Impending battle--By railway to Chicago--Northern enlightenment
--Mound City--“Cotton is King”--Land in the States--Dead level of
American society--Return into the Union--American homes--Across
the prairie--White labourers--New pillager--Lake Michigan.
_June 23rd._--The latest information which I received to-day is of
a nature to hasten my departure for Washington; it can no longer
be doubted that a battle between the two armies assembled in the
neighbourhood of the capital is imminent. The vague hope which from
time to time I have entertained of being able to visit Richmond
before I finally take up my quarters with the only army from which I
can communicate regularly with Europe has now vanished.
At four o’clock in the evening I started by the train on the famous
Central Illinois line from Cairo to Chicago.
The carriages were tolerably well filled with soldiers, and in
addition to them there were a few unfortunate women, undergoing
deportation to some less moral neighbourhood. Neither the look,
language, nor manners of my fellow passengers inspired me with an
exalted notion of the intelligence, comfort and respectability of the
people which are so much vaunted by Mr. Seward and American journals,
and which, though truly attributed, no doubt, to the people of the
New England states, cannot be affirmed with equal justice to belong
to all the other components of the Union.
As the Southerners say, their negroes are the happiest people on the
earth, so the Northerners boast “We are the most enlightened nation
in the world.” The soldiers in the train were intelligent enough to
think they ought not to be kept without pay, and free enough to say
so. The soldiers abused Cairo roundly, and indeed it is wonderful if
the people can live on any food but quinine. However, speculators,
looking to its natural advantages as the point where the two great
rivers join, bespeak for Cairo a magnificent and prosperous future.
The present is not promising.
Leaving the shanties, which face the levées, and some poor wooden
houses with a short vista of cross streets partially flooded at right
angles to them, the rail suddenly plunges into an unmistakeable
swamp, were a forest of dead trees wave their ghastly, leafless arms
over their buried trunks, like plumes over a hearse--a cheerless,
miserable place, sacred to the ague and fever. This occurs close
to the cleared space on which the city is to stand,--when it is
finished--and the rail, which runs on the top of the embankment or
levée, here takes to the trestle, and is borne over the water on the
usual timber frame work.
“Mound City,” which is the first station, is composed of a mere heap
of earth, like a ruined brick-kiln, which rises to some height and is
covered with fine white oaks, beneath which are a few log huts and
hovels, giving the place its proud name. Tents were pitched on the
mound side, from which wild-looking banditti sort of men, with arms,
emerged as the train stopped. “I’ve been pretty well over Europe,”
said a meditative voice beside me, “and I’ve seen the despotic armies
of the old world, but I don’t think they equal that set of boys.” The
question was not worth arguing--the boys were in fact very “weedy,”
“splinter-shinned chaps,” as another critic insisted.
There were some settlers in the woods around Mound City, and a
jolly-looking, corpulent man, who introduced himself as one of the
officers of the land department of the Central Illinois railroad,
described them as awful warnings to the emigrants not to stick in
the south part of Illinois. It was suggestive to find that a very
genuine John Bull, “located,” as they say in the States for many
years, had as much aversion to the principles of the abolitionists as
if he had been born a Southern planter. Another countryman of his and
mine, steward on board the steamer to Cairo, eagerly asked me what I
thought of the quarrel, and which side I would back. I declined to
say more than I thought the North possessed very great superiority of
means if the conflict were to be fought on the same terms. Whereupon
my Saxon friend exclaimed, “all the Northern States and all the power
of the world can’t beat the South; and why?--because the South has
got cotton, and cotton is king.”
The Central Illinois officer did not suggest the propriety of
purchasing lots but he did intimate I would be doing service if I
informed the world at large, they could get excellent land, at sums
varying from ten to twenty-five dollars an acre. In America a man’s
income is represented by capitalizing all that he is worth, and
whereas in England we say a man has so much a year, the Americans, in
representing his value, observe that he is worth so many dollars, by
which they mean that all he has in the world would realise the amount.
It sounds very well to an Irish tenant farmer, an English cottier,
or a cultivator in the Lothians, to hear that he can get land at the
rate of from £2 to £5 per acre, to be his for ever, liable only to
state taxes; but when he comes to see a parallelogram marked upon the
map as “good soil, of unfathomable richness,” and finds in effect
that he must cut down trees, eradicate stumps, drain off water, build
a house, struggle for high-priced labour, and contend with imperfect
roads, the want of many things to which he has been accustomed in
the old country, the land may not appear to him such a bargain. In
the wooded districts he has, indeed a sufficiency of fuel as long as
trees and stumps last, but they are, of course, great impediments to
tillage. If he goes to the prairie he finds that fuel is scarce and
water by no means wholesome.
When we left this swamp and forest, and came out after a run of many
miles on the clear lands which abut upon the prairie, large fields
of corn lay around us, which bore a peculiarly blighted and harassed
look. These fields were suffering from the ravages of an insect
called the “army worm,” almost as destructive to corn and crops as
the locust-like hordes of North and South, which are vying with each
other in laying waste the fields of Virginia. Night was falling as
the train rattled out into the wild, flat sea of waving grass, dotted
by patch-like Indian corn enclosures; but halts at such places as
Jonesburgh and Cobden, enabled us to see that these settlements in
Illinois were neither very flourishing nor very civilised.
There is a level modicum of comfort, which may be consistent with the
greatest good of the greatest number, but which makes the standard
of the highest in point of well-being very low indeed. I own, that
to me, it would be more agreeable to see a flourishing community
placed on a high level in all that relates to the comfort and social
status of all its members than to recognise the old types of European
civilisation, which place the castle on the hill, surround its outer
walls with the mansion of doctor and lawyer, and drive the people
into obscure hovels outside. But then one must confess that there are
in the castle some elevating tendencies which cannot be found in the
uniform level of citizen equality. There are traditions of nobility
and noble deeds in the family; there are paintings on the walls; the
library is stored with valuable knowledge, and from its precincts are
derived the lessons not yet unlearned in Europe, that though man may
be equal the condition of men must vary as the accidents of life or
the effects of individual character, called fortune, may determine.
The towns of Jonesburgh and Cobden have their little teapot-looking
churches and meeting houses, their lager-bier saloons, their
restaurants, their small libraries, institutes, and reading rooms,
and no doubt they have also their political cliques, social
distinctions and favouritisms; but it requires, nevertheless, little
sagacity to perceive that the highest of the bourgeois who leads
the mass at meeting and prayer, has but little to distinguish him
from the very lowest member of the same body politic. Cobden, for
example, has no less than four drinking saloons, all on the line of
rail, and no doubt the highest citizen in the place frequents some
one or other of them, and meets there the worst rowdy in the place.
Even though they do carry a vote for each adult man, “locations” here
would not appear very enviable in the eyes of the most miserable
Dorsetshire small farmer ever ferretted out by “S.G.O.”
A considerable number of towns, formed by accretions of small stores
and drinking places, called magazines, round the original shed
wherein live the station master and his assistants, mark the course
of the railway. Some are important enough to possess a bank, which is
generally represented by a wooden hut, with a large board nailed in
front, bearing the names of the president and cashier, and announcing
the success and liberality of the management. The stores are also
decorated with large signs, recommending the names of the owners to
the attention of the public, and over all of them is to be seen the
significant announcement, “Cash for produce.”
At Carbondale there was no coal at all to be found, but several
miles farther to the north, at a place called Dugoine, a field of
bituminous deposit crops out, which is sold at the pit’s mouth for
one dollar twenty-five cents, or about 5_s._ 2_d._ a-ton. Darkness
and night fell as I was noting such meagre particulars of the new
district as could be learned out of the window of a railway carriage;
and finally with a delicious sensation of cool night air creeping
in through the windows, the first I had experienced for many a long
day, we made ourselves up for repose, and were borne steadily, if
not rapidly, through the great prairie, having halted for tea at the
comfortable refreshment rooms of Centralia.
There were no physical signs to mark the transition from the land
of the Secessionist to Union-loving soil. Until the troops were
quartered there, Cairo was for Secession, and Southern Illinois is
supposed to be deeply tainted with disaffection to Mr. Lincoln.
Placards on which were printed the words, “Vote for Lincoln and
Hamlin, for Union and Freedom,” and the old battle-cry of the last
election, still cling to the wooden walls of the groceries often
accompanied by bitter words or offensive additions.
One of my friends argues that as slavery is at the base of Secession,
it follows that States or portions of States will be disposed to
join the Confederates or the Federalists just as the climate may be
favourable or adverse to the growth of slave produce. Thus in the
mountainous parts of the border States of Kentucky and Tennessee, in
the north-western part of Virginia, vulgarly called the pan handle,
and in the pine woods of North Carolina, where white men can work at
the rosin and naval store manufactories, there is a decided feeling
in favour of the Union; in fact, it becomes a matter of isothermal
lines. It would be very wrong to judge of the condition of a people
from the windows of a railway carriage, but the external aspect
of the settlements along the line, far superior to that of slave
hamlets, does not equal my expectations. We all know the aspect of a
wood in a gentleman’s park which is submitting to the axe, and has
been partially cleared, how raw and bleak the stumps look, and how
dreary is the naked land not yet turned into arable. Take such a
patch and fancy four or five houses made of pine planks, sometimes
not painted, lighted, by windows in which there is, or has been,
glass, each guarded by a paling around a piece of vegetable garden,
a pig house, and poultry box; let one be a grocery, which means a
whisky shop, another the post-office, and a third the store where
“cash is given for produce.” Multiply these groups if you desire
a larger settlement, and place a wooden church with a Brobdignag
spire and Lilliputian body out in a waste, to be approached only by
a causeway of planks; before each grocery let there be a gathering
of tall men in sombre clothing, of whom the majority have small
newspapers and all of whom are chewing tobacco; near the stores let
there be some light wheeled carts and ragged horses, around which are
knots of unmistakeably German women; then see the deep tracks which
lead off to similar settlements in the forest or prairie, and you
have a notion, if your imagination is strong enough, of one of these
civilising centres which the Americans assert to be the homes of the
most cultivated and intelligent communities in the world.
Next morning, just at dawn, I woke up and got out on the platform
of the carriage, which is the favourite resort of smokers and their
antitheses, those who love pure fresh air, notwithstanding the
printed caution “It is dangerous to stand on the platform;” and under
the eye of early morn saw spread around a flat sea-like expanse not
yet warmed into colour and life by the sun. The line was no longer
guarded from daring Secessionists by soldiers’ outposts, and small
camps had disappeared. The train sped through the centre of the great
verdant circle as a ship through the sea, leaving the rigid iron wake
behind it tapering to a point at the horizon, and as the light spread
over it the surface of the crisping corn waved in broad undulations
beneath the breeze from east to west. This is the prairie indeed.
Hereabouts it is covered with the finest crops, some already cut and
stacked. Looking around one could see church spires rising in the
distance from the white patches of houses, and by degrees the tracks
across the fertile waste became apparent, and then carts and horses
were seen toiling through the rich soil.
A large species of partridge or grouse appeared very abundant, and
rose in flocks from the long grass at the side of the rail or from
the rich carpet of flowers on the margin of the corn fields. They
sat on the fence almost unmoved by the rushing engine, and literally
swarmed along the line. These are called “prairie chickens” by the
people, and afford excellent sport. Another bird about the size
of a thrush, with a yellow breast and a harsh cry, I learned was
“the sky-lark;” and _à propos_ of the unmusical creature, I was very
briskly attacked by a young lady patriot for finding fault with the
sharp noise it made. “Oh, my! And you not to know that your Shelley
loved it above all things! Didn’t he write some verses--quite
beautiful, too, they are--to the sky-lark.” And so “the Britisher was
dried up,” as I read in a paper afterwards of a similar occurrence.
At the little stations which occur at every few miles--there are some
forty of them, at each of which the train stops, in 365 miles between
Cairo and Chicago--the Union flag floated in the air; but we had left
all the circumstance of this inglorious war behind us, and the train
rattled boldly over the bridges across the rare streams, no longer
in danger from Secession hatchets. The swamp had given place to the
corn field. No black faces were turned up from the mowing and free
white labour was at work, and the type of the labourers was German
and Irish.
The Yorkshireman expatiated on the fertility of the land, and on
the advantages it held out to the emigrant. But I observed all the
lots by the side of the rail, and apparently as far as the eye could
reach, were occupied. “Some of the very best land lies beyond on each
side,” said he. “Out over there in the fat places is where we put our
Englishmen.” By digging deep enough good water is always to be had,
and coal can be carried from the rail, where it costs only 7_s._ or
8_s._ a ton. Wood there is little or none in the prairies, and it was
rarely indeed a clump of trees could be detected, or anything higher
than some scrub brushwood. These little communities which we passed
were but the growth of a few years, and as we approached the Northern
portion of the line we could see, as it were, the village swelling
into the town, and the town spreading out to the dimensions of the
city. “I daresay, Major,” says one of the passengers, “this gentleman
never saw anything like these cities before. I’m told they’ve nothin’
like them in Europe?” “Bless you,” rejoined the Major, with a wink,
“just leaving out London, Edinbro’, Paris, and Manchester, there’s
nothing on earth to ekal them.” My friend, who is a shrewd fellow, by
way of explanation of his military title, says, “I was a major once,
a major in the Queen’s Bays, but they would put troop-sergeant before
it them days.” Like many Englishmen he complains that the jealousy of
native-born Americans effectually bars the way to political position
of any naturalised citizen, and all the places are kept by the
natives.
The scene now began to change gradually as we approached Chicago,
the prairie subsided into swampy land, and thick belts of trees
fringed the horizon; on our right glimpses of the sea could be
caught through openings in the wood--the inland sea on which stands
the Queen of the Lakes. Michigan looks broad and blue as the
Mediterranean. Large farm-houses stud the country, and houses which
must be the retreat of merchants and citizens of means; and when the
train, leaving the land altogether, dashes out on a pier and causeway
built along the borders of the lake, we see lines of noble houses, a
fine boulevard, a forest of masts, huge isolated piles of masonry,
the famed grain elevators by which so many have been hoisted to
fortune, churches and public edifices, and the apparatus of a great
city; and just at nine o’clock the train gives its last steam shout
and comes to a standstill in the spacious station of the Central
Illinois Company, and in half-an-hour more I am in comfortable
quarters at the Richmond House, where I find letters waiting for me,
by which it appears that the necessity for my being in Washington in
all haste, no longer exists. The wary General who commands the army
is aware that the advance to Richmond, for which so many journals are
clamouring, would be attended with serious risk at present, and the
politicians must be content to wait a little longer.