CAIRO AND CAMP WOOD.
To whatever period of life my days may be prolonged, I do not think
that I shall ever forget Cairo. I do not mean Grand Cairo, which is
also memorable in its way, and a place not to be forgotten,--but
Cairo in the State of Illinois, which by native Americans is always
called Caaro. An idea is prevalent in the States, and I think I have
heard the same broached in England, that a popular British author had
Cairo, State of Illinois, in his eye when under the name of Eden he
depicted a chosen, happy spot on the Mississippi river, and told us
how certain English emigrants fixed themselves in that locality, and
there made light of those little ills of life which are incident to
humanity even in the garden of the valley of the Mississippi. But I
doubt whether that author ever visited Cairo in mid-winter, and I
am sure that he never visited Cairo when Cairo was the seat of an
American army. Had he done so, his love of truth would have forbidden
him to presume that even Mark Tapley could have enjoyed himself in
such an Eden.
I had no wish myself to go to Cairo, having heard it but
indifferently spoken of by all men; but my friend with whom I was
travelling was peremptory in the matter. He had heard of gun-boats
and mortar-boats, of forts built upon the river, of Columbiads,
Dahlgrens, and Parrotts, of all the pomps and circumstance of
glorious war, and entertained an idea that Cairo was the nucleus or
pivot of all really strategetic movements in this terrible national
struggle. Under such circumstances I was as it were forced to go to
Cairo, and bore myself, under the circumstances, as much like Mark
Tapley as my nature would permit. I was not jolly while I was there
certainly, but I did not absolutely break down and perish in its mud.
Cairo is the southern terminus of the Illinois central railway. There
is but one daily arrival there, namely, at half-past four in the
morning, and but one despatch, which is at half-past three in the
morning. Everything is thus done to assist that view of life which
Mark Tapley took when he resolved to ascertain under what possible
worst circumstances of existence he could still maintain his jovial
character. Why anybody should ever arrive at Cairo at half-past four
A.M., I cannot understand. The departure at any hour is easy of
comprehension. The place is situated exactly at the point at which
the Ohio and the Mississippi meet, and is, I should say, merely
guessing on the matter, some ten or twelve feet lower than the
winter level of the two rivers. This gives it naturally a depressed
appearance, which must have much aided Mark Tapley in his endeavours.
Who were the founders of Cairo I have never ascertained. They are
probably buried fathoms deep in the mud, and their names will no
doubt remain a mystery to the latest ages. They were brought thither,
I presume, by the apparent water privileges of the place; but the
water privileges have been too much for them, and by the excess of
their powers have succeeded in drowning all the capital of the early
Cairovians, and in throwing a wet blanket of thick, moist, glutinous
dirt over all their energies.
The free State of Illinois runs down far south between the slave
States of Kentucky to the east, and of Missouri to the west, and is
the most southern point of the continuous free-soil territory of the
Northern States. This point of it is a part of a district called
Egypt, which is as fertile as the old country from whence it has
borrowed a name; but it suffers under those afflictions which are
common to all newly-settled lands which owe their fertility to the
vicinity of great rivers. Fever and ague universally prevail. Men and
women grow up with their lantern faces like spectres. The children
are prematurely old; and the earth which is so fruitful is hideous in
its fertility. Cairo and its immediate neighbourhood must, I suppose,
have been subject to yearly inundation before it was "settled up."
At present it is guarded on the shores of each river by high mud
banks, built so as to protect the point of land. These are called
the levees, and do perform their duty by keeping out the body of the
waters. The shore between the banks is, I believe, never above breast
deep with the inundation; and from the circumstances of the place,
and the soft, half-liquid nature of the soil, this inundation
generally takes the shape of mud instead of water.
Here, at the very point, has been built a town. Whether the town
existed during Mr. Tapley's time I have not been able to learn. At
the period of my visit, it was falling quickly into ruin; indeed I
think I may pronounce it to have been on its last legs. At that
moment a galvanic motion had been pumped into it by the war movements
of General Halleck, but the true bearings of the town, as a town,
were not less plainly to be read on that account. Every street was
absolutely impassable from mud. I mean that in walking down the
middle of any street in Cairo a moderately framed man would soon
stick fast and not be able to move. The houses are generally built
at considerable intervals and rarely face each other, and along one
side of each street a plank boarding was laid, on which the mud had
accumulated only up to one's ankles. I walked all over Cairo with
big boots, and with my trousers tucked up to my knees; but at the
crossings I found considerable danger, and occasionally had my doubts
as to the possibility of progress. I was alone in my work, and saw
no one else making any such attempt. A few only were moving about,
and they moved in wretched carts, each drawn by two miserable,
floundering horses. These carts were always empty, but were presumed
to be engaged in some way on military service. No faces looked out
at the windows of the houses, no forms stood in the doorways. A few
shops were open, but only in the drinking shops did I see customers.
In these silent, muddy men were sitting,--not with drink before them,
as men sit with us,--but with the cud within their jaws, ruminating.
Their drinking is always done on foot. They stand silent at a bar,
with two small glasses before them. Out of one they swallow the
whisky, and from the other they take a gulp of water, as though to
rinse their mouths. After that, they again sit down and ruminate. It
was thus that men enjoyed themselves at Cairo.
I cannot tell what was the existing population of Cairo. I asked one
resident; but he only shook his head and said that the place was
about "played out." And a miserable play it must have been. I tried
to walk round the point on the levees, but I found that the mud
was so deep and slippery on that which protected the town from the
Mississippi, that I could not move on it. On the other, which forms
the bank of the Ohio, the railway runs, and here was gathered all
the life and movement of the place. But the life was galvanic in its
nature, created by a war-galvanism of which the shocks were almost
neutralized by mud.
As Cairo is of all towns in America the most desolate, so is its
hotel the most forlorn and wretched. Not that it lacked custom. It
was so full that no room was to be had on our first entry from the
railway cars at five A.M., and we were reduced to the necessity of
washing our hands and faces in the public wash-room. When I entered
it the barber and his assistants were asleep there, and four or five
citizens from the railway were busy at the basins. There is a fixed
resolution in these places that you shall be drenched with dirt and
drowned in abominations, which is overpowering to a mind less strong
than Mark Tapley's. The filth is paraded and made to go as far as
possible. The stranger is spared none of the elements of nastiness.
I remember how an old woman once stood over me in my youth, forcing
me to swallow the gritty dregs of her terrible medicine-cup. The
treatment I received in the hotel at Cairo reminded me of that old
woman. In that room I did not dare to brush my teeth lest I should
give offence; and I saw at once that I was regarded with suspicion
when I used my own comb instead of that provided for the public.
At length we got a room, one room for the two. I had become
so depressed in spirits that I did not dare to object to this
arrangement. My friend could not complain much, even to me, feeling
that these miseries had been produced by his own obstinacy. "It is a
new phase of life," he said. That, at any rate, was true. If nothing
more be necessary for pleasurable excitement than a new phase of
life, I would recommend all who require pleasurable excitement to
go to Cairo. They will certainly find a new phase of life. But do
not let them remain too long, or they may find something beyond a
new phase of life. Within a week of that time my friend was taking
quinine, looking hollow about the eyes, and whispering to me of fever
and ague. To say that there was nothing eatable or drinkable in
that hotel, would be to tell that which will be understood without
telling. My friend, however, was a cautious man, carrying with him
comfortable tin pots, hermetically sealed, from Fortnum & Mason's;
and on the second day of our sojourn we were invited by two officers
to join their dinner at a Cairo eating-house. We ploughed our way
gallantly through the mud to a little shanty, at the door of which we
were peremptorily demanded by the landlord to scrub ourselves before
we entered with the stump of an old broom. This we did, producing on
our nether persons the appearance of bread which has been carefully
spread with treacle by an economic housekeeper. And the proprietor
was right, for had we not done so, the treacle would have run off
through the whole house. But after this we fared royally. Squirrel
soup and prairie chickens regaled us. One of our new friends had
laden his pockets with champagne and brandy; the other with glasses
and a corkscrew; and as the bottle went round, I began to feel
something of the spirit of Mark Tapley in my soul.
But our visit to Cairo had been made rather with reference to its
present warlike character, than with any eye to the natural beauties
of the place. A large force of men had been collected there, and also
a fleet of gun-boats. We had come there fortified with letters to
generals and commodores, and were prepared to go through a large
amount of military inspection. But the bird had flown before our
arrival; or rather the body and wings of the bird, leaving behind
only a draggled tail and a few of its feathers. There were only a
thousand soldiers at Cairo when we were there;--that is, a thousand
stationed in the Cairo sheds. Two regiments passed through the place
during the time, getting out of one steamer on to another, or passing
from the railway into boats. One of these regiments passed before me
down the slope of the river-bank, and the men as a body seemed to
be healthy. Very many were drunk, and all were mud-clogged up to
their shoulders and very caps. In other respects they appeared to
be in good order. It must be understood that these soldiers, the
volunteers, had never been made subject to any discipline as to
cleanliness. They wore their hair long. Their hats or caps, though
all made in some military form and with some military appendance,
were various and ill-assorted. They all were covered with loose,
thick, blue-gray great-coats, which no doubt were warm and wholesome,
but which from their looseness and colour seemed to be peculiarly
susceptible of receiving and showing a very large amount of mud.
Their boots were always good; but each man was shod as he liked.
Many wore heavy over-boots coming up the leg;--boots of excellent
manufacture, and from their cost, if for no other reason, quite out
of the reach of an English soldier; boots in which a man would be
not at all unfortunate to find himself hunting; but from these, or
from their high-lows, shoes, or whatever they might wear, the mud
had never been even scraped. These men were all warmly clothed, but
clothed apparently with an endeavour to contract as much mud as might
be possible.
The generals and commodores were gone up the Ohio river and up the
Tennessee in an expedition with gun-boats, which turned out to be
successful, and of which we have all read in the daily history of
this war. They had departed the day before our arrival, and though
we still found at Cairo a squadron of gun-boats,--if gun-boats go in
squadrons,--the bulk of the army had been moved. There was left there
one regiment and one colonel, who kindly described to us the battles
he had fought, and gave us permission to see everything that was to
be seen. Four of these gun-boats were still lying in the Ohio, close
under the terminus of the railway with their flat, ugly noses against
the muddy bank, and we were shown over two of them. They certainly
seemed to be formidable weapons for river warfare, and to have been
"got up quite irrespective of expense." So much, indeed, may be said
for the Americans throughout the war. They cannot be accused of
parsimony. The largest of these vessels, called the "Benton," had
cost £36,000. These boats are made with sides sloping inwards, at an
angle of 45 degrees. The iron is two-and-a-half inches thick, and
it has not, I believe, been calculated that this will resist cannon
shot of great weight, should it be struck in a direct line. But the
angle of the sides of the boat makes it improbable that any such
shot should strike them; and the iron, bedded as it is upon oak, is
supposed to be sufficient to turn a shot that does not hit it in a
direct line. The boats are also roofed in with iron, and the pilots
who steer the vessel stand encased, as it were, under an iron cupola.
I imagine that these boats are well calculated for the river service,
for which they have been built. Six or seven of them had gone up the
Tennessee river the day before we reached Cairo, and while we were
there they succeeded in knocking down Fort Henry, and in carrying
off the soldiers stationed there and the officer in command. One of
the boats, however, had been penetrated by a shot which made its
way into the boiler, and the men on deck, six, I think, in number,
were scalded to death by the escaping steam. The two pilots up in
the cupola were destroyed in this terrible manner. As they were
altogether closed in by the iron roof and sides, there was no escape
for the steam. The boats, however, were well made and very powerfully
armed, and will, probably, succeed in driving the secessionist armies
away from the great river banks. By what machinery the secessionist
armies are to be followed into the interior is altogether another
question.
But there was also another fleet at Cairo, and we were informed that
we were just in time to see the first essay made at testing the
utility of this armada. It consisted of no less than thirty-eight
mortar-boats, each of which had cost £1700. These mortar-boats were
broad, flat-bottomed rafts, each constructed with a deck raised
three feet above the bottom. They were protected by high iron sides,
supposed to be proof against rifle balls, and when supplied had been
furnished each with a little boat, a rope, and four rough sweeps or
oars. They had no other furniture or belongings, and were to be moved
either by steam tugs or by the use of the long oars which were sent
with them. It was intended that one 13-inch mortar, of enormous
weight, should be put upon each, that these mortars should be fired
with twenty-three pounds of powder, and that the shell thrown should,
at a distance of three miles, fall with absolute precision into any
devoted town which the rebels might hold on the river banks. The
grandeur of the idea is almost sublime. So large an amount of powder
had, I imagine, never then been used for the single charge in any
instrument of war; and when we were told that thirty-eight of them
were to play at once on a city, and that they could be used with
absolute precision, it seemed as though the fate of Sodom and
Gomorrah could not be worse than the fate of that city. Could any
city be safe when such implements of war were about upon the waters?
But when we came to inspect the mortar-boats, our misgivings as
to any future destination for this fleet were relieved, and our
admiration was given to the smartness of the contractor who had
secured to himself the job of building them. In the first place they
had all leaked till the spaces between the bottoms and the decks were
filled with water. This space had been intended for ammunition, but
now seemed hardly to be fitted for that purpose. The officer who was
about to test them by putting a mortar into one and by firing it off
with twenty-three pounds of powder, had the water pumped out of a
selected raft, and we were towed by a steam-tug from their moorings a
mile up the river, down to the spot where the mortar lay ready to be
lifted in by a derrick. But as we turned on the river, the tug-boat
which had brought us down, was unable to hold us up against the force
of the stream. A second tug-boat was at hand, and with one on each
side we were just able, in half-an-hour, to recover the 100 yards
which we had lost down the river. The pressure against the stream
was so great, owing partly to the weight of the raft, and partly to
the fact that its flat head buried itself in the water, that it was
almost immoveable against the stream, although the mortar was not yet
on it.
It soon became manifest that no trial could be made on that day,
and so we were obliged to leave Cairo without having witnessed the
firing of the great gun. My belief is that very little evil to the
enemy will result from those mortar-boats, and that they cannot be
used with much effect. Since that time they have been used on the
Mississippi, but as yet we do not know with what result. Island
No. 10 has been taken, but I do not know that the mortar-boats
contributed much to that success. The enormous cost of moving them
against the stream of the river is in itself a barrier to their use.
When we saw them--and then they were quite new--many of the rivets
were already gone. The small boats had been stolen from some of them,
and the ropes and oars from others. There they lay, thirty-eight in
number, up against the mud-banks of the Ohio, under the boughs of the
half-clad, melancholy forest trees, as sad a spectacle of reckless
prodigality as the eye ever beheld. But the contractor who made them
no doubt was a smart man.
This armada was moored on the Ohio against the low, reedy bank, a
mile above the levee, where the old unchanged forest of nature came
down to the very edge of the river, and mixed itself with the shallow
overflowing waters. I am wrong in saying that it lay under the boughs
of the trees, for such trees do not spread themselves out with broad
branches. They stand thickly together, broken, stunted, spongy
with rot, straight and ugly, with ragged tops and shattered arms,
seemingly decayed, but still ever renewing themselves with the
rapid moist life of luxuriant forest vegetation. Nothing to my eyes
is sadder than the monotonous desolation of such scenery. We, in
England, when we read and speak of the primeval forests of America,
are apt to form pictures in our minds of woodland glades, with
spreading oaks and green mossy turf beneath,--of scenes than which
nothing that God has given us is more charming. But these forests
are not after that fashion; they offer no allurement to the lover,
no solace to the melancholy man of thought. The ground is deep with
mud, or overflown with water. The soil and the river have no defined
margins. Each tree, though full of the forms of life, has all the
appearance of death. Even to the outward eye they seem to be laden
with ague, fever, sudden chills, and pestilential malaria.
When we first visited the spot we were alone, and we walked across
from the railway line to the place at which the boats were moored.
They lay in treble rank along the shore, and immediately above them
an old steam-boat was fastened against the bank. Her back was broken,
and she was given up to ruin,--placed there that she might rot
quietly into her watery grave. It was mid-winter, and every tree
was covered with frozen sleet and small particles of snow which had
drizzled through the air; for the snow had not fallen in hearty,
honest flakes. The ground beneath our feet was crisp with frost, but
traitorous in its crispness; not frozen manfully so as to bear a
man's weight, but ready at every point to let him through into the
fat, glutinous mud below. I never saw a sadder picture, or one which
did more to awaken pity for those whose fate had fixed their abodes
in such a locality. And yet there was a beauty about it too,--a
melancholy, death-like beauty. The disordered ruin and confused decay
of the forest was all gemmed with particles of ice. The eye reaching
through the thin underwood could form for itself picturesque shapes
and solitary bowers of broken wood, which were bright with the opaque
brightness of the hoar-frost. The great river ran noiselessly along,
rapid, but still with an apparent lethargy in its waters. The ground
beneath our feet was fertile beyond compare, but as yet fertile to
death rather than to life. Where we then trod man had not yet come
with his axe and his plough; but the railroad was close to us, and
within a mile of the spot thousands of dollars had been spent in
raising a city which was to have been rich with the united wealth of
the rivers and the land. Hitherto fever and ague, mud and malaria,
had been too strong for man, and the dollars had been spent in vain.
The day, however, will come when this promontory between the two
great rivers will be a fit abode for industry. Men will settle there,
wandering down from the North and East, and toil sadly, and leave
their bones among the mud. Thin, pale-faced, joyless mothers will
come there, and grow old before their time; and sickly children will
be born, struggling up with wan faces to their sad life's labour.
But the work will go on, for it is God's work; and the earth will be
prepared for the people, and the fat rottenness of the still living
forest will be made to give forth its riches.
We found that two days at Cairo were quite enough for us. We had
seen the gun-boats and the mortar-boats, and gone through the sheds
of the soldiers. The latter were bad, comfortless, damp, and cold;
and certain quarters of the officers, into which we were hospitably
taken, were wretched abodes enough; but the sheds of Cairo did not
stink like those of Benton barracks at St. Louis, nor had illness
been prevalent there to the same degree. I do not know why this
should have been so, but such was the result of my observation. The
locality of Benton barracks must, from its nature, have been the more
healthy, but it had become by art the foulest place I ever visited.
Throughout the army it seemed to be the fact, that the men under
canvas were more comfortable, in better spirits, and also in better
health than those who were lodged in sheds. We had inspected the
Cairo army and the Cairo navy, and had also seen all that Cairo had
to show us of its own. We were thoroughly disgusted with the hotel,
and retired on the second night to bed, giving positive orders that
we might be called at half-past two, with reference to that terrible
start to be made at half-past three. As a matter of course we kept
dozing and waking till past one, in our fear lest neglect on the part
of the watcher should entail on us another day at this place; of
course we went fast asleep about the time at which we should have
roused ourselves; and of course we were called just fifteen minutes
before the train started. Everybody knows how these things always go.
And then the pair of us, jumping out of bed in that wretched chamber,
went through the mockery of washing and packing which always takes
place on such occasions;--a mockery indeed of washing, for there was
but one basin between us! And a mockery also of packing, for I left
my hair-brushes behind me! Cairo was avenged in that I had declined
to avail myself of the privileges of free citizenship which had been
offered to me in that barber's shop. And then, while we were in our
agony, pulling at the straps of our portmanteaux and swearing at the
faithlessness of the boots, up came the clerk of the hotel--the great
man from behind the bar--and scolded us prodigiously for our delay.
"Called! We had been called an hour ago!" Which statement, however,
was decidedly untrue, as we remarked, not with extreme patience. "We
should certainly be late," he said; "it would take us five minutes to
reach the train, and the cars would be off in four." Nobody who has
not experienced them can understand the agonies of such moments,--of
such moments as regards travelling in general; but none who have not
been at Cairo can understand the extreme agony produced by the threat
of a prolonged sojourn in that city. At last we were out of the
house, rushing through the mud, slush, and half-melted snow, along
the wooden track to the railway, laden with bags and coats, and
deafened by that melancholy, wailing sound, as though of a huge polar
she-bear in the pangs of travail upon an iceberg, which proceeds
from an American railway-engine before it commences its work. How
we slipped and stumbled, and splashed and swore, rushing along in
the dark night, with buttons loose, and our clothes half on! And how
pitilessly we were treated! We gained our cars, and even succeeded in
bringing with us our luggage; but we did not do so with the sympathy,
but amidst the derision of the bystanders. And then the seats were
all full, and we found that there was a lower depth even in the
terrible deep of a railway train in a western State. There was a
second-class carriage, prepared, I presume, for those who esteemed
themselves too dirty for association with the aristocracy of Cairo;
and into this we flung ourselves. Even this was a joy to us, for we
were being carried away from Eden. We had acknowledged ourselves to
be no fitting colleagues for Mark Tapley, and would have been glad
to escape from Cairo even had we worked our way out of the place
as assistant-stokers to the engine-driver. Poor Cairo! unfortunate
Cairo! "It is about played out!" said its citizen to me. But in truth
the play was commenced a little too soon. Those players have played
out; but another set will yet have their innings, and make a score
that shall perhaps be talked of far and wide in the western world.
We were still bent upon army inspection, and with this purpose went
back from Cairo to Louisville in Kentucky. I had passed through
Louisville before, as told in my last chapter, but had not gone south
from Louisville towards the Green River, and had seen nothing of
General Buell's soldiers. I should have mentioned before that when we
were at St. Louis, we asked General Halleck, the officer in command
of the northern army of Missouri, whether he could allow us to pass
through his lines to the South. This he assured us he was forbidden
to do, at the same time offering us every facility in his power for
such an expedition if we could obtain the consent of Mr. Seward,
who at that time had apparently succeeded in engrossing into his
own hands, for the moment, supreme authority in all matters of
Government. Before leaving Washington we had determined not to ask
Mr. Seward, having but little hope of obtaining his permission, and
being unwilling to encounter his refusal. Before going to General
Halleck we had considered the question of visiting the land of Dixie
without permission from any of the men in authority. I ascertained
that this might easily have been done from Kentucky to Tennessee,
but that it could only be done on foot. There are very few available
roads running North and South through these States. The railways came
before roads; and even where the railways are far asunder, almost
all the traffic of the country takes itself to them, preferring a
long circuitous conveyance with steam, to short distances without.
Consequently such roads as there are run laterally to the railways,
meeting them at this point or that, and thus maintaining the
communication of the country. Now the railways were of course in the
hands of the armies. The few direct roads leading from North to South
were in the same condition, and the bye-roads were impassable from
mud. The frontier of the North therefore, though very extended,
was not very easily to be passed, unless, as I have said before,
by men on foot. For myself I confess that I was anxious to go
South; but not to do so without my coats and trousers, or shirts
and pocket-handkerchiefs. The readiest way of getting across the
line,--and the way which was I believe the most frequently used,--was
from below Baltimore in Maryland by boat across the Potomac. But in
this there was a considerable danger of being taken, and I had no
desire to become a state-prisoner in the hands of Mr. Seward under
circumstances which would have justified our Minister in asking for
my release only as a matter of favour. Therefore when at St. Louis,
I gave up all hopes of seeing "Dixie" during my present stay in
America. I presume it to be generally known that Dixie is the negro's
heaven, and that the southern slave States, in which it is presumed
that they have found a Paradise, have since the beginning of the war
been so named.
We remained a few days at Louisville, and were greatly struck with
the natural beauty of the country around it. Indeed, as far as I was
enabled to see, Kentucky has superior attractions as a place of rural
residence for an English gentleman, to any other State in the Union.
There is nothing of landscape there equal to the banks of the upper
Mississippi, or to some parts of the Hudson river. It has none of
the wild grandeur of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, nor does
it break itself into valleys equal to those of the Alleghanies in
Pennsylvania. But all those are beauties for the tourist rather
than for the resident. In Kentucky the land lies in knolls and soft
sloping hills. The trees stand apart, forming forest openings. The
herbage is rich, and the soil, though not fertile like the prairies
of Illinois, or the river bottoms of the Mississippi and its
tributaries, is good, steadfast, wholesome farming ground. It is a
fine country for a resident gentleman farmer, and in its outward
aspect reminds me more of England in its rural aspects, than any
other State which I visited. Round Louisville there are beautiful
sites for houses, of which advantage in some instances has been
taken. But, nevertheless, Louisville though a well-built, handsome
city, is not now a thriving city. I liked it because the hotel was
above par, and because the country round it was good for walking;
but it has not advanced as Cincinnati and St. Louis have advanced.
And yet its position on the Ohio is favourable, and it is well
circumstanced as regards the wants of its own State. But it is not
a free-soil city. Nor indeed is St. Louis; but St. Louis is tending
that way, and has but little to do with the "domestic institution."
At the hotels in Cincinnati and St. Louis you are served by white
men, and are very badly served. At Louisville the ministration is by
black men, "bound to labour." The difference in the comfort is very
great. The white servants are noisy, dirty, forgetful, indifferent,
and sometimes impudent. The negroes are the very reverse of all this;
you cannot hurry them; but in all other respects,--and perhaps even
in that respect also,--they are good servants. This is the work for
which they seem to have been intended. But nevertheless where they
are, life and energy seem to languish, and prosperity cannot make any
true advance. They are symbols of the luxury of the white men who
employ them, and as such are signs of decay and emblems of decreasing
power. They are good labourers themselves, but their very presence
makes labour dishonourable. That Kentucky will speedily rid herself
of the institution I believe firmly. When she has so done, the
commercial city of that State may perhaps go a-head again like her
sisters.
At this very time the Federal army was commencing that series of
active movements in Kentucky and through Tennessee which led to such
important results, and gave to the North the first solid victories
which they had gained since the contest began. On the 19th of January
one wing of General Buell's army, under General Thomas, had defeated
the secessionists near Somerset, in the south-eastern district of
Kentucky, under General Zollicoffer, who was there killed. But in
that action the attack was made by Zollicoffer and the secessionists.
When we were at Louisville we heard of the success of that gun-boat
expedition up the Tennessee river by which Fort Henry was taken. Fort
Henry had been built by the Confederates on the Tennessee,--exactly
on the confines of the States of Tennessee and Kentucky. They had
also another fort, Fort Donnelson, on the Cumberland river, which at
that point runs parallel to the Tennessee, and is there distant
from it but a very few miles. Both these rivers run into the Ohio.
Nashville, which is the capital of Tennessee, is higher up on the
Cumberland; and it was now intended to send the gun-boats down the
Tennessee back into the Ohio, and thence up the Cumberland, there to
attack Fort Donnelson, and afterwards to assist General Buell's army
in making its way down to Nashville. The gun-boats were attached to
General Halleck's army, and received their directions from St. Louis.
General Buell's head-quarters were at Louisville, and his advanced
position was on the Green River, on the line of the railway from
Louisville to Nashville. The secessionists had destroyed the railway
bridge over the Green River, and were now lying at Bowling Green,
between the Green River and Nashville. This place it was understood
that they had fortified.
Matters were in this position when we got a military pass to go down
by the railway to the army on the Green River,--for the railway was
open to no one without a military pass;--and we started, trusting
that Providence would supply us with rations and quarters. An officer
attached to General Buell's staff, with whom however our acquaintance
was of the very slightest, had telegraphed down to say that we were
coming. I cannot say that I expected much from the message, seeing
that it simply amounted to a very thin introduction to a general
officer to whom we were strangers even by name, from a gentleman to
whom we had brought a note from another gentleman whose acquaintance
we had chanced to pick up on the road. We manifestly had no right to
expect much; but to us, expecting very little, very much was given.
General Johnson was the officer to whose care we were confided, he
being a brigadier under General M'Cook, who commanded the advance.
We were met by an aide-de-camp and saddle-horses, and soon found
ourselves in the General's tent, or rather in a shanty formed of
solid upright wooden logs, driven into the ground with the bark still
on, and having the interstices filled in with clay. This was roofed
with canvas, and altogether made a very eligible military residence.
The General slept in a big box about nine feet long and four broad
which occupied one end of the shanty, and he seemed in all his
fixings to be as comfortably put up as any gentleman might be when
out on such a picnic as this. We arrived in time for dinner, which
was brought in, table and all, by two negroes. The party was made up
by a doctor, who carved, and two of the staff, and a very nice dinner
we had. In half-an-hour we were intimate with the whole party, and
as familiar with the things around us as though we had been living
in tents all our lives. Indeed I had by this time been so often in
the tents of the northern army, that I almost felt entitled to make
myself at home. It has seemed to me that an Englishman has always
been made welcome in these camps. There has been and is at this
moment a terribly bitter feeling among Americans against England, and
I have heard this expressed quite as loudly by men in the army as by
civilians; but I think I may say that this has never been brought to
bear upon individual intercourse. Certainly we have said some very
sharp things of them,--words which, whether true or false, whether
deserved or undeserved, must have been offensive to them. I have
known this feeling of offence to amount almost to an agony of anger.
But nevertheless I have never seen any falling off in the hospitality
and courtesy generally shown by a civilized people to passing
visitors. I have argued the matter of England's course throughout
the war, till I have been hoarse with asseverating the rectitude of
her conduct and her national unselfishness. I have met very strong
opponents on the subject, and have been coerced into loud strains of
voice; but I never yet met one American who was personally uncivil
to me as an Englishman, or who seemed to be made personally angry by
my remarks. I found no coldness in that hospitality to which as a
stranger I was entitled, because of the national ill-feeling which
circumstances have engendered. And while on this subject I will
remark, that when travelling I have found it expedient to let
those with whom I might chance to talk know at once that I was an
Englishman. In fault of such knowledge things would be said which
could not but be disagreeable to me; but not even from any rough
western enthusiast in a railway carriage have I ever heard a word
spoken insolently to England, after I had made my nationality known.
I have learned that Wellington was beaten at Waterloo; that Lord
Palmerston was so unpopular that he could not walk alone in the
streets; that the House of Commons was an acknowledged failure; that
starvation was the normal condition of the British people, and that
the Queen was a bloodthirsty tyrant. But these assertions were not
made with the intention that they should be heard by an Englishman.
To us as a nation they are at the present moment unjust almost beyond
belief; but I do not think that the feeling has ever taken the guise
of personal discourtesy.
We spent two days in the camp close upon the Green River, and I do
not know that I enjoyed any days of my trip more thoroughly than I
did these. In truth for the last month, since I had left Washington,
my life had not been one of enjoyment. I had been rolling in mud
and had been damp with filth. Camp Wood, as they called this
military settlement on the Green River, was also muddy; but we were
excellently well-mounted; the weather was very cold, but peculiarly
fine, and the soldiers around us, as far as we could judge, seemed to
be better off in all respects than those we had visited at St. Louis,
at Rolla, or at Cairo. They were all in tents, and seemed to be
light-spirited and happy. Their rations were excellent,--but so much
may, I think, be said of the whole northern army from Alexandria on
the Potomac to Springfield in the west of Missouri. There was very
little illness at that time in the camp in Kentucky, and the reports
made to us led us to think that on the whole this had been the most
healthy division of the army. The men, moreover, were less muddy than
their brethren either east or west of them,--at any rate this may be
said of them as regards the infantry.
But perhaps the greatest charm of the place to me was the beauty of
the scenery. The Green River at this spot is as picturesque a stream
as I ever remember to have seen in such a country. It lies low down
between high banks, and curves hither and thither, never keeping a
straight line. Its banks are wooded; but not, as is so common in
America, by continuous, stunted, uninteresting forest, but by large
single trees standing on small patches of meadow by the water-side,
with the high banks rising over them, with glades through them open
for the horseman. The rides here in summer must be very lovely. Even
in winter they were so, and made me in love with the place in spite
of that brown, dull, barren aspect which the presence of an army
always creates. I have said that the railway bridge which crossed
the Green River at this spot had been destroyed by the secessionists.
This had been done effectually as regarded the passage of trains, but
only in part as regarded the absolute fabric of the bridge. It had
been, and still was when I saw it, a beautifully light construction,
made of iron and supported over a valley, rather than over a river,
on tall stone piers. One of these piers had been blown up; but when
we were there, the bridge had been repaired with beams and wooden
shafts. This had just been completed, and an engine had passed over
it. I must confess that it looked to me most perilously insecure; but
the eye uneducated in such mysteries is a bad judge of engineering
work. I passed with a horse backwards and forwards on it, and it did
not tumble down then; but I confess that on the first attempt I was
glad enough to lead the horse by the bridle.
That bridge was certainly a beautiful fabric, and built in a most
lovely spot. Immediately under it there was also a pontoon bridge.
The tents of General M'Cook's division were immediately at the
northern end of it, and the whole place was alive with soldiers,
nailing down planks, pulling up temporary rails at each side,
carrying over straw for the horses, and preparing for the general
advance of the troops. It was a glorious day. There had been heavy
frost at night; but the air was dry, and the sun though cold was
bright. I do not know when I saw a prettier picture. It would perhaps
have been nothing without the loveliness of the river scenery; but
the winding of the stream at the spot, the sharp wooded hills on each
side, the forest openings, and the busy, eager, strange life together
filled the place with no common interest. The officers of the army at
the spot spoke with bitterest condemnation of the vandalism of their
enemy in destroying the bridge. The justice of the indignation, I
ventured very strongly to question. "Surely you would have destroyed
their bridge?" I said. "But they are rebels," was the answer. It has
been so throughout the contest; and the same argument has been held
by soldiers and by non-soldiers,--by women and by men. "Grant that
they are rebels," I have answered. "But when rebels fight they cannot
be expected to be more scrupulous in their mode of doing so than
their enemies who are not rebels." The whole population of the North
has from the beginning of this war considered themselves entitled to
all the privileges of belligerents; but have called their enemies
Goths and Vandals for even claiming those privileges for themselves.
The same feeling was at the bottom of their animosity against
England. Because the South was in rebellion, England should
have consented to allow the North to assume all the rights of
a belligerent, and should have denied all those rights to the
South! Nobody has seemed to understand that any privilege which a
belligerent can claim must depend on the very fact of his being in
encounter with some other party having the same privilege. Our press
has animadverted very strongly on the States government for the
apparent untruthfulness of their arguments on this matter; but I
profess that I believe that Mr. Seward and his colleagues,--and
not they only but the whole nation,--have so thoroughly deceived
themselves on this subject, have so talked and speechified themselves
into a misunderstanding of the matter, that they have taught
themselves to think that the men of the South could be entitled to
no consideration from any quarter. To have rebelled against the
stars and stripes seems to a northern man to be a crime putting the
criminal altogether out of all courts,--a crime which should have
armed the hands of all men against him, as the hands of all men
are armed at a dog that is mad, or a tiger that has escaped from
its keeper. It is singular that such a people, a people that has
founded itself on rebellion, should have such a horror of rebellion;
but, as far as my observation may have enabled me to read their
feelings rightly, I do believe that it has been as sincere as it is
irrational.
We were out riding early on the morning of the second day of our
sojourn in the camp, and met the division of General Mitchell, a
detachment of General Buell's army, which had been in camp between
the Green River and Louisville, going forward to the bridge which was
then being prepared for their passage. This division consisted of
about 12,000 men, and the road was crowded throughout the whole day
with them and their waggons. We first passed a regiment of cavalry,
which appeared to be endless. Their cavalry regiments are, in
general, more numerous than those of the infantry, and on this
occasion we saw, I believe, about 1200 men pass by us. Their horses
were strong and serviceable, and the men were stout and in good
health; but the general appearance of everything about them was
rough and dirty. The American cavalry have always looked to me like
brigands. A party of them would, I think, make a better picture than
an equal number of our dragoons; but if they are to be regarded in
any other view than that of the picturesque, it does not seem to me
that they have been got up successfully. On this occasion they were
forming themselves into a picture for my behoof, and as the picture
was, as a picture, very good, I at least have no reason to complain.
We were taken to see one German regiment, a regiment of which all
the privates were German and all the officers save one,--I think the
surgeon. We saw the men in their tents, and the food which they eat,
and were disposed to think that hitherto things were going well with
them. In the evening the colonel and lieutenant-colonel, both of whom
had been in the Prussian service, if I remember rightly, came up to
the general's quarters, and we spent the evening together in smoking
cigars and discussing slavery round the stove. I shall never forget
that night, or the vehement abolition enthusiasm of the two German
colonels. Our host had told us that he was a slave-owner; and as our
wants were supplied by two sable ministers, I concluded that he had
brought with him a portion of his domestic institution. Under such
circumstances I myself should have avoided such a subject, having
been taught to believe that southern gentlemen did not generally take
delight in open discussions on the subject. But had we been arguing
the question of the population of the planet Jupiter, or the final
possibility of the transmutation of metals, the matter could not have
been handled with less personal feeling. The Germans, however, spoke
the sentiments of all the Germans of the western States,--that is,
of all the Protestant Germans, and to them is confined the political
influence held by the German immigrants. They all regard slavery
as an evil, holding on the matter opinions quite as strong as ours
have ever been. And they argue that as slavery is an evil, it should
therefore be abolished at once. Their opinions are as strong as ours
have ever been, and they have not had our West Indian experience.
Any one desiring to understand the present political position of the
States should realize the fact of the present German influence on
political questions. Many say that the present President was returned
by German voters. In one sense this is true, for he certainly could
not have been returned without them; but for them, or for their
assistance, Mr. Breckinridge would have been President, and this
civil war would not have come to pass. As abolitionists they are much
more powerful than the republicans of New England, and also more in
earnest. In New England the matter is discussed politically; in the
great western towns, where the Germans congregate by thousands, they
profess to view it philosophically. A man, as a man, is entitled to
freedom. That is their argument, and it is a very old one. When you
ask them what they would propose to do with 4,000,000 of enfranchised
slaves and with their ruined masters,--how they would manage the
affairs of those 12,000,000 of people, all whose wealth and work and
very life have hitherto been hinged and hung upon slavery, they again
ask you whether slavery is not in itself bad, and whether anything
acknowledged to be bad should be allowed to remain.
But the American Germans are in earnest, and I am strongly of opinion
that they will so far have their way, that the country which for
the future will be their country, will exist without the taint of
slavery. In the northern nationality, which will reform itself after
this war is over, there will, I think, be no slave State. That final
battle of abolition will have to be fought among a people apart; and
I must fear that while it lasts their national prosperity will not be
great.