Cincinnati has been made famous by Mrs Trollope, whose aristocratic
feelings were offended by the pork-trade, which is here carried on
on a great scale. From her accounts many persons have thought that
every body in Cincinnati was a pork merchant, and the city a mere
slaughter-house. The fact is that Cincinnati is a large and beautiful
town, charmingly situated in one of those bends which the Ohio makes,
as if unwilling to leave the spot. The hills which border the _Belle
Rivière_ (Beautiful River, the French name of the Ohio) through its
whole course, seem here to have receded from the river bank, in order
to form a lofty plain, to which they serve as walls, whenever the Ohio
does not serve as a foss, and on which man might build a town above
the reach of the terrible floods of the river. Geologists, who have
no faith in the favours of the fabled Oreads, will merely attribute
this table-land to the washing away of the mountains, in the diluvian
period, by the River Licking, now a modest little stream, which,
descending from the highlands of Kentucky, empties itself into the Ohio
opposite Cincinnati. However this may be, there is not, in the whole
course of the river, a single spot which offers such attractions to the
founders of a town.
The architectural appearance of Cincinnati is very nearly the same with
that of the new quarters of the English towns. The houses are generally
of brick, most commonly three stories high, with the windows shining
with cleanliness, calculated each for a single family, and regularly
placed along well paved and spacious streets, sixty feet in width.
Here and there the prevailing uniformity is interrupted by some more
imposing edifice, and there are some houses of hewn stone in very good
taste, real palaces in miniature, with neat porticoes, inhabited by the
aristocratical portion of Mrs Trollope's hog-merchants, and several
very pretty mansions surrounded with gardens and terraces. Then there
are the common school-houses, where girls and boys together learn
reading, writing, cyphering, and geography, under the simultaneous
direction of a master and mistress.[AX] In another direction you see a
small, plain church, without sculpture or paintings, without coloured
glass or gothic arches, but snug, well carpeted, and well-warmed by
stoves. In Cincinnati, as everywhere else in the United States, there
is a great number of churches; each sect has its own, from Anglican
Episcopalianism, which enlists under its banner the wealth of the
country, to the Baptist and Methodist sects, the religion of the
labourers and negroes. On another side, stands a huge hotel, which
from its exterior you would take for a royal residence, but in which,
as I can testify, you will not experience a princely hospitality; or a
museum, which is merely a private speculation, as all American museums
are, and which consists of some few crystals, some mammoth-bones, which
are very abundant in the United States, an Egyptian mummy, some Indian
weapons and dresses, and a half-dozen wax-figures, representing, for
instance, Washington, General Jackson, and the Indian Chiefs, Black
Hawk and Tecumseh, a figure of Napoleon afoot or on horseback, a French
cuirass from Waterloo, a collection of portraits of distinguished
Americans, comprising Lafayette and some of the leading men of the
town, another of stuffed birds, snakes preserved in spirits, and
particularly a large living snake, a boa constrictor, or an anaconda.
One of these museums in Cincinnati is remarkable for its collection of
Indian antiquities, derived from the huge caves of Kentucky, or from
the numerous mounds on the banks of the Ohio, of which there were
several on the site of Cincinnati.[AY]
As for the banks they are modestly lodged at Cincinnati, but a plan of
a handsome edifice, worthy of their high fortune, and sufficient to
accommodate them all, is at present under consideration. The founderies
for casting steam-engines, the yards for building steamboats, the
noisy, unwholesome, or unpleasant workshops, are in the adjoining
village of Fulton, in Covington or Newport on the Kentucky bank of the
river, or in the country. As to the enormous slaughter of hogs, about
150,000 annually, and the preparation of the lard, which follows, the
town is not in the least incommoded by it; the whole process takes
place on the banks of a little stream called Deer Creek, which has
received the nickname of the Bloody Run, from the colour of its waters
during the season of the massacre, or near the basins of the great
canal, which extends from Cincinnati towards the Maumee of Lake Erie.
Cincinnati has, however, no squares planted with trees in the English
taste, no parks nor walks, no fountains, although it would be very
easy to have them. It is necessary to wait for the ornamental, until
the taste for it prevails among the inhabitants; at present the useful
occupies all thoughts. Besides, all improvements require an increase of
taxes, and in the United States it is not easy to persuade the people
to submit to this. (See _Note 20_.) Cincinnati also stands in need of
some public provision for lighting the streets, which this repugnance
to taxes has hitherto prevented.
Cincinnati has had water-works, for supplying the inhabitants with
water, for about 20 years; for an annual rate, which amounts to about
8 or 12 dollars for a family, each has a quantity amply sufficient
for all its wants. A steam-engine on the banks of the river raises
the water to a reservoir on one of the hills near the city, 300 feet
high, whence it is conducted in iron pipes in every direction. The
height of the reservoir is such that the water rises to the top of
every house, and fire-plugs are placed at intervals along the streets
to supply the engines in case of fire. Several of the new towns in
the United States have water-works, and Philadelphia, among the older
cities, has an admirable system of works, which, owing to a series of
unsuccessful experiments, have cost a large sum.[AZ] At this moment,
a plan for supplying Boston with water is under discussion, which
will cost several millions, because the water must be brought from a
distance. New York is also engaged in a similar work, the expense of
which will be about five millions. The Cincinnati water-works have
not cost much above 150,000 dollars, although they have been several
times completely reconstructed. It is generally thought in the United
States, that the water-works ought to be owned by the towns, but those
in Cincinnati belong to a company, and the water-rate is, therefore,
higher than in Philadelphia and Pittsburg. The city has three times
been in negotiation for the purchase of the works, and has always
declined buying on advantageous terms; the first time the establishment
was offered for 35,000 dollars, and the second time for 80,000; the
third time, 125,000 dollars were demanded, and 300,000 or 400,000 will
finally be paid for it. In this case, as in regard to lighting the
streets, the principal cause of the refusal of the city to buy was the
unwillingness to lay new taxes.
The appearance of Cincinnati as it is approached from the water, is
imposing, and it is still more so when it is viewed from one of the
neighbouring hills. The eye takes in the windings of the Ohio and
the course of the Licking, which enters the former at right angles,
the steamboats that fill the port, the basin of the Miami canal,
with the warehouses that line it and the locks that connect it with
the river, the white-washed spinning works of Newport and Covington
with their tall chimneys, the Federal arsenal, above which floats the
starry banner, and the numerous wooden spires that crown the churches.
On all sides the view is terminated by ranges of hills, forming an
amphitheatre yet covered with the vigourous growth of the primitive
forest. This rich verdure is here and there interrupted by country
houses surrounded by colonnades, which are furnished by the forest.
The population which occupies this amphitheatre, lives in the midst of
plenty; it is industrious, sober, frugal, thirsting after knowledge,
and if, with a very few exceptions, it is entirely a stranger to the
delicate pleasures and elegant manners of the refined society of our
European capitals, it is equally ignorant of its vices, dissipation,
and follies.
At the first glance one does not perceive any difference between the
right and left bank of the river; from a distance, the prosperity of
Cincinnati seems to extend to the opposite shore. This is an illusion;
on the right bank, that is, in Ohio, there are none but freemen;
slavery exists on the other side. You may descend the river hundreds of
miles, with slavery on the left and liberty on the right, although it
is the same soil, and equally capable of being cultivated by the white
man. When you enter the Mississippi you have slavery on both sides of
you. A blind carelessness, or rather a fatal weakness in the rulers,
and a deplorable selfishness in the people, have allowed this plague
to become fixed in a country where there was no need of tolerating its
existence. Who can tell when and how, and through what sufferings, it
will be possible to eradicate it?
I met with one incident in Cincinnati, which I shall long remember.
I had observed at the hotel table a man of about the medium height,
stout and muscular, and of about the age of sixty years, yet with the
active step and lively air of youth. I had been struck with his open
and cheerful expression, the amenity of his manners, and a certain
air of command, which appeared through his plain dress. "That is,"
said my friend, "General Harrison, clerk of the Cincinnati Court of
Common Pleas"--"What! General Harrison of the Tippecanoe and the
Thames?" "The same; the ex-general, the conqueror of Tecumseh and
Proctor; the avenger of our disasters on the Raisin and at Detroit;
the ex-governor of the Territory of Indiana, the ex-senator in
Congress, the ex-minister of the United States to one of the South
American republics. He has grown old in the service of his country,
he has passed twenty years of his life in those fierce wars with the
Indians, in which there was less glory to be won, but more dangers to
be encountered, than at Rivoli and Austerlitz. He is now poor, with
a numerous family, neglected by the Federal government, although yet
vigourous, because he has the independence to think for himself. As
the Opposition is in the majority here, his friends have bethought
themselves of coming to his relief by removing the clerk of the court
of Common Pleas, who was a Jackson man, and giving him the place, which
is a lucrative one, as a sort of retiring pension. His friends in the
East talk of making him President of the United States. Meanwhile we
have made him clerk of an inferior court." After a pause my informant
added, "At this wretched table you may see another candidate for the
presidency, who seems to have a better chance than General Harrison; it
is Mr McLean, now one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the United
States."
Examples of this abandonment of men, whose career has been in the
highest degree honourable, are not rare in the United States. I had
already seen the illustrious Gallatin at New York, who, after having
grown old in the service of the republic, after having been for forty
years a legislator, a member of the cabinet, a minister abroad,
after having taken an active part in every wise and good measure of
the Federal government, was dismissed without any provision, and
would have terminated his laborious career in poverty, had not his
friends offered him the place of president of one of the banks in
New York. The distress of President Jefferson in his old age is well
known, and that he was reduced to the necessity of asking permission
of the Virginia legislature to dispose of his estate by lottery;
while President Monroe, still more destitute, after having spent his
patrimony in the service of the State, was constrained to implore the
compassion of Congress; and these are the men to whom their country
owes the invaluable acquisitions of Louisiana and Florida. The system
of retiring pensions is unknown in the United States. No provision is
made for the old age of eminent men who accept the highest offices in
the State, although it is impossible for them to lay up anything out of
their comparatively moderate salaries, and several of them have seen
their fortunes disappear with their health in the public service. The
public functionaries are treated like menial servants; the system of
domestic life is such in the United States, that every American, in
private life, treats the humblest of his white domestics with more
respect, than most of them show, in public life, to officers of the
highest rank. On every occasion and in a thousand forms, the latter
are reminded, that they are nothing but dust, and that a frown of the
people can annihilate them.
This treatment of their public officers by the Americans is the
mathematical consequence of the principle of popular sovereignty;
but I consider it as consistent neither with reason nor justice. If
it is true, that nations have an imprescriptible right to regulate
the conduct of the depositaries of power conformably to their own
interests, it is equally true, that men of superior abilities and worth
have a natural and sacred right to be invested with high powers and
functions. If it is criminal to sport with the welfare of the mass, it
is no less so to trample under foot the wise and good. And if those
whom talents and zeal for the public good call to important posts, are
repulsed by the prospect of ingratitude and contempt, to what hands
shall the care of the commonwealth be confided? What will then be the
fate of the sovereign people? There is no less despotism in a people,
who, impatient of all superiority, repays the services of illustrious
citizens only with neglect, and capriciously throws them aside, like so
much garbage, than in an Asiatic prince, who reduces all to the same
level of servitude, treats all with the same insolence and brutality,
and considers virtue and genius overpaid by the honour of being
permitted to kneel on the steps of his throne.
In conformity with the prevailing ideas on the subject of offices
and officers, no sort of provision has been made for the protection
of the latter. They are removeable without any kind of pretence or
formality, without being informed of the ground of their removal, and
without any reason being given to the public. In this way a terrible
rod of tyranny hangs over them, although under the mild and moderate
administration of former Presidents little use was made of it; but,
since the accession of General Jackson, a regular system of removal
from office has been sanctioned, and office has become the reward of
party-services; it has been publicly declared, that the _spoils of
victory belong to the conquerors_. President Jackson has filled all
the custom-houses and post offices with his creatures, and this policy
has gained over some States, counties, and towns; at every change of
opinion, the State changes its executive officers; the legislators
change their secretaries, printers, and even their messengers; the
courts, their clerks; the towns, their treasurers, their inspectors of
markets, weights and measures, and even their scavengers and watchmen.
Men in office now understand, that the preservation of their places and
the bread of their families are hazarded at every municipal, State,
or Federal election, according as they hold of the town, State, or
general government. Formerly they took no part in election manoeuvres,
the Presidents having expressly forbidden the officers of the Federal
government to meddle with them; at present, they are the most active
agents in them. The President has now at his command an army of 60,000
voters,[BA] dependent on his will, whose interests are bound up in
his, and who are his forlorn hope. So true is it that extremes meet,
and that, by pushing to excess a single principle, however true, we
shall come to conclusions, which, practically speaking, amount to the
overthrow of the principle itself. Thus by drawing out too fine the
principle of the popular sovereignty, we may come nearer and nearer
to tyranny and the oppression of the people. Is not this a proof that
logic is not always reason, and that truth is often, if not always,
to be found in the harmonious combinations of seemingly contradictory
principles?