Journey from Washington to Philadelphia.--A day at Philadelphia.
--Journey to New York on the rail-road.--Stop on Broadway.--A
dinner consisting of ice water and one mouthful of roast beef!--
Bill of fare, but no fare.--Thefts and burglary.--Broadstreet
Hotel corner of Broad and Pearl streets.--Fare excellent, but no
BILL OF FARE on the table at dinner.--Charles A. Clinton and Dr.
Hosack.--Mrs. Lentner’s on Amity street, where Colonel Trumbull
lived and died.--Albert Gallatin and his lady on Beckman street.
--Mr. Gallatin’s eventful life.--How employed in the study of
Indian languages.--His inquiries concerning his old friends in
the District of Columbia.--Their feeling towards him and Mrs.
Gallatin, and the comparisons they are now daily compelled to
make.--The trade of New York city, its vast amount and probable
increase, which will eventually render it the greatest commercial
emporium in the world.--Rail-road to the Pacific ocean and a fair
prospect of its connecting our Atlantic cities with China and the
Pacific islands, by means of rail-roads and steam vessels.--The
future wealth, grandeur and moral glory of this republic.
Having tarried at Washington about eight days, and having visited
all the places and persons that I then desired to see, I left the
city early in the morning, in the rail-road cars, breakfasted in
Baltimore at Bradshaws, and reached Philadelphia about dark in the
evening. Stopping at the Mansion House hotel, adjoining the depot, I
visited Dr. S. G. Morton, on Arch street, not far from my lodgings.
He invited me to call on him the next evening, which I did. Through
the day intervening, I visited some book-sellers and book-binders,
and saw and conversed with several very agreeable and well educated
persons, citizens and strangers. The Philadelphians are a very moral,
well-informed and good people. At Dr. Morton’s I met a small circle
of his friends, with whom I spent agreeably several hours. The Doctor
and his lady have a family of very promising sons and daughters, whom
they are educating in the best possible manner. I saw Dr. Wistar at
the hotel where I put up, and where he boards. He is the son of the
celebrated Doctor of that name, but the present Dr. Wistar does not
wish to follow the practice of his profession, and so he does not
follow it at present; at least, I so understood him to say. Since I had
seen this city, it had greatly increased its dimensions and improved
its exterior appearance. The Girard College buildings, the Merchants’
Exchange and the Almshouse, have been built since I had seen
Philadelphia before, and they added much to its exterior aspect.
The building intended as a residence for paupers, as we passed along
the rail-road, on my return from New York, in a pleasant morning, on
our right hand, across the Schuylkill, standing on elevated ground,
made a splendid appearance. Had we not known that it was the Almshouse,
we might have been tempted to believe it the residence of some retired
monarch of the old world, who had come here, and at the expense of a
million of dollars or more, had erected this splendid palace for a
residence. The traveller is generally treated a little better, and
charged a little less in Philadelphia, than he is in any other Atlantic
city. As a whole, this city has always been celebrated for its good
qualities of all sorts, and yet a few, a very few men here have done
not a little to injure its still fair character. Its banks, bankers and
bankrupts have brought down ruin on many an honest man and covered
themselves, the authors of the ruin, with shame and disgrace. The
ruin has fallen on the innocent only, while the guilty have escaped
condign punishment, except one of them, whose death in all human
probability was occasioned by his mental sufferings, at the loss of his
character.--Peace to his shade.
Early on the morning of January 10th, I left the Mansion house, crossed
the Delaware and passed through the State of New Jersey, in the
rail-road cars, and arrived at New York city about three o’clock in the
afternoon, in season for a dinner at a tavern on Broadway, At dinner
we had a printed bill of fare in French. For drink, I had a glass of
Croton water, with ice in it, and this, after a cold day’s ride, in
the depth of a cold, northern winter! Had I been a frozen turnip, such
water might have thawed my frozen stomach, but as it was, hot coffee
or hot tea would have suited me much better. I called for something to
eat, but the waiter in an insolent tone ordered me in German “to read
my bill of fare,” and he refused to give me any thing to eat. Finally,
after positively refusing to comply with my request a dozen times,
the ruffian gave me a thin slice of roasted beef, which I ate at a
mouthful, and called in vain for more. This mouthful of meat, with some
cold Croton water and some ice in it, was all I got for my dinner! Half
a dollar for such a dinner! kind reader. I had the _bill of fare_ lying
before me, but the _fare itself_ I did not and could not obtain. After
sitting at the table nearly an hour, faint, cold and hungry, I went
to my room, in which a small fire had been made at my request, at the
expense of another half dollar. The room being cold and damp, with so
bad a prospect before me, I locked my door, put the key in my pocket,
and went down Broadstreet, until I came to Thresher’s Broadstreet
hotel, and told the host my story. He agreed to furnish me the best
fare, unaccompanied by a bill of it, a good room to myself, warmed
constantly by a good coal fire, for one dollar a day. Upon these terms
we agreed, and I went back to the Broadway tavern. The Broadstreet
hotel is the same house, which was occupied by General Washington as
his head quarters, when he took possession of the city, after the
British army had left it, at the conclusion of the revolutionary
war. Standing in front of a large opened window in the second story,
his officers standing before him in the street, below him, General
Washington delivered to them his farewell address. From the house, his
officers accompanied him to the wharf, not very distant from this spot,
where he took his final leave of his companions in arms. Having crossed
the ferry into New Jersey, he hastened to appear before the continental
Congress, then sitting in Annapolis, the now seat of government in the
State of Maryland. A painting in the rotundo, represents Washington at
Annapolis delivering his farewell address to Congress.
On the conclusion of my bargain with the landlord of the Broadstreet
Hotel, I returned to my first stopping place, and by dint of argument,
aided by several southern guests, I got a warm supper, with warm
coffee and warm food, a little after ten o’clock that night. I got
some sleep that night and a breakfast next morning, and paid a bill
of three dollars twelve-and-a-half cents, for what I had! Although my
door had always been locked when I was out of it and the key was in
my pocket, yet that precaution had not prevented my room from being
entered, my locked trunk’s being opened, and several articles of no
great value being stolen from it--such as a shirt, a handkerchief and a
quire of writing paper. By ten in the morning I was at my new lodgings,
where I continued some three weeks, while I remained in New York.
This Broadstreet Hotel, on the corner of Pearl and Broad streets, is
within one minute’s walk of the shipping, in the slip; it is one square
from Broadway, and the old Battery. At the Battery there is playing
constantly a splendid, roaring fountain of Croton water. It roars like
a cataract in a still night. This Hotel is near not only to all the
shipping in port, and the principal wholesale stores of all sorts, but
it is the headquarters of most of the captain of vessels, which sail
from this city to all parts of the world. From such a point, I found it
an easy matter to visit every part of this emporium. New York, with its
four hundred thousand people, here, or in Brooklyn, is unquestionably
the first city on this continent. To fully comprehend all the ideas
necessarily belonging to the wealth and resources of the United States,
a man must visit New York and tarry some time there. Its streets,
compared with those of Philadelphia, are narrow, crooked and dirty.
The first person whom I called to see, merely as a friend, was Charles
A. Clinton, the eldest son of De Witt Clinton. Him I found some few
squares above the Park and near Broadway. Here I found too Dr. Hosack,
the son of my old friend Dr. Hosack, now deceased. It was quite
gratifying to see the sons of my old friends, in the enjoyment of good
health and prosperous in the world. Maj. Clinton had been clerk of the
Superior court, for some dozen or more years, but had been removed
from office, to make room for some relative of one of the judges of
the court. This circumstance I had previously learned through the
newspapers, about which Major Clinton said nothing. I called several
times afterwards to see Major Clinton at his law office, nearly
opposite the Customhouse, in Nassau street. He practices in partnership
with Henry S. Towner, Esq., a lawyer, originally from Williamstown,
Massachusetts. The lawyers cluster around the Customhouse and around
the Merchants’ Exchange in Wall street.
If law business is great in the city, the number of those who follow
the legal profession, is great likewise. I became personally acquainted
with several lawyers here, who are highly respectable as men, as
lawyers and as scholars. Among them may be mentioned GEORGE FOLSOM,
Esq., whose office is opposite the Exchange, on Wall street. He is an
author too. A son of Colonel Gibbs, the geologist, is a lawyer whose
office is near the Exchange.
The bustle and crowd, the noise, the anxiety on many faces, and the
vast amount of property of all sorts, such as cotton for instance, in
piles, blocking up streets, or moving to and fro, between warehouses
and wharves--the masts of vessels, standing along the shores of North
river or those of Long Island sound, strike the eye, as one passes
over the lower end of the city. Along Broadway, the goods and the
signs and every thing, indeed, that possibly can catch the eye and
draw the attention of the stranger, are not wanting, for a distance of
two miles from the Battery upwards. The citizens, I believe, do not
patronise the hotels on Broadway, but prefer those in streets farther
eastward, as cheaper, more quiet and better in all respects, than
Broadway houses. The retail stores are many of them on Broadway, but
the wholesale ones are lower down in the city. Wall street is full of
banks and insurance companies. The Harpers’ great book establishment is
in Cliff street, near the old swamp, we believe. At the foot of Fulton
street is the ferry, which crosses the East river to Long Island.
This is the greatest ferrying place in America. We say this, though
we are aware that a place in Kentucky, is called “Great Crossings,”
yet Brooklyn ferry is a greater “crossing” place, than the “Crossings”
in Scott county, Kentucky. I went over to Brooklyn and called on the
editor of the Long Island Star--Alden Spooner, Esq. He is the surrogate
of the county where he resides, and he devotes the most of his time
to the duties of his office. Of the forty thousand people who live in
Brooklyn, not a few of them have stores, shops and offices in New York
city. Such men spend the day in the city and sleep with their families
on Long Island at night. House rent is cheaper in Brooklyn than it is
in New York, and there may be other reasons, such as the comparative
quietness of a village, in Brooklyn, which is not found in New York,
except some three miles up in the city. Brooklyn is therefore nearer
their business than the upper part of New York would be; so Brooklyn is
preferred by men of business, as a family residence, to the city itself.
Soon after my arrival in the city, as soon as it was generally known,
through the newspapers, where I was located, I was carried by Geo.
Folsom, Esq. to the dwelling house of Albert Gallatin, in Beekman
street. He and his lady received me most cordially, as “a man, whom
they had ardently desired to see, (as they assured me) during the last
thirty years.” I found Mrs. Gallatin a most interesting old lady,
surrounded by the neighboring ladies of that vicinity, to whom she
politely introduced me. After a brief interview with these ladies
below stairs, we proceeded (Mr. Folsom and myself) to Mr. Gallatin’s
library room, where we found him engaged in his favorite study of
the Indian languages of America. Perhaps I am in an error, but as I
understood him, Mr. Gallatin had taken the Indian words as spelt by
Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portugese, Americans, &c. as the true
pronunciation of Indian words, which by the Indians themselves, had
never been written. If he had done so, the true pronunciation of the
Indians themselves had seldom been reached. Having been myself engaged
in writing down the language of the Sioux, I am aware of the difficulty
of catching the exact sound of each word, and the difficulty too, of
expressing the exact sound of the word, by means of our alphabet.
I saw at a glance the difficulty of his position. I hinted at this
circumstance, but Mr. Gallatin did not fully comprehend my meaning, and
so I dropped the subject. No alphabet now in use among men, can convey
all the sounds of any Indian language, now or ever spoken in North
America. Of this fact I feel assured from my own knowledge of Indian
languages. The perfect knowledge of these languages is more curious
than useful, perhaps, in as much as the Indians themselves will soon be
gone, before the Anglo-Americans, whose march and conquests will soon
obliterate every vestige of the aboriginals of America.
Our regrets may and will follow the disappearance of the Indians from
the face of the globe, but their doom is certain, and not far off, in
point of time. Our legislative bodies, from the best of motives, are
endeavoring to preserve Indian names of places, rivers, mountains,
&c., but our gross ignorance of Indian languages, prevents us from
even retaining proper names. _Hoo_, for instance, in some Indian
dialects, means elk, and _uk_ is river, so _Hoosuk_ means “elks river.”
“_Sooske_,” means hunting, and “_hannah_,” in a Delaware dialect, means
river. _Sooskehannah_ means “hunting river,” which we call Susquehanna
river.
No Indian, who heard us pronounce the word _Potomac_ would suspect that
we meant to say the river Potum; so of _Rappa-hannah_, he would not
know that we meant the river _Rappa_. So of the river _Roan_, which
we call Roanoak, instead of calling it simply the river _Roan_. But
enough, perhaps, too much of Indian languages. We give, however, the
names correctly: Hoo, Sooske, Potum, Rappa and Roan. After spending
several hours with Mr. Gallatin in his library, and after conversing
with him on my business, which had brought me to the city, in which he
took an interest, I returned to my lodgings in Broad street. He invited
me to call on him again, and spend some time with him, on his birth
day, when he would be eighty-three years old.
I next visited Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins and their daughter, who boarded
with Mrs. Lentner, No. 15 Amity street, near Broadway. In this house,
kept by the present occupant, Colonel Trumbull spent the last twenty
years of his life. Here he lived and here he died, not long before my
visit. It was in this house that Colonel Trumbull executed his splendid
paintings which now adorn the rotundo in the capitol at Washington
city. These paintings are seen by a great number of persons every
day in the year. The Declaration of Independence, the Surrender of
Cornwallis, &c. &c. will confer an unfading fame on Colonel Trumbull.
MRS. LENTNER will always be remembered for her care of the painter,
which so greatly contributed to preserve his useful life, until he was
more than eighty-seven years old. I saw in Mrs. Lentner’s parlor a
likeness of Colonel Trumbull, painted by himself, in his last years. It
was said to be a very correct one. So said Mrs. Lentner.
After taking dinner and supper with Mrs. Lentner and her family, I
returned in the omnibus to my lodgings. If any persons could prolong
human life and render it happy, Mrs. Lentner, her sister, and the
domestics around her, could certainly effect that object. So it seemed
to me during the six hours that I spent at number 15, Amity street, New
York. She is the MRS. BALLARD of New York.
On Mr. Gallatin’s birth day, when he had arrived at the age of
eighty-three years, I went to see him as early in the morning of that
day as I could, after taking a very early breakfast. I found him up in
his library, busily engaged in his favorite study of Indian languages.
He was quite active, quick in his motions, his cheeks were ruddy, his
eye clear and piercing, his step elastic, his eye sight, by the aid
of his glasses, good. He repeatedly ran up his ladder like a squirrel
to get a book for me. His hearing is unimpaired, and his memory of
past events, wherein he had been concerned, excellent. His reasoning
powers were good, and so was his judgment. On my former visit I had,
at his request, related to him what I had known of the transactions
of his life, in which I had left many blanks, especially when he had
been in Europe as our diplomatic agent. To-day Mr. Gallatin filled
up those blanks and recounted to me what he had done, ever since he
landed at New York, a poor foreigner, ignorant of our language,
unlearned and not twenty years old; but now I saw before me, at the
age of eighty-three, a man of wealth, of learning, of great practical
knowledge and of vast mental powers, whose fame as a diplomatist,
as a man of business and as a statesman, was co-extensive with the
civilized world. He more than once told me that he was relating the
manner in which he had succeeded in life, so that I might profit by his
experience, whereas I expected to die long years before he would. So
I thought, but said nothing, because any remark in reply or by way of
inquiry, seemed to discompose his mind very much. In the course of his
long story of four or five hours in length, he more than once gave the
credit of his success to his wife and her relatives in New York. He had
married a daughter of Commodore Nicholson. She had entered into all his
concerns, political, moral, social and mental with her whole heart. She
even watched the newspapers, to learn what they said of Mr. Gallatin.
He related to me an anecdote of Mr. Gales, who in his Intelligencer
had said of Mr. Gallatin, after his arrival in Washington, “that the
_venerable_ Mr. Gallatin had arrived in the city.” Soon after that
paper appeared, when a party of gentlemen had convened to give Mr.
Gallatin a public dinner, perhaps, the latter gentleman said aloud,
so that all present heard him, “Mr. Gales, my wife says, you make her
husband quite too venerable.” Mr. and Mrs. Gallatin sent by me their
best respects to all their old friends in the District of Columbia,
with a very pressing request, that I would give him an accurate account
of these friends, and what had befallen them since January 1830,
which was the last time Mr. Gallatin had been in Washington city.
On my return to Washington I executed my commission in a way that I
supposed would be satisfactory to all concerned--that is, to Mr. and
Mrs. Gallatin and to their surviving friends in the District. On the
whole, we may safely pronounce Mr. Gallatin a very fortunate man,
who, by his industry, economy, perseverance and sleepless energy, has
acquired honors, wealth and fame. Sixty years ago, he was a surveyor of
wild lands along and near the Ohio river, naming the smaller streams
that run into that river, ascertaining the latitude and longitude of
particular points, and extending his surveys quite into what is now
the State of Kentucky. George Washington was a surveyor in that region
at the same time. Mr. Gallatin spoke of himself, as a man in rather
limited circumstances, whose annual income amounted to only about five
thousand dollars. When he so informed me, I thought that many a man
in the western States would consider himself well off, provided he
had that sum as his whole estate. As to size, Mr. Gallatin is rather
under the common one, extremely well formed in person, and has in his
head a piercing, hazle coloured eye. His memory is remarkably good,
and he is almost infinitely better qualified to be the Secretary
of the Treasury, than the man *******. His old clerks all retain
a warm friendship for him, and so do their families. Mrs. Gallatin
is remembered by them, and all her old neighbors in Washington,
with heartfelt gratitude, on account of her numerous unostentatious
hospitalities and charitable acts. The comparison which all in this
city, who lived here in Gallatin’s time and still reside here, are
compelled to make, is quite mortifying to their feelings. While the
mass of the people of Washington city have become better, some of
the higher officers of the government have become worse--much worse.
Esconsed, malignant, haughty, distant, reserved, lazy, inattentive
to the duties of their offices, one of them, scarcely ever reaches
his office until noon, carrying his gold headed cane, horizontally
suspended in his hand, he signs his name to a few papers, which Mr.
***** and his clerks, *** and others had prepared for his signature,
and he departs to his house to write for the newspapers against the
administration, one of which he is. A President who would dare to
brush off a musquito from his hand, that was biting it, would clear out
such a fellow forthwith.[A] It is an old maxim with me, “to mark the
man, whom God has marked.” When I see a deformed mouth and a cocked
eye, I expect to find their owner a man actuated by malice, treachery
and deceit; a cold hearted wretch, whom no one pities and no one loves.
Under some frivolous pretence, such a creature hides himself in his
house as an owl does in his hollow tree in the day time, and prowls,
like the wolf or the owl, during the night. That man’s father says,
that his son is the worst man in the world.
[A] While this form was passing through the press, the
President brushed off the musquito from his hand.--Thank you
Sir.
During the time I was in New York city, the Customhouse officers were
kept very busy. The duties on the imported goods were of great amount,
and the officers were employed all day long in the open air, from
sun-rise till dark, when the thermometer was many degrees below zero.
General Waller was thus employed, weighing iron from Sweden and Russia,
all day long.
Goods by wholesale are sold much cheaper in New York than I had
supposed, and I had no correct idea of the vast amount of its commerce,
until I had been in the city two weeks. Considerable as the amount of
duties on goods received in this city, is, yet the goods not paying
any duty, such as cotton, Orleans sugar, and domestic manufactures, is
still greater. The amount too, of flour, wheat, corn, pork, beef, lard,
&c., brought here, is much more than I had supposed it to be. When we
have a despotism in this country, all these goods will pay a duty to
the government. It might amount to twenty millions of dollars annually,
and would then be a very low duty on domestic products. We say this for
the lovers of low wages and free trade.
As this nation increases in numbers--as the western States fill up with
people--as the amount of agricultural and manufactured goods increases,
and as the foreign goods, consumed in this great and growing nation,
increase, the city of New York will increase its numbers of people, its
commerce, wealth and power. Her ships and commerce will float on every
sea and every ocean, until she will rival London herself in trade,
wealth and power. The position of New York, so near the main ocean, on
an island, laved too by the North river and the Sound, affords every
facility which she needs or could desire, for extending her commerce
not only to foreign countries, but into the interior of this vast
country. She will only need a rail-road to the Pacific, and a dense
population, settled along its whole route, to enliven and animate the
scenery along its way. In that event, steam vessels, running from
Astoria to China and Japan and all the islands of the northern Pacific,
would soon be seen on the Upper Pacific, conveying the productions of
the whole world to a market. Such a rail-road might be made by the
nation, from the land sales in the new regions to be settled by our
people. What a sublime, moral, political and commercial prospect is
held out to our enraptured eyes! Christians, statesmen, Americans and
scholars, look on this picture!
From surveys actually made by Lieut. Freemont, it is certain, that a
rail-road from Cumberland, in Maryland, to the Pacific, is entirely
within our means as a nation, at an expense of only about fifty
millions of dollars or less; and it is equally certain that the new
lands to be brought into market by making the road, would defray
every dollar of the expense of making it. We live in the infancy of
the greatest nation that now exists, ever did, or ever will exist, on
the face of the globe. Looking through the vista of futurity, we can
now behold a nation consisting of five hundred millions of people,
all speaking our language, and governing the world in peace without
a rival in commerce, arts or arms. Should the British lion growl at
us, the Gallic cock would flap his wings and crow at our success,
and the Russian bear smile upon us. The American eagle will yet soar
above both, into his own pure air, where he can revel in the brilliant
beams of his own flaming sun. The trade between the East Indies and
Europe will eventually pass across our territory, east and west, and
the time of passing from London to Canton might not occupy more than
two months. Such a state of things would add to the wealth, numbers,
commerce, agriculture and manufactures of this whole nation. Such a
nation, whose territory extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from
the Icy sea in the north to the Isthmus of Darien in the south, would
present a sublime spectacle. What a vast field in which free government
might exercise its energies! The human imagination is lost in its
contemplation of such a prospect, for the future generations of our
posterity.
Yet, certainly, such is the prospect ahead, unless it be our own fault.
The most difficult portion of the road to be made between the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans, is between Cumberland and Wheeling; and yet that
portion of it could be made in five years after it was fairly began to
be made by the nation. The little questions of policy and of party, now
agitating so many little minds, will be lost in oblivion, and higher,
nobler, better and more extended objects and aims, will occupy higher,
nobler and better minds than are now employed on political affairs. The
little ants and their mole hills, will give place to mammoths and to
Alps, in the intellectual, political and moral world. Our destiny is
in our own hands, and unless we abuse all the gifts of God to us, we
shall be the most powerful nation on earth. Let us hope that our people
will move forward in their career to its ultimate grand end, unimpeded
by factions at home, or by force from abroad. The more States we have
in our confederacy, the stronger we shall be as a nation. As a great
whole, the human mind has always moved forward, and we see no reason
why the American mind should stand still, or stop short of its grand,
final destiny, at the very head of nations--of all nations on earth.
Nature’s God never intended that the people of this great continent,
should be subservient to the people of Europe, more than he did that
the sun in yonder firmament should descend from his orbit to revolve
around a pebble on our sea shore, as his centre of gravity. No. We
inhabit a great and mighty continent, blest with every soil, climate,
plant and animal which the earth contains. Our people, too, derive
their origin from every other people almost who live on this globe. Let
us throw aside as useless, and worse than useless, all low aims, and
soar like our own eagle into purer air.