North America Volume I Part 16

"But," it will be said, "all the intelligence and education of this people have not saved them from falling out among themselves and their friends, and running into troubles by which they will be ruined. Their political arrangements have been so bad, that in spite of all their reading and writing they must go to the wall." I venture to express an opinion that they will by no means go to the wall, and that they will be saved from such a destiny, if in no other way, then by their education. Of their political arrangements, as I mean before long to rush into that perilous subject, I will say nothing here. But no political convulsions, should such arise,--no revolution in the const.i.tution, should such be necessary,--will have any wide effect on the social position of the people to their serious detriment.

They have the great qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race,--industry, intelligence, and self-confidence; and if these qualities will no longer suffice to keep such a people on their legs, the world must be coming to an end.

I have said that it is not a common thing to meet an American who belongs to no denomination of Christian wors.h.i.+p. This I think is so; but I would not wish to be taken as saying that religion on that account stands on a satisfactory footing in the States. Of all subjects of discussion, this is the most difficult. It is one as to which most of us feel that to some extent we must trust to our prejudices rather than our judgments. It is a matter on which we do not dare to rely implicitly on our own reasoning faculties, and therefore throw ourselves on the opinions of those whom we believe to have been better men and deeper thinkers than ourselves. For myself, I love the name of State and Church, and believe that much of our English well-being has depended on it. I have made up my mind to think that union good, and not to be turned away from that conviction. Nevertheless I am not prepared to argue the matter. One does not always carry one's proofs at one's finger-ends.

But I feel very strongly that much of that which is evil in the structure of American politics is owing to the absence of any national religion, and that something also of social evil has sprung from the same cause. It is not that men do not say their prayers. For aught I know, they may do so as frequently and as fervently, or more frequently and more fervently, than we do; but there is a rowdiness, if I may be allowed to use such a word, in their manner of doing so which robs religion of that reverence which is, if not its essence, at any rate its chief protection. It is a part of their system that religion shall be perfectly free, and that no man shall be in any way constrained in that matter. Consequently, the question of a man's religion is regarded in a free-and-easy way. It is well, for instance, that a young lad should go somewhere on a Sunday; but a sermon is a sermon, and it does not much concern the lad's father whether his son hear the discourse of a freethinker in the music-hall, or the eloquent but lengthy outpouring of a preacher in a Methodist chapel. Everybody is bound to have a religion, but it does not much matter what it is.

The difficulty in which the first fathers of the Revolution found themselves on this question, is shown by the const.i.tutions of the different States. There can be no doubt that the inhabitants of the New England States were, as things went, a strictly religious community. They had no idea of throwing over the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, as the French had attempted to do at their Revolution. They intended that the new nation should be pre-eminently composed of a G.o.d-fearing people; but they intended also that they should be a people free in everything,--free to choose their own forms of wors.h.i.+p. They intended that the nation should be a Protestant people; but they intended also that no man's conscience should be coerced in the matter of his own religion. It was hard to reconcile these two things, and to explain to the citizens that it behoved them to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d,--even under penalties for omission; but that it was at the same time open to them to select any form of wors.h.i.+p that they pleased, however that form might differ from the practices of the majority. In Connecticut it is declared that it is the duty of all men to wors.h.i.+p the Supreme Being, the Creator and Preserver of the universe, but that it is their right to render that wors.h.i.+p in the mode most consistent with the dictates of their consciences. And then a few lines further down the article skips the great difficulty in a manner somewhat disingenuous, and declares that each and every society of Christians in the State shall have and enjoy the same and equal privileges. But it does not say whether a Jew shall be divested of those privileges, or, if he be divested, how that treatment of him is to be reconciled with the a.s.surance that it is every man's right to wors.h.i.+p the Supreme Being in the mode most consistent with the dictates of his own conscience.

In Rhode Island they were more honest. It is there declared that every man shall be free to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d according to the dictates of his own conscience, and to profess and by argument to maintain his opinion in matters of religion; and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect his civil capacity. Here it is simply presumed that every man will wors.h.i.+p a G.o.d, and no allusion is made even to Christianity.

In Ma.s.sachusetts they are again hardly honest. "It is the right,"

says the const.i.tution, "as well as the duty of all men in society publicly and at stated seasons to wors.h.i.+p the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe." And then it goes on to say that every man may do so in what form he pleases; but further down it declares that "every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves peaceably and as good subjects of the commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law." But what about those who are not Christians? In New Hamps.h.i.+re it is exactly the same. It is enacted that--"Every individual has a natural and unalienable right to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d according to the dictates of his own conscience and reason." And that--"Every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves quietly and as good citizens of the State, shall be equally under the protection of the law." From all which it is, I think, manifest that the men who framed these doc.u.ments, desirous above all things of cutting themselves and their people loose from every kind of trammel, still felt the necessity of enforcing religion,--of making it to a certain extent a matter of State duty.

In the first const.i.tution of North Carolina it is enjoined,--"That no person who shall deny the being of G.o.d, or the truth of the Protestant religion, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit." But this was altered in the year 1836, and the words "Christian religion" were subst.i.tuted for "Protestant religion."

In New England the Congregationalists are, I think, the dominant sect. In Ma.s.sachusetts, and I believe in the other New England States, a man is presumed to be a Congregationalist if he do not declare himself to be anything else; as with us the Church of England counts all who do not specially have themselves counted elsewhere.

The Congregationalist, as far as I can learn, is very near to a Presbyterian. In New England I think the Unitarians would rank next in number; but a Unitarian in America is not the same as a Unitarian with us. Here, if I understand the nature of his creed, a Unitarian does not recognize the divinity of our Saviour. In America he does do so, but throws over the doctrine of the Trinity. The Protestant Episcopalians muster strong in all the great cities, and I fancy that they would be regarded as taking the lead of the other religious denominations in New York. Their tendency is to high-church doctrines. I wish they had not found it necessary to alter the forms of our prayer-book in so many little matters, as to which there was no national expediency for such changes. But it was probably thought necessary that a new people should show their independence in all things. The Roman Catholics have a very strong party--as a matter of course--seeing how great has been the immigration from Ireland; but here, as in Ireland--and as indeed is the case all the world over--the Roman Catholics are the hewers of wood and drawers of water. The Germans, who have latterly flocked into the States in such swarms that they have almost Germanized certain States, have of course their own churches. In every town there are places of wors.h.i.+p for Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anabaptists, and every denomination of Christianity; and the meeting-houses prepared for these sects are not, as with us, hideous buildings contrived to inspire disgust by the enormity of their ugliness, nor are they called Salem, Ebenezer, and Sion, nor do the ministers within them look in any way like the Deputy-Shepherd. The churches belonging to those sects are often handsome. This is especially the case in New York; and the pastors are not unfrequently among the best educated and most agreeable men whom the traveller will meet. They are for the most part well paid; and are enabled by their outward position to hold that place in the world's ranks which should always belong to a clergyman. I have not been able to obtain information from which I can state with anything like correctness what may be the average income of ministers of the Gospel in the northern States, but that it is much higher than the average income of our parish clergymen, admits, I think, of no doubt. The stipends of clergymen in the American towns are higher than those paid in the country. The opposite to this, I think as a rule, is the case with us.

I have said that religion in the States is rowdy. By that I mean to imply that it seems to me to be divested of that reverential order and strictness of rule which, according to our ideas, should be attached to matters of religion. One hardly knows where the affairs of this world end, or where those of the next begin. When the holy men were had in at the lecture, were they doing stage-work or church-work? On hearing sermons, one is often driven to ask oneself whether the discourse from the pulpit be in its nature political or religious. I heard an Episcopalian Protestant clergyman talk of the scoffing nations of Europe,--because at that moment he was angry with England and France about Slidell and Mason. I have heard a chapter of the Bible read in Congress at the desire of a member, and very badly read. After which the chapter itself and the reading of it became the subject of a debate, partly jocose and partly acrimonious. It is a common thing for a clergyman to change his profession and follow any other pursuit. I know two or three gentlemen who were once in that line of life, but have since gone into other trades. There is, I think, an unexpressed determination on the part of the people to abandon all reverence, and to regard religion from an altogether worldly point of view. They are willing to have religion, as they are willing to have laws; but they choose to make it for themselves. They do not object to pay for it, but they like to have the handling of the article for which they pay. As the descendants of Puritans and other G.o.dly Protestants, they will submit to religious teaching, but as Republicans they will have no priestcraft. The French at their Revolution had the latter feeling without the former, and were therefore consistent with themselves in abolis.h.i.+ng all wors.h.i.+p. The Americans desire to do the same thing politically, but infidelity has had no charms for them. They say their prayers, and then seem to apologize for doing so, as though it were hardly the act of a free and enlightened citizen, justified in ruling himself as he pleases.

All this to me is rowdy. I know no other word by which I can so well describe it.

Nevertheless the nation is religious in its tendencies, and p.r.o.ne to acknowledge the goodness of G.o.d in all things. A man there is expected to belong to some church, and is not, I think, well looked on if he profess that he belongs to none. He may be a Swedenborgian, a Quaker, a Muggletonian;--anything will do. But it is expected of him that he shall place himself under some flag, and do his share in supporting the flag to which he belongs. This duty is, I think, generally fulfilled.

CHAPTER XX.

FROM BOSTON TO WAs.h.i.+NGTON.

From Boston, on the 27th of November, my wife returned to England, leaving me to prosecute my journey southward to Was.h.i.+ngton by myself.

I shall never forget the political feeling which prevailed in Boston at that time, or the discussions on the subject of Slidell and Mason, in which I felt myself bound to take a part. Up to that period I confess that my sympathies had been strongly with the northern side in the general question; and so they were still, as far as I could divest the matter of its English bearings. I had always thought, and do think, that a war for the suppression of the southern rebellion could not have been avoided by the North without an absolute loss of its political prestige. Mr. Lincoln was elected President of the United States in the autumn of 1860, and any steps taken by him or his party towards a peaceable solution of the difficulties which broke out immediately on his election, must have been taken before he entered upon his office. South Carolina threatened secession as soon as Mr. Lincoln's election was known, while yet there were four months left of Mr. Buchanan's Government. That Mr. Buchanan might, during those four months, have prevented secession, few men, I think, will doubt when the history of the time shall be written. But instead of doing so he consummated secession. Mr. Buchanan is a northern man, a Pennsylvanian; but he was opposed to the party which had brought in Mr. Lincoln, having thriven as a politician by his adherence to southern principles. Now, when the struggle came, he could not forget his party in his duty as President. General Jackson's position was much the same when Mr. Calhoun, on the question of the tariff, endeavoured to produce secession in South Carolina thirty years ago, in 1832,--excepting in this, that Jackson was himself a southern man.

But Jackson had a strong conception of the position which he held as President of the United States. He put his foot on secession and crushed it, forcing Mr. Calhoun, as senator from South Carolina, to vote for that compromise as to the tariff which the Government of the day proposed. South Carolina was as eager in 1832 for secession as she was in 1859-1860; but the Government was in the hands of a strong man and an honest one. Mr. Calhoun would have been hung had he carried out his threats. But Mr. Buchanan had neither the power nor the honesty of General Jackson, and thus secession was in fact consummated during his Presidency.

But Mr. Lincoln's party, it is said--and I believe truly said--might have prevented secession by making overtures to the South, or accepting overtures from the South, before Mr. Lincoln himself had been inaugurated. That is to say,--if Mr. Lincoln and the band of politicians who with him had pushed their way to the top of their party, and were about to fill the offices of State, chose to throw overboard the political convictions which had bound them together and insured their success,--if they could bring themselves to adopt on the subject of slavery the ideas of their opponents,--then the war might have been avoided, and secession also avoided. I do believe that had Mr. Lincoln at that time submitted himself to a compromise in favour of the Democrats, promising the support of the Government to certain acts which would in fact have been in favour of slavery, South Carolina would again have been foiled for the time. For it must be understood, that though South Carolina and the Gulf States might have accepted certain compromises, they would not have been satisfied in so accepting them. They desired secession, and nothing short of secession would, in truth, have been acceptable to them. But in doing so Mr. Lincoln would have been the most dishonest politician even in America. The North would have been in arms against him; and any true spirit of agreement between the cotton-growing slave States and the manufacturing States of the North, or the agricultural States of the West, would have been as far off and as improbable as it is now. Mr.

Crittenden, who proffered his compromise to the Senate in December, 1860, was at that time one of the two senators from Kentucky, a slave State. He now sits in the Lower House of Congress as a member from the same State. Kentucky is one of those border States which has found it impossible to secede, and almost equally impossible to remain in the Union. It is one of the States into which it was most probable that the war would be carried;--Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri being the three States which have suffered the most in this way. Of Mr. Crittenden's own family, some have gone with secession and some with the Union. His name had been honourably connected with American politics for nearly forty years, and it is not surprising that he should have desired a compromise. His terms were in fact these,--a return to the Missouri compromise, under which the Union pledged itself that no slavery should exist north of 36.30 degrees N. lat. unless where it had so existed prior to the date of that compromise; a pledge that Congress would not interfere with slavery in the individual States,--which under the const.i.tution it cannot do; and a pledge that the Fugitive Slave Law should be carried out by the northern States. Such a compromise might seem to make very small demand on the forbearance of the Republican party, which was now dominant. The repeal of the Missouri compromise had been to them a loss, and it might be said that its re-enactment would be a gain.

But since that compromise had been repealed, vast territories south of the line in question had been added to the Union, and the re-enactment of that compromise would hand those vast regions over to absolute slavery, as had been done with Texas. This might be all very well for Mr. Crittenden in the slave State of Kentucky--for Mr.

Crittenden, although a slave-owner, desired to perpetuate the Union; but it would not have been well for New England or for the West. As for the second proposition, it is well understood that under the const.i.tution Congress cannot interfere in any way in the question of slavery in the individual States. Congress has no more const.i.tutional power to abolish slavery in Maryland than she has to introduce it into Ma.s.sachusetts. No such pledge, therefore, was necessary on either side. But such a pledge given by the North and West would have acted as an additional tie upon them, binding them to the finality of a const.i.tutional enactment to which, as was of course well known, they strongly object. There was no question of Congress interfering with slavery, with the purport of extending its area by special enactment, and therefore by such a pledge the North and West could gain nothing; but the South would in prestige have gained much.

But that third proposition as to the Fugitive Slave Law and the faithful execution of that law by the northern and western States would, if acceded to by Mr. Lincoln's party, have amounted to an unconditional surrender of everything. What! Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut carry out the Fugitive Slave Law! Ohio carry out the Fugitive Slave Law after the "Dred Scot" decision and all its consequences! Mr. Crittenden might as well have asked Connecticut, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Ohio to introduce slavery within their own lands.

The Fugitive Slave Law was then, as it is now, the law of the land; it was the law of the United States as voted by Congress and pa.s.sed by the President, and acted on by the Supreme Judge of the United States' Court. But it was a law to which no free State had submitted itself, or would submit itself. "What!" the English reader will say,--"sundry States in the Union refuse to obey the laws of the Union,--refuse to submit to the const.i.tutional action of their own Congress!" Yes. Such has been the position of this country! To such a dead lock has it been brought by the attempted but impossible amalgamation of North and South. Mr. Crittenden's compromise was moons.h.i.+ne. It was utterly out of the question that the free States should bind themselves to the rendition of escaped slaves,--or that Mr. Lincoln, who had just been brought in by their voices, should agree to any compromise which should attempt so to bind them. Lord Palmerston might as well attempt to re-enact the Corn Laws.

Then comes the question whether Mr. Lincoln or his Government could have prevented the war after he had entered upon his office in March, 1861? I do not suppose that any one thinks that he could have avoided secession and avoided the war also;--that by any ordinary effort of Government he could have secured the adhesion of the Gulf States to the Union after the first shot had been fired at Fort Sumter. The general opinion in England is, I take it, this,--that secession then was manifestly necessary, and that all the bloodshed and money-shed, and all this destruction of commerce and of agriculture might have been prevented by a graceful adhesion to an indisputable fact. But there are some facts, even some indisputable facts, to which a graceful adherence is not possible. Could King Bomba have welcomed Garibaldi to Naples? Can the Pope shake hands with Victor Emmanuel?

Could the English have surrendered to their rebel colonists peaceable possession of the colonies? The indisputability of a fact is not very easily settled while the circ.u.mstances are in course of action by which the fact is to be decided. The men of the northern States have not believed in the necessity of secession, but have believed it to be their duty to enforce the adherence of these States to the Union.

The American Governments have been much given to compromises, but had Mr. Lincoln attempted any compromise by which any one southern State could have been let out of the Union, he would have been impeached.

In all probability the whole const.i.tution would have gone to ruin, and the presidency would have been at an end. At any rate, his presidency would have been at an end. When secession, or in other words rebellion, was once commenced, he had no alternative but the use of coercive measures for putting it down;--that is, he had no alternative but war. It is not to be supposed that he or his ministry contemplated such a war as has existed,--with 600,000 men in arms on one side, each man with his whole belongings maintained at a cost of 150 per annum, or ninety millions sterling per annum for the army.

Nor did we, when we resolved to put down the French revolution, think of such a national debt as we now owe. These things grow by degrees, and the mind also grows in becoming used to them; but I cannot see that there was any moment at which Mr. Lincoln could have stayed his hand and cried Peace! It is easy to say now that acquiescence in secession would have been better than war, but there has been no moment when he could have said so with any avail. It was inc.u.mbent on him to put down rebellion, or to be put down by it. So it was with us in America in 1776.

I do not think that we in England have quite sufficiently taken all this into consideration. We have been in the habit of exclaiming very loudly against the war, execrating its cruelty and anathematizing its results, as though the cruelty were all superfluous and the results unnecessary. But I do not remember to have seen any statement as to what the northern States should have done,--what they should have done, that is, as regards the South, or when they should have done it. It seems to me that we have decided as regards them that civil war is a very bad thing, and that therefore civil war should be avoided. But bad things cannot always be avoided. It is this feeling on our part that has produced so much irritation in them against us,--reproducing, of course, irritation on our part against them.

They cannot understand that we should not wish them to be successful in putting down a rebellion; nor can we understand why they should be outrageous against us for standing aloof, and keeping our hands, if it be only possible, out of the fire.

When Slidell and Mason were arrested, my opinions were not changed, but my feelings were altered. I seemed to acknowledge to myself that the treatment to which England had been subjected, and the manner in which that treatment was discussed, made it necessary that I should regard the question as it existed between England and the States, rather than in its reference to the North and South. I had always felt that as regarded the action of our Government we had been sans reproche; that in arranging our conduct we had thought neither of money nor political influence, but simply of the justice of the case,--promising to abstain from all interference and keeping that promise faithfully. It had been quite clear to me that the men of the North, and the women also, had failed to appreciate this, looking, as men in a quarrel always do look, for special favour on their side.

Everything that England did was wrong. If a private merchant, at his own risk, took a cargo of rifles to some southern port, that act to northern eyes was an act of English interference,--of favour shown to the South by England as a nation; but twenty s.h.i.+ploads of rifles sent from England to the North merely signified a brisk trade and a desire for profit. The "James Adger," a northern man-of-war, was refitted at Southampton as a matter of course. There was no blame to England for that. But the "Nashville," belonging to the Confederates, should not have been allowed into English waters! It was useless to speak of neutrality. No Northerner would understand that a rebel could have any mutual right. The South had no claim in his eyes as a belligerent, though the North claimed all those rights which he could only enjoy by the fact of there being a recognized war between him and his enemy the South. The North was learning to hate England, and day by day the feeling grew upon me that, much as I wished to espouse the cause of the North, I should have to espouse the cause of my own country. Then Slidell and Mason were arrested, and I began to calculate how long I might remain in the country. "There is no danger. We are quite right," the lawyers said. "There are Vattel and Puffendorff and Stowell and Phillimore and Wheaton," said the ladies. "Amba.s.sadors are contraband all the world over,--more so than gunpowder; and if taken in a neutral bottom, &c." I wonder why s.h.i.+ps are always called bottoms when spoken of with legal technicality? But neither the lawyers nor the ladies convinced me. I know that there are matters which will be read not in accordance with any written law, but in accordance with the bias of the reader's mind. Such laws are made to be strained any way. I knew how it would be. All the legal ac.u.men of New England declared the seizure of Slidell and Mason to be right. The legal ac.u.men of Old England has declared it to be wrong; and I have no doubt that the ladies of Old England can prove it to be wrong out of Vattel, Puffendorff, Stowell, Phillimore, and Wheaton.

"But there's Grotius," I said, to an elderly female at New York, who had quoted to me some half-dozen writers on international law, thinking thereby that I should trump her last card. "I've looked into Grotius too," said she, "and as far as I can see," &c. &c. &c. So I had to fall back again on the convictions to which instinct and common sense had brought me. I never doubted for a moment that those convictions would be supported by English lawyers.

I left Boston with a sad feeling at my heart that a quarrel was imminent between England and the States, and that any such quarrel must be destructive to the cause of the North. I had never believed that the States of New England and the Gulf States would again become parts of one nation, but I had thought that the terms of separation would be dictated by the North, and not by the South. I had felt a.s.sured that South Carolina and the Gulf States, across from the Atlantic to Texas, would succeed in forming themselves into a separate confederation; but I had still hoped that Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri might be saved to the grander empire of the North, and that thus a great blow to slavery might be the consequence of this civil war. But such ascendancy could only fall to the North by reason of their command of the sea. The northern ports were all open, and the southern ports were all closed. But if this should be reversed. If by England's action the southern ports should be opened, and the northern ports closed, the North could have no fair expectation of success. The ascendancy in that case would all be with the South. Up to that moment,--the Christmas of 1861,--Maryland was kept in subjection by the guns which General Dix had planted over the city of Baltimore. Two-thirds of Virginia were in active rebellion, coerced originally into that position by her dependence for the sale of her slaves on the cotton States. Kentucky was doubtful, and divided. When the federal troops prevailed, Kentucky was loyal; when the Confederate troops prevailed, Kentucky was rebellious. The condition in Missouri was much the same. Those four States, by two of which the capital, with its district of Columbia, is surrounded, might be gained, or might be lost. And these four States are susceptible of white labour,--as much so as Ohio and Illinois,--are rich in fertility, and rich also in all a.s.sociations which must be dear to Americans. Without Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky, without the Potomac, the Chesapeake, and Mount Vernon, the North would indeed be shorn of its glory! But it seemed to be in the power of the North to say under what terms secession should take place, and where should be the line. A senator from South Carolina could never again sit in the same chamber with one from Ma.s.sachusetts; but there need be no such bar against the border States. So much might at any rate be gained, and might stand hereafter as the product of all that money spent on 600,000 soldiers.

But if the Northerners should now elect to throw themselves into a quarrel with England, if in the gratification of a shameless braggadocio they should insist on doing what they liked, not only with their own, but with the property of all others also, it certainly did seem as though utter ruin must await their cause. With England, or one might say with Europe, against them, secession must be accomplished, not on northern terms, but on terms dictated by the South. The choice was then for them to make; and just at that time it seemed as though they were resolved to throw away every good card out of their hand. Such had been the ministerial wisdom of Mr. Seward.

I remember hearing the matter discussed in easy terms by one of the United States senators. "Remember, Mr. Trollope," he said to me, "we don't want a war with England. If the choice is given to us, we had rather not fight England. Fighting is a bad thing. But remember this also, Mr. Trollope--that if the matter is pressed on us, we have no great objection. We had rather not, but we don't care much one way or the other." What one individual may say to another is not of much moment, but this senator was expressing the feelings of his const.i.tuents, who were the legislature of the State from whence he came. He was expressing the general idea on the subject of a large body of Americans. It was not that he and his State had really no objection to the war. Such a war loomed terribly large before the minds of them all. They knew it to be fraught with the saddest consequences. It was so regarded in the mind of that senator. But the braggadocio could not be omitted. Had he omitted it, he would have been untrue to his const.i.tuency.

When I left Boston for Was.h.i.+ngton nothing was as yet known of what the English Government or the English lawyers might say. This was in the first week in December, and the expected voice from England could not be heard till the end of the second week. It was a period of great suspense, and of great sorrow also to the more sober-minded Americans. To me the idea of such a war was terrible. It seemed that in these days all the hopes of our youth were being shattered. That poetic turning of the sword into a sickle, which gladdened our hearts ten or twelve years since, had been clean banished from men's minds.

To belong to a peace-party was to be either a fanatic, an idiot, or a driveller. The arts of war had become everything. Armstrong guns, themselves indestructible, but capable of destroying everything within sight, and most things out of sight, were the only recognized results of man's inventive faculties. To build bigger, stronger, and more s.h.i.+ps than the French was England's glory. To hit a speck with a rifle bullet at 800 yards' distance was an Englishman's first duty.

The proper use for a young man's leisure hours was the practice of drilling. All this had come upon us with very quick steps, since the beginning of the Russian war. But if fighting must needs be done, one did not feel special grief at fighting a Russian. That the Indian mutiny should be put down was a matter of course. That those Chinese rascals should be forced into the harness of civilization was a good thing. That England should be as strong as France,--or perhaps, if possible, a little stronger,--recommended itself to an Englishman's mind as a State necessity. But a war with the States of America! In thinking of it I began to believe that the world was going backwards.

Over sixty millions sterling of stock--railway stock and such like--are held in America by Englishmen, and the chances would be that before such a war could be finished the whole of that would be confiscated. Family connections between the States and the British isles are almost as close as between one of those islands and another. The commercial intercourse between the two countries has given bread to millions of Englishmen, and a break in it would rob millions of their bread. These people speak our language, use our prayers, read our books, are ruled by our laws, dress themselves in our image, are warm with our blood. They have all our virtues; and their vices are our own too, loudly as we call out against them. They are our sons and our daughters, the source of our greatest pride, and as we grow old they should be the staff of our age. Such a war as we should now wage with the States would be an unloosing of h.e.l.l upon all that is best upon the world's surface. If in such a war we beat the Americans, they with their proud stomachs would never forgive us. If they should be victors, we should never forgive ourselves. I certainly could not bring myself to speak of it with the equanimity of my friend the senator.

I went through New York to Philadelphia and made a short visit to the latter town. Philadelphia seems to me to have thrown off its Quaker garb, and to present itself to the world in the garments ordinarily a.s.sumed by large cities; by which I intend to express my opinion that the Philadelphians are not in these latter days any better than their neighbours. I am not sure whether in some respects they may not perhaps be worse. Quakers,--Quakers absolutely in the very flesh of close bonnets and brown knee-breeches,--are still to be seen there; but they are not numerous, and would not strike the eye if one did not specially look for a Quaker at Philadelphia. It is a large town, with a very large hotel,--there are no doubt half-a-dozen large hotels, but one of them is specially great,--with long straight streets, good shops and markets, and decent comfortable-looking houses. The houses of Philadelphia generally are not so large as those of other great cities in the States. They are more modest than those of New York, and less commodious than those of Boston. Their most striking appendage is the marble steps at the front doors. Two doors as a rule enjoy one set of steps, on the outer edges of which there is generally no parapet or raised curb-stone. This, to my eye, gave the houses an unfinished appearance,--as though the marble ran short, and no further expenditure could be made. The frost came when I was there, and then all these steps were covered up in wooden cases.

The city of Philadelphia lies between the two rivers, the Delaware and the Schuylkill. Eight chief streets run from river to river, and twenty-four cross-streets bisect the eight at right angles. The long streets are, with the exception of Market Street, called by the names of trees,--chesnut, walnut, pine, spruce, mulberry, vine, and so on. The cross-streets are all called by their numbers. In the long streets the numbers of the houses are not consecutive, but follow the numbers of the cross streets; so that a person living in Chesnut Street between Tenth Street and Eleventh Street, and ten doors from Tenth Street, would live at No. 1010. The opposite house would be No. 1011. It thus follows that the number of the house indicates the exact block of houses in which it is situated. I do not like the right-angled building of these towns, nor do I like the sound of Twentieth Street and Thirtieth Street; but I must acknowledge that the arrangement in Philadelphia has its convenience. In New York I found it by no means an easy thing to arrive at the desired locality.

They boast in Philadelphia that they have half a million inhabitants.

If this be taken as a true calculation, Philadelphia is in size the fourth city in the world,--putting out of the question the cities of China, as to which we have heard so much and believe so little. But in making this calculation the citizens include the population of a district on some sides ten miles distant from Philadelphia. It takes in other towns connected with it by railway but separated by large s.p.a.ces of open country. American cities are very proud of their population, but if they all counted in this way, there would soon be no rural population left at all. There is a very fine bank at Philadelphia,--and Philadelphia is a town somewhat celebrated in its banking history. My remarks here, however, apply simply to the external building, and not to its internal honesty and wisdom, or to its commercial credit.

In Philadelphia also stands the old house of Congress,--the house in which the Congress of the United States was held previous to 1800, when the Government, and the Congress with it, were moved to the new city of Was.h.i.+ngton. I believe, however, that the first Congress, properly so called, was a.s.sembled at New York in 1789, the date of the inauguration of the first President. It was, however, here, in this building at Philadelphia, that the independence of the Union was declared in 1776, and that the const.i.tution of the United States was framed.

Pennsylvania, with Philadelphia for its capital, was once the leading State of the Union,--leading by a long distance. At the end of the last century it beat all the other States in population, but has since been surpa.s.sed by New York in all respects,--in population, commerce, wealth, and general activity. Of course it is known that Pennsylvania was granted to William Penn, the Quaker, by Charles II. I cannot completely understand what was the meaning of such grants,--how far they implied absolute possession in the territory, or how far they confirmed simply the power of settling and governing a colony. In this case a very considerable property was confirmed, as the claim made by Penn's children after Penn's death was bought up by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 130,000; which in those days was a large price for almost any landed estate on the other side of the Atlantic.

Pennsylvania lies directly on the borders of slave land, being immediately north of Maryland. Mason and Dixon's line, of which we hear so often, and which was first established as the division between slave soil and free soil, runs between Pennsylvania and Maryland. The little State of Delaware, which lies between Maryland and the Atlantic, is also tainted with slavery; but the stain is not heavy nor indelible. In a population of a hundred and twelve thousand there are not two thousand slaves, and of these the owners generally would willingly rid themselves if they could. It is, however, a point of honour with these owners, as it is also in Maryland, not to sell their slaves; and a man who cannot sell his slaves must keep them.

Were he to enfranchise them and send them about their business, they would come back upon his hands. Were he to enfranchise them and pay them wages for work, they would get the wages but he would not get the work. They would get the wages, but at the end of three months they would still fall back upon his hands in debt and distress, looking to him for aid and comfort as a child looks for it. It is not easy to get rid of a slave in a slave State. That question of enfranchising slaves is not one to be very readily solved.

In Pennsylvania the right of voting is confined to free white men. In New York the coloured free men have the right to vote, providing they have a certain small property qualification, and have been citizens for three years in the State;--whereas a white man need have been a citizen but for ten days, and need have no property qualification; from which it is seen that the position of the negro becomes worse, or less like that of a white man, as the border of slave land is more nearly reached. But in the teeth of this embargo on coloured men, the const.i.tution of Pennsylvania a.s.serts broadly that all men are born equally free and independent. One cannot conceive how two clauses can have found their way into the same doc.u.ment so absolutely contradictory to each other. The first clause says that white men shall vote, and that black men shall not, which means that all political action shall be confined to white men. The second clause says that all men are born equally free and independent!

In Philadelphia I for the first time came across live secessionists,--secessionists who p.r.o.nounced themselves to be such. I will not say that I had met in other cities men who falsely declared themselves true to the Union; but I had fancied, in regard to some, that their words were a little stronger than their feelings. When a man's bread,--and much more, when the bread of his wife and children,--depends on his professing a certain line of political conviction, it is very hard for him to deny his a.s.sent to the truth of the argument. One feels that a man under such circ.u.mstances is bound to be convinced, unless he be in a position which may make a stanch adherence to opposite politics a matter of grave public importance. In the North I had fancied that I could sometimes read a secessionist tendency under a cloud of unionist protestations. But in Philadelphia men did not seem to think it necessary to have recourse to such a cloud. I generally found in mixed society, even there, that the discussion of secession was not permitted; but in society that was not mixed, I heard very strong opinions expressed on each side.

With the unionists nothing was so strong as the necessity of keeping Slidell and Mason. When I suggested that the English Government would probably require their surrender, I was talked down and ridiculed.

"Never that; come what may." Then, within half an hour, I would be told by a secessionist that England must demand reparation if she meant to retain any place among the great nations of the world; but he also would declare that the men would not be surrendered.

"She must make the demand," the secessionist would say, "and then there will be war; and after that we shall see whose ports will be blockaded!" The Southerner has ever looked to England for some breach of the blockade, quite as strongly as the North has looked to England for sympathy and aid in keeping it.

The railway from Philadelphia to Baltimore pa.s.ses along the top of Chesapeake Bay and across the Susquehanna river; at least the railway cars do so. On one side of that river they are run on to a huge ferryboat, and are again run off at the other side. Such an operation would seem to be one of difficulty to us under any circ.u.mstances; but as the Susquehanna is a tidal river, rising and falling a considerable number of feet, the natural impediment in the way of such an enterprise would, I think, have staggered us. We should have built a bridge costing two or three millions sterling, on which no conceivable amount of traffic would pay a fair dividend. Here, in crossing the Susquehanna, the boat is so constructed that its deck shall be level with the line of the railway at half tide, so that the inclined plane from the sh.o.r.e down to the boat, or from the sh.o.r.e up to the boat, shall never exceed half the amount of the rise or fall.

One would suppose that the most intricate machinery would have been necessary for such an arrangement; but it was all rough and simple, and apparently managed by two negroes. We should employ a small corps of engineers to conduct such an operation, and men and women would be detained in their carriages under all manner of threats as to the peril of life and limb; but here everybody was expected to look out for himself. The cars were dragged up the inclined plane by a hawser attached to an engine, which hawser, had the stress broken it, as I could not but fancy probable, would have flown back and cut to pieces a lot of us who were standing in front of the car. But I do not think that any such accident would have caused very much attention.

Life and limbs are not held to be so precious here as they are in England. It may be a question whether with us they are not almost too precious. Regarding railways in America generally, as to the relative safety of which, when compared with our own, we have not in England a high opinion, I must say that I never saw any accident or in any way became conversant with one. It is said that large numbers of men and women are slaughtered from time to time on different lines; but if it be so, the newspapers make very light of such cases. I myself have seen no such slaughter, nor have I even found myself in the vicinity of a broken bone. Beyond the Susquehanna we pa.s.sed over a creek of Chesapeake Bay on a long bridge. The whole scenery here is very pretty, and the view up the Susquehanna is fine. This is the bay which divides the State of Maryland into two parts, and which is blessed beyond all other bays by the possession of canvas-back ducks.

Nature has done a great deal for the State of Maryland, but in nothing more than in sending thither these web-footed birds of Paradise.

Nature has done a great deal for Maryland; and Fortune also has done much for it in these latter days in directing the war from its territory. But for the peculiar position of Was.h.i.+ngton as the capital, all that is now being done in Virginia would have been done in Maryland, and I must say that the Marylanders did their best to bring about such a result. Had the presence of the war been regarded by the men of Baltimore as an unalloyed benefit, they could not have made a greater struggle to bring it close to them. Nevertheless fate has so far spared them.

As the position of Maryland and the course of events as they took place in Baltimore on the commencement of secession had considerable influence both in the North and in the South, I will endeavour to explain how that State was affected, and how the question was affected by that State. Maryland, as I have said before, is a slave State lying immediately south of Mason and Dixon's line. Small portions both of Virginia and of Delaware do run north of Maryland, but practically Maryland is the frontier State of the slave States.

It was therefore of much importance to know which way Maryland would go in the event of secession among the slave States becoming general; and of much also to ascertain whether it could secede if desirous of doing so. I am inclined to think that as a State it was desirous of following Virginia, though there are many in Maryland who deny this very stoutly. But it was at once evident that if loyalty to the North could not be had in Maryland of its own free will, adherence to the North must be enforced upon Maryland. Otherwise the city of Was.h.i.+ngton could not be maintained as the existing capital of the nation.

The question of the fidelity of the State to the Union was first tried by the arrival at Baltimore of a certain Commissioner from the State of Mississippi, who visited that city with the object of inducing secession. It must be understood that Baltimore is the commercial capital of Maryland, whereas Annapolis is the seat of Government and the legislature--or is, in other terms, the political capital. Baltimore is a city containing 230,000 inhabitants, and is considered to have as strong and perhaps as violent a mob as any city in the Union. Of the above number 30,000 are negroes and 2000 are slaves. The Commissioner made his appeal, telling his tale of southern grievances, declaring, among other things, that secession was not intended to break up the Government but to perpetuate it, and asked for the a.s.sistance and sympathy of Maryland. This was in December, 1860. The Commissioner was answered by Governor Hicks, who was placed in a somewhat difficult position. The existing legislature of the State was presumed to be secessionist, but the legislature was not sitting, nor in the ordinary course of things would that legislature have been called on to sit again. The legislature of Maryland is elected every other year, and in the ordinary course sits only once in the two years. That session had been held, and the existing legislature was therefore exempt from further work,--unless specially summoned for an extraordinary session. To do this is within the power of the Governor. But Governor Hicks, who seems to have been mainly anxious to keep things quiet, and whose individual politics did not come out strongly, was not inclined to issue the summons.

"Let us show moderation as well as firmness," he said; and that was about all he did say to the Commissioner from Mississippi.

The Governor after that was directly called on to convene the legislature; but this he refused to do, alleging that it would not be safe to trust the discussion of such a subject as secession to--"excited politicians, many of whom having nothing to lose from the destruction of the Government, may hope to derive some gain from the ruin of the State!" I quote these words, coming from the head of the executive of the State and spoken with reference to the legislature of the State, with the object of showing in what light the political leaders of a State may be held in that very State to which they belong! If we are to judge of these legislators from the opinion expressed by Governor Hicks, they could hardly have been fit for their places. That plan of governing by the little men has certainly not answered. It need hardly be said that Governor Hicks, having expressed such an opinion of his State's legislature, refused to call them to an extraordinary session.