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North America
Volume 2
by Anthony Trollope
August, 1999 [Etext #1866]
Project Gutenberg Etext North America, V. II by Anthony Trollope
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NORTH AMERICA
by ANTHONY TROLLOPE
VOLUME II.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER I.
Washington
CHAPTER II.
Congress
CHAPTER III.
The Causes of the War
CHAPTER IV.
Washington to St. Louis
CHAPTER V.
Missouri
CHAPTER VI.
Cairo and Camp Wood
CHAPTER VII.
The Army of the North
CHAPTER VIII.
Back to Boston
CHAPTER IX.
The Constitution of the United States
CHAPTER X.
The Government
CHAPTER XI.
The Law Courts and Lawyers of the United States
CHAPTER XII.
The Financial Position
CHAPTER XIII.
The Post-office
CHAPTER XIV.
American Hotels
CHAPTER XV.
Literature
CHAPTER XVI.
Conclusion
NORTH AMERICA.
CHAPTER 1.
WASHINGTON.
The site of the present City of Washington was chosen with three
special views: firstly, that being on the Potomac it might have the
full advantage of water-carriage and a sea-port; secondly, that it
might be so far removed from the sea-board as to be safe from
invasion; and, thirdly, that it might be central alike to all the
States. It was presumed, when Washington was founded, that these
three advantages would be secured by the selected position. As
regards the first, the Potomac affords to the city but few of the
advantages of a sea-port. Ships can come up, but not ships of large
burden. The river seems to have dwindled since the site was chosen,
and at present it is, I think, evident that Washington can never be
great in its shipping. Statio benefida carinis can never be its
motto. As regards the second point, singularly enough Washington is
the only city of the Union that has been in an enemy's possession
since the United States became a nation. In the war of 1812 it fell
into our hands, and we burned it. As regards the third point,
Washington, from the lie of the land, can hardly have been said to
be centrical at any time. Owing to the irregularities of the coast
it is not easy of access by railways from different sides.
Baltimore would have been far better. But as far as we can now see,
and as well as we can now judge, Washington will soon be on the
borders of the nation to which it belongs, instead of at its center.
I fear, therefore, that we must acknowledge that the site chosen for
his country's capital by George Washington has not been fortunate.
I have a strong idea, which I expressed before in speaking of the
capital of the Canadas, that no man can ordain that on such a spot
shall be built a great and thriving city. No man can so ordain even
though he leave behind him, as was the case with Washington, a
prestige sufficient to bind his successors to his wishes. The
political leaders of the country have done what they could for
Washington. The pride of the nation has endeavored to sustain the
character of its chosen metropolis. There has been no rival,
soliciting favor on the strength of other charms. The country has
all been agreed on the point since the father of the country first
commenced the work. Florence and Rome in Italy have each their
pretensions; but in the States no other city has put itself forward
for the honor of entertaining Congress. And yet Washington has been
a failure. It is commerce that makes great cities, and commerce has
refused to back the general's choice. New York and Philadelphia,
without any political power, have become great among the cities of
the earth. They are beaten by none except by London and Paris. But
Washington is but a ragged, unfinished collection of unbuilt broad
streets, as to the completion of which there can now, I imagine, be
but little hope.
Of all places that I know it is the most ungainly and most
unsatisfactory: I fear I must also say the most presumptuous in its
pretensions. There is a map of Washington accurately laid down; and
taking that map with him in his journeyings, a man may lose himself
in the streets, not as one loses one's self in London, between
Shoreditch and Russell Square, but as one does so in the deserts of
the Holy Land, between Emmaus and Arimathea. In the first place no
one knows where the places are, or is sure of their existence, and
then between their presumed localities the country is wild,
trackless, unbridged, uninhabited, and desolate. Massachusetts
Avenue runs the whole length of the city, and is inserted on the
maps as a full-blown street, about four miles in length. Go there,
and you will find yourself not only out of town, away among the
fields, but you will find yourself beyond the fields, in an
uncultivated, undrained wilderness. Tucking your trowsers up to
your knees you will wade through the bogs, you will lose yourself
among rude hillocks, you will be out of the reach of humanity. The
unfinished dome of the Capitol will loom before you in the distance,
and you will think that you approach the ruins of some western
Palmyra. If you are a sportsman, you will desire to shoot snipe
within sight of the President's house. There is much unsettled land
within the States of America, but I think none so desolate in its
state of nature as three-fourths of the ground on which is supposed
to stand the City of Washington.
The City of Washington is something more than four miles long, and
is something more than two miles broad. The land apportioned to it
is nearly as compact as may be, and it exceeds in area the size of a
parallelogram four miles long by two broad. These dimensions are
adequate for a noble city, for a city to contain a million of
inhabitants. It is impossible to state with accuracy the actual
population of Washington, for it fluctuates exceedingly. The place
is very full during Congress, and very empty during the recess. By
which I mean it to be understood that those streets which are
blessed with houses are full when Congress meets. I do not think
that Congress makes much difference to Massachusetts Avenue. I
believe that the city never contains as many as eighty thousand, and
that its permanent residents are less than sixty thousand.
But, it will be said, was it not well to prepare for a growing city?
Is it not true that London is choked by its own fatness, not having
been endowed at its birth or during its growth with proper means for
accommodating its own increasing proportions? Was it not well to
lay down fine avenues and broad streets, so that future citizens
might find a city well prepared to their hand?
There is no doubt much in such an argument, but its correctness must
be tested by its success. When a man marries it is well that be
should make provision for a coming family. But a Benedict, who
early in his career shall have carried his friends with considerable
self-applause through half a dozen nurseries, and at the end of
twelve years shall still be the father of one rickety baby, will
incur a certain amount of ridicule. It is very well to be prepared
for good fortune, but one should limit one's preparation within a
reasonable scope. Two miles by one might, perhaps, have done for
the skeleton sketch of a new city. Less than half that would
contain much more than the present population of Washington; and
there are, I fear, few towns in the Union so little likely to enjoy
any speedy increase.
Three avenues sweep the whole length of Washington: Virginia Avenue,
Pennsylvania Avenue, and Massachusetts Avenue. But Pennsylvania
Avenue is the only one known to ordinary men, and the half of that
only is so known. This avenue is the backbone of the city, and
those streets which are really inhabited cluster round that half of
it which runs westward from the Capitol. The eastern end, running
from the front of the Capitol, is again a desert. The plan of the
city is somewhat complicated. It may truly be called "a mighty
maze, but not without a plan." The Capitol was intended to be the
center of the city. It faces eastward, away from the Potomac--or
rather from the main branch of the Potomac, and also unfortunately
from the main body of the town. It turns its back upon the chief
thoroughfare, upon the Treasury buildings, and upon the President's
house, and, indeed, upon the whole place. It was, I suppose,
intended that the streets to the eastward should be noble and
populous, but hitherto they have come to nothing. The building,
therefore, is wrong side foremost, and all mankind who enter it,
Senators, Representatives, and judges included, go in at the back
door. Of course it is generally known that in the Capitol is the
chamber of the Senate, that of the House of Representatives, and the
Supreme Judicial Court of the Union. It may be said that there are
two centers in Washington, this being one and the President's house
the other. At these centers the main avenues are supposed to cross
each other, which avenues are called by the names of the respective
States. At the Capitol, Pennsylvania Avenue, New Jersey Avenue,
Delaware Avenue, and Maryland Avenue converge. They come from one
extremity of the city to the square of the Capitol on one side, and
run out from the other side of it to the other extremity of the
city. Pennsylvania Avenue, New York Avenue, Vermont Avenue, and
Connecticut Avenue do the same at what is generally called
President's Square. In theory, or on paper, this seems to be a
clear and intelligible arrangement; but it does not work well.
These center depots are large spaces, and consequently one portion
of a street is removed a considerable distance from the other. It
is as though the same name should be given to two streets, one of
which entered St. James's Park at Buckingham Gate, while the other
started from the Park at Marlborough, House. To inhabitants the
matter probably is not of much moment, as it is well known that this
portion of such an avenue and that portion of such another avenue
are merely myths--unknown lands away in the wilds. But a stranger
finds himself in the position of being sent across the country knee
deep into the mud, wading through snipe grounds, looking for
civilization where none exists.
All these avenues have a slanting direction. They are so arranged
that none of them run north and south, or east and west; but the
streets, so called, all run in accordance with the points of the
compass. Those from east to west are A Street, B Street, C Street,
and so on--counting them away from the Capitol on each side, so that
there are two A streets and two B streets. On the map these streets
run up to V Street, both right and left--V Street North and V Street
South. Those really known to mankind are E, F, G, H, I, and K
Streets North. Then those streets which run from north to south are
numbered First Street, Second Street, Third Street, and so on, on
each front of the Capitol, running to Twenty-fourth or Twenty-fifth
Street on each side. Not very many of these have any existence, or,
I might perhaps more properly say, any vitality in their existence.
Such is the plan of the city, that being the arrangement and those
the dimensions intended by the original architects and founders of
Washington; but the inhabitants have hitherto confined themselves to
Pennsylvania Avenue West, and to the streets abutting from it or
near to it. Whatever address a stranger may receive, however
perplexing it may seem to him, he may be sure that the house
indicated is near Pennsylvania Avenue. If it be not, I should
recommend him to pay no attention to the summons. Even in those
streets with which he will become best acquainted, the houses are
not continuous. There will be a house, and then a blank; then two
houses, and then a double blank. After that a hut or two, and then
probably an excellent, roomy, handsome family mansion. Taken
altogether, Washington as a city is most unsatisfactory, and falls
more grievously short of the thing attempted than any other of the
great undertakings of which I have seen anything in the States. San
Jose, the capital of the republic of Costa Rica, in Central America,
has been prepared and arranged as a new city in the same way. But
even San Jose comes nearer to what was intended than does
Washington.
For myself, I do not believe in cities made after this fashion.
Commerce, I think, must select the site of all large congregations
of mankind. In some mysterious way she ascertains what she wants,
and having acquired that, draws men in thousands round her
properties. Liverpool, New York, Lyons, Glasgow, Venice,
Marseilles, Hamburg, Calcutta, Chicago, and Leghorn have all become
populous, and are or have been great, because trade found them to be
convenient for its purposes. Trade seems to have ignored Washington
altogether. Such being the case, the Legislature and the Executive
of the country together have been unable to make of Washington
anything better than a straggling congregation of buildings in a
wilderness. We are now trying the same experiment at Ottawa, in
Canada, having turned our back upon Montreal in dudgeon. The site
of Ottawa is more interesting than that of Washington, but I doubt
whether the experiment will be more successful. A new town for art,
fashion, and politics has been built at Munich, and there it seems
to answer the expectation of the builders; but at Munich there is an
old city as well, and commerce had already got some considerable
hold on the spot before the new town was added to it.
The streets of Washington, such as exist, are all broad. Throughout
the town there are open spaces--spaces, I mean, intended to be open
by the plan laid down for the city. At the present moment it is
almost all open space. There is also a certain nobility about the
proposed dimensions of the avenues and squares. Desirous of
praising it in some degree, I can say that the design is grand. The
thing done, however, falls so infinitely short of that design, that
nothing but disappointment is felt. And I fear that there is no
look-out into the future which can justify a hope that the design
will be fulfilled. It is therefore a melancholy place. The society
into which one falls there consists mostly of persons who are not
permanently resident in the capital; but of those who were permanent
residents I found none who spoke of their city with affection. The
men and women of Boston think that the sun shines nowhere else; and
Boston Common is very pleasant. The New Yorkers believe in Fifth
Avenue with an unswerving faith; and Fifth Avenue is calculated to
inspire a faith. Philadelphia to a Philadelphian is the center of
the universe; and the progress of Philadelphia, perhaps, justifies
the partiality. The same thing may be said of Chicago, of Buffalo,
and of Baltimore. But the same thing cannot be said in any degree
of Washington. They who belong to it turn up their noses at it.
They feel that they live surrounded by a failure. Its grand names
are as yet false, and none of the efforts made have hitherto been
successful. Even in winter, when Congress is sitting, Washington is
melancholy; but Washington in summer must surely be the saddest spot
on earth.
There are six principal public buildings in Washington, as to which
no expense seems to have been spared, and in the construction of
which a certain amount of success has been obtained. In most of
these this success has been more or less marred by an independent
deviation from recognized rules of architectural taste. These are
the Capitol, the Post-office, the Patent-office, the Treasury, the
President's house, and the Smithsonian Institution. The five first
are Grecian, and the last in Washington is called--Romanesque. Had
I been left to classify it by my own unaided lights, I should have
called it bastard Gothic.
The Capitol is by far the most imposing; and though there is much
about it with which I cannot but find fault, it certainly is
imposing. The present building was, I think, commenced in 1815, the
former Capitol having been destroyed by the English in the war of
1812-13. It was then finished according to the original plan, with
a fine portico and well proportioned pediment above it--looking to
the east. The outer flight of steps, leading up to this from the
eastern approach, is good and in excellent taste. The expanse of
the building to the right and left, as then arranged, was well
proportioned, and, as far as we can now judge, the then existing
dome was well proportioned also. As seen from the east the original
building must have been in itself very fine. The stone is
beautiful, being bright almost as marble, and I do not know that
there was any great architectural defect to offend the eye. The
figures in the pediment are mean. There is now in the Capitol a
group apparently prepared for a pediment, which is by no means mean.
I was informed that they were intended for this position; but they,
on the other band, are too good for such a place, and are also too
numerous. This set of statues is by Crawford. Most of them are
well known, and they are very fine. They now stand within the old
chamber of the Representative House, and the pity is that, if
elevated to such a position as that indicated, they can never be
really seen. There are models of them all at West Point, and some
of them I have seen at other places in marble. The Historical
Society, at New York, has one or two of them. In and about the
front of the Capitol there are other efforts of sculpture--imposing
in their size, and assuming, if not affecting, much in the attitudes
chosen. Statuary at Washington runs too much on two subjects, which
are repeated perhaps almost ad nauseam: one is that of a stiff,
steady-looking, healthy, but ugly individual, with a square jaw and
big jowl, which represents the great general; he does not prepossess
the beholder, because he appears to be thoroughly ill natured. And
the other represents a melancholy, weak figure without any hair, but
often covered with feathers, and is intended to typify the red
Indian. The red Indian is generally supposed to be receiving
comfort; but it is manifest that he never enjoys the comfort
ministered to him. There is a gigantic statue of Washington, by
Greenough, out in the grounds in front of the building. The figure
is seated and holding up one of its arms toward the city. There is
about it a kind of weighty magnificence; but it is stiff, ungainly,
and altogether without life.
But the front of the original building is certainly grand. The
architect who designed it must have had skill, taste, and nobility
of conception; but even this is spoiled, or rather wasted, by the
fact that the front is made to look upon nothing, and is turned from
the city. It is as though, the facade of the London Post-office had
been made to face the Goldsmiths' Hall. The Capitol stands upon the
side of a hill, the front occupying a much higher position than the
back; consequently they who enter it from the back--and everybody
does so enter it--are first called on to rise to the level of the
lower floor by a stiff ascent of exterior steps, which are in no way
grand or imposing, and then, having entered by a mean back door, are
instantly obliged to ascend again by another flight--by stairs
sufficiently appropriate to a back entrance, but altogether unfitted
for the chief approach to such a building. It may, of course, be
said that persons who are particular in such matters should go in at
the front door and not at the back; but one must take these things
as one finds them. The entrance by which the Capitol is approached
is such as I have described. There are mean little brick chimneys
at the left hand as one walks in, attached to modern bakeries, which
have been constructed in the basement for the use of the soldiers;
and there is on the other hand the road by which wagons find their
way to the underground region with fuel, stationery, and other
matters desired by Senators and Representatives, and at present by
bakers also.
In speaking of the front I have spoken of it as it was originally
designed and built. Since that period very heavy wings have been
added to the pile--wings so heavy that they are or seem to be much
larger than the original structure itself. This, to my thinking,
has destroyed the symmetry of the whole. The wings, which in
themselves are by no means devoid of beauty, are joined to the
center by passages so narrow that from exterior points of view the
light can be seen through them. This robs the mass of all oneness,
of all entirety as a whole, and gives a scattered, straggling
appearance, where there should be a look of massiveness and
integrity. The dome also has been raised--a double drum having been
given to it. This is unfinished, and should not therefore yet be
judged; but I cannot think that the increased height will be an
improvement. This, again, to my eyes, appears to be straggling
rather than massive. At a distance it commands attention; and to
one journeying through the desert places of the city gives that idea
of Palmyra which I have before mentioned.
Nevertheless, and in spite of all that I have said, I have had
pleasure in walking backward and forward, and through the grounds
which lie before the eastern front of the Capitol. The space for
the view is ample, and the thing to be seen has points which are
very grand. If the Capitol were finished and all Washington were
built around it, no man would say that the house in which Congress
sat disgraced the city.
Going west, but not due west, from the Capitol, Pennsylvania Avenue
stretches in a right line to the Treasury chambers. The distance is
beyond a mile; and men say scornfully that the two buildings have
been put so far apart in order to save the secretaries who sit in
the bureaus from a too rapid influx of members of Congress. This
statement I by no means indorse; but it is undoubtedly the fact that
both Senators and Representatives are very diligent in their calls
upon gentlemen high in office. I have been present on some such
occasions, and it has always seemed to me a that questions of
patronage have been paramount. This reach of Pennsylvania Avenue is
the quarter for the best shops of Washington--that is to say, the
frequented side of it is so, that side which is on your right as you
leave the Capitol. Of the other side the world knows nothing. And
very bad shops they are. I doubt whether there be any town in the
world at all equal in importance to Washington which is in such
respects so ill provided. The shops are bad and dear. In saying
this I am guided by the opinions of all whom I heard speak on the
subject. The same thing was told me of the hotels. Hearing that
the city was very full at the time of my visit--full to overflowing--
I had obtained private rooms, through a friend, before I went
there. Had I not done so, I might have lain in the streets, or have
made one with three or four others in a small room at some third-
rate inn. There had never been so great a throng in the town. I am
bound to say that my friend did well for me. I found myself put up
at the house of one Wormley, a colored man, in I Street, to whose
attention I can recommend any Englishman who may chance to want
quarters in Washington. He has a hotel on one side of the street
and private lodging-houses on the other, in which I found myself
located. From what I heard of the hotels, I conceived myself to be
greatly in luck. Willard's is the chief of these; and the
everlasting crowd and throng of men with which the halls and
passages of the house were always full certainly did not seem to
promise either privacy or comfort. But then there are places in
which privacy and comfort are not expected--are hardly even desired--
and Washington is one of them.
The Post-office and the Patent-office, lie a little away from
Pennsylvania Avenue in I Street, and are opposite to each other.
The Post-office is certainly a very graceful building. It is
square, and hardly can be said to have any settled front or any
grand entrance. It is not approached by steps, but stands flush on
the ground, alike on each of the four sides. It is ornamented with
Corinthian pilasters, but is not over-ornamented. It is certainly a
structure creditable to any city. The streets around it are all
unfinished; and it is approached through seas of mud and sloughs of
despond, which have been contrived, as I imagine, to lessen, if
possible, the crowd of callers, and lighten in this way the
overtasked officials within. That side by which the public in
general were supposed to approach was, during my sojourn, always
guarded by vast mountains of flour barrels. Looking up at the
windows of the building, I perceived also that barrels were piled
within, and then I knew that the Post-office had become a provision
depot for the army. The official arrangements here for the public
were so bad as to be absolutely barbarous. I feel some remorse in
saying this, for I was myself treated with the utmost courtesy by
gentlemen holding high positions in the office, to which I was
specially attracted by my own connection with the post-office in
England. But I do not think that such courtesy should hinder me
from telling what I saw that was bad, seeing that it would not
hinder me from telling what I saw that was good. In Washington
there is but one post-office. There are no iron pillars or wayside
letter-boxes, as are to be found in other towns of the Union--no
subsidiary offices at which stamps can be bought and letters posted.
The distances of the city are very great, the means of transit
through the city very limited, the dirt of the city ways unrivaled
in depth and tenacity, and yet there is but one post-office. Nor is
there any established system of letter-carriers. To those who
desire it letters are brought out and delivered by carriers, who
charge a separate porterage for that service; but the rule is that
letters should be delivered from the window. For strangers this is
of course a necessity of their position; and I found that, when once
I had left instruction that my letters should be delivered, those
instructions, were carefully followed. Indeed, nothing could exceed
the civility of the officials within; but so also nothing can exceed
the barbarity of the arrangements without. The purchase of stamps I
found to be utterly impracticable. They were sold at a window in a
corner, at which newspapers were also delivered, to which there was
no regular ingress and from which there was no egress, it would
generally be deeply surrounded by a crowd of muddy soldiers, who
would wait there patiently till time should enable them to approach
the window. The delivery of letters was almost more tedious, though
in that there was a method. The aspirants stood in a long line, en
cue, as we are told by Carlyle that the bread-seekers used to
approach the bakers' shops at Paris during the Revolution. This
"cue" would sometimes project out into the street. The work inside
was done very slowly. The clerk had no facility, by use of a desk
or otherwise, for running through the letters under the initials
denominated, but turned letter by letter through his hand. To one
questioner out of ten would a letter be given. It no doubt may be
said in excuse for this that the presence of the army round
Washington caused, at that period, special inconvenience; and that
plea should of course be taken, were it not that a very trifling
alteration in the management within would have remedied all the
inconvenience. As a building, the Washington Post-office is very
good; as the center of a most complicated and difficult department,
I believe it to be well managed; but as regards the special
accommodation given by it to the city in which it stands, much
cannot, I think, be said in its favor.
Opposite to that which is, I presume, the back of the Post-office,
stands the Patent-office. This also is a grand building, with a
fine portico of Doric pillars at each of its three fronts. These
are approached by flights of steps, more gratifying to the eye than
to the legs. The whole structure is massive and grand, and, if the
streets round it were finished, would be imposing. The utilitarian
spirit of the nation has, however, done much toward marring the
appearance of the building, by piercing it with windows altogether
unsuited to it, both in number and size. The walls, even under the
porticoes, have been so pierced, in order that the whole space might
be utilized without loss of light; and the effect is very mean. The
windows are small, and without ornament--something like a London
window of the time of George III. The effect produced by a dozen
such at the back of a noble Doric porch, looking down among the
pillars, may be imagined.
In the interior of this building the Minister of the Interior holds
his court, and, of course, also the Commissioners of Patents. Here
is, in accordance with the name of the building, a museum of models
of all patents taken out. I wandered through it, gazing with
listless eye now upon this and now upon that; but to me, in my
ignorance, it was no better than a large toy-shop. When I saw an
ancient, dusty white hat, with some peculiar appendage to it which
was unintelligible, it was no more to me than any other old white
hat. But had I been a man of science, what a tale it might have
told! Wandering about through the Patent-office I also found a
hospital for soldiers. A British officer was with me who pronounced
it to be, in its kind, very good. At any rate it was sweet, airy,
and large. In these days the soldiers had got hold of everything.
The Treasury chambers is as yet an unfinished building. The front
to the south has been completed, but that to the north has not been
built. Here at the north stands as yet the old Secretary of State's
office. This is to come down, and the Secretary of State is to be
located in the new building, which will be added to the Treasury.
This edifice will probably strike strangers more forcibly than any
other in the town, both from its position and from its own
character. It Stands with its side to Pennsylvania Avenue, but the
avenue here, has turned round, and runs due north and south, having
taken a twist, so as to make way for the Treasury and for the
President's house, through both of which it must run had it been
carried straight on throughout. These public offices stand with
their side to the street, and the whole length is ornamented with an
exterior row of Ionic columns raised high above the footway. This
is perhaps the prettiest thing in the city, and when the front to
the north has been completed, the effect will be still better. The
granite monoliths which have been used, and which are to be used, in
this building are very massive. As one enters by the steps to the
south there are two flat stones, one on each side of the ascent, the
surface of each of which is about twenty feet by eighteen. The
columns are, I think, all monoliths. Of those which are still to be
erected, and which now lie about in the neighboring streets, I
measured one or two--one which was still in the rough I found to be
thirty-two feet long by five feet broad, and four and a half deep.
These granite blocks have been brought to Washington from the State
of Maine. The finished front of this building, looking down to the
Potomac, is very good; but to my eyes this also has been much
injured by the rows of windows which look out from the building into
the space of the portico.
The President's house--or the White House as it is now called all
the world over--is a handsome mansion fitted for the chief officer
of a great republic, and nothing more. I think I may say that we
have private houses in London considerably larger. It is neat and
pretty, and with all its immediate outside belongings calls down no
adverse criticism. It faces on to a small garden, which seems to be
always accessible to the public, and opens out upon that everlasting
Pennsylvania Avenue, which has now made another turn. Here in front
of the White House is President's Square, as it is generally called.
The technical name is, I believe, La Fayette Square. The houses
round it are few in number--not exceeding three or four on each
side, but they are among the best in Washington, and the whole place
is neat and well kept. President's Square is certainly the most
attractive part of the city. The garden of the square is always
open, and does not seem to suffer from any public ill usage; by
which circumstance I am again led to suggest that the gardens of our
London squares might be thrown open in the same way. In the center
of this one at Washington, immediately facing the President's house,
is an equestrian statue of General Jackson. It is very bad; but
that it is not nearly as bad as it might be is proved by another
equestrian statue--of General Washington--erected in the center of a
small garden plat at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue, near the
bridge leading to Georgetown. Of all the statues on horseback which
I ever saw, either in marble or bronze, this is by far the worst and
most ridiculous. The horse is most absurd, but the man sitting on
the horse is manifestly drunk. I should think the time must come
when this figure at any rate will be removed.
I did not go inside the President's house, not having had while at
Washington an opportunity of paying my personal respects to Mr.
Lincoln. I had been told that this was to be done without trouble,
but when I inquired on the subject I found that this was not exactly
the case. I believe there are times when anybody may walk into the
President's house without an introduction; but that, I take it, is
not considered to be the proper way of doing the work. I found that
something like a favor would be incurred, or that some disagreeable
trouble would be given, if I made a request to be presented, and
therefore I left Washington without seeing the great man.
The President's house is nice to look at, but it is built on marshy
ground, not much above the level of the Potomac, and is very
unhealthy. I was told that all who live there become subject to
fever and ague, and that few who now live there have escaped it
altogether. This comes of choosing the site of a new city, and
decreeing that it shall be built on this or on that spot. Large
cities, especially in these latter days, do not collect themselves
in unhealthy places. Men desert such localities--or at least do not
congregate at them when their character is once known. But the poor
President cannot desert the White House. He must make the most of
the residence which the nation has prepared for him.
Of the other considerable public building of Washington, called the
Smithsonian Institution, I have said that its style was bastard
Gothic; by this I mean that its main attributes are Gothic, but that
liberties have been taken with it, which, whether they may injure
its beauty or no, certainly are subversive of architectural purity.
It is built of red stone, and is not ugly in itself. There is a
very nice Norman porch to it, and little bits of Lombard Gothic have
been well copied from Cologne. But windows have been fitted in with
stilted arches, of which the stilts seem to crack and bend, so
narrow are they and so high. And then the towers with high
pinnacled roofs are a mistake--unless indeed they be needed to give
to the whole structure that name of Romanesque which it has assumed.
The building is used for museums and lectures, and was given to the
city by one James Smithsonian, an Englishman. I cannot say that the
City of Washington seems to be grateful, for all to whom I spoke on
the subject hinted that the Institution was a failure. It is to be
remarked that nobody in Washington is proud of Washington, or of
anything in it. If the Smithsonian Institution were at New York or
at Boston, one would have a different story to tell.
There has been an attempt made to raise at Washington a vast obelisk
to the memory of Washington--the first in war and first in peace, as
the country is proud to call him. This obelisk is a fair type of
the city. It is unfinished--not a third of it having as yet been
erected--and in all human probability ever will remain so. If
finished, it would be the highest monument of its kind standing on
the face of the globe; and yet, after all, what would it be even
then as compared with one of the great pyramids? Modern attempts
cannot bear comparison with those of the old world in simple
vastness. But in lieu of simple vastness, the modern world aims to
achieve either beauty or utility. By the Washington monument, if
completed, neither would be achieved. An obelisk with the
proportions of a needle may be very graceful; but an obelisk which
requires an expanse of flat-roofed, sprawling buildings for its
base, and of which the shaft shall be as big as a cathedral tower,
cannot be graceful. At present some third portion of the shaft has
been built, and there it stands. No one has a word to say for it.
No one thinks that money will ever again be subscribed for its
completion. I saw somewhere a box of plate-glass kept for
contributions for this purpose, and looking in perceived that two
half-dollar pieces had been given--but both of them were bad. I was
told also that the absolute foundation of the edifice is bad--that
the ground, which is near the river and swampy, would not bear the
weight intended to be imposed on it.
A sad and saddening spot was that marsh, as I wandered down on it
all alone one Sunday afternoon. The ground was frozen and I could
walk dry-shod, but there was not a blade of grass. Around me on all
sides were cattle in great numbers--steers and big oxen--lowing in
their hunger for a meal. They were beef for the army, and never
again, I suppose, would it be allowed to them to fill their big maws
and chew the patient cud. There, on the brown, ugly, undrained
field, within easy sight of the President's house, stood the
useless, shapeless, graceless pile of stones. It was as though I
were looking on the genius of the city. It was vast, pretentious,
bold, boastful with a loud voice, already taller by many heads than
other obelisks, but nevertheless still in its infancy--ugly,
unpromising, and false. The founder of the monument had said, Here
shall be the obelisk of the world! and the founder of the city had
thought of his child somewhat in the same strain. It is still
possible that both city and monument shall be completed; but at the
present moment nobody seems to believe in the one or in the other.
For myself, I have much faith in the American character, but I
cannot believe either in Washington City or in the Washington
Monument. The boast made has been too loud, and the fulfillment yet
accomplished has been too small!
Have I as yet said that Washington was dirty in that winter of 1861-
62? Or, I should rather ask, have I made it understood that in
walking about Washington one waded as deep in mud as one does in
floundering through an ordinary plowed field in November? There
were parts of Pennsylvania Avenue which would have been considered
heavy ground by most hunting-men, and through some of the remoter
streets none but light weights could have lived long. This was the
state of the town when I left it in the middle of January. On my
arrival in the middle of December, everything was in a cloud of
dust. One walked through an atmosphere of floating mud; for the
dirt was ponderous and thick, and very palpable in its atoms. Then
came a severe frost and a little snow; and if one did not fall while
walking, it was very well. After that we had the thaw; and
Washington assumed its normal winter condition. I must say that,
during the whole of this time, the atmosphere was to me
exhilarating; but I was hardly out of the doctor's hands while I was
there, and he did not support my theory as to the goodness of the
air. "It is poisoned by the soldiers," he said, "and everybody is
ill." But then my doctor was, perhaps, a little tinged with
Southern proclivities.
On the Virginian side of the Potomac stands a country-house called
Arlington Heights, from which there is a fine view down upon the
city. Arlington Heights is a beautiful spot--having all the
attractions of a fine park in our country. It is covered with grand
timber. The ground is varied and broken, and the private roads
about sweep here into a dell and then up a brae side, as roads
should do in such a domain. Below it was the Potomac, and
immediately on the other side stands the City of Washington. Any
city seen thus is graceful; and the white stones of the big
buildings, when the sun gleams on them, showing the distant rows of
columns, seem to tell something of great endeavor and of achieved
success. It is the place from whence Washington should be seen by
those who wish to think well of the present city and of its future
prosperity. But is it not the case that every city is beautiful
from a distance?
The house at Arlington Heights is picturesque, but neither large nor
good. It has before it a high Greek colonnade, which seems to be
almost bigger than the house itself. Had such been built in a city--
and many such a portico does stand in cities through the States--it
would be neither picturesque nor graceful; but here it is surrounded
by timber, and as the columns are seen through the trees, they
gratify the eye rather than offend it. The place did belong, and as
I think does still belong, to the family of the Lees--if not already
confiscated. General Lee, who is or would be the present owner,
bears high command in the army of the Confederates, and knows well
by what tenure he holds or is likely to hold his family property.
The family were friends of General Washington, whose seat, Mount
Vernon, stands about twelve miles lower down the river and here, no
doubt, Washington often stood, looking on the site he had chosen.
If his spirit could stand there now and look around upon the masses
of soldiers by which his capital is surrounded, how would it address
the city of his hopes? When he saw that every foot of the
neighboring soil was desecrated by a camp, or torn into loathsome
furrows of mud by cannon and army wagons--that agriculture was gone,
and that every effort both of North and South was concentrated on
the art of killing; when he saw that this was done on the very spot
chosen by himself for the center temple of an everlasting union,
what would he then say as to that boast made on his behalf by his
countrymen, that he was first in war and first in peace? Washington
was a great man, and I believe a good man. I, at any rate, will not
belittle him. I think that he had the firmness and audacity
necessary for a revolutionary leader, that he had honesty to
preserve him from the temptations of ambition and ostentation, and
that he had the good sense to be guided in civil matters by men who
had studied the laws of social life and the theories of free
government. He was justus et tenax propositi; and in periods that
might well have dismayed a smaller man, he feared neither the throne
to which he opposed himself nor the changing voices of the fellow-
citizens for whose welfare he had fought. But sixty or seventy
years will not suffice to give to a man the fame of having been
first among all men. Washington did much, and I for one do not
believe that his work will perish. But I have always found it
difficult--I may say impossible--to sound his praises in his own
land. Let us suppose that a courteous Frenchman ventures an opinion
among Englishmen that Wellington was a great general, would he feel
disposed to go on with his eulogium when encountered on two or three
sides at once with such observations as the following: "I should
rather calculate he was; about the first that ever did live or ever
will live. Why, he whipped your Napoleon everlasting whenever he
met him. He whipped everybody out of the field. There warn't
anybody ever lived was able to stand nigh him, and there won't come
any like him again. Sir, I guess our Wellington never had his likes
on your side of the water. Such men can't grow in a down-trodden
country of slaves and paupers." Under such circumstances the
Frenchman would probably be shut up. And when I strove to speak of
Washington I generally found myself shut up also.
Arlington Heights, when I was at Washington, was the headquarters of
General McDowell, the general to whom is attributed--I believe most
wrongfully--the loss of the battle of Bull's Run. The whole place
was then one camp. The fences had disappeared. The gardens were
trodden into mud. The roads had been cut to pieces, and new tracks
made everywhere through the grounds. But the timber still remained.
Some no doubt had fallen, but enough stood for the ample
ornamentation of the place. I saw placards up, prohibiting the
destruction of the trees, and it is to be hoped that they have been
spared. Very little in this way has been spared in the country all
around.
Mount Vernon, Washington's own residence, stands close over the
Potomac, about six miles below Alexandria. It will be understood
that the capital is on the eastern, or Maryland side of the river,
and that Arlington Heights, Alexandria, and Mount Vernon are in
Virginia. The River Potomac divided the two old colonies, or States
as they afterward became; but when Washington was to be built, a
territory, said to be ten miles square, was cut out of the two
States and was called the District of Columbia. The greater portion
of this district was taken from Maryland, and on that the city was
built. It comprised the pleasant town of Georgetown, which is now a
suburb--and the only suburb--of Washington. The portion of the
district on the Virginian side included Arlington heights, and went
so far down the river as to take in the Virginian City of
Alexandria. This was the extreme western point of the district; but
since that arrangement was made, the State of Virginia petitioned to
have their portion of Columbia back again, and this petition was
granted. Now it is felt that the land on both sides of the river
should belong to the city, and the government is anxious to get back
the Virginian section. The city and the immediate vicinity are
freed from all State allegiance, and are under the immediate rule of
the United States government--having of course its own municipality;
but the inhabitants have no political power, as power is counted in
the States. They vote for no political officer, not even for the
President, and return no member to Congress, either as a senator or
as a Representative. Mount Vernon was never within the District of
Columbia.
When I first made inquiry on the subject, I was told that Mount
Vernon at that time was not to be reached; that though it was not in
the hands of the rebels, neither was it in the hands of Northerners,
and that therefore strangers could not go there; but this, though it
was told to me and others by those who should have known the facts,
was not the case. I had gone down the river with a party of ladies,
and we were opposite to Mount Vernon; but on that occasion we were
assured we could not land. The rebels, we were told, would
certainly seize the ladies, and carry them off into Secessia. On
hearing which, the ladies were of course doubly anxious to be
landed. But our stern commander, for we were on a government boat,
would not listen to their prayers, but carried us instead on board
the "Pensacola," a sloop-of-war which was now lying in the river,
ready to go to sea, and ready also to run the gantlet of the rebel
batteries which lined the Virginian shore of the river for many
miles down below Alexandria and Mount Vernon. A sloop-of-war in
these days means a large man-of-war, the guns of which are so big
that they only stand on one deck, whereas a frigate would have them
on two decks, and a line-of-battle ship on three. Of line-of-battle
ships there will, I suppose, soon be none, as the "Warrior" is only
a frigate. We went over the "Pensacola," and I must say she was
very nice, pretty, and clean. I have always found American sailors
on their men-of-war to be clean and nice looking--as much so I
should say as our own; but nothing can be dirtier, more untidy, or
apparently more ill preserved than all the appurtenances of their
soldiers.
We landed also on this occasion at Alexandria, and saw as melancholy
and miserable a town as the mind of man can conceive. Its ordinary
male population, counting by the voters, is 1500, and of these 700
were in the Southern army. The place had been made a hospital for
Northern soldiers, and no doubt the site for that purpose had been
well chosen. But let any woman imagine what would be the feelings
of her life while living in a town used as a hospital for the
enemies against whom her absent husband was then fighting. Her own
man would be away--ill, wounded, dying, for what she knew, without
the comfort of any hospital attendance, without physic, with no one
to comfort him; but those she hated with a hatred much keener than
his were close to her hand, using some friend's house that had been
forcibly taken, crawling out into the sun under her eyes, taking the
bread from her mouth! Life in Alexandria at this time must have
been sad enough. The people were all secessionists, but the town
was held by the Northern party. Through the lines, into Virginia,
they could not go at all. Up to Washington they could not go
without a military pass, not to be obtained without some cause
given. All trade was at an end. In no town at that time was trade
very flourishing; but here it was killed altogether--except that
absolutely necessary trade of bread. Who would buy boots or coats,
or want new saddles, or waste money on books, in such days as these,
in such a town as Alexandria? And then out of 1500 men, one-half
had gone to fight the Southern battles! Among the women of
Alexandria secession would have found but few opponents.
It was here that a hot-brained young man, named Ellsworth, was
killed in the early days of the rebellion. He was a colonel in the
Northern volunteer army, and on entering Alexandria found a
secession flag flying at the chief hotel. Instead of sending up a
corporal's guard to remove it, he rushed up and pulled it down with
his own hand. As he descended, the landlord shot him dead, and one
of his soldier's shot the landlord dead. It was a pity that so
brave a lad, who had risen so high, should fall so vainly; but they
have made a hero of him in America; have inscribed his name on
marble monuments, and counted him up among their great men. In all
this their mistake is very great. It is bad for a country to have
no names worthy of monumental brass; but it is worse for a country
to have monumental brasses covered with names which have never been
made worthy of such honor. Ellsworth had shown himself to be brave
and foolish. Let his folly be pardoned on the score of his courage,
and there, I think, should have been an end of it.
I found afterward that Mount Vernon was accessible, and I rode
thither with some officers of the staff of General Heintzelman,
whose outside pickets were stationed beyond the old place. I
certainly should not have been well pleased had I been forced to
leave the country without seeing the house in which Washington had
lived and died. Till lately this place was owned and inhabited by
one of the family, a Washington, descended from a brother of the
general's; but it has now become the property of the country, under
the auspices of Mr. Everett, by whose exertions was raised the money
with which it was purchased. It is a long house, of two stories,
built, I think, chiefly of wood, with a veranda, or rather long
portico, attached to the front, which looks upon the river. There
are two wings, or sets of outhouses, containing the kitchen and
servants' rooms, which were joined by open wooden verandas to the
main building; but one of these verandas has gone, under the
influence of years. By these a semicircular sweep is formed before
the front door, which opens away from the river, and toward the old
prim gardens, in which, we were told, General Washington used to
take much delight. There is nothing very special about the house.
Indeed, as a house, it would now be found comfortless and
inconvenient. But the ground falls well down to the river, and the
timber, if not fine, is plentiful and picturesque. The chief
interest of the place, however, is in the tomb of Washington and his
wife. It must be understood that it was a common practice
throughout the States to make a family burying-ground in any
secluded spot on the family property. I have not unfrequently come
across these in my rambles, and in Virginia I have encountered
small, unpretending gravestones under a shady elm, dated as lately
as eight or ten years back. At Mount Vernon there is now a cemetery
of the Washington family; and there, in an open vault--a vault
open, but guarded by iron grating--is the great man's tomb, and by
his side the tomb of Martha his wife. As I stood there alone, with
no one by to irritate me by assertions of the man's absolute
supremacy, I acknowledged that I had come to the final resting-place
of a great and good man,--of a man whose patriotism was, I believe,
an honest feeling, untinged by any personal ambition of a selfish
nature. That he was pre-eminently a successful man may have been
due chiefly to the excellence of his cause, and the blood and
character of the people who put him forward as their right arm in
their contest; but that he did not mar that success by arrogance, or
destroy the brightness of his own name by personal aggrandizement,
is due to a noble nature and to the calm individual excellence of
the man.
Considering the circumstances and history of the place, the position
of Mount Vernon, as I saw it, was very remarkable. It lay exactly
between the lines of the two armies. The pickets of the Northern
army had been extended beyond it, not improbably with the express
intention of keeping a spot so hallowed within the power of the
Northern government. But since the war began it had been in the
hands of the seceders. In fact, it stood there in the middle of the
battle-field, on the very line of division between loyalism and
secession. And this was the spot which Washington had selected as
the heart and center, and safest rallying homestead of the united
nation which he left behind him. But Washington, when he resolved
to found his capital on the banks of the Potomac, knew nothing of
the glories of the Mississippi. He did not dream of the speedy
addition to his already gathered constellations of those Western
stars--of Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa; nor did he dream
of Texas conquered, Louisiana purchased, and Missouri and Kansas
rescued from the wilderness.
I have said that Washington was at that time--the Christmas of 1861-
62--a melancholy place. This was partly owing to the despondent
tone in which so many Americans then spoke of their own affairs. It
was not that the Northern men thought that they were to be beaten,
or that the Southern men feared that things were going bad with
their party across the river; but that nobody seemed to have any
faith in anybody. McClellan had been put up as the true man--
exalted perhaps too quickly, considering the limited opportunities
for distinguishing himself which fortune had thrown in his way; but
now belief in McClellan seemed to be slipping away. One felt that
it was so from day to day, though it was impossible to define how or
whence the feeling came. And then the character of the ministry
fared still worse in public estimation. That Lincoln, the
President, was honest, and that Chase, the Secretary of the
Treasury, was able, was the only good that one heard spoken. At
this time two Jonahs were specially pointed out as necessary
sacrifices, by whose immersion into the comfortless ocean of private
life the ship might perhaps be saved. These were Mr. Cameron, the
Secretary of War, and Mr. Welles, the Secretary of the Navy. It was
said that Lincoln, when pressed to rid his cabinet of Cameron, had
replied, that when a man was crossing a stream the moment was hardly
convenient for changing his horse; but it came to that at last, that
he found he must change his horse, even in the very sharpest run of
the river. Better that than sit an animal on whose exertions he
knew that he could not trust. So Mr. Cameron went, and Mr. Stanton
became Secretary of War in his place. But Mr. Cameron, though put
out of the cabinet, was to be saved from absolute disgrace by being
sent as Minister to Russia. I do not know that it would become me
here to repeat the accusations made against Mr. Cameron, but it had
long seemed to me that the maintenance in such a position, at such a
time, of a gentleman who had to sustain such a universal absence of
public confidence, must have been most detrimental to the army and
to the government.
Men whom one met in Washington were not unhappy about the state of
things, as I had seen men unhappy in the North and in the West.
They were mainly indifferent, but with that sort of indifference
which arises from a break down of faith in anything. "There was the
army! Yes, the army! But what an army! Nobody obeyed anybody.
Nobody did anything! Nobody thought of advancing! There were,
perhaps, two hundred thousand men assembled round Washington; and
now the effort of supplying them with food and clothing was as much
as could be accomplished! But the contractors, in the mean time,
were becoming rich. And then as to the government! Who trusted it?
Who would put their faith in Seward and Cameron? Cameron was now
gone, it was true; and in that way the whole of the cabinet would
soon be broken up. As to Congress, what could Congress do? Ask
questions which no one would care to answer, and finally get itself
packed up and sent home." The President and the Constitution fared
no better in men's mouths. The former did nothing--neither harm nor
good; and as for the latter, it had broken down and shown itself to
be inefficient. So men ate, and drank, and laughed, waiting till
chaos should come, secure in the belief that the atoms into which
their world would resolve itself would connect themselves again in
some other form without trouble on their part.
And at Washington I found no strong feeling against England and
English conduct toward America. "We men of the world," a Washington
man might have said, "know very well that everybody must take care
of himself first. We are very good friends with you--of course, and
are very glad to see you at our table whenever you come across the
water; but as for rejoicing at your joys, or expecting you to
sympathize with our sorrows, we know the world too well for that.
We are splitting into pieces, and of course that is gain to you.
Take another cigar." This polite, fashionable, and certainly
comfortable way of looking at the matter had never been attained at
New York or Philadelphia, at Boston or Chicago. The Northern
provincial world of the States had declared to itself that those who
were not with it were against it; that its neighbors should be
either friends or foes; that it would understand nothing of
neutrality. This was often mortifying to me, but I think I liked it
better on the whole than the laisser-aller indifference of
Washington.
Everybody acknowledged that society in Washington had been almost
destroyed by the loss of the Southern half of the usual sojourners
in the city. The Senators and members of government, who heretofore
had come front the Southern States, had no doubt spent more money in
the capital than their Northern brethren. They and their families
had been more addicted to social pleasures. They are the
descendants of the old English Cavaliers, whereas the Northern men
have come from the old English Roundheads. Or if, as may be the
case, the blood of the races has now been too well mixed to allow of
this being said with absolute truth, yet something of the manners of
the old forefathers has been left. The Southern gentleman is more
genial, less dry--I will not say more hospitable, but more given to
enjoy hospitality than his Northern brother; and this difference is
quite as strong with the women as with the men. It may therefore be
understood that secession would be very fatal to the society of
Washington. It was not only that the members of Congress were not
there. As to very many of the Representatives, it may be said that
they do not belong sufficiently to Washington to make a part of its
society. It is not every Representative that is, perhaps, qualified
to do so. But secession had taken away from Washington those who
held property in the South--who were bound to the South by any ties,
whether political or other; who belonged to the South by blood,
education, and old habits. In very many cases--nay, in most such
cases--it had been necessary that a man should select whether he
would be a friend to the South, and therefore a rebel; or else an
enemy to the South, and therefore untrue to all the predilections
and sympathies of his life. Here has been the hardship. For such
people there has been no neutrality possible. Ladies even have not
been able to profess themselves simply anxious for peace and good-
will, and so to remain tranquil. They who are not for me are
against me, has been spoken by one side and by the other. And I
suppose that in all civil war it is necessary that it should be so.
I heard of various cases in which father and son had espoused
different sides in order that property might be retained both in the
North and in the South. Under such circumstances it may be supposed
that society in Washington would be considerably cut up. All this
made the place somewhat melancholy.
CHAPTER II.
CONGRESS.
In the interior of the Capitol much space is at present wasted, but
this arises from the fact of great additions to the original plan
having been made. The two chambers--that of the Senate and the
Representatives--are in the two new wings, on the middle or what we
call the first floor. The entrance is made under a dome to a large
circular hall, which is hung around with surely the worst pictures
by which a nation ever sought to glorify its own deeds. There are
yards of paintings at Versailles which are bad enough; but there is
nothing at Versailles comparable in villany to the huge daubs which
are preserved in this hall at the Capitol. It is strange that even
self-laudatory patriotism should desire the perpetuation of such
rubbish. When I was there the new dome was still in progress; and
an ugly column of wood-work, required for internal support and
affording a staircase to the top, stood in this hall. This of
course was a temporary and necessary evil; but even this was hung
around with the vilest of portraits.
From the hall, turning to the left, if the entrance be made at the
front door, one goes to the new Chamber of Representatives, passing
through that which was the old chamber. This is now dedicated to
the exposition of various new figures by Crawford, and to the sale
of tarts and gingerbread--of very bad tarts and gingerbread. Let
that old woman look to it, or let the house dismiss her. In fact,
this chamber is now but a vestibule to a passage--a second hall, as
it were, and thus thrown away. Changes probably will be made which
will bring it into some use or some scheme of ornamentation. From
this a passage runs to the Representative Chamber, passing between
those tell-tale windows, which, looking to the right and left,
proclaim the tenuity of the building. The windows on one side--that
looking to the east or front--should, I think, be closed. The
appearance, both from the inside and from the outside, would be thus
improved.
The Representative Chamber itself--which of course answers to our
House of Commons--is a handsome, commodious room, admirably fitted
for the purposes required. It strikes one as rather low; but I
doubt, if it were higher, whether it would be better adapted for
hearing. Even at present it is not perfect in this respect as
regards the listeners in the gallery. It is a handsome, long
chamber, lighted by skylights from the roof, and is amply large
enough for the number to be accommodated. The Speaker sits opposite
to the chief entrance, his desk being fixed against the opposite
wall. He is thus brought nearer to the body of the men before him
than is the case with our Speaker. He sits at a marble table, and
the clerks below him are also accommodated with marble. Every
representative has his own arm-chair, and his own desk before it.
This may be done for a house consisting of about two hundred and
forty members, but could hardly be contrived with us. These desks
are arranged in a semicircular form, or in a broad horseshoe, and
every member as he sits faces the Speaker. A score or so of little
boys are always running about the floor ministering to the members'
wishes--carrying up petitions to the chair, bringing water to long-
winded legislators, delivering and carrying out letters, and running
with general messages. They do not seem to interrupt the course of
business, and yet they are the liveliest little boys I ever saw.
When a member claps his hands, indicating a desire for attendance,
three or four will jockey for the honor. On the whole, I thought
the little boys had a good time of it.
But not so the Speaker. It seemed to me that the amount of work
falling upon the Speaker's shoulders was cruelly heavy. His voice
was always ringing in my ears exactly as does the voice of the
croupier at a gambling-table, who goes on declaring and explaining
the results of the game, and who generally does so in sharp, loud,
ringing tones, from which all interest in the proceeding itself
seems to be excluded. It was just so with the Speaker in the House
of Representatives. The debate was always full of interruptions;
but on every interruption the Speaker asked the gentleman
interrupted whether he would consent to be so treated. "The
gentleman from Indiana has the floor." "The gentleman from Ohio
wishes to ask the gentleman from Indiana a question." "The
gentleman from Indiana gives permission." "The gentleman from
Ohio!"--these last words being a summons to him of Ohio to get up
and ask his question. "The gentleman from Pennsylvania rises to
order." "The gentleman from Pennsylvania is in order." And then
the House seems always to be voting, and the Speaker is always
putting the question. "The gentlemen who agree to the amendment
will say Aye." Not a sound is heard. "The gentlemen who oppose the
amendment will say No." Again not a sound. "The Ayes have it,"
says the Speaker, and then he goes on again. All this he does with
amazing rapidity, and is always at it with the same hard, quick,
ringing, uninterested voice. The gentleman whom I saw in the chair
was very clever, and quite up to the task. But as for dignity--!
Perhaps it might be found that any great accession of dignity would
impede the celerity of the work to be done, and that a closer copy
of the British model might not on the whole increase the efficiency
of the American machine.
When any matter of real interest occasioned a vote, the ayes and
noes would be given aloud; and then, if there were a doubt arising
from the volume of sound, the Speaker would declare that the "ayes"
or the "noes" would seem to have it! And upon this a poll would be
demanded. In such cases the Speaker calls on two members, who come
forth and stand fronting each other before the chair, making a
gangway. Through this the ayes walk like sheep, the tellers giving
them an accelerating poke when they fail to go on with rapidity.
Thus they are counted, and the noes are counted in the same way. It
seemed to me that it would be very possible in a dishonest
legislator to vote twice on any subject of great interest; but it
may perhaps be the case that there are no dishonest legislators in
the house of Representatives.
According to a list which I obtained, the present number of members
is 173, and there are 63 vacancies occasioned by secession. New
York returns 33 members; Pennsylvania, 25; Ohio, 21; Virginia, 13;
Massachusetts and Indiana, 11; Tennessee and Kentucky, 10; South
Carolina, 6; and so on, till Delaware, Kansas, and Florida return
only 1 each. When the Constitution was framed, Pennsylvania
returned 8, and New York only 6; whereas Virginia returned 10, and
South Carolina 5, From which may be gathered the relative rate of
increase in population of the free-soil States and the slave States.
All these States return two Senators each to the other House--Kansas
sending as many as New York. The work in the House begins at twelve
noon, and is not often carried on late into the evening. Indeed,
this, I think, is never done till toward the end of the session.
The Senate house is in the opposite wing of the building, the
position of the one house answering exactly to that of the other.
It is somewhat smaller, but is, as a matter of course, much less
crowded. There are 34 States, and, therefore, 68 seats and 68 desks
only are required. These also are arranged in a horseshoe form, and
face the President; but there was a sad array of empty chairs when I
was in Washington, nineteen or twenty seats being vacant in
consequence of secession. In this house the Vice-President of the
United States acts as President, but has by no means so hard a job
of work as his brother on the other side of the way. Mr. Hannibal
Hamlin, from Maine, now fills this chair. I was driven, while in
Washington, to observe something amounting almost to a peculiarity
in the Christian names of the gentlemen who were then administrating
the government of the country. Mr. Abraham Lincoln was the
President; Mr. Hannibal Hamlin, the Vice-President; Mr. Galusha
Grow, the Speaker of the House of Representatives; Mr. Salmon Chase,
the Secretary of the Treasury; Mr. Caleb Smith, the Attorney-
General; Mr. Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War; and Mr. Gideon
Welles, the Secretary of the Navy.
In the Senate House, as in the other house, there are very
commodious galleries for strangers, running round the entire
chambers, and these galleries are open to all the world. As with
all such places in the States, a large portion of them is
appropriated to ladies. But I came at last to find that the word
lady signified a female or a decently dressed man. Any arrangement
for classes is in America impossible; the seats intended for
gentlemen must, as a matter of course, be open to all men; but by
giving up to the rougher sex half the amount of accommodation
nominally devoted to ladies, the desirable division is to a certain
extent made. I generally found that I could obtain admittance to
the ladies' gallery if my coat were decent and I had gloves with me.
All the adjuncts of both these chambers are rich and in good
keeping. The staircases are of marble, and the outside passages and
lobbies are noble in size and in every way convenient. One knows
well the trouble of getting into the House of Lords and House of
Commons, and the want of comfort which attends one there; and an
Englishman cannot fail to make comparisons injurious to his own
country. It would not, perhaps, be possible to welcome all the
world in London as is done in Washington, but there can be no good
reason why the space given to the public with us should not equal
that given in Washington. But, so far are we from sheltering the
public, that we have made our House of Commons so small that it will
not even hold all its own members.
I had an opportunity of being present at one of their field days in
the senate, Slidell and Mason had just then been sent from Fort
Warren across to England in the Rinaldo. And here I may as well say
what further there is for me to say about those two heroes. I was
in Boston when they were taken, and all Boston was then full of
them. I was at Washington when they were surrendered, and at
Washington for a time their names were the only household words in
vogue. To me it had from the first been a matter of certainty that
England would demand the restitution of the men. I had never
attempted to argue the matter on the legal points, but I felt, as
though by instinct, that it would be so. First of all there reached
us, by telegram from Cape Race, rumors of what the press in England
was saying; rumors of a meeting in Liverpool, and rumors of the
feeling in London. And then the papers followed, and we got our
private letters. It was some days before we knew what was actually
the demand made by Lord Palmerston's cabinet; and during this time,
through the five or six days which were thus passed, it was clear to
be seen that the American feeling was undergoing a great change--or
if not the feeling, at any rate the purpose. Men now talked of
surrendering these Commissioners, as though it were a line of
conduct which Mr. Seward might find convenient; and then men went
further, and said that Mr. Seward would find any other line of
conduct very inconvenient. The newspapers, one after another, came
round. That, under all these circumstances, the States government
behaved well in the matter, no one, I think, can deny; but the
newspapers, taken as a whole, were not very consistent, and, I
think, not very dignified. They had declared with throats of brass
that these men should never be surrendered to perfidious Albion; but
when it came to be understood that in all probability they would be
so surrendered, they veered round without an excuse, and spoke of
their surrender as of a thing of course. And thus, in the course of
about a week, the whole current of men's minds was turned. For
myself, on my first arrival at Washington, I felt certain that there
would be war, and was preparing myself for a quick return to
England; but from the moment that the first whisper of England's
message reached us, and that I began to hear how it was received and
what men said about it, I knew that I need not hurry myself. One
met a minister here, and a Senator there, and anon some wise
diplomatic functionary. By none of these grave men would any secret
be divulged; none of them had any secret ready for divulging. But
it was to be read in every look of the eye, in every touch of the
hand, and in every fall of the foot of each of them, that Mason and
Slidell would go to England.
Then we had, in all the fullness of diplomatic language, Lord
Russell's demand, and Mr. Seward's answer. Lord Russell's demand
was worded in language so mild, was so devoid of threat, was so free
from anger, that at the first reading it seemed to ask for nothing.
It almost disappointed by its mildness. Mr. Seward's reply, on the
other hand, by its length of argumentation, by a certain sharpness
of diction, to which that gentleman is addicted in his State papers,
and by a tone of satisfaction inherent through it all, seemed to
demand more than he conceded. But, in truth, Lord Russell had
demanded everything, and the United States government had conceded
everything.
I have said that the American government behaved well in its mode of
giving the men up, and I think that so much should be allowed to
them on a review of the whole affair. That Captain Wilkes had no
instructions to seize the two men, is a known fact. He did seize
them, and brought them into Boston harbor, to the great delight of
his countrymen. This delight I could understand, though of course I
did not share it. One of these men had been the parent of the
Fugitive Slave Law; the other had been great in fostering the
success of filibustering. Both of them were hot secessionists, and
undoubtedly rebels. No two men on the continent were more grievous
in their antecedents and present characters to all Northern feeling.
It is impossible to deny that they were rebels against the
government of their country. That Captain Wilkes was not on this
account justified in seizing them, is now a matter of history; but
that the people of the loyal States should rejoice in their seizure,
was a matter of course. Wilkes was received with an ovation, which
as regarded him was ill judged and undeserved, but which in its
spirit was natural. Had the President's government at that moment
disowned the deed done by Wilkes, and declared its intention of
giving up the men unasked, the clamor raised would have been very
great, and perhaps successful. We were told that the American
lawyers were against their doing so; and indeed there was such a
shout of triumph that no ministry in a country so democratic could
have ventured to go at once against it, and to do so without any
external pressure.
Then came the one ministerial blunder. The President put forth his
message, in which he was cunningly silent on the Slidell and Mason
affair; but to his message was appended, according to custom, the
report from Mr. Welles, the Secretary of the Navy. In this report
approval was expressed of the deed done by Captain Wilkes. Captain
Wilkes was thus in all respects indemnified, and the blame, if any,
was taken from his shoulders and put on to the shoulders of that
officer who was responsible for the Secretary's letter. It is true
that in that letter the Secretary declared that in case of any
future seizure the vessel seized must be taken into port, and so
declared in animadverting on the fact that Captain Wilkes had not
brought the "Trent" into port. But, nevertheless, Secretary Welles
approved of Captain Wilkes's conduct. He allowed the reasons to be
good which Wilkes had put forward for leaving the ship, and in all
respects indemnified the captain. Then the responsibility shifted
itself to Secretary Welles; but I think it must be clear that the
President, in sending forward that report, took that responsibility
upon himself. That he is not bound to send forward the reports of
his Secretaries as he receives them--that he can disapprove them and
require alteration, was proved at the very time by the fact that he
had in this way condemned Secretary Cameron's report, and caused a
portion of it to be omitted. Secretary Cameron had unfortunately
allowed his entire report to be printed, and it appeare d in a New
York paper. It contained a recommendation with reference to the
slave question most offensive to a part of the cabinet, and to the
majority of Mr. Lincoln's party. This, by order of the President,
was omitted in the official way. It was certainly a pity that Mr.
Welles's paragraph respecting the "Trent" was not omitted also. The
President was dumb on the matter, and that being so the Secretary
should have been dumb also.
But when the demand was made, the States government yielded at once,
and yielded without bluster. I cannot say I much admired Mr.
Seward's long letter. It was full of smart special pleading, and
savored strongly, as Mr. Seward's productions always do, of the
personal author. Mr. Seward was making an effort to place a great
State paper on record, but the ars celare artem was altogether
wanting; and, if I am not mistaken, he was without the art itself.
I think he left the matter very much where he found it. The men,
however, were to be surrendered, and the good policy consisted in
this, that no delay was sought, no diplomatic ambiguities were put
into request. It was the opinion of very many that some two or
three months might be gained by correspondence, and that at the end
of that time things might stand on a different footing. If during
that time the North should gain any great success over the South,
the States might be in a position to disregard England's threats.
No such game was played. The illegality of the arrest was at once
acknowledged, and the men were given up with a tranquillity that
certainly appeared marvelous after all that had so lately occurred.
Then came Mr. Sumner's field day. Mr. Charles Sumner is a Senator
from Massachusetts, known as a very hot abolitionist, and as having
been the victim of an attack made upon him in the Senate House by
Senator Brooks. He was also, at the time of which I am writing,
Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, which position is as
near akin to that of a British minister in Parliament as can be
attained under the existing Constitution of the States. It is not
similar, because such chairman is by no means bound to the
government; but he has ministerial relations, and is supposed to be
specially conversant with all questions relating to foreign affairs.
It was understood that Mr. Sumner did not intend to find fault
either with England or with the government of his own country as to
its management of this matter; or that, at least, such fault-finding
was not his special object, but that he was desirous to put forth
views which might lead to a final settlement of all difficulties
with reference to the right of international search.
On such an occasion, a speaker gives himself very little chance of
making a favorable impression on his immediate hearers if he reads
his speech from a written manuscript. Mr. Sumner did so on this
occasion, and I must confess that I was not edified. It seemed to
me that he merely repeated, at greater length, the arguments which I
had heard fifty times during the last thirty or forty days. I am
told that the discourse is considered to be logical, and that it
"reads" well. As regards the gist of it, or that result which Mr.
Sumner thinks to be desirable, I fully agree with him, as I think
will all the civilized world before many years have passed. If
international law be what the lawyers say it is, international law
must be altered to suit the requirements of modern civilization. By
those laws, as they are construed, everything is to be done for two
nations at war with each other; but nothing is to be done for all
the nations of the world that can manage to maintain the peace. The
belligerents are to be treated with every delicacy, as we treat our
heinous criminals; but the poor neutrals are to be handled with
unjust rigor, as we handle our unfortunate witnesses in order that
the murderer may, if possible, be allowed to escape. Two men living
in the same street choose to pelt each other across the way with
brickbats, and the other inhabitants are denied the privileges of
the footpath lest they should interfere with the due prosecution of
the quarrel! It is, I suppose, the truth that we English have
insisted on this right of search with more pertinacity than any
other nation. Now in this case of Slidell and Mason we have felt
ourselves aggrieved, and have resisted. Luckily for us there was no
doubt of the illegality of the mode of seizure in this instance; but
who will say that if Captain Wilkes had taken the "Trent" into the
harbor of New York, in order that the matter might have been
adjudged there, England would have been satisfied? Our grievance
was, that our mail-packet was stopped on the seas while doing its
ordinary beneficent work. And our resolve is, that our mail-packets
shall not be so stopped wit impunity. As we were high handed in old
days in insisting on this right of search, it certainly behoves us
to see that we be just in our modes of proceeding. Would Captain
Wilkes have been right, according to the existing law, if he had
carried the "Trent" away to New York? If so, we ought not to be
content with having escaped from such a trouble merely through a
mistake on his part. Lord Russell says that the voyage was an
innocent voyage. That is the fact that should be established; not
only that the voyage was, in truth, innocent, but that it should not
be made out to be guilty by any international law. Of its real
innocency all thinking men must feel themselves assured. But it is
not only of the seizure that we complain, but of the search also.
An honest man is not to be bandied by a policeman while on his daily
work, lest by chance a stolen watch should be in his pocket. If
international law did give such power to all belligerents,
international law must give it no longer. In the beginning of these
matters, as I take it, the object was when two powerful nations were
at war to allow the smaller fry of nations to enjoy peace and quiet,
and to avoid, if possible, the general scuffle. Thence arose the
position of a neutral. But it was clearly not fair that any such
nation, having proclaimed its neutrality, should, after that, fetch
and carry for either of the combatants to the prejudice of the
other. Hence came the right of search, in order that unjust
falsehood might be prevented. But the seas were not then bridged
with ships as they are now bridged, and the laws as written were,
perhaps, then practical and capable of execution. Now they are
impracticable and not capable of execution. It will not, however,
do for us to ignore them if they exist; and therefore they should be
changed. It is, I think, manifest that our own pretensions as to
the right of search must be modified after this. And now I trust I
may finish my book without again naming Messrs. Slidell and Mason.
The working of the Senate bears little or no analogy to that of our
House of Lords. In the first place, the Senator's tenure there is
not hereditary, nor is it for life. They are elected, and sit for
six years. Their election is not made by the people of their
States, but by the State legislature. The two Houses, for instance,
of the State of Massachusetts meet together and elect by their joint
vote to the vacant seat for their State. It is so arranged that an
entirely new Senate is not elected every sixth year. Instead of
this a third of the number is elected every second year. It is a
common thing for Senators to be re-elected, and thus to remain in
the house for twelve and eighteen years. In our Parliament the
House of Commons has greater political strength and wider political
action than the House of Lords; but in Congress the Senate counts
for more than the House of Representatives in general opinion.
Money bills must originate in the House of Representatives, but that
is, I think, the only special privilege attaching to the public
purse which the Lower House enjoys over the Upper. Amendments to
such bills can be moved in the Senate; and all such bills must pass
the Senate before they become law. I am inclined to think that
individual members of the Senate work harder than individual
Representatives. More is expected of them, and any prolonged
absence from duty would be more remarked in the Senate than in the
other House. In our Parliament this is reversed. The payment made
to members of the Senate is 3000 dollars, or 600l., per annum, and
to a Representative, 500l. per annum. To this is added certain
mileage allowance for traveling backward and forward between their
own State and the Capitol. A Senator, therefore, from California or
Oregon has not altogether a bad place; but the halcyon days of
mileage allowances are, I believe, soon to be brought to an end. It
is quite within rule that the Senator of to-day should be the
Representative of to-morrow. Mr. Crittenden, who was Senator from
Kentucky, is now a member of the Lower House from an electoral
district in that State. John Quincy Adams went into the House of
Representatives after he had been President of the United States.
Divisions in the Senate do not take place as in the House of
Representatives. The ayes and noes are called for in the same way;
but if a poll be demanded, the Clerk of the House calls out the
names of the different Senators, and makes out lists of the votes
according to the separate answers given by the members. The mode is
certainly more dignified than that pursued in the other House, where
during the ceremony of voting the members look very much like sheep
being passed into their pens.
I heard two or three debates in the House of Representatives, and
that one especially in which, as I have said before, a chapter was
read out of the Book of Joshua. The manner in which the Creator's
name and the authority of His Word was banded about the house on
that occasion did not strike me favorably. The question originally
under debate was the relative power of the civil and military
authority. Congress had desired to declare its ascendency over
military matters, but the army and the Executive generally had
demurred to this,--not with an absolute denial of the rights of
Congress, but with those civil and almost silent generalities with
which a really existing power so well knows how to treat a nominal
power. The ascendant wife seldom tells her husband in so many words
that his opinion in the house is to go for nothing; she merely
resolves that such shall be the case, and acts accordingly. An
observer could not but perceive that in those days Congress was
taking upon itself the part, not exactly of an obedient husband, but
of a husband vainly attempting to assert his supremacy. "I have got
to learn," said one gentleman after another, rising indignantly on
the floor, "that the military authority of our generals is above
that of this House." And then one gentleman relieved the difficulty
of the position by branching off into an eloquent discourse against
slavery, and by causing a chapter to be read out of the Book of
Joshua.
On that occasion the gentleman's diversion seemed to have the effect
of relieving the House altogether from the embarrassment of the
original question; but it was becoming manifest, day by day, that
Congress was losing its ground, and that the army was becoming
indifferent to its thunders: that the army was doing so, and also
that ministers were doing so. In the States, the President and his
ministers are not in fact subject to any parliamentary
responsibility. The President may be impeached, but the member of
an opposition does not always wish to have recourse to such an
extreme measure as impeachment. The ministers are not in the
houses, and cannot therefore personally answer questions. Different
large subjects, such as foreign affairs, financial affairs, and army
matters, are referred to Standing Committees in both Houses; and
these committees have relations with the ministers. But they have
no constitutional power over the ministers; nor have they the much
more valuable privilege of badgering a minister hither and thither
by viva voce questions on every point of his administration. The
minister sits safe in his office--safe there for the term of the
existing Presidency if he can keep well with the president; and
therefore, even under ordinary circumstances, does not care much for
the printed or written messages of Congress. But under
circumstances so little ordinary as those of 186l-62, while
Washington was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of soldiers,
Congress was absolutely impotent. Mr. Seward could snap his fingers
at Congress, and he did so. He could not snap his fingers at the
army; but then he could go with the army, could keep the army on his
side by remaining on the same side with the army; and this as it
seemed he resolved to do. It must be understood that Mr. Seward was
not Prime Minister. The President of the United States has no Prime
Minister--or hitherto has had none. The Minister for Foreign
Affairs has usually stood highest in the cabinet, and Mr. Seward, as
holding that position, was not inclined to lessen its authority. He
was gradually assuming for that position the prerogatives of a
Premier, and men were beginning to talk of Mr. Seward's ministry.
It may easily be understood that at such a time the powers of
Congress would be undefined, and that ambitious members of Congress
would rise and assert on the floor, with that peculiar voice of
indignation so common in parliamentary debate, "that they had got to
learn," etc. etc. etc. It seemed to me that the lesson which they
had yet to learn was then in the process of being taught to them.
They were anxious to be told all about the mischance at Ball's
Bluff, but nobody would tell them anything about it. They wanted to
know something of that blockade on the Potomac; but such knowledge
was not good for them. "Pack them up in boxes, and send them home,"
one military gentleman said to me. And I began to think that
something of the kind would be done, if they made themselves
troublesome. I quote here the manner in which their questions,
respecting the affair at Ball's Bluff, were answered by the
Secretary of war. "The Speaker laid before the House a letter from
the Secretary of War, in which he says that he has the honor to
acknowledge the receipt of the resolution adopted on the 6th
instant, to the effect that the answer of the Department to the
resolution, passed on the second day of the session, is not
responsive and satisfactory to the House, and requesting a farther
answer. The Secretary has now to state that measures have been
taken to ascertain who is responsible for the disastrous movement at
Ball's Bluff, but that it is not compatible with the public interest
to make known those measures at the present time."
In truth the days are evil for any Congress of debaters, when a
great army is in camp on every side of them. The people had called
for the army, and there it was. It was of younger birth than
Congress, and had thrown its elder brother considerably out of favor
as has been done before by many a new-born baby. If Congress could
amuse itself with a few set speeches, and a field day or two, such
as those afforded by Mr. Sumner, it might all be very well--provided
that such speeches did not attack the army. Over and beyond this,
let them vote the supplies and have done with it. Was it probable
that General McClellan should have time to answer questions about
Ball's Bluff--and he with such a job of work on his hands? Congress
could of course vote what committees of military inquiry it might
please, and might ask questions without end; but we all know to what
such questions lead, when the questioner has no power to force an
answer by a penalty. If it might be possible to maintain the
semblance of respect for Congress, without too much embarrassment to
military secretaries, such semblance should be maintained; but if
Congress chose to make itself really disagreeable, then no semblance
could be kept up any longer. That, as far as I could judge, was the
position of Congress in the early months of 1862; and that, under
existing circumstances, was perhaps the only possible position that
it could fill.
All this to me was very melancholy. The streets of Washington were
always full of soldiers. Mounted sentries stood at the corners of
all the streets with drawn sabers--shivering in the cold and
besmeared with mud. A military law came out that civilians might
not ride quickly through the street. Military riders galloped over
one at every turn, splashing about through the mud, and reminding
one not unfrequently of John Gilpin. Why they always went so fast,
destroying their horses' feet on the rough stones, I could never
learn. But I, as a civilian, given as Englishmen are to trotting,
and furnished for the time with a nimble trotter, found myself
harried from time to time by muddy men with sabers, who would dash
after me, rattling their trappings, and bid me go at a slower pace.
There is a building in Washington, built by private munificence and
devoted, according to an inscription which it bears, "To the Arts."
It has been turned into an army clothing establishment. The streets
of Washington, night and day, were thronged with army wagons. All
through the city military huts and military tents were to be seen,
pitched out among the mud and in the desert places. Then there was
the chosen locality of the teamsters and their mules and horses--a
wonderful world in itself; and all within the city! Here horses and
mules lived--or died--sub dio, with no slightest apology for a
stable over them, eating their provender from off the wagons to
which they were fastened. Here, there, and everywhere large houses
were occupied as the headquarters of some officer, or the bureau of
some military official. At Washington and round Washington the army
was everything. While this was so, is it to be conceived that
Congress should ask questions about military matters with success?
All this, as I say, filled me with sorrow. I hate military
belongings, and am disgusted at seeing the great affairs of a nation
put out of their regular course. Congress to me is respectable.
Parliamentary debates--be they ever so prosy, as with us, or even so
rowdy, as sometimes they have been with our cousins across the
water--engage my sympathies. I bow inwardly before a Speaker's
chair, and look upon the elected representatives of any nation as
the choice men of the age. Those muddy, clattering dragoons,
sitting at the corners of the streets with dirty woolen comforters
around their ears, were to me hideous in the extreme. But there at
Washington, at the period of which I am writing, I was forced to
acknowledge that Congress was at a discount, and that the rough-shod
generals were the men of the day. "Pack them up and send them in
boxes to their several States." It would come to that, I thought,
or to something like that, unless Congress would consent to be
submissive. "I have yet to learn--!" said indignant members,
stamping with their feet on the floor of the House. One would have
said that by that time the lesson might almost have been understood.
Up to the period of this civil war Congress has certainly worked
well for the United States. It might be easy to pick holes in it;
to show that some members have been corrupt, others quarrelsome, and
others again impracticable. But when we look at the circumstances
under which it has been from year to year elected; when we remember
the position of the newly populated States from which the members
have been sent, and the absence throughout the country of that old
traditionary class of Parliament men on whom we depend in England;
when we think how recent has been the elevation in life of the
majority of those who are and must be elected, it is impossible to
deny them praise for intellect, patriotism, good sense, and
diligence. They began but sixty years ago, and for sixty years
Congress has fully answered the purpose for which it was
established. With no antecedents of grandeur, the nation, with its
Congress, has made itself one of the five great nations of the
world. And what living English politician will say even now, with
all its troubles thick upon it, that it is the smallest of the five?
When I think of this, and remember the position in Europe which an
American has been able to claim for himself, I cannot but
acknowledge that Congress on the whole has been conducted with
prudence, wisdom, and patriotism.
The question now to be asked is this-- Have the powers of Congress
been sufficient, or are they sufficient, for the continued
maintenance of free government in the States under the Constitution?
I think that the powers given by the existing Constitution to
Congress can no longer be held to be sufficient; and that if the
Union be maintained at all, it must be done by a closer assimilation
of its congressional system to that of our Parliament. But to that
matter I must allude again, when speaking of the existing
Constitution of the States.
CHAPTER III.
THE CAUSES OF THE WAR.
I have seen various essays purporting to describe the causes of this
civil war between the North and South; but they have generally been
written with the view of vindicating either one side or the other,
and have spoken rather of causes which should, according to the
ideas of their writers, have produced peace, than of those which
did, in the course of events, actually produce war. This has been
essentially the case with Mr. Everett, who in his lecture at New
York, on the 4th of July, 1860, recapitulated all the good things
which the North has done for the South, and who proved--if he has
proved anything--that the South should have cherished the North
instead of hating it. And this was very much the case also with Mr.
Motley in his letter to the London Times. That letter is good in
its way, as is everything that comes from Mr. Motley, but it does
not tell us why the war has existed. Why is it that eight millions
of people have desired to separate themselves from a rich and mighty
empire--from an empire which was apparently on its road to
unprecedented success, and which had already achieved wealth,
consideration, power, and internal well-being?
One would be glad to imagine, from the essays of Mr. Everett and of
Mr. Motley, that slavery has had little or nothing to do with it. I
must acknowledge it to be my opinion that slavery in its various
bearings has been the single and necessary cause of the war; that
slavery being there in the South, this war was only to be avoided by
a voluntary division--secession voluntary both on the part of North
and South; that in the event of such voluntary secession being not
asked for, or if asked for not conceded, revolution and civil war
became necessary--were not to be avoided by any wisdom or care on
the part of the North.
The arguments used by both the gentlemen I have named prove very
clearly that South Carolina and her sister States had no right to
secede under the Constitution; that is to say, that it was not open
to them peaceably to take their departure, and to refuse further
allegiance to the President and Congress without a breach of the
laws by which they were bound. For a certain term of years, namely,
from 1781 to 1787, the different States endeavored to make their way
in the world simply leagued together by certain articles of
confederation. It was declared that each State retained its
sovereignty, freedom, and independence; and that the said States
then entered severally into a firm league of friendship with each
other for their common defense. There was no President, no Congress
taking the place of our Parliament, but simply a congress of
delegates or ambassadors, two or three from each State, who were to
act in accordance with the policy of their own individual States.
It is well that this should be thoroughly understood, not as bearing
on the question of the present war, but as showing that a loose
confederation, not subversive of the separate independence of the
States, and capable of being partially dissolved at the will of each
separate State, was tried, and was found to fail. South Carolina
took upon herself to act as she might have acted had that
confederation remained in force; but that confederation was an
acknowledged failure. National greatness could not be achieved
under it, and individual enterprise could not succeed under it.
Then in lieu of that, by the united consent of the thirteen States,
the present Constitution was drawn up and sanctioned, and to that
every State bound itself in allegiance. In that Constitution no
power of secession is either named or presumed to exist. The
individual sovereignty of the States had, in the first instance,
been thought desirable. The young republicans hankered after the
separate power and separate name which each might then have
achieved; but that dream had been found vain--and therefore the
States, at the cost of some fond wishes, agreed to seek together for
national power rather than run the risks entailed upon separate
existence. Those of my readers who may be desirous of examining
this matter for themselves, are referred to the Articles of
Confederation and the Constitution of the United States. The latter
alone is clear enough on the subject, but is strengthened by the
former in proving that under the latter no State could possess the
legal power of seceding.
But they who created the Constitution, who framed the clauses, and
gave to this terribly important work what wisdom they possessed, did
not presume to think that it could be final. The mode of altering
the Constitution is arranged in the Constitution. Such alterations
must be proposed either by two-thirds of both the houses of the
general Congress, or by the legislatures of two-thirds of the
States; and must, when so proposed, be ratified by the legislatures
of three-fourths of the States, (Article V.) There can, I think, be
no doubt that any alteration so carried would be valid--even though
that alteration should go to the extent of excluding one or any
number of States from the Union. Any division so made would be made
in accordance with the Constitution.
South Carolina and the Southern States no doubt felt that they would
not succeed in obtaining secession in this way, and therefore they
sought to obtain the separation which they wanted by revolution--by
revolution and rebellion, as Naples has lately succeeded in her
attempt to change her political status; as Hungary is looking to do;
as Poland has been seeking to do any time since her subjection; as
the revolted colonies of Great Britain succeeded in doing in 1776,
whereby they created this great nation which is now undergoing all
the sorrows of a civil war. The name of secession claimed by the
South for this movement is a misnomer. If any part of a nationality
or empire ever rebelled against the government established on behalf
of the whole, South Carolina so rebelled when, on the 20th of
November, 1860, she put forth her ordinance of so-called secession;
and the other Southern States joined in that rebellion when they
followed her lead. As to that fact, there cannot, I think, much
longer be any doubt in any mind. I insist on this especially,
repeating perhaps unnecessarily opinions expressed in my first
volume, because I still see it stated by English writers that the
secession ordinance of South Carolina should have been accepted as a
political act by the Government of the United States. It seems to
me that no government can in this way accept an act of rebellion
without declaring its own functions to be beyond its own power.
But what if such rebellion be justifiable, or even reasonable? what
if the rebels have cause for their rebellion? For no one will now
deny that rebellion may be both reasonable and justifiable; or that
every subject in the land may be bound in duty to rebel. In such
case the government will be held to have brought about its own
punishment by its own fault. But as government is a wide affair,
spreading itself gradually, and growing in virtue or in vice from
small beginnings--from seeds slow to produce their fruits--it is
much easier to discern the incidence of the punishment than the
perpetration of the fault. Government goes astray by degrees, or
sins by the absence of that wisdom which should teach rulers how to
make progress as progress is made by those whom they rule. The
fault may be absolutely negative and have spread itself over
centuries; may be, and generally has been, attributable to dull,
good men; but not the less does the punishment come at a blow. The
rebellion exist