The Englishwoman in America

I >> Isabella Lucy Bird >> The Englishwoman in America

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Articles of English manufacture are not seen in considerable quantities in
the wholesale stores, and even the import of foreign wines has been
considerably diminished by the increasingly successful culture of the
grape in Ohio, 130,000 gallons of wine having been produced in the course
of the year. Wines resembling hock, claret, and champagne are made, and
good judges speak very highly of them.

Cincinnati is famous for its public libraries and reading-rooms. The Young
Men's Mercantile Library Association has a very handsome suite of rooms
opened as libraries and reading-rooms, the number of books amounting to
16,000, these, with upwards of 100 newspapers, being well selected by a
managing committee; none of our English works of good repute being a-
wanting. The facility with which English books are reprinted in America,
and the immense circulation which they attain in consequence of their
cheapness, greatly increases the responsibility which rests upon our
authors as to the direction which they give, whether for good or evil, to
the intelligent and inquiring minds of the youth of America--minds
ceaselessly occupied, both in religion and politics, in investigation and
inquiry--in overturning old systems before they have devised new ones.

I believe that the most important religious denominations in Cincinnati
are the Episcopalian, the Baptist, and the Wesleyan. The first is under
the superintendence of the learned and pious Bishop M'Ilvaine, whose
apostolic and untiring labours have greatly advanced the cause of religion
in the State of Ohio. There is a remarkable absence of sectarian spirit,
and the ministers of all orthodox denominations act in harmonious
combination for the general good. But after describing the beauty of her
streets, her astonishing progress, and the splendour of her shops, I must
not close this chapter without stating that the Queen City bears the less
elegant name of Porkopolis; that swine, lean, gaunt, and vicious-looking,
riot through her streets; and that, on coming out of the most splendid
stores, one stumbles over these disgusting intruders. Cincinnati is the
city of pigs. As there is a railway system and a hotel system, so there is
also a _pig system_, by which this place is marked out from any other.
Huge quantities of these useful animals are reared after harvest in the
corn-fields of Ohio, and on the beech-mast and acorns of its gigantic
forests. At a particular time of year they arrive by thousands--brought in
droves and steamers to the number of 500,000--to meet their doom, when it
is said that the Ohio runs red with blood! There are huge slaughterhouses
behind the town, something on the plan of the _abattoirs_ of Paris--large
wooden buildings, with numerous pens, from whence the pigs march in single
file along a narrow passage, to an apartment where each, on his entrance,
receives a blow with a hammer, which deprives him of consciousness, and in
a short time, by means of numerous hands, and a well-managed caldron
system, he is cut up ready for pickling. The day on which a pig is killed
in England constitutes an era in the family history of the year, and
squeals of a terrific description announce the event to the neighbourhood.
There is not time or opportunity for such a process at Porkopolis, and the
first notification which the inhabitants receive of the massacre is the
thousand barrels of pork on the quays, ready to be conveyed to the
Atlantic cities, for exportation to the European markets. At one
establishment 12,000 pigs are killed, pickled, and packed every fall; and
in the whole neighbourhood, as I have heard in the cars, the "hog crop" is
as much a subject of discussion and speculation as the cotton crop of
Alabama, the hop-picking of Kent, or the harvest in England.

Kentucky, the land, by reputation, of "red horses, bowie-knives, and
gouging," is only separated from Ohio by the river Ohio; and on a day when
the thermometer stood at 103 in the shade I went to the town of
Covington. Marked, wide, and almost inestimable, is the difference between
the free state of Ohio and the slave-state of Kentucky. They have the same
soil, the same climate, and precisely the same natural advantages; yet the
total absence of progress, if not the appearance of retrogression and
decay, the loungers in the streets, and the peculiar appearance of the
slaves, afford a contrast to the bustle on the opposite side of the river,
which would strike the most unobservant. I was credibly informed that
property of the same real value was worth 300 dollars in Kentucky and 3000
in Ohio! Free emigrants and workmen will not settle in Kentucky, where
they would be brought into contact with compulsory slave-labour; thus the
development of industry is retarded, and the difference will become more
apparent every year, till possibly some great changes will be forced upon
the legislature. Few English people will forget the impression made upon
them by the first sight of a slave--a being created in the image of God,
yet the _bona fide_ property of his fellow-man. The first I saw was an
African female, the slave of a lady from Florida, with a complexion black
as the law which held her in captivity. The subject of slavery is one
which has lately been brought so prominently before the British people by
Mrs. Beecher Stowe, that I shall be pardoned for making a few remarks upon
it. Powerfully written as the book is, and much as I admire the benevolent
intentions of the writer, I am told that the effect of the volume has been
prejudical, and this assertion is borne out by persons well acquainted
with the subject in the free states. A gentleman very eminent in his
country, as having devoted himself from his youth to the cause of
abolition, as a steadfast pursuer of one grand principle, together with
other persons, say that "'Uncle Tom's Cabin' had thrown the cause back for
many years!" [Footnote: It must be observed that I do not offer any
opinion of my own upon 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' or upon the estimation in
which it is held in the United States; but in order to answer questions
which have frequently been put to me upon the subject, I have just given
the substance of the remarks which have been made upon it by abolitionists
in the Northern States.] The excitement on the subject still continues in
England, though it found a safety-valve in the Stafford House manifesto,
and the received impression, which no force of fact can alter, is, that
slave-owners are divided into but two classes--brutalised depraved
"_Legrees_," or enthusiastic, visionary "_St. Clairs_"--the former, of
course, predominating.

Slavery, though under modifications which rendered it little more than the
apprenticeship of our day, was _permitted_ under the Mosaic dispensation;
but it is contrary to the whole tenor of Christianity; and a system which
lowers man as an intellectual and responsible being is no less morally
than politically wrong. That it is a political mistake is plainly
evidenced by the retarded development and apparent decay of the Southern
States, as compared with the ceaseless material progress of the North and
West. It cannot be doubted that in Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana,
"_Legrees_" are to be found, for cruelty is inherent in base natures; we
have "_Legrees_" in our factories and coal-pits; but in England their most
terrible excesses are restrained by the strong arm of law, which, _when
appealed to_, extends its protection to the feeblest and most helpless.
What then must such men become in the isolated cotton or sugar plantations
of the South, distant from the restraints which public opinion exercises,
and where the evidence of a slave is inadmissible in a court of justice?
The full extent of the cruelties practised will never be known, until
revealed at the solemn tribunal of the last day. But we dare not hope that
such men are rare, though circumstances of self-interest combine to form a
class of slave-owners of a higher grade. These are men who look upon their
slaves as we do upon our cows and horses--as mere animal property, of
greater or less value according to the care which is taken of them. The
slaves of these persons are well clothed, lodged, and fed; they are not
overworked, and dancing, singing, and other amusements, which increase
health and cheerfulness, are actively promoted. But the system is one
which has for its object the transformation of reason into instinct the
lowering of a rational being into a machine scarcely more intelligent in
appearance than some of our own ingeniously-contrived steam-engines.
Religious teaching is withheld, reading is forbidden, and the instruction
of a slave in it punished as a crime, lest he should learn that freedom is
his birthright.

A third and very large class of slave-owners is to be found, who, having
inherited their property in slaves, want the means of judiciously
emancipating them. The negroes are not in a condition to receive freedom
in the reckless way in which some abolitionists propose to bestow it upon
them. They must be prepared for it by instruction in the precepts of
religion, by education, and by the reception of those principles of self-
reliance, without which they have not the moral perception requisite to
enable them to appreciate the blessings of freedom; and this very
ignorance and obtuseness is one of the most telling arguments against the
system which produces it. The want of this previous preparation has been
frequently shown, particularly in Kentucky, where whole bodies of
emancipated slaves, after a few days' experience of their new condition,
have entreated for a return to servitude. These slave-owners of whom I now
speak deeply deplore the circumstances under which they are placed, and,
while wanting the spirit of self-sacrifice, and the moral courage, which
would lead them, by manumitting their slaves, to enter into a novel
competition with slave-labour on other estates, do their best to
ameliorate the condition in which the Africans are placed, encouraging
them, by the sale of little articles of their own manufacture, to purchase
their freedom, which is granted at a very reduced rate. I had
opportunities of conversing with several of these freed negroes, and they
all expressed attachment to their late owners, and spoke of the mildness
with which they were treated, saying that the great threat made use of was
to send them "_down south_."

The slaves in the northern slave States are a thoughtless, happy set,
spending their evenings in dancing or singing to the banjo; and 'Oh, carry
me back to Old Virginny,' or 'Susannah, don't you cry for me,' may be
heard on summer evenings rising from the maize and tobacco grounds of
Kentucky. Yet, whether naturally humane instincts may lead to merciful
treatment of the slave, or the same result be accomplished by the rigorous
censorship of public opinion in the border States, apart from the abstract
question of slavery, that system is greatly to be reprobated which gives
_power without responsibility_, and permits the temporal, yes, the eternal
well-being of another to depend upon the will and caprice of a man, when
the victim of his injustice is deprived of the power of appeal to an
earthly tribunal. Instances of severe treatment on one side, and of
kindness on the other, cannot fairly be brought as arguments for or
against the system; it must be justified or condemned by the undeviating
law of moral right as laid down in divine revelation. Slavery existed in
1850 in 15 out of 31 States, the number of slaves being 3,204,345,
connected by sympathy and blood with 433,643 coloured persons, nominally
free, but who occupy a social position of the lowest grade. It is probable
that this number will increase, as it has hitherto done, in a geometrical
ratio, which will give 6,000,000, in 1875, of a people dangerous from
numbers merely, but doubly, trebly so in their consciousness of
oppression, and in the passions which may incite them to a terrible
revenge. America boasts of freedom, and of such a progress as the world
has never seen before; but while the tide of the Anglo-Saxon race rolls
across her continent, and while we contemplate with pleasure a vast nation
governed by free institutions, and professing a pure faith, a hand,
faintly seen at present, but destined ere long to force itself upon the
attention of all, points to the empires of a by-gone civilisation, and
shows that they had their periods in which to rise, flourish, and decay,
and that slavery was the main cause of that decay. The exasperating
reproaches addressed to the Americans, in ignorance of the real
difficulties of dealing with the case, have done much harm in inciting
that popular clamour which hurries on reckless legislation. The problem is
one which occupies the attention of thinking and Christian men on both
sides of the Atlantic, but still remains a gigantic evil for
philanthropists to mourn over, and for politicians to correct.

An unexceptional censure ought not to be pronounced without a more
complete knowledge of the subject than can be gained from novels and
newspapers; still less ought this censure to extend to America as a whole,
for the people of the Northern States are more ardent abolitionists than
ourselves--more consistent, in fact, for they have no white slaves, no
oppressed factory children, the cry of whose wrongs ascends daily into the
ears of an avenging Judge. Still, blame must attach to _them_ for the way
in which they place the coloured people in an inferior social position, a
rigid system of exclusiveness shutting them out from the usual places of
amusement and education. It must not be forgotten that England bequeathed
this system to her colonies, though she has nobly blotted it out from
those which still own her sway; that it is encouraged by the cotton lords
of Preston and Manchester; and that the great measure of negro
emancipation was carried, not by the violent declamation and ignorant
railings of men who sought popularity by exciting the passions of the
multitude, but by the persevering exertions and practical Christian
philanthropy of Mr. Wilberforce and his coadjutors. It is naturally to be
expected that a person writing a book on America would offer some remarks
upon this subject, and raise a voice, however feeble, against so gigantic
an evil. The conclusions which I have stated in the foregoing pages are
derived from a careful comparison and study of facts which I have learned
from eminent speakers and writers both in favour of and against the slave-
system.

CHAPTER VIII.

The hickory stick--Chawing up ruins--A forest scene--A curious questioner
--Hard and soft shells--Dangers of a ferry--The western prairies--
Nocturnal detention--The Wild West and the Father of Rivers--Breakfast in
a shed--What is an alligator?--Physiognomy, and its uses--The ladies'
parlour--A Chicago hotel, its inmates and its horrors--A water-drinking
people--The Prairie City--Progress of the West.

A bright September sun glittered upon the spires of Cincinnati as I
reluctantly bade it adieu, and set out in the early morning by the cars to
join my travelling companions, meaning to make as long a _detour_ as
possible, or, as a "down-east" lady might say, to "make a pretty
considerable circumlocution." Fortunately I had met with some friends,
well acquainted with the country, who offered to take me round a much
larger circle than I had contemplated; and with a feeling of excitement
such as I had not before experienced, we started for the Mississippi and
the western prairies _en route_ to Detroit.

Bishop M'Ilvaine, anxious that a very valued friend of his in England
should possess something from Ohio, had cut down a small sapling, which,
when divested of its branches and otherwise trimmed, made a very
formidable-looking bludgeon or cudgel, nearly four feet long. This being
too lengthy for my trunks was tied to my umbrella, and on this day in the
cars excited no little curiosity, several persons eyeing it, then me, as
if wondering in what relation we stood to each other. Finally they took it
up, minutely examining it, and tapping it as if to see whether anything
were therein concealed. It caused me much amusement, and, from its size,
some annoyance, till at length, wishing to leave it in my room at a
Toronto hotel while I went for a visit of a few days, the waiter brought
it down to the door, asking me "if I wished to take the _cudgel?_" After
this I had it shortened, and it travelled in my trunk to New York, where
it was given to a carver to be fashioned into a walking-stick; and, unless
the tradesman played a Yankee trick, and substituted another, it is now,
after surviving many dangers by sea and land, in the possession of the
gentleman for whom it was intended.

Some amusing remarks were made upon England by some of the "Buckeyes," as
the inhabitants of Ohio are called. On trying to persuade a lady to go
with me to St. Louis, I observed that it was _only_ five hundred miles.
"Five hundred miles!" she replied; "why, you'd tumble off your paltry
island into the sea before you got so far!" Another lady, who got into the
cars at some distance from Cincinnati, could not understand the value
which we set upon ruins. "We should chaw them up," she said, "make roads
or bridges of them, unless Barnum transported them to his museum: we would
never keep them on our own hook as you do." "You value them yourselves,"
I answered; "any one would be '_lynched_' who removed a stone of
Ticonderoga." It was an unfortunate speech, for she archly replied, "Our
only ruins are British fortifications, and we go to see them because they
remind us that we whipped the nation which whips all the world." The
Americans, however, though they may talk so, would give anything if they
could appropriate a Kenilworth Castle, or a Melrose or a Tintern Abbey,
with its covering of ivy, and make it sustain some episode of their
history. But though they can make railways, ivy is beyond them, and the
purple heather disdains the soil of the New World. A very amusing ticket
was given me on the Mad River line. It bore the command, "Stick this check
in your ----," the blank being filled up with a little engraving of a hat;
consequently I saw all the gentlemen with small pink embellishments to the
covering of their heads.

We passed through a large and very beautiful portion of the State of Ohio;
the soil, wherever cultivated, teeming with crops, and elsewhere with a
vegetation no less beautiful than luxuriant; a mixture of small weed
prairies, and forests of splendid timber. Extensive districts of Ohio are
still without inhabitants, yet its energetic people have constructed
within a period of five years half as many miles of railroad as the whole
of Great Britain contains; they are a "_great people_" they do "_go a-
head_," these Yankees. The newly cleared soil is too rich for wheat for
many years; it grows Indian corn for thirty in succession, without any
manure. Its present population is under three millions, and it is
estimated that it would support a population of ten millions, almost
entirely in agricultural pursuits. We were going a-head, and in a few
hours arrived at Forest, the junction of the Clyde, Mad River, and Indiana
lines.

Away with all English ideas which may be conjured up by the word
_junction_--the labyrinth of iron rails, the smart policeman at the
points, the handsome station, and elegant refreshment-rooms. Here was a
dense forest, with merely a clearing round the rails, a small shanty for
the man who cuts wood for the engine, and two sidings for the trains
coming in different directions. There was not even a platform for
passengers, who, to the number of two or three hundred, were standing on
the clearing, resting against the stumps of trees. And yet for a few
minutes every day the bustle of life pervades this lonely spot, for here
meet travellers from east, west, and south; the careworn merchant from the
Atlantic cities, and the hardy trapper from the western prairies. We here
changed cars for those of the Indianapolis line, and, nearly at the same
time with three other trains, plunged into the depths of the forest.

"You're from down east, I guess?" said a sharp nasal voice behind me.--
This was a supposition first made in the Portland cars, when I was at a
loss to know what distinguishing and palpable peculiarity marked me as a
"down-easter." Better informed now, I replied, "I am." "Going west?"--
"Yes." "Travelling alone?"--"No." "Was you raised down east?"--"No, in the
Old Country." "In the little old island? well, you are kinder glad to
leave it, I guess? Are you a widow?"--"No." "Are you travelling on
business?"--"No." "What business do you follow?"--"None." "Well, now, what
are you travelling for?"--"Health and pleasure." "Well, now, I guess
you're pretty considerable rich. Coming to settle out west, I suppose?"--
"No, I'm going back at the end of the fall." "Well, now, if that's not a
pretty tough hickory-nut! I guess you Britishers are the queerest critturs
as ever was raised!" I considered myself quite fortunate to have fallen in
with such a querist, for the Americans are usually too much taken up with
their own business to trouble themselves about yours, beyond such
questions as, "Are you bound west, stranger?" or, "You're from down east,
I guess." "Why do you take me for a down-easier?" I asked once. "Because
you speak like one," was the reply; the frequent supposition that I was a
New Englander being nearly as bad as being told that I "had not the
English accent at all." I was glad to be taken for an American, as it gave
me a better opportunity of seeing things as they really are. An English
person going about staring and questioning, with a note-book in his hand,
is considered "fair game," and consequently is "_crammed_" on all
subjects; stories of petticoated table-legs, and fabulous horrors of the
bowie-knife, being among the smallest of the absurdities swallowed.

Our party consisted of five persons besides myself, two elderly gentlemen,
the niece of one of them, and a young married couple. They knew the
governor of Indiana, and a candidate for the proud position of Senator,
also our fellow travellers; and the conversation assumed a political
character; in fact, they held a long parliament, for I think the
discussion lasted for three hours. Extraordinary, and to me unintelligible
names, were bandied backwards and forwards; I heard of "Silver Grays," but
my companions were not discussing a breed of fowls; and of "Hard Shells,"
and "Soft Shells," but the merits of eggs were not the topic. "Whigs and
Democrats" seemed to be analogous to our Radicals, and "Know-Nothings" to
be a respectable and constitutional party. Whatever minor differences my
companions had, they all seemed agreed in hating the "Nebraska men" (the
advocates of an extension of slavery), who one would have thought, from
the epithets applied to them, were a set of thieves and cut-throats. A
gentleman whose whole life had been spent in opposition to the principles
which they are bringing forward was very violent, and the pretty young
lady, Mrs. Wood, equally so.

After stopping for two hours at a wayside shed, we set out again at dark
for La Fayette, [Footnote: From the frequent recurrence of the same names,
the great distance travelled over, the short halt we made at any place,
and the absence of a railway guide, I have been unable to give, our route
from Cincinnati to Chicago with more than an approximation to
correctness.] which we reached at nine. These Western cars are crammed to
overflowing, and, having to cross a wide stream in a ferryboat, the crush
was so terrible, that I was nearly knocked down; but as American gentlemen
freely use their canes where a lady is in the case, I fared better than
some of my fellow-passengers, who had their coat-tails torn and their toes
barbarously crushed in the crowd. The steam ferry-boat had no parapet, and
the weakest were pushed to the side; the centre was filled up with
baggage, carts, and horses; and vessels were moored along the river, with
the warps crossing each other, to which we had to bow continually to avoid
decapitation. When we reached the wharf, quantities of people were waiting
to go to the other side; and directly the gangway-board was laid, there
was a simultaneous rush of two opposing currents, and, the insecure board
slipping, they were all precipitated into the water. Fortunately it was
not deep, so they merely underwent its cooling influences, which they bore
with admirable equanimity, only one making a bitter complaint, that he had
spoiled his "_go-to-meetins_." The farther west we went, the more
dangerous the neighbourhood became. At all the American stations there are
placards warning people to beware of pickpockets; but from Indiana
westward they bore the caution, "Beware of pickpockets, swindlers, and
luggage-thieves." At many of the depots there is a general rush for the
last car, for the same reason that there is a scramble for the stern
cabins in a steamer,--viz. the explosive qualities of the boilers.

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