vvith treason, nor do I intend to say that having secession at heart they could have obtained it by constitutional means. But I do intend to say that acting as they did, demanding, secession not constitutionally but in opposition to the constitution, taking upon themselves the right of breaking up a nationality of whicli they formed only a part, and doing that without consent of the other part, opposition from the Korth^and war was an inevitable consequence.

8 NOETH AMEEICA.

It is, I think, only necessary to look back to the revolution by which the United States separated themselves from England to see this. There is hardly to be met, here and there, an Englishman who now regrets the loss of the revolted American colonies ; — who now thinks that civilization was retarded and the world injured by that revolt ; who now conceives that England should have expended more treasure and more lives in the hope of retaining those colonies. It is agreed that the revolt was a good thing ; that those who were then rebels became patriots by success, and that they deserved well of all coming ages of mankind. But not the less absolutely necessary was it that England should endeavour to hold her own. She was as the mother bird when the young bird will fly alone. She suffered those pangs which Nature calls upon mothers to endure.

As was the necessity of British opposition to American independence, so was the necessity of Northern opposition to Southern secession. I do not say that in other respects the two cases were parallel. The States separated from us because they Avould not endure taxation without representation — in other words because they were old enough and big enough to go alone. The South is seceding from the North because the two are not homogeneous. They have different instincts, different appetites, different morals, and a different culture. It is well for one man to say that slavery has caused the separation ; and for another to say that slavery has not caused it. Each in so saying speaks the truth. Slavery has caused it, seeing that slavery is the great point on which the two have agreed to differ. But slavery has not caused it, seeing that other points of difference are to be found in every circumstance and feature of the two people. The North and the South must ever be dissimilar. In the North labour will always be honourable, and because honourable successful. In the South labour has ever been servile, — at least in some sense, and therefore dishonourable ; and because dishonourable has not, to itself, been successful. In the South, I say, labour ever has been dishonourable ; and I am driven to confess that I have not hitherto seen a sign of any change in the Creator's fiat on this matter. That labour Avill be honourable all the world over, as years advance and the millennium draws nigh, I for one never doubt.

So much for English opinion about America in August last. And now I will venture to say a word or two as to American feeling respecting this English opinion at that period. It will of course be remembered by all my readers that at the beginning of the war Lord Russell, who was then in the lower house, declared as Foreign Secretary of State that England would regard the North and South as belligerents, and would remain neutral as to both of them. This declaration gave violent offence to the North, and has been taken as indicating British sympathy with the cause of the seceders. I am not going to explain — indeed it would be necessary that I should iirst understand — the laws of nations with regard to blockaded ports, privateering, ships and men and goods contraband of war, and all those semi-nautical semi-military rules and axioms which it is necessary that all Attorneys-General and such like should at the present moment have at their fingers' end. But it must be evident to the most ignorant in those matters, among which large crowd I certainly include myself, that it was essentially necessary that Lord John Russell should at that time declare openly what England intended to do. It was essential that our seamen should know where they would be protected and where not, and that the course to be taken by England should be defined. Reticence in the matter was not within the power of the British Government. It behoved the Foreign Secretary of State to declare openly that England intended to side either with one party or with the other, or else to remain neutral, between them.

I had heard this matter discussed by Americans before I left England, and I have of course heard it discussed very frequently in America. There can be no doubt that the front of the ofi*ence given by England to the Northern States was this declaration of Lord John Russell's. But it has been always made evident to me that the sin did not consist in the fact of England's neutrality, — in the fact of her regarding the two parties as belligerents, — but in the open declaration made to the world by a Secretary of State that she did intend so to regard them. If another proof were wanting, this would aflbrd another proof of the immense weight attached in America to all the proceedings and to all the feelings of England on this matter. The very anger of the North is a compliment paid by the North to England. But not the less is that anger unreasonable. To those in America who understand our constitution, it must be evident that our Government cannot take ofiicial measures without a public avowal of such measures. France can do so. Russia can do so. The Government of the United States can do so, and could do so even before this rupture. But the Government of England cannot do so. All men connected with the Government in England have felt themselves from time to time more or less hampered by the

A2 necessity of publicity. Our statesmen have been forced to fight their battles with the plan of their tactics open before their adversaries. But we, in England, are inclined to believe, that the general result is good, and that battles so fought and so w^on will be fought with the honestest blows, and won with the surest results. Reticence in this matter was not possible, and Lord John Russell in making the open avowal which gave such offence to the Northern States only did that which, as a servant of England, England required him to do.

"What would you in England have thought," a gentleman of much weight in Boston said to me, " if when you were in trouble in India, we had openly declared that we regarded your opponents there as belhgerents on equal terms with yourselves ?" I was forced to say that, as far as I could see, there was no analogy between the two cases. In India an army had mutinied, and that an army composed of a subdued, if not a servile race. The analogy would have been fairer had it referred to any sympathy shown by us to insurgent negroes. But, nevertheless, had the army which mutinied in India been in possession of ports and sea-board ; had they held in their hands vast commercial cities and great agricultural districts ; had they owned ships and been masters of a wide-spread trade, America could have done nothing better towards us than have remained neutral in such a conflict, and have regarded the parties as belligerents. The only question is whether she would have done so well by us. " But," said my friend in answer to all this, " we should not have proclaimed to the world that we regarded you and them as standing on an equal footing." There again appeared the true gist of the offence. A word from England such as that spoken by Lord John Russell was of such weight to the South, that the North could not endure to have it spoken. I did not say to that gentleman, — but here I may say, that had such circumstances arisen as those conjectured, and had America spoken such a word, England would not have felt herself called upon to resent it.