should add, that the only point where I am disappointed is one I have
never seen raised by the most incredulous newspaper critics,--namely
their physical condition. They often look magnificently to my
gymnasium-trained eye; and I always like to observe them when
bathing,--such splendid muscular development, set off by that smooth
coating of adipose tissue which makes them, like the South-Sea
Islanders, appear even more muscular than they are. Their skins are also
of finer grain than those of whites, the surgeons say, and certainly are
smoother and far more free from hair. Their weakness is pulmonary;
pneumonia and pleurisy are their besetting ailments; they are easily
made ill,--and easily cured, if promptly treated: childish organization
again. Guard-duty injures them more than whites, apparently; and
double-quick movements, in choking dust, set them coughing badly. But
then it is to be remembered that this is their sickly season, from
January to March, and that their healthy season will come in summer,
when the whites break down. Still my conviction of the physical
superiority of more highly civilized races is strengthened on the whole,
not weakened, by observing them. As to availability for military drill
and duty in other respects, the only question I ever hear debated among
the officers is, whether they are equal or superior to whites. I have
never heard it suggested that they were inferior, although I expected
frequently to hear such complaints from hasty or unsuccessful officers.
Of one thing I am sure, that their best qualities will be wasted by
merely keeping them for garrison duty. They seem peculiarly fitted for
offensive operations, and especially for partisan warfare; they have so
much dash and such abundant resources, combined with such an Indian-like
knowledge of the country and its ways. These traits have been often
illustrated in expeditions sent after deserters. For instance, I
despatched one of my best lieutenants and my best sergeant with a squad
of men to search a certain plantation, where there were two separate
negro villages. They went by night, and the force was divided. The
lieutenant took one set of huts, the sergeant the other. Before the
lieutenant had reached his first house, every man in the village was in
the woods, innocent and guilty alike. But the sergeant's mode of
operation was thus described by a corporal from a white regiment who
happened to be in one of the negro houses. He said that not a sound was
heard until suddenly a red leg appeared in the open doorway, and a voice
outside said, "Rally." Going to the door, he observed a similar pair of
red legs before every hut, and not a person was allowed to go out, until
the quarters had been thoroughly searched, and the three deserters
found. This was managed by Sergeant Prince Rivers, our color-sergeant,
who is provost-sergeant also, and has entire charge of the prisoners and
of the daily policing of the camp. He is a man of distinguished
appearance, and in old times was the crack coachman of Beaufort, in
which capacity he once drove Beauregard from this plantation to
Charleston, I believe. They tell me that he was once allowed to present
a petition to the Governor of South Carolina in behalf of slaves, for
the redress of certain grievances; and that a placard, offering two
thousand dollars for his recapture, is still to be seen by the wayside
between here and Charleston. He was a sergeant in the old "Hunter
Regiment," and was taken by General Hunter to New York last spring,
where the _chevrons_ on his arm brought a mob upon him in Broadway, whom
he kept off till the police interfered. There is not a white officer in
this regiment who has more administrative ability, or more absolute
authority over the men; they do not love him, but his mere presence has
controlling power over them. He writes well enough to prepare for me a
daily report of his duties in the camp: if his education reached a
higher point, I see no reason why he should not command the Army of the
Potomac. He is jet-black, or rather, I should say, _wine-black_; his
complexion, like that of others of my darkest men, having a sort of
rich, clear depth, without a trace of sootiness, and to my eye very
handsome. His features are tolerably regular, and full of command, and
his figure superior to that of any of our white officers,--being six
feet high, perfectly proportioned, and of apparently inexhaustible
strength and activity. His gait is like a panther's; I never saw such a
tread. No anti-slavery novel has described a man of such marked ability.
He makes Toussaint perfectly intelligible; and if there should ever be a
black monarchy in South Carolina, he will be its king.
_January 15._--This morning is like May. Yesterday I saw bluebirds and a
butterfly; so this winter of a fortnight is over. I fancy a trifle less
coughing in the camp. We hear of other stations in the Department where
the mortality, chiefly from yellow fever, has been frightful. Dr. ----
is rubbing his hands professionally over the fearful tales of the
surgeon of a New York regiment, just from Key West, who has had two
hundred cases of the fever. "I suppose he is a skilful, highly educated
man," said I; "Yes," he responded with enthusiasm. "Why, he had seventy
deaths!"--as if that proved his superiority past question.
_January 19._
"And first, sitting proud as a king on his throne,
At the head of them all rode Sir Richard Tyrone."
But I fancy that Sir Richard felt not much better satisfied with his
following than I to-day. J. R. L. said once that nothing was quite so
good as turtle-soup, except mock-turtle; and I have heard officers
declare that nothing was so stirring as real war, except some exciting
parade. To-day, for the first time, I marched the whole regiment through
Beaufort and back,--the first appearance of such a novelty on any stage.
They did march splendidly: this all admit. M----'s prediction was
fulfilled:
"Will not ---- be in bliss? A thousand men, every one black as a coal!"
I confess it. To look back on twenty broad double-ranks of men, (for
they marched by platoons,)--every polished musket having a black face
beside it, and every face set steadily to the front,--a regiment of
freed slaves marching on into the future,--it was something to remember;
and when they returned through the same streets, marching by the flank,
with guns at a "support," and each man covering his file-leader
handsomely, the effect on the eye was almost as fine. The band of the
Eighth Maine joined us at the entrance of the town, and escorted us in.
Sergeant Rivers said ecstatically afterwards, in describing the
affair,--"And when dat band wheel in before us, and march on,--my God! I
quit dis world altogeder." I wonder if he pictured to himself the many
dusky regiments, now unformed, which I seemed to see marching up behind
us, gathering shape out of the dim air.
I had cautioned the men, before leaving camp, not to be staring about
them as they marched, but to look straight to the front, every man; and
they did it with their accustomed fidelity, aided by the sort of
spontaneous eye-for-effect which is in all their melodramatic natures.
One of them was heard to say exultingly afterwards,--"We didn't look to
de right nor to de leff. I didn't see notin' in Beaufort. Eb'ry step was
worth a half-a-dollar." And they all marched as if it were so. They knew
well that they were marching through throngs of officers and soldiers
who had drilled as many months as we had drilled weeks, and whose eyes
would readily spy out every defect. And I must say, that, on the whole,
with a few trivial exceptions, those spectators behaved in a manly and
courteous manner, and I do not care to write down all the handsome
things that were said. Whether said or not, they were deserved; and
there is no danger that our men will not take sufficient satisfaction in
their good appearance. I was especially amused at one of our recruits,
who did not march in the ranks, and who said, after watching the
astonishment of some white soldiers,--"De buckra sojers look like a man
who been-a-steal a sheep,"--that is, I suppose, sheepish.
After passing and repassing through the town, we marched to the
parade-ground and went through an hour's drill, forming squares and
reducing them, and doing other things which look hard on paper and are
perfectly easy in fact; and we were to have been reviewed by General
Saxton, but he had been unexpectedly called to Ladies Island, and did
not see us at all, which was the only thing to mar the men's enjoyment.
Then we marched back to camp, (three miles,) the men singing the "John
Brown Song," and all manner of things,--as happy creatures as one can
well conceive.
It is worth mentioning, before I close, that we have just received an
article about "Negro Troops," from the London "Spectator," which is so
admirably true to our experience that it seems as if written by one of
us. I am confident that there never has been, in any American newspaper,
a treatment of the subject so discriminating and so wise.
_January 21._--To-day brought a visit from Major-General Hunter and his
staff, by General Saxton's invitation,--the former having just arrived
in the Department. I expected them at dress parade, but they came during
battalion drill, rather to my dismay, and we were caught in our old
clothes. It was our first review, and I dare say we did tolerably; but
of course it seemed to me that the men never appeared so ill
before,--just as one always thinks a party at one's own house a failure,
even if the guests seem to enjoy it, because one is so keenly sensitive
to every little thing that goes wrong. After review and drill, General
Hunter made the men a little speech, at my request, and told them that
he wished there were fifty thousand of them. General Saxton spoke to
them afterwards, and said that fifty thousand muskets were on their way
for colored troops. The men cheered both the Generals lustily; and they
were complimentary afterwards, though I knew that the regiment could not
have appeared nearly so well as on its visit to Beaufort. I suppose I
felt like some anxious mamma whose children have accidentally appeared
at dancing-school in their old clothes.
General Hunter promises us all we want,--pay when the funds arrive,
Springfield rifled muskets, and blue trousers. Moreover, he has
graciously consented that we should go on an expedition along the coast,
to pick up cotton, lumber, and, above all, recruits. I declined an offer
like this just after my arrival, because the regiment was not drilled or
disciplined, not even the officers; but it is all we wish for now.
"What care I how black I be?
Forty pounds will marry me,"
quoth Mother Goose. Forty _rounds_ will marry us to the American Army,
past divorcing, if we can only use them well. Our success or failure may
make or mar the prospects of colored troops. But it is well to remember
in advance that military success is really less satisfactory than any
other, because it may depend on a moment's turn of events, and that may
be determined by some trivial thing, neither to be anticipated nor
controlled. Napoleon ought to have won at Waterloo by all reasonable
calculations; but who cares? All that one can expect is, to do one's
best, and to take with equanimity the fortune of war.[D]
FOOTNOTES:
[D] In coming to the record of more active service, the Journal form
must be abandoned. The next chapter will give some account of an
expedition up the St. Mary's River.
THE AMERICAN METROPOLIS.
A little more than two centuries ago the site of New York City was
bought by its first white owners for twenty-four dollars. The following
tabular statement exhibits the steps of its progressive settlement since
then.
Year. Population. Year. Population.
1656 1,000 1820 123,706
1673 2,500 1825 166,089
1696 4,302 1830 202,589
1731 8,628 1835 270,068
1756 10,381 1840 312,852
1773 21,876 1845 371,223
1786 23,614 1850 515,394
1790 33,131 1855 629,810
1800 60,489 1860 814,254
1810 96,373 1864 1,000,000+
Taking the first census as a point of departure, the population of New
York doubled itself in about eleven years. During the first century it
increased a little more than tenfold. It was doubled again in less than
twenty years; the next thirty years quadrupled it; and another period of
twenty years doubled it once more. Its next duplication consumed the
shorter term of eighteen years. It more than doubled again during the
fifteen years preceding the last census; and the four years since that
census have witnessed an increase of nearly twenty-three per cent. This
final estimate is of course liable to correction by next year's census,
but its error will be found on the side of under-statement, rather than
of exaggeration.
The property on the north-west corner of Broadway and Chamber Street,
now occupied in part by one of Delmonico's restaurants, was purchased
by a New York citizen, but lately deceased, for the sum of $1,000: its
present value is $125,000. A single Broadway lot, surveyed out of an
estate which cost the late John Jay $500 per acre, was recently sold at
auction for $80,000, and the purchaser has refused a rent of $16,000 per
annum, or twenty per cent on his purchase-money, for the store which he
has erected on the property. In 1826, the estimated total value of real
estate in the city of New York was $64,804,050. In 1863, it had reached
a total of $402,196,652, thus increasing more than sixfold within the
lifetime of an ordinary business-generation. In 1826, the personal
estate of New York City, so far as could be arrived at for official
purposes, amounted to $42,434,981. In 1863, the estimate of this class
of property-values was $192,000,161. It had thus more than quadrupled in
a generation.
But statistics are most eloquent through illustration. Let us look
discursively about the city of New York at various periods of her career
since the opening of the present century. I shall assume that a map of
the city is everywhere attainable, and that the reader has a general
acquaintance with the physical and political geography of the United
States.
Not far from the beginning of the century, Wall Street, as its name
implies, was the northern boundary of the city of New York. The present
north boundary of civilized settlement is almost identical with the
statutory limit of the city, or that of the island itself. There is no
perceptible break, though there are gradations of compactness, in the
settled district between the foot of the island and Central Park. Beyond
the Park, Haarlem Lane, Manhattanville, and Carmansville take up the
thread of civic population, and carry it, among metropolitan houses and
lamp-posts, quite to the butment of High Bridge. It has been seriously
proposed to legislate for the annexation of a portion of Westchester to
the bills of mortality, and this measure cannot fail to be demanded by
the next generation; but for the present we will consider High Bridge as
the north end of the city. Let us compare the boundary remembered by our
veterans with that to which metropolitan settlement has been pushed by
them and their children. In the lifetime of our oldest business-men, the
advance wave of civic refinement, convenience, luxury, and population
has travelled a distance greater than that from the Westminster Palaces
to the hulks at the Isle of Dogs. When we consider that the population
of the American Metropolis lives better, on the average, than that of
any earthly capital, and that ninety-nine hundredths of all our
suffering poor are the overflow of Great Britain's pauperism running
into our grand channels a little faster than we can direct its current
to the best advantage,--under these circumstances the advance made by
New York in less than a century toward the position of the world's
metropolis is a more important one than has been gained by London
between the time of Julius Caesar and the present century.
I know an excellent business-man who was born in his father's
aristocratic residence in Beaver Street. Holborn is as aristocratic now.
Another friend of mine still living, the freshest of sexagenarians, told
me lately of a walk he took in boyhood which so much fatigued him, that,
when he was a long way out in the fields, he sat down to rest on the
steps of a suburban hospital. I guessed Bellevue; but he replied that it
was the New York Hospital, standing in what we now call the lower part
of Broadway, just opposite North Pearl Street. No part of the Strand or
of the Boulevards is less rural than the vast settled district about the
New York Hospital at this day. It stands at least four times farther
within than it then did beyond the circumference of New York
civilization. I remember another illustration of its relative situation
early in the century,--a story of good old Doctor Stone, who excused
himself from his position of manager by saying, that, as the infirmities
of age grew on him, he found the New York Hospital so far out in the
country that he should be obliged, if he stayed, to keep "a horse and
_cheer_."
Many New-Yorkers, recognized among our young and active men, can
recollect when Houston Street was called North Street because it was
practically the northern boundary of the settled district. Middle-aged
men remember the swamp of Lispenard's Meadow, which is now the dryest
part of Canal Street; some recall how they crossed other parts of the
swamp on boards, and how tide-water practically made a separate island
of what is now the northern and much the larger portion of the city.
Young men recollect making Saturday-afternoon appointments with their
schoolfellows (there was no time on any other day) to go "clear out into
the country," bathe in the rural cove at the foot of East Thirteenth
Street, and, refreshed by their baths, proceed to bird's-nesting on the
wilderness of the Stuyvesant Farm, where is now situate Stuyvesant Park,
one of the loveliest and most elegant pleasure-grounds open to the New
York public, surrounded by one of the best-settled portions of the city,
in every sense of the word. Still younger men remember Fourteenth Street
as the utmost northern limit of the wave of civilization; and
comparative boys have seen Franconi's Hippodrome pitched in a vacant lot
of the suburbs, where now the Fifth Avenue Hotel stands, at the entrance
to a double mile of palaces, in the northern, southern, and western
directions.
We may safely affirm, that, since the organization of the science of
statistics, no city in the world has ever multiplied its population,
wealth, and internal resources of livelihood with a rapidity approaching
that shown by New York. London has of late years made great progress
quantitively, but her means of accommodating a healthy and happy
population have kept no adequate pace with the increase of numbers.
During the year 1862, 75,000 immigrants landed at the port of New York;
in 1863, 150,000 more; and thus far in 1864 (we write in November)
200,000 have debarked here. Of these 425,000 immigrants, 40 per cent
have stayed in the city. Of the 170,000 thus staying, 90 per cent, or
153,000, are British subjects; and of these, it is not understating to
say that five eighths are dependent for their livelihood on physical
labor of the most elementary kind. By comparing these estimates with the
tax-list, it will appear that we have pushed our own inherent vitality
to an extent of forty millions increase in our taxable property, and
contributed to the support of the most gigantic war in human annals,
during the period that we received into our grand civic digestion a city
of British subjects as large as Bristol, and incorporated them into our
own body politic with more comfort both to mass and particles than
either had enjoyed at home.
There are still some people who regard the settlement of countries and
the selection of great capitals as a matter of pure romantic accident.
Philosophers know, that, if, at the opening of the Adamic period, any
man had existed with a perfect knowledge of the world's physical
geography and the laws of national development, he would have been able
to foretell _a priori_ the situations of all the greatest capitals. It
is a law as fixed as that defining the course of matter in the line of
least resistance, that population flows to the level where the best
livelihood is most easily obtained. The brute motives of food and
raiment must govern in their selection of residence nine tenths of the
human race. A few noble enthusiasts, like those of Plymouth Colony, may
leave immortal footprints on a rugged coast, exchanging old civilization
for a new battle with savagery, and abandoning comfort with conformity
for a good conscience with privation. Still, had there been back of
Plymouth none of the timber, the quarries, the running streams, the
natural avenues of inland communication, and to some extent the
agricultural capabilities which make good subsistence possible, there
would have been no Boston, no Lynn, no Lowell, no New Bedford, no
healthy or wealthy civilization of any kind, until the Pilgrim
civilization had changed its base. It may be generally laid down that
the men who leave home for truth's sake exile themselves as much for the
privilege to mere opportunity of living truly.
New York was not even in the first place settled by enthusiasts. Trade
with the savages, nice little farms at Haarlem, a seat among the
burgomasters, the feast of St. Nicholas, pipes and Schiedam, a vessel
now and then in the year bringing over letters of affection ripened by a
six months' voyage, some little ventures, and two or three new
colonists,--these were the joys which allured the earliest New-Yorkers
to the island now swarming from end to end with almost national
vitalities. Not until 1836, when the Italian Opera was first domiciled
in New York, on the corner of Leonard and Church Streets, could the
second era of metropolitan life be said fully to have set in there,--the
era when people flow toward a city for the culture as well as the
livelihood which it offers them. About the same time American studios
began to be thronged with American picture-buyers; and there is no need
of referring to the rapid advance of American literature, and the wide
popularization of luxuries, dating from that period.
Long prior to that, New York was growing with giant vitality. She
possesses, as every great city must possess preeminent advantages for
the support of a vast population and the employment of immense
industries. If she could not feed a million of men better than Norfolk,
Norfolk would be New York and New York Norfolk. If the products of the
world were not more economically exchanged across her counter than over
that of Baltimore, Baltimore would need to set about building shelter
for half a million more heads than sleep there to-night. Perth Amboy was
at one time a prominent rival of New York in the struggle for the
position of the American Metropolis, and is not New York only because
Nature said No!
Let us invite the map to help us in our investigation of New York's
claim to the metropolitan rank. There are three chief requisites for the
chief city of every nation. It must be the city in easiest communication
with other countries,--on the sea-coast, if there be a good harbor
there, or on some stream debouching into the best harbor that there is.
It must be the city in easiest communication with the interior, either
by navigable streams, or valleys and mountain-passes, and thus the most
convenient rendezvous for the largest number of national interests,--the
place where Capital and Brains, Import and Export, Buyer and Seller,
Doers and Things to be Done, shall most naturally make their
appointments to meet for exchange. Last, (and least, too,--for even
cautious England will people jungles for money's sake,) the metropolis
must enjoy at least a moderate sanitary reputation; otherwise men who
love Fortune well enough to die for her will not be reinforced by
another large class who care to die on no account whatever.