Cincinnati. Lying on a plain, sloping gently up from the river, it
spreads widely in rectangular uniformity of streets—a city of broad
avenues, getting to be well paved and well shaded, with ample spaces in
lawns, houses detached, somewhat uniform in style, but with an air of
comfort, occasionally of elegance and solid good taste. The city has
an exceedingly open, friendly, cheerful appearance. In May, with its
abundant foliage and flowery lawns, it is a beautiful city: a beautiful,
healthful city in a temperate climate, surrounded by a fertile country,
is Louisville. Beyond the city the land rises into a rolling country of
Blue-Grass farms, and eastward along the river are fine bluffs broken
into most advantageous sites for suburban residences. Looking northward
across the Ohio are seen the Indiana “Knobs.” In high-water the river
is a majestic stream, covering almost entirely the rocks which form the
“Falls,” and the beds of “cement” which are so profitably worked.
The canal, which makes navigation round the rapids, has its mouth at
Shipping-port Island. About this spot clusters much of the early romance
of Louisville. Here are some of the old houses and the old mill built
by the Frenchman Tarascon in the early part of the century. Here in a
weather-beaten wooden tenement, still standing, Taras-con offered border
hospitality to many distinguished guests; Aaron Burr and Blennerhasset
were among his visitors, and General Wilkinson, the projector of the
canal, then in command of the armies of the United States; and it was
probably here that the famous “Spanish conspiracy” was concocted. Corn
Island, below the rapids, upon which the first settlement of Louisville
was made in 1778, disappeared some years ago, gradually washed away by
the swift river.
Opposite this point, in Indiana, is the village of Clarksville, which
has a unique history. About 1785 Virginia granted to Gen. George Rogers
Clark, the most considerable historic figure of this region, a large
tract of land in recognition of his services in the war. When Virginia
ceded this territory to Indiana the township of Clarksville was
excepted from the grant. It had been organized with a governing board
of trustees, self-perpetuating, and this organization still continues.
Clarksville has therefore never been ceded to the United States, and if
it is not an independent community, the eminent domain must still rest
in the State of Virginia.
Some philosophers say that the character of a people is determined by
climate and soil. There is a notion in this region that the underlying
limestone and the consequent succulent Blue-Grass produce a race of
large men, frank in manner, brave in war, inclined to oratory and
ornamental conversation, women of uncommon beauty, and the finest horses
in the Union. Of course a fertile soil and good living conduce to beauty
of form and in a way to the free graces of life. But the contrast of
Cincinnati and Louisville in social life and in the manner of doing
business cannot all be accounted for by Blue-Grass. It would be very
interesting, if one had the knowledge, to study the causes of this
contrast in two cities not very far apart. In late years Louisville has
awakened to a new commercial life, as one finds in it a strong infusion
of Western business energy and ambition. It is jubilant in its growth
and prosperity. It was always a commercial town, but with a dash of
Blue-Grass leisure and hospitality, and a hereditary flavor of manners
and fine living. Family and pedigree have always been held in as high
esteem as beauty. The Kentuckian of society is a great contrast to
the Virginian, but it may be only the development of the tide-water
gentleman in the freer, wider opportunities of the Blue-Grass region.
The pioneers of Kentucky were backwoodsmen, but many of the early
settlers, whose descendants are now leaders in society and in the
professions, came with the full-blown tastes and habits of Virginia
civilization, as their spacious colonial houses, erected in the latter
part of the last century and the early part of this, still attest. They
brought and planted in the wilderness a highly developed social state,
which was modified into a certain freedom by circumstances. One can
fancy in the abundance of a temperate latitude a certain gayety and
joyousness in material existence, which is contented with that, and
has not sought the art and musical development which one finds in
Cincinnati. All over the South, Louisville is noted for the beauty of
its women, but the other ladies of the South say that they can always
tell one from Louisville by her dress, something in it quite aware of
the advanced fashion, something in the “cut”—a mystery known only to the
feminine eye.
I did not intend, however, to enter upon a disquisition of the different
types of civilization in Cincinnati and in Louisville. One observes them
as evidences of what has heretofore been mentioned, the great variety
in American life, when one looks below the surface. The traveller enjoys
both types, and is rejoiced to find such variety, culture, taking in one
city the form of the worship of beauty and the enjoyment of life, and
in the other greater tendency to the fine arts. Louisville is a city of
churches, of very considerable religious activity, and of pretty stanch
orthodoxy. I do not mean to say that what are called modern ideas do
not leaven its society. In one of its best literary clubs I heard the
Spencerian philosophy expounded and advocated with the enthusiasm and
keenness of an emancipated Eastern town. But it is as true of Louisville
as it is of other Southern cities that traditional faith is less
disturbed by doubts and isms than in many Eastern towns. One notes
here also, as all over the South, the marked growth of the temperance
movement. The Kentuckians believe that they produce the best fluid from
rye and corn in the Union, and that they are the best judges of it.
Neither proposition will be disputed, nor will one trifle with a
legitimate pride in a home production; but there is a new spirit abroad,
and both Bourbon and the game that depends quite as much upon the
knowledge of human nature as upon the turn of the cards are silently
going to the rear. Always Kentuckians have been distinguished in
politics, in oratory, in the professions of law and of medicine; nor has
the city ever wanted scholars in historical lore, men who have not only
kept alive the traditions of learning and local research, like Col. John
Mason Brown, but have exhibited the true antiquarian spirit of Col.
H. T. Durrett, whose historical library is worth going far to see and
study. It will be a great pity if his exceedingly valuable collection is
not preserved to the State to become the nucleus of a Historical Society
worthy of the State’s history. When I spoke of art it was in a public
sense; there are many individuals who have good pictures and especially
interesting portraits, and in the early days Kentucky produced at least
one artist, wholly self-taught, who was a rare genius. Matthew H. Jouett
was born in Mercer County in 1780, and died in Louisville in 1820. In
the course of his life he painted as many as three hundred and fifty
portraits, which are scattered all over the Union. In his mature years
he was for a time with Stuart in Boston. Some specimens of his work in
Louisville are wonderfully fine, recalling the style and traditions
of the best masters, some of them equal if not superior to the best
by Stuart, and suggesting in color and solidity the vigor and grace of
Vandyck. He was the product of no school but nature and his own genius.
Louisville has always had a scholarly and aggressive press, and its
traditions are not weakened in Mr. Henry Watterson. On the social side
the good-fellowship of the city is well represented in the Pendennis
Club, which is thoroughly home-like and agreeable. The town has at
least one book-store of the first class, but it sells very few American
copyright books. The city has no free or considerable public library.
The Polytechnic Society, which has a room for lectures, keeps for
circulation among subscribers about 38,000 books. It has also a
geological and mineral collection, and a room devoted to pictures, which
contains an allegorical statue by Canova.
In its public schools and institutions of charity the city has a great
deal to show that is interesting. In medicine it has always been famous.
It has four medical colleges, a college of dentistry, a college of
pharmacy, and a school of pharmacy for women. In nothing, however,
is the spirit of the town better exhibited than in its public-school
system. With a population of less than 180,000, the school enrolment,
which has advanced year by year, was in 1887, 21,601, with an aggregate
belonging of 17,392. The amount expended on schools, which was in 1880
$197,699, had increased to $323,943 in 1887—a cost of $18.62 per pupil.
Equal provision is made for colored schools as for white, but the number
of colored pupils is less than 3000, and the colored high-school is
small, as only a few are yet fitted to go so far in education. The
negroes all prefer colored teachers, and so far as I could learn, they
are quite content with the present management of the School Board.
Co-education is not in the Kentucky idea, nor in its social scheme.
There are therefore two high-schools—one for girls and one for boys—both
of the highest class and efficiency, in excellent buildings, and under
most intelligent management. Among the teachers in the schools are
ladies of position, and the schools doubtless owe their good character
largely to the fact that they are in the fashion: as a rule, all the
children of the city are educated in them. Manual training is not
introduced, but all the advanced methods in the best modern schools,
object-lessons, word-building, moulding, and drawing, are practised.
During the fall and winter months there are night schools, which are
very well attended. In one of the intermediate schools I saw an exercise
which illustrates the intelligent spirit of the schools. This was an
account of the early settlement, growth, and prosperity of Louisville,
told in a series of very short papers—so many that a large number of
the pupils had a share in constructing the history. Each one took up
connectively a brief period or the chief events in chronological order,
with illustrations of manners and customs, fashions of dress and mode
of life. Of course this mosaic was not original, but made up of extracts
from various local histories and statistical reports. This had the merit
of being a good exercise as well as inculcating an intelligent pride in
the city.
Nearly every religious denomination is represented in the 142 churches
of Louisville. Of these 9 are Northern Presbyterian and 7 Southern
Presbyterian, 11 of the M.E. Church South and 6 of the M.E. Church
North, 18 Catholic, 7 Christian, 1 Unitarian, and 31 colored. There are
seven convents and monasteries, and a Young Men’s Christian Association.
In proportion to its population, the city is pre-eminent for public
and private charities: there are no less than thirty-eight of these
institutions, providing for the infirm and unfortunate of all ages
and conditions. Unique among these in the United States is a very fine
building for the maintenance of the widows and orphans of deceased
Freemasons of the State of Kentucky, supported mainly by contributions
of the Masonic lodges. One of the best equipped and managed industrial
schools of reform for boys and girls is on the outskirts of the city.
Mr. P. Caldwell is its superintendent, and it owes its success, as all
similar schools do, to the peculiar fitness of the manager for this sort
of work. The institution has three departments. There were 125 white
boys and 79 colored boys, occupying separate buildings in the same
enclosure, and 41 white girls in their own house in another enclosure.
The establishment has a farm, a garden, a greenhouse, a library
building, a little chapel, ample and pleasant play-yards. There is as
little as possible the air of a prison about the place, and as much as
possible that of a home and school. The boys have organized a very fair
brass band. The girls make all the clothes for the establishment; the
boys make shoes, and last year earned $8000 in bottoming chairs. The
school is mainly sustained by taxation and city appropriations; the
yearly cost is about $26,000. Children are indentured out when good
homes can be found for them.
The School for the Education of the Blind is a State institution,
and admits none from outside the State. The fine building occupies a
commanding situation on hills not far from the river, and is admirably
built, the rooms spacious and airy, and the whole establishment is
well ordered. There are only 79 scholars, and the few colored are
accommodated by themselves in a separate building, in accordance with
an Act of the Legislature in 1884 for the education of colored blind
children. The distinction of this institution is that it has on its
premises the United States printing-office for furnishing publications
for the blind asylums of the country. Printing is done here both in
letters and in points, by very ingenious processes, and the library is
already considerable. The space required to store a library of books
for the blind may be reckoned from the statement that the novel of
“Ivan-hoe” occupies three volumes, each larger than Webster’s Unabridged
Dictionary. The weekly Sunday-school Times is printed here. The point
writing consists entirely of dots in certain combinations to represent
letters, and it is noticed that about half the children prefer this
to the alphabet. The preference is not explained by saying that it is
merely a matter of feeling.
The city has as yet no public parks, but the very broad streets—from
sixty to one hundred and twenty feet in width—the wide spacing of the
houses in the residence parts, and the abundant shade make them less a
necessity than elsewhere. The city spreads very freely and openly over
the plain, and short drives take one into lovely Blue-Grass country.
A few miles out on Churchill Downs is the famous Jockey Club Park, a
perfect racing track and establishment, where worldwide reputations are
made at the semi-annual meetings. The limestone region, a beautifully
rolling country, almost rivals the Lexington plantations in the raising
of fine horses. Driving out to one of these farms one day, we passed,
not far from the river, the old Taylor mansion and the tomb of Zachary
Taylor. It is in the reserved family burying-ground, where lie also the
remains of Richard Taylor, of Revolutionary memory. The great tomb and
the graves are overrun thickly with myrtle, and the secluded irregular
ground is shaded by forest-trees. The soft wind of spring was blowing
sweetly over the fresh green fields, and there was about the place an
air of repose and dignity most refreshing to the spirit. Near the
tomb stands the fine commemorative shaft bearing on its summit a good
portrait statue of the hero of Buena Vista. I liked to linger there, the
country was so sweet; the great river flowing in sight lent a certain
grandeur to the resting-place, and I thought how dignified and fit it
was for a President to be buried at his home.
The city of Louisville in 1888 has the unmistakable air of confidence
and buoyant prosperity. This feeling of confidence is strengthened
by the general awakening of Kentucky in increased immigration of
agriculturists, and in the development of extraordinary mines of coal
and iron, and in the railway extension. But locally the Board of
Trade (an active body of 700 members) has in its latest report most
encouraging figures to present. In almost every branch of business there
was an increase in 1887 over 1886; in both manufactures and trade
the volume of business increased from twenty to fifty per cent. For
instance, stoves and castings increased from 16,574,547 pounds to
19,386,808; manufactured tobacco, from 12,729,421 pounds to 17,059,006;
gas and water pipes, from 56,083,380 pounds to 63,745,216; grass and
clover seed, from 4,240,908 bushels to 6,601,451. A conclusive item
as to manufactures is that there were received in 1887 951,767 tons
of bituminous coal, against 204,221 tons in 1886. Louisville makes
the claim of being the largest tobacco market in the world in bulk and
variety. It leads largely the nine principal leaf-tobacco markets in
the West. The figures for 1887 are—receipts, 123,569 hogsheads;
sales, 135,192 hogsheads; stock in hand, 36,431 hogsheads, against the
corresponding figures of 62,074, 65,924, 13,972 of its great rival,
Cincinnati. These large figures are a great increase over 1886, when
the value of tobacco handled here was estimated at nearly $20,000,000.
Another great interest always associated with Louisville, whiskey, shows
a like increase, there being shipped in 1887 119,637 barrels, against
101,943 barrels in 1886. In the Louisville collection district there
were registered one hundred grain distilleries, with a capacity of
80,000 gallons a day. For the five years ending June 30, 1887, the
revenue taxes on this product amounted to nearly $30,000,000. I am not
attempting a conspectus of the business of Louisville, only selecting
some figures illustrating its growth. Its manufacture of agricultural
implements has attained great proportions. The reputation of Louisville
for tobacco and whiskey is widely advertised, but it is not generally
known that it has the largest plough factory in the world. This is one
of four which altogether employ about 2000 hands, and make a product
valued at $2,275,000. In 1880 Louisville made 80,000 ploughs; in 1886,
190,000. The capacity of manufacture in 1887 was increased by the
enlargement of the chief factory to a number not given, but there were
shipped that year 11,005,151 pounds of ploughs. There is a steadily
increasing manufacture of woollen goods, and the production of the mixed
fabric known as Kentucky jeans is another industry in which Louisville
leads the world, making annually 7,500,000 yards of cloth, and its four
mills increased their capacity twenty per cent, in 1887. The opening of
the hard-wood lumber districts in eastern Kentucky has made Louisville
one of the important lumber markets: about 125,000,000 feet of
lumber, logs, etc., were sold here in 1887. But it is unnecessary
to particularize. The Board of Trade think that the advantages of
Louisville as a manufacturing centre are sufficiently emphasized from
the fact that during the year 1887 seventy-three new manufacturing
establishments, mainly from the North and East, were set up, using
a capital of $1,290,500, and employing 1621 laborers. The city has
twenty-two banks, which had, July 1, 1887, $8,200,200 capital, and
$19,927,138 deposits. The clearings for 1887 were $281,110,402—an
increase of nearly $50,000,000 over 1886.
Another item which helps to explain the buoyant feeling of Louisville is
that its population increased over 10,000 from 1886 to 1887, reaching,
according to the best estimate, 177,000 people. I should have said also
that no city in the Union is better served by street railways, which
are so multiplied and arranged as to “correspondences” that for one
fare nearly every inhabitant can ride within at least two blocks of his
residence. In these cars, as in the railway cars of the State, there
is the same absence of discrimination against color that prevails in
Louisiana and in Arkansas. And it is an observation hopeful, at least to
the writer, of the good time at hand when all party lines shall be drawn
upon the broadest national issues, that there seems to be in Kentucky no
social distinction between Democrats and Republicans.
XIII.—MEMPHIS AND LITTLE ROCK.
The State of Tennessee gets its diversity of climate and productions
from the irregularity of its surface, not from its range over degrees
of latitude, like Illinois; for it is a narrow State, with an average
breadth of only a hundred and ten miles, while it is about four hundred
miles in length, from the mountains in the east—the highest land east
of the Rocky Mountains—to the alluvial bottom of the Mississippi in the
west. In this range is every variety of mineral and agricultural wealth,
with some of the noblest scenery and the fairest farming-land in the
Union, and all the good varieties of a temperate climate.
In the extreme south-west corner lies Memphis, differing as entirely
in character from Knoxville and Nashville as the bottom-lands of the
Mississippi differ from the valleys of the Great Smoky Mountains. It is
the natural centre of the finest cotton-producing district in the
world, the county of Shelby, of which it is legally known as the Taxing
District, yielding more cotton than any other county in the Union
except that of Washington in Mississippi. It is almost as much aloof
politically from east and middle Tennessee as it is geographically. A
homogeneous State might be constructed by taking west Tennessee, all of
Mississippi above Vicksburg and Jackson, and a slice off Arkansas, with
Memphis for its capital. But the redistricting would be a good thing
neither for the States named nor for Memphis, for the more variety
within convenient limits a State can have, the better, and Memphis
could not wish a better or more distinguished destiny than to become the
commercial metropolis of a State of such great possibilities and varied
industries as Tennessee. Her political influence might be more decisive
in the homogeneous State outlined, but it will be abundant for all
reasonable ambition in its inevitable commercial importance. And
besides, the western part of the State needs the moral tonic of the more
elevated regions.
The city has a frontage of about four miles on the Mississippi River,
but is high above it on the Chickasaw Bluffs, with an uneven surface and
a rolling country back of it, the whole capable of perfect drainage.
Its site is the best on the river for a great city from St. Louis to the
Gulf; this advantage is emphasized by the concentration of railways
at this point, and the great bridge, which is now on the eve of
construction, to the Arkansas shore, no doubt fixes its destiny as
the inland metropolis of the South-west. Memphis was the child of the
Mississippi, and this powerful, wayward stream is still its fostering
mother, notwithstanding the decay of river commerce brought about by the
railways; for the river still asserts its power as a regulator of rates
of transportation. I do not mean to say that the freighting on it in
towed barges is not still enormous, but if it did not carry a pound
to the markets of the world it is still the friend of all the inner
continental regions, which says to the railroads, beyond a certain
rate of charges you shall not go. With this advantage of situation, the
natural receiver of the products of an inexhaustible agricultural region
(one has only to take a trip by rail through the Yazoo Valley to be
convinced of that), and an equally good point for distribution of
supplies, it is inevitable that Memphis should grow with an accelerating
impulse.