Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of War.--JULIUS CÆSAR.
Sancho Panza passed away too early. To-day, he would extend his
benediction on the man who invented sleep, to the person who introduced
sleeping-cars. The name of that philanthropist, by whose luxurious aid
we may enjoy unbroken sleep at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour,
should not be concealed from a grateful posterity.
[Sidenote: A SUNDAY AT NIAGARA FALLS.]
Thus I soliloquized one May evening, when, in pursuit of that "seat
of war," as yet visible only to the prophetic eye, or in newspaper
columns, I turned my face westward. It were more exact to say, "turned
my heels." Inexorable conductors compel the drowsy passenger to ride
feet foremost, on the hypothesis that he would rather break a leg than
knock his brains out.
I was detained for a day at Suspension Bridge; but life has more
afflictive dispensations, even for the impatient traveler, than a
Sunday at Niagara Falls. Vanity of vanities indeed must existence be to
him who could not find a real Sabbath at the great cataract, laying his
tired head upon the calm breast of Nature, and feeling the pulsations
of her deep, loving heart!
Eight years had intervened since my last visit. There was no second
pang of the disappointment we feel in seeing for the first time any
object of world-wide fame. In Nature, as in Art, the really great,
however falling below the ideal at first glance, grows upon the
beholder forever afterward.
Though the visiting season had not begun, the harpies were waiting
for their victims. Step out of your hotel, or turn a corner, and one
instantly pounced upon you. But, though numerous, they were quiet, and
decorous manners, even in leeches, are above all praise.
Everybody at the Falls is eager to shield you from the extortion of
everybody else. The driver, whom you pay two dollars per hour; the
vender, who sells you Indian bead-work at a profit of one hundred per
cent.; the guide, who fleeces you for leading to places you would
rather find without him--each warns you against the other, with
touching zeal for your welfare. And the precocious boy, who offers a
bit of slate from under the Cataract for two shillings, cautions you to
beware of them all.
[Sidenote: VIEW FROM THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE.]
As you cross the suspension bridge, the driver points out the spot,
more than two hundred feet above the water, where Blondin, of
tight-rope renown, crossed upon a single strand, with a man upon his
shoulders, cooked his aerial omelet, hung by the heels, and played
other fantastic tricks before high heaven.
[Sidenote: PALACE OF THE FROST KING.]
From the bridge you view three sections of the Cataract. First, is the
lower end of the American Fall, whose deep green is intermingled with
jets and streaks of white. Its smooth surface conveys the impression of
the segment of a slowly revolving wheel rather than of tumbling water.
Beyond the dense foliage appears another section, parted in the middle
by the stone tower on Goat Island. Its water is of snowy whiteness,
and looks like an immense frozen fountain. Still farther is the great
Horse-shoe Fall, its deep green surface veiled at the base in clouds of
pure white mist.
Here, at the distance of two miles, the Falls soothe you with their
quiet, surpassing beauty. But when you reach them on the Canada side,
and go down, down, beneath Table Rock, under the sheet of water, you
feel their sublimity. As you look out upon the sea of snowy foam below,
or through the rainbow hues of the vast sweeping curtain above, the
earth trembles with the unceasing thunder of the cataract.
In winter the effect is grandest. Then, from the bank in front of the
Clifton House, you look down on upright rocks, crowned with pinnacles
of ice, till they rise half way to the summit, or catch glimpses of the
boundless column of water as it strikes the torrent below, faintly seen
through the misty, alabaster spray rising forever from its troubled
bed. Hundreds of white-winged sea-gulls graze the rapids above, and
circle down to plunge in the waters below.
Attired in stiff, cold, water-proof clothing, which, culminating in a
round oil-cloth cap, makes you look like an Esquimaux and feel like a
mummy, you follow the guide far down dark, icy stairs and paths.
Look up ninety feet, and see the great torrent pour over the brink.
Look down seventy feet from your icy little shelf, and behold it plunge
into the dense mist of the boiling gulf. Through its half-transparent
sheet, filtered rays of the bright sunshine struggle toward your eyes.
You are in the palace of the Frost King. Ice--ice everywhere, from your
slippery foothold to the huge icicles, fifty feet long and three feet
thick, which overhang you like the sword of Damocles.
Admiration without comparison is vague and unsatisfactory. Less
glorious, because less vast, than the matchless panorama seen from the
summit of Pike's Peak, this picture is nearly as impressive, because
spread right beside you, and at your very feet. Less minutely beautiful
than the exquisite chambers of the Mammoth Cave, its great range and
sweep make it more grand and imposing.
Along the Great Western Railway of Canada, the country closely
resembles northern Ohio; but the people have uncompromising English
faces. A well-dressed farmer and his wife rode upon our train all day
in a second-class car, without seeming in the least ashamed of it--a
moral courage not often exhibited in the United States.
At Detroit, an invalid, pale, wasted, unable to speak above a whisper,
was lying on a bed hastily spread upon the floor of the railway
station. Her husband, with their two little boys bending over her in
tears, told us that they had been driven from New Orleans, and he
was now taking his dying wife to their old home in Maine. There were
few dry eyes among the lookers-on. A liberal sum of money was raised
on the spot for the destitute family, whose broken pride, after some
persuasion, accepted it.
[Sidenote: CHICAGO RISING FROM THE EARTH.]
The next morning we reached Chicago. In that breezy city upon the
lake shore, property was literally rising. Many of the largest brick
and stone blocks were being elevated five or six feet, by a very nice
system of screws under their walls, while people were constantly
pouring in and out of them, and the transaction of business was not
impeded. The stupendous enterprise was undertaken that the streets
might be properly graded and drained. This summoning a great metropolis
to rise from its vasty deep of mud, is one of the modern miracles of
mechanics, which make even geological revelations appear trivial and
common-place.
[Sidenote: MYSTERIES OF WESTERN CURRENCY.]
The world has many mysteries, but none more inscrutable than Western
Currency. The notes of most Illinois and Wisconsin banks, based on
southern State bonds, having depreciated steadily for several weeks,
gold and New York exchange now commanded a premium of twenty per cent.
The Michigan Central Railway Company was a good illustration of the
effect of this upon Chicago interests. That corporation was paying
six thousand dollars per week in premiums upon eastern exchange. Yet
the hotels and mercantile houses were receiving the currency at par.
One Illinois bank-note depreciated just seventy per cent., during the
twelve hours it spent in my possession!
In Chicago I encountered an old friend just from Memphis. His
association with leading Secessionists for some time protected him;
but the popular frenzy was now so wild that they counselled him, as he
valued his life, to stay not upon the order of his going, but go at
once.
The Memphians were repudiating northern debts, and, with unexampled
ferocity, driving out all men suspected of Abolitionism or Unionism.
More than five thousand citizens had been forced or frightened away,
and in many cases beggared. A secret Committee of Safety, made up of
prominent citizens, was ruling with despotic sway.
Scores of suspected persons were brought before it daily, and, if they
could not exculpate themselves, sentenced to banishment, with head half
shaved, to whipping, or to death. Though, by the laws of all slave
States, negroes were precluded from testifying against white men, this
inquisition received their evidence. My friend dared not avow that he
was coming North, but purchased a ticket for St. Louis, which was then
deemed a Rebel stronghold.
[Sidenote: A HORRIBLE SPECTACLE IN ARKANSAS.]
As the steamer passed Osceola, Arkansas, he saw the body of a man
hanging by the heels, in full view of the river. A citizen told him
that it had been there for eight days; that the wretched victim, upon
mere suspicion of tampering with slaves, was suspended, head downward,
and suffered intensely before death came to his relief.
All on board the crowded steamboat pretended to be Secessionists. But
when, at last, nearing Cairo, they saw the Stars and Stripes, first
one, then another, began to huzza. The enthusiasm was contagious; and
in a moment nearly all, many with heaving breasts and streaming eyes,
gave vent to their long-suppressed feeling in one tumultuous cheer for
the Flag of the Free. Of the one hundred and fifty passengers, nearly
every man was a fleeing Unionist.
The all-pervading railroad and telegraph in the North began to show
their utility in war. Cairo, the extreme southern point of Illinois,
now garrisoned by Union troops, was threatened by the enemy. The
superintendent of the Illinois Central Railway (including branches,
seven hundred and four miles in length) assured me that, at ten hours'
notice, he could start, from the various points along his line, _four
miles_ of cars, capable of transporting twenty-four thousand soldiers.
[Sidenote: PATRIOTISM OF THE NORTHWEST.]
The Rebels now began to perceive their mistake in counting upon
the friendship of the great Northwest. Indeed, of all their wild
dreams, this was wildest. They expected the very States which claimed
Mr. Lincoln as from their own section, and voted for him by heavy
majorities, to help break up the Union because he was elected! Though
learning their delusion, they never comprehended its cause. After the
war had continued nearly a year, _The New Orleans Delta_ said:
"The people of the Northwest are our natural allies, and
ought to be fighting on our side. It is the profoundest
mystery of these times how the few Yankee peddlers and
school-marms there have been able to convert them into our
bitter enemies."
On the mere instinct of nationality--the bare question of an undivided
republic--the West would perhaps fight longer, and sacrifice more,
than any other section. Its people, if not more earnest, are much
more demonstrative than their eastern brethren. Their long migration
from the Atlantic States to the Mississippi, the Missouri, or the
Platte, has quickened and enlarged their patriotism. It has made our
territorial greatness to them no abstraction, but a reality.
No one else looks forward with such faith and fervor to that great
future when man shall "fill up magnificently the magnificent designs of
Nature;" when their Mississippi Valley shall be the heart of mightiest
empire; when, from all these mingling nationalities, shall spring the
ripe fruitage of free schools and free ballots, in a higher average Man
than the World has yet seen.
Our train from Chicago to St. Louis was crowded with Union troops.
Along the route booming guns saluted them; handkerchiefs fluttered from
windows; flags streamed from farm-houses and in village streets; old
men and boys at the plow huzzaed themselves hoarse.
Thus, at the rising of the curtain, the northwestern States, worthy
offspring of the Ordinance of Eighty-seven, were sending out--
"A multitude, like which the populous North Poured never from
her frozen loins."
Four blood-stained years have not dimmed their faith or abated their
ardor. "Wherever Death spread his banquet, they furnished many guests."
What histories have they not made for themselves! Ohio, Iowa, Kansas,
Wisconsin--indeed, if we call their roll, which State has not covered
herself with honor--which has _not_ achieved her Lexington--her
Saratoga--her Bennington--though the battle-field lie beyond her
soil?[9]
[9] Now (April, 1865), while we are witnessing some of the closing
scenes of the war, subscriptions to the popular loan of the Government
come pouring in from the West more largely, according to wealth and
population, than from any other section.
[Sidenote: MISSOURI REBELS BENT ON REVOLUTION.]
In St. Louis I found at last a "seat of war." Recent days had been
full of startling events. The Missouri Legislature, at Jefferson City,
desired to pass a Secession ordinance, but had no pretext for doing so.
The election of a State Convention, to consider this very subject, had
just demonstrated, by overwhelming Union majorities, the loyalty of the
masses. Claiborne Fox Jackson, the Governor, was a Secessionist, and
was determined to plunge Missouri into revolution. This flagrant, open
warfare against the popular majority, well illustrated how grossly the
Rebels deceived themselves in supposing that their conduct was impelled
by regard for State Rights, rather than by the inherent antagonism
between free and slave labor.
Camp Jackson, commanded by Gen. D. M. Frost, was established at
Lindell Grove, two miles west of St. Louis, "for the organization and
instruction of the State Militia." It embraced some Union men, both
officers and privates. Frost and his friends claimed that it was loyal;
but the State flag, only, was flying from the camp, and its streets
were named "Davis Avenue," "Beauregard Avenue," etc.
[Sidenote: NATHANIEL LYON AND CAMP JACKSON.]
An envoy extraordinary, sent by Governor Jackson, had just returned
from Louisiana with shot, shell, and mortars--all stolen from the
United States Arsenal at Baton Rouge. The camp was really designed as
the nucleus of a Secession force, to seize the Government property in
St. Louis and drive out the Federal authorities. But the Union men were
too prompt for the Rebels. Long before the capture of Fort Sumter,
nightly drills were instituted among the loyal Germans of St. Louis;
and within two weeks after the President's first call for troops,
Missouri had ten thousand Union soldiers, armed, equipped, and in camp.
The first act of the Union authorities was to remove by night all the
munitions from the United States Arsenal near St. Louis, to Alton,
Illinois. When the Rebels learned it, they were intensely exasperated.
The Union troops were commanded by a quiet, slender, stooping,
red-haired, pale-faced officer, who walked about in brown linen coat,
wearing no military insignia. He was by rank a captain; his name was
Nathaniel Lyon.
On the tenth of May, Capt. Lyon, with three or four hundred regulars,
and enough volunteers to swell his forces to five thousand, planted
cannon upon the hills commanding Camp Jackson, and sent to Gen. Frost
a note, reciting conclusive evidence of its treasonable intent, and
concluding as follows:
"I do hereby demand of you an immediate surrender of your
command, with no other conditions than that all persons
surrendering shall be humanely and kindly treated. Believing
myself prepared to enforce this demand, one-half hour's time
will be allowed for your compliance."
This contrasted so sharply with the shuffling timidity of our civil
and military authorities, usual at this period, that Frost was
surprised and "shocked." His reply, of course, characterized the
demand as "illegal" and "unconstitutional." In those days there were
no such sticklers for the Constitution as the men taking up arms
against it! Frost wrote that he surrendered only upon compulsion--his
forces being too weak for resistance. The encampment was found to
contain twenty cannon, more than twelve hundred muskets, many mortars,
siege-howitzers, and shells, charged ready for use--which convinced
even the most skeptical that it was something more than a school for
instruction.
The garrison, eight hundred strong, were marched out under guard. There
were many thousands of spectators. Hills, fields, and house-tops were
black with people. In spite of orders to disperse, crowds followed,
jeering the Union troops, throwing stones, brickbats, and other
missiles, and finally discharging pistols. Several soldiers were hurt,
and one captain shot down at the head of his company, when the troops
fired on the crowd, killing twenty and wounding eleven. As in all such
cases, several innocent persons suffered.
Intense excitement followed. A large public meeting convened that
evening in front of the Planter's House--heard bitter speeches from
Governor Jackson, Sterling Price, and others. The crowd afterward
went to mob _The Democrat_ office, but it contained too many resolute
Unionists, armed with rifles and hand-grenades, and they wisely
desisted.
[Sidenote: STERLING PRICE JOINS THE REBELS.]
Sterling Price was president of the State Convention--elected as
an Unconditional Unionist. But, in this whirlwind, he went over to
the enemy. An old feud existed between him and a leading St. Louis
loyalist. Price had a small, detached command in the Mexican war.
Afterward, he was Governor of Missouri, and candidate for the United
States Senate. An absurd sketch, magnifying a trivial skirmish into a
great battle, with Price looming up heroically in the foreground, was
drawn and engraved by an unfortunate artist, then in the Penitentiary.
It pleased Price's vanity; he circulated it largely, and pardoned out
the suffering votary of art.
[Sidenote: SEVERE LOSS TO THE UNIONISTS.]
When the Legislature was about voting for United States Senator, Frank
Blair, Jr., then a young member from St. Louis, obtained permission to
say a few words about the candidates. He was a great vessel of wrath,
and administered a terrible excoriation, pronouncing Price "worthy the
genius of a convict artist, and fit subject for a Penitentiary print!"
Price was defeated, and the rupture never healed.
At the outbreak of the Rebellion, Price was far more loyal than men
afterward prominent Union leaders in Missouri. In those chaotic days,
very slight influences decided the choice of many. By tender treatment,
Price could doubtless have been retained; but neither party regarded
him as possessing much ability.
His defection proved a calamity to the Loyalists. He was worth twenty
thousand soldiers to the Rebels, and developed rare military talent.
Like Robert E. Lee, he was an old man, of pure personal character,
sincerity, kindness of heart, and unequaled popularity among the
self-sacrificing ragamuffins whom he commanded. He held them together,
and induced them to fight with a bravery and persistency which, Rebels
though they were, was creditable to the American name. With a good
cause, they would have challenged the world's acclamation.
At this time the President was treating the border slave States with
marvelous tenderness and timidity. The Rev. M. D. Conway declared,
wittily, that Mr. Lincoln's daily and nightly invocation ran:
"O Lord, I desire to have Thee on my side, but I _must_ have
Kentucky!"
Captain Lyon was confident that if he asked permission to seize Camp
Jackson, it would be refused. So he captured the camp, and then
telegraphed to Washington--not what he proposed to do, but what he
_had_ done. At first his act was disapproved. But the loyal country
applauded to the echo, and Lyon's name was everywhere honored. Hence
the censure was withheld, and he was made a Brigadier-General!
[Sidenote: ST. LOUIS IN A CONVULSION.]
Governor Jackson burned the bridges on the Pacific Railroad; the
Missouri Legislature passed an indirect ordinance of Secession, and
adjourned in a panic, caused by reports that Lyon was coming; a Union
regiment was attacked in St. Louis, and again fired into the mob, with
deadly results. The city was convulsed with terror. Every available
vehicle, including heavy ox wagons, was brought into requisition; every
outgoing railway train was crowded with passengers; every avenue was
thronged with fugitives; every steamer at the levee was laden with
families, who, with no definite idea of where they were going, had
hastily packed a few articles of clothing, to flee from the general and
bloody conflict supposed to be impending between the Americans and the
Dutch, as Secessionists artfully termed the two parties. Thus there
became a "Seat of War."
Heart-rending as were the stories of most southern refugees, some were
altogether ludicrous. In St. Louis, I encountered an old acquaintance
who related to me his recent experiences in Nashville. Grandiloquent
enough they sounded; for his private conversation always ran into stump
speeches.
[Sidenote: A NASHVILLE EXPERIENCE.]
"One day," said he, "I was waited on by a party of leading Nashville
citizens, who remarked: 'Captain May, _we_ know very well that you
are with us in sentiment; but, as you come from the North, others,
less intimate with you, desire some special assurance.' I replied:
'Gentlemen, by education, by instinct, and by association, I am a
Southern man. But, gentlemen, when you fire upon that small bit of
bunting known as the American flag, you can count me, by Heaven, as
your persistent and uncompromising foe!' The committee intimated to
me that the next train for the North started in one hour! You may
stake your existence, sir, that the subscriber came away on that
train. Confound a country, anyhow, where a man must wear a Secession
cockade upon each coat-tail to keep himself from being kicked as an
Abolitionist!"
Inexorable war knows no ties of friendship, of family, or of love.
Its bitterest features were seen on the border, where brother was
arrayed against brother, and husband against wife. At a little Missouri
village, the Rebels raised their flag, but it was promptly torn down by
the loyal wife of one of the leaders. I met a lady who had two brothers
in the Union army, and two among Price's Rebels, who were likely soon
to meet on the battle-field.
In St. Louis, a Rebel damsel, just about to be married, separated from
her Union lover, declaring that no man who favored the Abolitionists
and the "Dutch hirelings" could be her husband. He retorted that he had
no use for a wife who sympathized with treason; and so the match was
broken off.
[Sidenote: BITTERNESS OF OLD NEIGHBORS.]
I knew a Union soldier who found at Camp Jackson, among the prisoners,
his own brother, wounded by two Minié rifle balls. He said: "I am sorry
my brother was shot; but he should not have joined the traitors!" Of
course, the bitterness between relatives and old neighbors, now foes,
was infinitely greater than between northerners and southerners. The
same was true everywhere. How intensely the Virginia and Tennessee
Rebels hated their fellow-citizens who adhered to the Union cause!
Ohio and Massachusetts Loyalists denounced northern "Copperheads"
with a malignity which they never felt toward South Carolinians and
Mississippians.
ST. LOUIS, _May 20, 1861_.
When South Carolina seceded, the slave property of Missouri was worth
forty-five millions of dollars; hence she is under bonds to just that
amount to keep the peace. With thirteen hundred miles of frontier, she
is "a slave peninsula in an ocean of free soil." Free Kansas, which
has many old scores to clear up, guards her on the west. Free Iowa,
embittered by hundreds of Union refugees, watches her on the north.
Free Illinois, the young giantess of the prairie, takes care of her
on the east. This loyal metropolis, with ten Union regiments already
under arms, is for her a sort of front-door police. Missouri, in the
significant phrase of the frontier, is _corraled_.[10]
[10] From the Spanish _corral_, a yard. Upon our frontier it is used,
colloquially, as a verb, to signify surrounded, captured, completely in
the power, or at the mercy, of another.
Here, at least, as _The Richmond Whig_, just before going over to the
Rebels, so aptly said: "Secession is Abolitionism in its worst and most
dangerous form."
Rebels glare upon Union men like chained wild beasts. Citizens,
walking by night, remember the late assassinations, and, like Americans
in Mexican towns, cast suspicious glances behind. Secessionists
utter fierce threats; but since their recent severe admonition that
Unionists, too, can use fire-arms, and that it is not discreet to
attack United States soldiers, they do not execute them.
Captain Lyon, who commands, is an exceedingly prompt and efficient
officer, attends strictly to his business, exhibits no hunger for
newspaper fame, and seems to act with an eye single to the honor of the
Government he has served so long and so faithfully.
[Sidenote: GOOD SOLDIERS FOR SCALING WALLS.]
Among our regiments is the Missouri First, Colonel Frank P. Blair.
Three companies are made up of German Turners--the most accomplished
of gymnasts. They are sinewy, muscular fellows, with deep chests and
well-knit frames. Every man is an athlete. To-day a party, by way of
exercise, suddenly formed a human pyramid, and commenced running up,
like squirrels, over each other's shoulders, to the high veranda upon
the second story of their building. In climbing a wall, they would not
require scaling-ladders. There are also two companies from the Far
West--old trappers and hunters, who have smelt gunpowder in Indian
warfare.
Colonel Blair's dry, epigrammatic humor bewilders some of his visitors.
I was sitting in his head-quarters when a St. Louis Secessionist
entered. Like nearly all of them, he now pretends to be a Union man,
but is very tender on the subject of State Rights, and wonderfully
solicitous about the Constitution. He remarked:
"I am a Union man, but I believe in State Rights. I believe a State may
dissolve its connection with the Government if it wants to."
"O yes," replied Blair, pulling away at his ugly mustache, "yes, you
can go out if you want to. Certainly you can secede. But, my friend,
you can't take with you one foot of American soil!"
[Sidenote: MISSOURI AND THE SLAVEHOLDERS.]
A citizen of Lexington introduced himself, saying:
"I am a loyal man, ready to fight for the Union; but I am
pro-slavery--I own niggers."
"Well, sir," replied Blair, with the faintest suggestion of a smile on
his plain, grim face, "you have a right to. We don't like negroes very
much ourselves. If _you_ do, that's a matter of taste. It is one of
your privileges. But if you gentlemen who own negroes attempt to take
the State of Missouri out of the Union, in about six months you will be
the most----niggerless set of individuals that you ever heard of!"