THE JOURNEY FROM WASHINGTON.
_Washington, Dec. 10th._—To accomplish the purposes which brought me to
Washington, it was necessary, on arriving here, to make arrangements
to secure food and shelter while I remained. There are two thousand
visitors now in Washington under a similar necessity. There are a dozen
or more persons who, for a consideration, undertake to provide what
they want. Mr. Dexter is reported to be the best of them, and really
seems a very obliging and honestly-disposed person. To Mr. Dexter,
therefore, I commit myself.
I commit myself by inscribing my name in a Register. Five minutes after
I have done so, Clerk No. 4, whose attention I have hitherto been
unable to obtain, suddenly catches the Register by the corner, swings
it round with a jerk, and throws a hieroglyph at it, which strikes
near my name. Henceforth, I figure as Boarder No. 201 (or whatever it
may be). Clerk No. 4 pipes “Boarder away!” and throws key No. 201 upon
the table. Turnkey No. 3 takes it, and me, and my travelling bag, up
several flights of stairs, along corridors and galleries, and finally
consigns me to this little square cell.
I have faith that there is a tight roof above the much-cracked
ceiling; that the bed is clean; and that I shall, by-and-by, be
summoned, along with hundreds of other boarders, to partake, in silent
sobriety, of a “splendid” dinner.
Food and shelter. Therewith should a man be content. But my perverse
nature will not be content: will be wishing things were otherwise. They
say this uneasiness—this passion for change—is a peculiarity of our
diseased Northern nature. The Southern man finds Providence in all that
is: Satan in all that might be. That is good; and, as I am going South,
when I have accomplished my purposes at Washington, I will not here
restrain the escape of my present discontent.
In my perversity I wish the dinner were not going to be so grand. My
idea is that, if it were not, Mr. Dexter would save moneys, which I
would like to have him expend in other ways. I wish he had more clerks,
so that they would have time to be as polite to an unknown man as I see
they are to John P. Hale; and, at least, answer civil questions, when
his boarders ask them. I don’t like such a fearful rush of business
as there is down stairs. I wish there were men enough to do the work
quietly.
I don’t like these cracked and variegated walls; and, though the roof
may be tight, I don’t like this threatening aspect of the ceiling. It
should be kept for boarders of Damoclesian ambition: I am humble.
I am humble, and I am short, and soon curried; but I am not satisfied
with a quarter of a yard of towelling, having an irregular vacancy in
its centre, where I am liable to insert my head. I am not proud; but I
had rather have something else, or nothing, than these three yards of
ragged and faded quarter-ply carpeting. I also would like a curtain to
the window, and I wish the glass were not so dusty, and that the sashes
did not rattle so in their casements; though, as there is no other
ventilation, I suppose I ought not to complain. Of course not; but it
is confoundedly cold, as well as noisy.
I don’t like that broken latch; I don’t like this broken chair; I would
prefer that this table were not so greasy; I would rather the ashes
and cinders, and the tobacco juice around the grate, had been removed
before I was consigned to the cell.
I wish that less of my two dollars and a half a day went to pay for
game at dinner, and interest on the cost of the mirrors and mahogany
for the public parlours, and of marble for the halls, and more of it
for providing me with a private room, which should be more than a
barely habitable cell, which should also be a little bit tasteful,
home-like, and comfortable.
I wish more of it could be expended in servants’ wages.
Six times I rang the bell; three several times came three different
Irish lads; entered, received my demand for a fire, and retired. I was
writing, shiveringly, a full hour before the fire-man came. Now he has
entered, bearing on his head a hod of coal and kindling wood, without
knocking. An aged negro, more familiar and more indifferent to forms
of subserviency than the Irish lads, very much bent, seemingly with
infirmity; an expression of impotent anger in his face, and a look
of weakness, like a drunkard’s. He does not look at me, but mutters
unintelligibly.
“What’s that you say?”
“Tink I can make a hundred fires at once?”
“I don’t want to sit an hour waiting for a fire, after I have ordered
one, and you must not let me again.”
“Nebber let de old nigger have no ress—hundred gemmen tink I kin mak
dair fires all de same minit; all get mad at an ole nigger; I ain’t a
goin to stan it—nebber get no ress—up all night—haint got nautin to eat
nor drink dis blessed mornin—hundred gemmen—”
“That’s not my business; Mr. Dexter should have more servants.”
“So he ort ter, master, dat he had; one ole man ain’t enough for all
dis house, is it, master? hundred gemmen—”
“Stop—here’s a quarter for you: now I want you to look out that I have
a good fire, and keep the hearth clean in my room as long as I stay
here. And when I send for you I want you to come immediately. Do you
understand?”
“I’le try, master—you jus look roun and fine me when you want yer fire;
I’ll be roun somewhere. You got a newspaper, sir, I ken take for a
minit? I won’t hurt it.”
I gave him one; and wondered what use he could put it to, that would
not hurt it. He opened it to a folio, and spread it before the grate,
so the draft held it in place, and it acted as a blower. I asked if
there were no blowers? “No.” “But haven’t you got any brush or shovel?”
I inquired, seeing him get down upon his knees again and sweep the
cinders and ashes he had thrown upon the floor with the sleeve of his
coat, and then take them up with his hands;—No, he said, his master did
not give him such things.
“Are you a slave?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you belong to Mr. Dexter?”
“No, sir—he hires me of de man dat owns me. Don’t you tink I’se too ole
a man for to be knock roun at dis kind of work, massa?—hundred gemmen
all want dair fires made de same minute, and caus de old nigger can’t
do it all de same minute, ebbery one tinks dey’s boun to scold him all
de time; nebber no rest for him, no time.”
* * * * *
_Washington, Dec. 14th._—I called to-day on Mr. C., whose fine farm,
from its vicinity to Washington, and its excellent management, as well
as from the hospitable habits of its owner, has a national reputation.
It is some two thousand acres in extent, and situated just without the
district, in Maryland.
The residence is in the midst of the farm, a quarter of a mile from the
high road—the private approach being judiciously carried through large
pastures which are divided only by slight, but close and well-secured
wire fences. The kept grounds are limited, and in simple but quiet
taste; being surrounded only by wires, they merge, in effect, into the
pastures. There is a fountain, an ornamental dove-cote, and ice-house,
and the approach road, nicely gravelled and rolled, comes up to the
door with a fine sweep.
I had dismounted and was standing before the door, when I heard myself
loudly hailed from a distance.
“Ef yer wants to see master, sah, he’s down thar—to the new stable.”
I could see no one; and when tired of holding my horse, I mounted, and
rode on in search of the new stable. I found it without difficulty; and
in it Mr. and Mrs. C. With them were a number of servants, one of whom
now took my horse with alacrity. I was taken at once to look at a very
fine herd of cows, and afterwards led upon a tramp over the farm, and
did not get back to the house till dinner-time.
Mr. C. is a large hereditary owner of slaves, which, for ordinary
field and stable work, constitute his labouring force. He has employed
several Irishmen for ditching; and for this work, and this alone, he
thought he could use them to better advantage than negroes. He would
not think of using Irishmen for common farm-labour, and made light of
their coming in competition with slaves. Negroes at hoeing and any
steady field-work, he assured me, would “do two to their one;” but his
main objection to employing Irishmen was derived from his experience
of their unfaithfulness—they were dishonest, would not obey explicit
directions about their work, and required more personal supervision
than negroes. From what he had heard and seen of Germans, he supposed
they did better than Irish. He mentioned that there were several
Germans who had come here as labouring men, and worked for wages
several years, who had now got possession of small farms, and were
reputed to be getting rich.[11] He was disinclined to converse on the
topic of slavery; and I therefore made no inquiries about the condition
and habits of his negroes, or his management of them. They seemed to
live in small and rude log-cabins, scattered in different parts of
the farm. Those I saw at work appeared to me to move very slowly and
awkwardly, as did also those engaged in the stable. These also were
very stupid and dilatory in executing any orders given to them, so that
Mr. C. would frequently take the duty off their hands into his own,
rather than wait for them, or make them correct their blunders: they
were much, in these respects, like what our farmers call dumb Paddies,
that is, Irishmen who do not readily understand the English language,
and who are still weak and stiff from the effects of the emigrating
voyage. At the entrance-gate was a porter’s lodge, and as I approached,
I saw a black face peeping at me from it, but, both when I entered and
left, I was obliged to dismount and open the gate myself.
Altogether it struck me—slaves coming here as they naturally did in
direct comparison with free labourers, as commonly employed on my own
and my neighbours’ farms, in exactly similar duties—that they must be
difficult to direct efficiently, and that it must be irksome and trying
to one’s patience to have to superintend their labour.
* * * * *
_Washington, Dec. 16th._—Visiting the market-place, early on Tuesday
morning, I found myself in the midst of a throng of a very different
character from any I have ever seen at the North. The majority of the
people were negroes; and, taken as a whole, they appeared inferior in
the expression of their face and less well-clothed than any collection
of negroes I had ever seen before. All the negro characteristics were
more clearly marked in each than they often are in any at the North.
In their dress, language, manner, motions—all were distinguishable
almost as much by their colour, from the white people who were
distributed among them, and engaged in the same occupations—chiefly
selling poultry, vegetables, and small country produce. The white men
were, generally, a mean-looking people, and but meanly dressed, but
differently so from the negroes.
Most of the produce was in small, rickety carts, drawn by the smallest,
ugliest, leanest lot of oxen and horses that I ever saw. There was
but one pair of horses in over a hundred that were tolerably good—a
remarkable proportion of them were maimed in some way. As for the oxen,
I do not believe New England and New York together could produce a
single yoke as poor as the best of them.
The very trifling quantity of articles brought in and exposed for sale
by most of the market-people was noticeable; a peck of potatoes, three
bunches of carrots, two cabbages, six eggs and a chicken, would be
about the average stock in trade of all the dealers. Mr. F. said that
an old negro woman once came to his door with a single large turkey,
which she pressed him to buy. Struck with her fatigued appearance, he
made some inquiries of her, and ascertained that she had been several
days coming from home, had travelled mainly on foot, and had brought
the turkey and nothing else with her. “Ole massa had to raise some
money somehow, and he could not sell anything else, so he tole me to
catch the big gobbler, and tote um down to Washington and see wot um
would fotch.”
Land may be purchased, within twenty miles of Washington, at from ten
to twenty dollars an acre. Most of it has been once in cultivation,
and, having been exhausted in raising tobacco, has been, for many
years, abandoned, and is now covered by a forest growth. Several New
Yorkers have lately speculated in the purchase of this sort of land,
and, as there is a good market for wood, and the soil, by the decay
of leaves upon it, and other natural causes, has been restored to
moderate fertility, have made money by clearing and improving it. By
deep ploughing and liming, and the judicious use of manures, it is made
quite productive; and, as equally cheap farms can hardly be found in
any free State, in such proximity to as good markets for agricultural
produce, there are inducements for a considerable Northern immigration
hither. It may not be long before a majority of the inhabitants will
be opposed to slavery, and desire its abolition within the district.
Indeed, when Mr. Seward proposed in the Senate to allow them to decide
that matter, the advocates of “popular sovereignty” made haste to vote
down the motion.
There are, already, more Irish and German labourers and servants than
_slaves_; and, as many of the objections which free labourers have to
going further south, do not operate in Washington, the proportion of
white labourers is every year increasing. The majority of servants,
however, are now _free_ negroes, which class constitutes one-fifth of
the entire population. The slaves are one-fifteenth, but are mostly
owned out of the district, and hired annually to those who require
their services. In the assessment of taxable property, for 1853, the
slaves, owned or hired in the district, were valued at three hundred
thousand dollars.
The coloured population voluntarily sustain several churches,
schools, and mutual assistance and improvement societies, and there
are evidently persons among them of no inconsiderable cultivation
of mind. Among the police reports of the City newspapers, there was
lately (April, 1855), an account of the apprehension of twenty-four
“genteel coloured men” (so they were described), who had been found
by a watchman assembling privately in the evening, and been lodged
in the watch-house. The object of their meeting appears to have been
purely benevolent, and, when they were examined before a magistrate
in the morning, no evidence was offered, nor does there seem to have
been any suspicion that they had any criminal purpose. On searching
their persons, there were found a Bible; a volume of _Seneca’s Morals;
Life in Earnest_; the printed constitution of a society, the object of
which was said to be “_to relieve the sick and bury the dead_;” and a
subscription paper _to purchase the freedom of Eliza Howard_, a young
woman, whom her owner was willing to sell at $650.
I can think of nothing that would speak higher for the character of
a body of poor men, servants and labourers, than to find, by chance,
in their pockets, just such things as these. And I cannot value
that man as a countryman, who does not feel intense humiliation and
indignation, when he learns that such men may not be allowed to meet
privately together, with such laudable motives, in the capital city of
the United States, without being subject to disgraceful punishment.
One of the prisoners, a slave named Joseph Jones, was ordered to be
flogged; four others, called in the papers free men, and named John E.
Bennett, Chester Taylor, George Lee, and Aquila Barton, were sent to
the workhouse; and the remainder, on paying costs of court, and fines,
amounting, in the aggregate, to one hundred and eleven dollars, were
permitted to range loose again.