RICHMOND—WAY BY THE BATTLE-FIELDS—HANDINESS OF AMERICAN
SOLDIERS—EFFECT OF SLAVERY ON THE VIRGINIAN LANDSCAPE—APPEARANCE
OF AMERICAN FOREST—REPUBLICAN RELATIONS OF FATHER AND SON—STATE
OF FEELING IN VIRGINIA—BILLIARDS IN AMERICA—WHY RICHMOND MILLERS
UNDERSOLD BY CALIFORNIAN—WHY AMERICAN CITIES ARE LARGE—AMERICAN
LIVING—PROSPECTS OF RICHMOND—INDICATIONS OF SOUTHERN CLIMATE IN
RICHMOND—CHURCH MATTERS IN RICHMOND—INTEREST THAT ATTACHES TO RICHMOND
AND TO THE HEROISM OF THE SOUTH.
[Sidenote: _To Richmond by the Battle-fields._]
In going to Richmond I made the circuit by Gordonsville, that I might
visit the battle-fields of the late war which lie so thickly on that
route from Washington. I went by Bull’s Run, Culpepper Court House,
Manassas Junction, the Rapahannock, the Rapidan, &c. This ground was
several times contested. Nothing strikes one now in these sites except
the extent of the breastworks and rifle-pits, and of the earthworks for
batteries. I was told by a general of engineers who went through the
whole war, that American soldiers, especially those in the Northern
armies, were always eager of themselves to throw up these defences. It
was their custom to set to work upon them even when tired with a long
day’s march or severe fighting; and there were occasions when they did
this without tools. They acted in this way because they had sufficient
intelligence to be fully aware of the advantage to themselves of
earthworks of this kind, and therefore were desirous of being provided
with them as speedily as possible. Most of the men, too, being young
farmers or sons of farmers, had been accustomed to felling timber, and
working on the land, so that every regiment was full of ready-made
pioneers.
Another advantage possessed in a preeminent degree by the Northern
armies, was that—their soldiers having been drawn from all classes and
trades—if a corps for wheelwrights’, millwrights’, harness-makers’, or
almost for any other kind of work required on the field, was suddenly
wanted, it was always to be had ready-made at a moment’s notice.
On passing over these battle-fields one quickly understands why in
the late war cavalry was so little used for improving a victory,
and why also the attacking army generally appeared to have so great
an advantage. In this part of Virginia—and I found it to be so
everywhere throughout the South—the clearings are small and few, and
far between, all the rest of the country being covered with forest,
or with abandoned clearings returning to forest. In such a country
cavalry could not have acted, even if, which was seldom the case, the
victorious army had had more than was required for outpost duty and
other work of the kind. And there being cover everywhere, an advancing
force, in coming up for an attack on the enemy, could everywhere find
concealment and shelter.
[Sidenote: _How Slavery Modified the Landscape._]
As soon as you enter Virginia you see unmistakable evidences of the
recent existence of slavery. The country is not cleared, cultivated,
and inhabited in the marvellous manner which so much surprises and
pleases one in the North, where each man holds a plot of about a
hundred acres, more or less, with his neat homestead planted in the
middle of it. Here only a very small proportion of the land is under
cultivation: far the greater part has, on the wasteful Southern system
(where men owned large estates of several thousand acres, many times as
much as they could keep in hand), been worked out, and then abandoned
and allowed to return to wood. A respectable house is hardly ever seen
along this line of railway. One gets tired of the monotony of the
forest, and of the ever-recurring reflection how differently things
would have looked, if this glorious State, blessed so highly in its
soil and climate, had not been cursed with the blight of slavery.
I was surprised to find how closely the American forests resemble
those of Europe. I suppose this settles the point that at some remote
epoch of geological time the two continents were united. The two
commonest species, and which often constitute the whole forest, are the
never-failing pine and the oak. They both reach from Canada to the Gulf
of Mexico. The former, to unscientific eyes, is only a small edition
of the Scotch fir; and the oak, in its several varieties, as you pass
along the railway, has much the same physiognomy as our English oak.
The same may be said of the elm, the ash, the birch, the maples and
the poplars. In the woods there is generally no undergrowth; on the
embankments and outskirts of the woods a rubus, very like some forms
of our English blackberry, is abundant. What is most striking in the
forests is the want of fine trees. Except in the Rocky Mountains, I
never saw one in the United States. Their oaks and pines die at the
top before they have got much beyond what we should call poles. They
never seem to branch freely. I suppose their progenitors having grown
in the forest for so many thousand years, the race has acquired the
habit of growing straight. In the heart, however, of the city of New
York, in Broadway between the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the Coleman House,
I noticed the trunk (for not much more is now left) of an occidental
plane that must once have been a noble specimen of its kind. I was told
that in Kentucky and Ohio there were fine trees, but I saw none. I have
heard from travelled Americans similar remarks to those I have just
been making on the dearth of large trees in the United States. This of
course is said of those States that lie to the east of the Alleghany
Mountains.
[Sidenote: _Republican Relations of Father and Son._]
We are in the habit of regarding Americans as less domestic than
ourselves. I would suggest that their ideas on this subject are
somewhat different from ours. It struck me that with them a little
republicanism had passed from the State into the home—that children
assumed and were allowed a greater degree of independence and equality
than with us. This doubtless arises in a great degree from the early
knowledge all children have that they will be able and must soon begin
to provide for themselves. But it is greatly promoted, I believe, by
the fact that the sons do not, as a general rule, leave the paternal
roof when they go to school. With us the father never sees his children
except in the holidays, and therefore continues to regard them as
children, and never learns to regard them as companions. In America
the father never loses sight of his child, who thus grows up as his
companion, and is soon treated as a companion, and as in some sort an
equal. I was often struck with this while listening to conversations
between fathers and sons. The father, evidently quite in good faith,
would ask the child’s opinion, and inquire of him what he was going to
do; as if he had some right to opinions of his own, and to independent
action in matters in which he was himself concerned. A little incident
in the train as I was on the way to Richmond, illustrated, I thought,
this state of things. A father and son of about fourteen years of
age were among the passengers, and in the next seat to myself. They
had long been talking on a footing of equality in the way I have
just mentioned; at last, to while away the time, they began to sing
together. First they accompanied each other. Then they took alternate
lines; at last alternate words. In this of course they tripped
frequently, each laughing at the other for his mistakes. There was
no attempt at keeping up the dignity of a parent, as might have been
considered necessary and proper with us. There was no reserve. They
were in a certain sense already on the equal footing of persons of the
same age.
I should have been glad to have fallen in again with this gentleman,
as, from the casual conversation I had with him this day in the railway
car, I found that he was one of the most cultivated persons I met in my
tour through the United States.
I arrived at the Spotswood Hotel at Richmond after dark, and was
immediately shown into the supper-room, and placed at a table already
occupied by three other persons. We soon entered into conversation.
They knew at the first glance, as I found everywhere was the case,
that I was an Englishman. ‘Sir,’ said the youngest of the party,
who did not appear to be yet twenty years old, ‘you have come to a
God-forsaken country. Those who lately had riches are now in want; and
the whites are now ruled by the blacks.’
Another gentleman I had met during the day had said to me, that ‘he
and many others wished they were living under a king of the English
royal family. That Virginians deeply regretted that they had ever
been separated from England; but that it was their own doing; for, if
they had not helped, the Yankees never could have brought about the
separation alone.’
Before I left Richmond, I had heard some of this gallant and most
unfortunate people give utterance to the sentiment, ‘that they were so
stung by the sense of defeat, that they were ever wishing themselves
dead. That everything had been so completely set on the cast of the
die, that now, when it had decided against them, they could not find
anything to live for. That their sense of honour had been crushed by
defeat. That their property had been taken from them. That their black
slaves had been made their masters.’
[Sidenote: _Billiards._]
I afterwards met with other Virginians, who, having been impoverished
by the war, had voluntarily expatriated themselves that they might,
if possible, find elsewhere some support for those who were dependent
on them. They were men who had been in the first and the last fight,
and had lost everything they possessed. But I never heard from their
lips one word of disloyalty to the Union to which they had returned
in perfect good faith. They had appealed to the arbitrament of the
sword. The decision had been against them; and they had submitted
without any reservation to that decision. Their bitterness was only for
those trading politicians who, being, as they thought, incapable of
understanding honourable men, had sent a Freedman’s Bureau and an army
of occupation to oppress and torment those who were now quite as loyal
to the Union as themselves, and if they were not, yet were utterly
incapable of moving a finger against it.
The rage for athletic exercises, which has spread like wildfire over
England, has made some feeble and unsuccessful efforts to lay hold of
the mind of Young America. It is quite in harmony with the English
love of field sports and outdoor games, but not at all with the habits
and predilections of Americans. Their climate, which covers the ground
with snow in winter, and is so hot in summer, may be unadapted to, and
therefore indispose them for these things. But I believe the chief
cause is in their indoor pursuits, which engross so much of their time
and thoughts, and in the almost total absence among them of a class
possessed of leisure, which from the times of the barons to the present
day has always been a large and constantly increasing class amongst us.
Billiards appear to have taken very much the place in America which
field sports and athletic exercises occupy here. The large billiard
rooms of their large hotels are of an evening always full of players
and spectators. The American tables have no pockets, except in the four
corners. At the hotel at which I stayed while at New York, I saw a man
who played his game without cue or mace, merely spinning his ball
between his thumb and middle finger. He had attained to such skill in
doing this, that he appeared to be able to send the ball just to any
point he pleased, with the greatest ease and certainty. I suppose, like
Blondin, he had made a single muscular feat the work of his life. I saw
billiard tables set up in wooden shanties on the plains of the North
Platte, and beyond the plains at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
I inquired here about the truth of what I had heard at Washington,
that the great millers of Richmond had last year been undersold in the
market of New York by the millers of California; and I was assured by
one of the oldest and largest firms in the city that it was so. This
firm, who had so short a water carriage from their own mill to the
quays of New York, whose appliances of business were all perfected
before the fathers of those now their rivals in California were born,
who carry on business on such a scale as to make between seven and
eight thousand barrels of flour a-week, cannot sell a barrel of that
flour in New York at less than two dollars more than the price at
which the Californian sells it. They account for this in the following
way. At the time the Californian’s harvest is ripe, he knows for a
certainty that for two or three months no rain will fall. He therefore
merely cuts his wheat without putting it into stacks or barns, without
even gathering it up into sheaves. All this expense in harvesting he
is saved. When he has cut the whole of his crop, he takes his machine
into the field, and threshes it from the swarth. But this is not all.
He gains still more largely in another way. He ploughs his land for
wheat, and puts in his seed. The land is naturally so clean, and the
climate so favourable, that the dropped grains of the first harvest
will give him another crop next year, without a cent of cost, for there
will be no ploughing or seeding required. Thus every second crop is
a pure gift of nature. It is this that makes Californian wheat, and
therefore Californian flour, so cheap. I tell the tale as it was told
to me. I remember, however, that Sir Alexander Burns mentions that he
saw wheat in the neighbourhood of Bokhara which was a biennial, and
that the Bokhara farmer got two crops from one sowing. It is possible
he may have got two crops from one sowing, not because on the banks of
the Oxus the wheat plant was capable of bearing seed twice, but in this
Californian fashion.
[Sidenote: _Two Crops of Wheat from One Sowing._]
American cities are not in the position of our country towns, but of
the capitals of European kingdoms. Richmond, for instance, till the
disruption of Virginia which took place during the late war, was the
capital of a State as large as the whole of England and Wales, with
the addition of almost the half of Scotland. And as the sites of these
cities were always chosen on account of the facilities they offered
for trade and commerce, they have in almost every instance become
the emporia for the chief part of the foreign and domestic business
of their respective States. This also has generally led to their
becoming manufacturing towns. In this way each has come to engross
almost everything in the State that contributes to the building up
of a great city. Bearing this in mind, we shall cease to wonder at
the rapid growth in population, wealth, and trade of such a place as
Chicago. It is a measure of the population, the wealth, the production
and consumption of the great State of Illinois. Just so also with
Cincinnati, St. Louis, and all their other great cities. They are made
by the States to which they belong. This of course is not the case with
New York, which is the commercial capital of a great part of the Union,
or with New Orleans, which is the warehouse through which a large
proportion of the produce of the valley of the Mississippi must pass.
We must also remember that these large cities are at enormous distances
from each other. In some instances, as notably in those of New York and
New Orleans, the chief town in the State has not been able to retain
the presence of the State legislature; this loss, however, has proved
of no great consequence to them.
We are often told that the character of a nation in some degree depends
on its kitchen. A traveller therefore who understands all that will be
expected of him when he returns home, will not pass by unnoticed the
style of cookery, and the materials with which it deals, of the people
among whom he makes what I heard in this country called, not unaptly,
‘a tour of observation’; and cookery, whether he chooses to observe it
or not, is a matter which at all events is submitted to his observation
two or three times a day.
The fact that first struck me in American ‘living’ was its abundance.
Butchers’ shops and poulterers’ were, particularly the latter, of more
frequent occurrence and better stored than I had ever seen elsewhere.
Everybody appears to have plenty to eat, and few appear to neglect
their opportunities.
[Sidenote: _American Living._]
But as this is a prosaic subject, I must begin at the beginning. On
my voyage out, before I had had time to generalise a conclusion on
such a subject, a gentleman among the passengers confided to me, as
the result of his own experience, that New England young ladies (of
course he did not mean this of the young ladies who belonged to the
upper ten thousand) never appeared less amiable than when at breakfast.
A long and large experience enabled him to speak with some authority
on this subject; though, as I afterwards discovered, he was not a
quite unprejudiced commentator. I declined to accept his conclusion,
notwithstanding his pointing out to me two young ladies who seemed to
confirm it by disposing, each of them every morning, of a beefsteak,
while they were considering what they would order for breakfast, and
then going through a performance of varieties which was in very good
keeping with the prologue.
One ought to be sparing of comment on a neighbour’s way of managing
himself. You are not acquainted with his constitution, or with the
atmosphere he has to live in, or with the kind of work he has to do;
and these things may render advisable in his case what would not suit
yourself. But if you know that some of his habits are such as do not
generally conduce to a sound sanitary condition, and then see that
the doctor is the most frequent visitor in his house, you can hardly
help coupling the two facts together in the relation of cause and
effect. Now it happens that wherever one is in the United States,
the most prominent and abundant _affiches_ are those that recommend
different kinds of ‘bitters.’ There are ‘Red jacket bitters,’ and
‘Planters’ bitters,’ ‘French,’ ‘German,’ ‘Mexican,’ and ‘American
bitters,’ but no English, which I am disposed to take as a compliment
implying that Englishmen need no such restoratives, for it can hardly
mean that the name would be no recommendation. And there are bitters
from the four quarters of the compass, limiting the range, I suppose,
to American soil. All this of course implies that in our neighbour’s
case ‘perfect order does not reign in the interior;’ and it struck me
that his constant habit of beginning the day with a breakfast that
for its variety and solidity would be sufficient for a dinner on this
side, had something to do with it. I hazard this, though the reply
is obvious that one does not know what is requisite in this way in
America. It is possible too that these bitters may not always mean
what the traveller is likely to suppose. I say this because, on an
occasion when a fractured rail delayed the train on the banks of the
Mississippi for several hours, and every one produced what he had in
the way of resources for passing away the time, an American I was then
with produced from his hand-bag a bottle of what he called ‘Angostura
bitters.’ I was rather surprised at his offering me a glass of it,
thinking from its name that it must be something medicinal. I found it,
however, to be merely a better kind of whiskey a little fortified with
spice.
But though one may not be quite up to the mark in judging of the
significance of these numerous species of bitters, one at all events is
able to understand the constant complaints of Americans themselves on
the subject of their health. One never elsewhere met with people who so
frequently impart to you the information that they are suffering from
dyspepsia. They do things in America on a big scale, and here they have
a bigger amount of dyspepsia than any other country in the world. There
may be other causes for this, but I still, perhaps very ignorantly,
think the breakfast sufficient to account for it. It is a good rule in
dietetics, as in many other things, to begin the day quietly. A certain
amount of breakfast means a certain amount of work for the digestive
machinery; and just the same rule that would apply to your horse will
apply to this animal part of your own system. If you were going to
give him some work in the afternoon, and again in the evening, or at
night, you would spare him in the morning. One’s stomach cannot always
be working hard any more than one’s horse can. I heard of a Southern
planter who (before the war) never sat down to breakfast with less
than six-and-twenty farinaceous preparations before him. I forbear to
call them six-and-twenty kinds of bread, as my informant did, because
they included dough cakes, buckwheat cakes, slap-jacks, fried hominy,
&c. It was by no means meant that the gentleman who was so profuse in
furnishing ‘the bread-kind’ department of his breakfast table confined
himself to what he found there. These were merely the garniture, and
not the substantial part of the replenishment of his matutinal board.
I heard of another gentleman, who bore a name well known in the Union,
and who made it his daily practice to conclude this meal with a large
bowl of cream; and of a third who, when, in Homeric fashion and phrase,
he had appeased the rage of his appetite, would conclude with as many
buckwheat cakes as he could lift at one time on his fork, which it was
his custom to strike for this purpose through a lofty pile of them.
Americans, sooner or later, find breakfasts of this kind harder to
digest than they have hitherto found their national debt.
As buckwheat cakes are the usual finale of an American breakfast, I
will explain what they are, and how they are to be eaten. The cakes are
made from a batter (as the name implies) of buckwheat meal. They are
done on a griddle. Each is in diameter about the size of the palm of
one’s hand, and in thickness about the sixth of an inch. The usual way
of serving them at hotels is three cakes, one on the top of another,
to each person; not from any wish to limit the number consumed, but
because they cannot be eaten in perfection if more or less than three
are brought at one time. You then prepare them yourself, by lifting
the uppermost one with your fork, and buttering the upper surface of
the middle one (if they are not hot enough to melt the butter they are
worthless) you then reverse your pile of three, and lifting what had
been the bottom one, repeat the process of buttering. That completed,
you pour upon them from a jug, which is always brought with them,
enough maple-syrup, or that failing, enough clarified syrup of sugar
to cover them. They are now ready, and are by no means to be despised.
As the buckwheat, however, is a little oleaginous, the cakes are a
little leathery—so much the better, many will say; but this, and the
combination of butter and syrup, must, one would think, render them
somewhat dyspeptic. Still they are universally approved of, and it is
the waiter’s business at an hotel, when he sees you are finishing
your breakfast, to ask you ‘if you will have some cakes.’ There would
be something to say in favour of concluding a moderate breakfast
occasionally in this way, but to make the cakes a daily addition to a
varied and solid meal is to presume too much on one’s strength. Who
but would be appalled at contemplating the amount of work which half a
century of such breakfasts would impose upon himself?
[Sidenote: _Slap-jacks._]
Where buckwheat meal, as in the Western prairies, cannot always be
had, a good and orthodox substitute is the slap-jack, which is made
and served in precisely the same way, the only difference being that
of the material, which is wheaten flour. As this latter preparation
is capable, and I think worthy, of acclimatisation, I will mention
that the batter from which it is made has no other ingredients than
flour, water, and soda. The griddle must be rubbed with a piece of suet
before it is heated, and again before it is used. Serve in threes—very
hot—with butter and syrup, as with the buckwheat cakes. I picked up
this bit of culinary lore at a solitary ranche on the plains, where,
having exhausted all the more obvious resources of the place, there was
nothing else to do.
At the great hotels five meals a day are allowed. This is too much,
not for the hotels, for such liberality is attractive (of course they
all have a fixed price per day, ranging from three and a half to five
dollars, for bed and board), but it is too much for the guests who
avail themselves of it.
I need not go into particulars as to how the great American nation
dines. If a man has breakfasted as he ought, and spent the day as
he ought, he may dine as he pleases. No people in the world have a
greater variety of materials for dining well than they have; perhaps
no people so great a variety. Their beef and mutton are (thanks to our
climate) not quite up to the English mark, but they are better than any
on the continent of Europe. In variety, however, of materials they far
exceed us. In Ohio and Kentucky they have naturalised the pheasant.
The domestic turkey, as might be expected in the native region of its
race, is so abundant as to be almost within everybody’s reach. The
same may be said of all kinds of poultry. This results from the great
number and smallness of the farms in America, and from the abundance
of Indian corn. There is also no scarcity of prairie game and quail.
Wild venison is to be had everywhere, which, when properly kept and
cooked, as I have seen it at Southern tables, is as tender as chicken,
though entirely devoid of fat. I once saw terrapin soup and stewed
terrapin on the _menu_; and thinking that I should frequently see them
there again, I let that opportunity for qualifying myself to form some
opinion of their merits pass by, and no other opportunity occurred—I
suppose because it was not the season for it. I let pass in the same
way all opportunities at New York for making myself acquainted with the
merits of the buffalo, thinking that I should frequently meet with it
in the West. When at Denver I received an invitation to sup on buffalo,
which was the only chance I had in the West; and this invitation I was
unable to accept. Stewed clams and clam soup are not bad. Soft-shelled
crabs are not good. There is a very great variety of wild fowl: at
Mobile, and in a still greater degree at New Orleans, I was astonished
at the number of species I saw in the market. At the head of all these
stands the world-renowned canvas-back. No one, I believe, ever found
him inferior to his reputation: of all the feathered tribe he is the
tenderest and the most juicy. If he has come from the Potomac, he has
a fine flavour of the wild celery, which is there his chief food. The
red-head duck has the second place in point of excellence.
[Sidenote: _American Vivres._]
But what I put first on the list of all the good things of America is
its oyster. It is two or three times the size of the European bivalve;
I think more tender, and certainly of a more delicate flavour. It has
also the great merit of being entirely free from any trace of a coppery
taste, which habit and necessity only have brought us to tolerate in
our own mollusk. To all its other merits it adds this great one—that it
exists in incredible and inexhaustible quantities: and we know that it
was abundant in the remote epochs of the past; because on the coasts
of the Southern States we find long ridges of its shells, which must
have been the slow accumulations of the thousands of years during which
some savage race, that has left behind it in these mounds no record of
any capacity for improvement or progress, was in the habit of fishing
it from the contiguous beds, and leaving its shells on the nearest
beach. This race has passed away without having left any record of its
existence except these heaps of oyster shells. But the descendants
of the oysters they lived upon still exist, and their shells are
dispersed, by the aid of the locomotive, over the whole continent.
How interesting and suggestive a contrast is here! But to keep to our
subject: these oysters exist in such abundance that in the Gulf of
Mexico I saw them bailed into the boats as fast as the men who were
taking them could work their rakes. There are enough of them taken for
a large trade with the towns in the interior, to which they are sent
either fresh or in tins. Wherever you go you have them in some form or
other—scalloped, stewed, uncooked, or in soup—every day; at some places
you see them on the bills of fare for breakfast, dinner, and supper.
As on my return to England we were supplied with them throughout the
voyage, and as our own oysters have of late been selling at a famine
price, I do not see why we should not import a part of our supply from
America.
As far as I was able to judge from what I saw (my experience was
confined to the winter), I thought that in fish we had the advantage of
the Americans, both in variety and quality. Their white fish and bass
are good. The latter is best when broiled. I mention this as I am not
aware that we cook our bass in this way.
Maize enters largely into the dietary of Americans, and is used in a
hundred forms. Well-prepared hominy is a good substitute for rice as
a vegetable adjunct to roast meat or stews. It ought to be as white
as paper, but to prepare it in this way requires a tedious process,
for it must be soaked for a long time in a strong lye, to get rid of
its yellow skin. Maize bread is good only for a few minutes after it
is taken out of the oven. As soon as it ceases to be warm, moist, and
soft, it ceases to be eatable. The sweet potatoes of America are as
superior to those of Algeria and the south of Europe as Stilton cheese
is to that of Suffolk. The best are grown in the sandy soils of the
South. In South Carolina from two to five hundred bushels per acre are
harvested. Pigs will fatten on them, and men can live on pork and sweet
potatoes. But no dependence can be placed on this root, as in some
years, for reasons that have not been discovered, they will not keep.
To those who are desirous of introducing a little variety into their
Christmas dinner I would recommend an American practice of serving the
turkey with hot apple jam. I need hardly say this is a very different
thing from apple sauce. There may, however, be some difficulty in
getting the jam made, as I do not recollect having often seen it in
England. I would also recommend for that festive season an American
method of improving mince pies. On this side it is sometimes objected
to this time-honoured institution, that there is a ha’p’orth of
mincemeat to an intolerable quantity of crust: with their unfailing
readiness of invention they have hit on the method of uniting what with
us would be two or three dozen small pies, almost all crust, into one
large raised pie, which they help in pieces or slices. This completely
meets the objection.
The fire which the Confederates kindled in Richmond to destroy the
tobacco that was in the city at the time the Northern army were about
to enter spread rapidly, as there was a strong wind at the time,
and destroyed the whole of the lower part of the town. This was the
quarter that was chiefly occupied by the large flour-mills and other
manufactories of the place; it contained also many of the largest
stores. A great part of what was burnt has been rebuilt, chiefly, I
understood, by Northern capital. At the time, however, of my visit the
work of reconstruction was at a standstill; and I saw considerable
spaces occupied only with the _débris_ of former buildings. One
might have expected that factories would not be rebuilt just yet, as
trade has been dull everywhere since the war, and as the Virginians
themselves, like all the Southern people, are utterly ruined. But that
any part of Richmond will ever remain in ruins it is difficult to
believe, for one cannot imagine a city more advantageously situated.
Nature has made it the commercial centre of a State which in climate,
soil, and abundance of water communication is unrivalled in the Union.
It may be regarded as the inland point upon which a great extent of
natural navigation converges. In the rapids of the James River it
possesses within the city great manufacturing power. In tobacco also
it has an agricultural product for export which is already enormous,
and which, as all the world wants it, may be increased to a practically
unlimited extent. Nothing, I think, is needed for enabling it to go
ahead as fast as any Western city but just a little time for arranging
matters in the town and in the neighbouring country on the new basis,
and so launching it on a career of prosperity which nothing henceforth
will be likely to check. As far as I am able to judge, the two best
speculations in the United States are buying land in Virginia (where it
may now be had in abundance at two or three shillings an acre—land that
must soon be settled in the Northern fashion) and in California, which
will be flooded with immigrants as soon as the Pacific Railroad is
opened through, and this is advertised for next year.
[Sidenote: _Prospects of Richmond._]
The upper part of Richmond is occupied with private residences. I was
at first surprised at their number, and at the indications they gave
of what had been till lately the wealth of their inhabitants. But this
surprise ceases when one remembers that it is the capital of, and the
only great city in, a rich and large State. Like most American cities
it has rows of trees in the streets, and here it is that you first
begin to see in the live oaks and magnolias unmistakable indications of
the commencement of a Southern climate. Some of the magnolias in the
little plots of ground in the fronts of the houses were true specimen
plants. I was never tired of looking at them. They had grown with such
uninterrupted regularity that there was not a twig, I might say not a
leaf, missing in them, to mar the symmetry of their form, which was
that of a large cone of the deepest green. Each leaf in size and depth
of colour was a noble object in itself. I thought, what would not one
give to see these noble trees in flower, and if a man could only have
such a tree on his own lawn in England?
Here, as I did wherever I went, I inquired into the position the
different churches, and especially the Episcopal Church, occupied in
the place; and here, as everywhere else, the Methodists and Baptists
appeared to be in the majority. I was taken to hear a very celebrated
Presbyterian preacher. As far as I could judge from a single sermon, I
thought that the preacher’s excellence consisted entirely in his style,
which was more polished and highly wrought than usual. As to his
matter, there was not an idea or a sentiment but what one might have
heard in the humblest chapel at home.
Of course sermons of this kind indicate the theological calibre of the
congregation as well as that of the minister; for ministers and sermons
are in the long run made by the congregation. In the evening of the
same day I attended service at an Episcopal church. The interior of the
building was profusely decorated with Christmas evergreens, and the
sermon showed that the preacher was a man of learning and thought.
There are five Episcopal churches in this city. Those who minister in
them appear to be well paid. I was told that the two highest salaries
were 4,000 and 3,500 dollars. I heard, however, but I do not know to
what denominations my informants belonged, and so possibly they may not
have been well acquainted with the subject, that the Episcopal Church
here is not so active as it is in the North. Of course in the North
there is greater intellectual and religious activity, just as there is
more doing in agriculture, manufactures, and trade; but if there was to
be any exception to this rule, I should have expected to have found it
in the Episcopal Church in Richmond, because here the people in hearing
and conversation far more closely resemble Englishmen than is the case
in the North. They speak, too, more frequently, and with more regard,
of the old country, its people, and its institutions. Everybody I saw
in the churches in Richmond, just as in the churches of the Northern
cities, was well-dressed. The humbler classes appeared neither to have
churches for themselves nor places in the churches of the rich. This,
as everybody knows, is the weak point in the American voluntary system
in their great cities.
[Sidenote: _Heroism and Sufferings of the South._]
Richmond possesses just now an especial interest for the traveller,
which attaches to no other city in the United States. It is the city
against which the North launched so many mighty hosts, and which was
defended with such bravery, skill, and success by Lee, Jackson, Stuart,
and other good soldiers whose names will live in history. It was in the
streets and houses of this city that the civil and military leaders
of the unfortunate Confederacy might have been seen. Here it was that
those resolutions were debated and formed which enabled them with such
slender resources in materials and men to stand at bay so long against
the overwhelming myriads of the North.
In talking, too, with Southern men about the war—the soldiers of the
North will understand, and even sympathise with the feeling—you are
more deeply stirred than in talking with Northern men. Those who
throughout wished the North well, and rejoiced in the issue of the
struggle, must still feel in this way. These Southern men fought for a
greater stake, for a country and for their property, against fearful
odds, and at great disadvantages. The issue was to them that they lost
everything except their honour. When you talk to these brave men,
and hear of the cruel privations and hardships they went through, of
their personal sufferings, of the brothers and sons they lost; when
you see them writhing under defeat, and paying heavier penalties than
vanquished men have ever paid in modern times, you regard them with
mingled feelings of admiration and pity, which cannot be awakened by
anything you can hear from those whose warfare has been crowned at
every point with complete success.