CHAPTER VII. Niagara
Niagara—Impression of the Falls—Battle scenes in the neighbourhood—A village of Indians—General Scott—Hostile movements on both sides—The Hudson—Military school at West Point—Return to New York—Altered appearance of the city—Misery and suffering—Altered state of public opinion, as to the Union and towards Great Britain.
At eight o’clock on the morning of the 27th I left Chicago for Niagara, which was so temptingly near that I resolved to make a detour by that route to New York. The line from the city which I took skirts the southern extremity of Lake Michigan for many miles, and leaving its borders at New Buffalo, traverses the southern portion of the state of Michigan by Albion and Jackson to the town of Detroit, or the outflow of Lake St. Clair into Lake Erie, a distance of 284 miles, which was accomplished in about twelve hours. The most enthusiastic patriot could not affirm the country was interesting. The names of the stations were certainly novel to a Britisher. Thus we had Kalumet, Pokagon, Dowagiac, Kalamazoo, Ypsilanti, among the more familiar titles of Chelsea, Marengo, Albion, and Parma.
It was dusk when we reached the steam ferry-boat at Detroit, which took us across to Windsor; but through the dusk I could perceive the Union Jack waving above the unimpressive little town which bears a name so respected by British ears. The customs’ inspections seemed very mild; and I was not much impressed by the representative of the British crown, who, with a brass button on his coat and a very husky voice, exercised his powers on behalf of Her Majesty at the landing-place of Windsor. The officers of the railway company, who received me as if I had been an old friend, and welcomed me as if I had just got out of a battle-field. “Well, I do wonder them Yankees have ever let you come out alive.” “May I ask why?” “Oh, because you have not been praising them all round, sir. Why even the Northern chaps get angry with a Britisher, as they call us, if he attempts to say a word against those cursed niggers.”
It did not appear the Americans are quite so thin-skinned, for whilst crossing in the steamer a passage of arms between the Captain, who was a genuine John Bull, and a Michigander, in the style which is called chaff or slang, diverted most of the auditors, although it was very much to the disadvantage of the Union champion. The Michigan man had threatened the Captain that Canada would be annexed as the consequence of our infamous conduct. “Why, I tell you,” said the Captain, “we’d just draw up the negro chaps from our barbers’ shops, and tell them we’d send them to Illinois if they did not lick you; and I believe every creature in Michigan, pigs and all, would run before them into Pennsylvania. We know what you are up to, you and them Maine chaps; but Lor’ bless you, sooner than take such a lot, we’d give you ten dollars a head to make you stay in your own country; and we know you would go to the next worst place before your time for half the money. The very Bluenoses would secede if you were permitted to come under the old flag.”
All night we travelled. A long day through a dreary, ill-settled, pine-wooded, half-cleared country, swarming with mosquitoes and biting flies, and famous for fevers. Just about daybreak the train stopped.
“Now, then,” said an English voice; “now, then, who’s for Clifton Hotel? All passengers leave cars for this side of the Falls.” Consigning our baggage to the commissioner of the Clifton, my companion, Mr. Ward, and myself resolved to walk along the banks of the river to the hotel, which is some two miles and a half distant, and set out whilst it was still so obscure that the outline of the beautiful bridge which springs so lightly across the chasm, filled with furious hurrying waters, hundreds of feet below, was visible only as is the tracery of some cathedral arch through the dim light of the cloister.
The road follows the course of the stream, which whirls and gurgles in an Alpine torrent, many times magnified, in a deep gorge like that of the Tête Noire. As the rude bellow of the steam-engine and the rattle of the train proceeding on its journey were dying away, the echoes seemed to swell into a sustained, reverberating, hollow sound from the perpendicular banks of the St. Lawrence. We listened. “It is the noise of the Falls,” said my companion; and as we walked on the sound became louder, filling the air with a strange quavering note, which played about a tremendous uniform bass note, and silencing every other. Trees closed in the road on the river side, but when we had walked a mile or so, the lovely light of morning spreading with our steps, suddenly through an opening in the branches there appeared, closing up the vista—white, flickering, indistinct, and shroud-like—the Falls, rushing into a grave of black waters, and uttering that tremendous cry which can never be forgotten.
I have heard many people say they were disappointed with the first impression of Niagara. Let those who desire to see the water-leap in all its grandeur, approach it as I did, and I cannot conceive what their expectations are if they do not confess the sight exceeded their highest ideal. I do not pretend to describe the sensations or to endeavour to give the effect produced on me by the scene or by the Falls, then or subsequently; but I must say words can do no more than confuse the writer’s own ideas of the grandeur of the sight, and mislead altogether those who read them. It is of no avail to do laborious statistics, and tell us how many gallons rush over in that down-flung ocean every second, or how wide it is, how high it is, how deep the earth-piercing caverns beneath. For my own part, I always feel the distance of the sun to be insignificant, when I read it is so many hundreds of thousands of miles away, compared with the feeling of utter inaccessibility to anything human which is caused by it when its setting rays illuminate some purple ocean studded with golden islands in dreamland.
Niagara is rolling its waters over the barrier. Larger and louder it grows upon us.
“I hope the hotel is not full,” quoth my friend. I confess, for the time, I forgot all about Niagara, and was perturbed concerning a breakfastless ramble and a hunt after lodgings by the borders of the great river.
But although Clifton Hotel was full enough, there was room for us, too; and for two days a strange, weird-kind of life I led, alternating between the roar of the cataract outside and the din of politics within; for, be it known, that at the Canadian side of the Falls many Americans of the Southern States, who would not pollute their footsteps by contact with the soil of Yankee-land, were sojourning, and that merchants and bankers of New York and other Northern cities had selected it as their summer retreat, and, indeed, with reason; for after excursions on both sides of the Falls, the comparative seclusion of the settlements on the left bank appears to me to render it infinitely preferable to the Rosherville gentism and semi-rowdyism of the large American hotels and settlements on the other side.
It was distressing to find that Niagara was surrounded by the paraphernalia of a fixed fair. I had looked forward to a certain degree of solitude. It appeared impossible that man could cockneyfy such a magnificent display of force and grandeur in nature. But, alas! it is haunted by what poor Albert Smith used to denominate “harpies.” The hateful race of guides infest the precincts of the hotels, waylay you in the lanes, and prowl about the unguarded moments of reverie. There are miserable little peepshows and photographers, bird stuffers, shell polishers, collectors of crystals, and proprietors of natural curiosity shops.
There is, besides, a large village population. There is a watering-side air about the people who walk along the road worse than all their mills and factories working their water privileges at both sides of the stream. At the American side there is a lanky, pretentious town, with big hotels, shops of Indian curiosities, and all the meagre forms of the bazaar life reduced to a minimum of attractiveness which destroy the comfort of a traveller in Switzerland. I had scarcely been an hour in the hotel before I was asked to look at the Falls through a little piece of coloured glass. Next I was solicited to purchase a collection of muddy photographs, representing what I could look at with my own eyes for nothing. Not finally by any means, I was assailed by a gentleman who was particularly desirous of selling me an enormous pair of cow’s-horns and a stuffed hawk. Small booths and peepshows corrupt the very margin of the bank, and close by the remnant of the “Table Rock,” a Jew (who, by-the-bye, deserves infinite credit for the zeal and energy he has thrown into the collections for his museum), exhibits bottled rattlesnakes, stuffed monkeys, Egyptian mummies, series of coins, with a small living menagerie attached to the shop, in which articles of Indian manufacture are exposed for sale. It was too bad to be asked to admire such lusus naturæ as double-headed calves and dogs with three necks by the banks of Niagara.
As I said before, I am not going to essay the impossible or to describe the Falls. On the English side there are, independently of other attractions, some scenes of recent historic interest, for close to Niagara are Lundy’s Lane and Chippewa. There are few persons in England aware of the exceedingly severe fighting which characterised the contests between the Americans and the English and Canadian troops during the campaign of 1814. At Chippewa, for example, Major-General Riall, who, with 2000 men, one howitzer, and two 24-pounders, attacked a force of Americans of a similar strength, was repulsed with a loss of 500 killed and wounded; and on the morning of the 25th of July the action of Lundy’s Lane, between four brigades of Americans and seven field-pieces, and 3100 men of the British and seven field-pieces, took place, in which the Americans were worsted, and retired with a loss of 854 men and two guns, whilst the British lost 878. On the 14th of August following Sir Gordon Drummond was repulsed with a loss of 905 men out of his small force in an attack on Fort Erie; and on the 17th of September an American sortie from the place was defeated with a loss of 510 killed and wounded, the British having lost 609. In effect the American campaign was unsuccessful; but their failures were redeemed by their successes on Lake Champlain, and in the affair of Plattsburgh.
There was more hard fighting than strategy in these battles, and their results were not, on the whole, creditable to the military skill of either party. They were sanguinary in proportion to the number of troops engaged, but they were very petty skirmishes considered in the light of contests between two great nations for the purpose of obtaining specific results. As England was engaged in a great war in Europe, was far removed from the scene of operations, was destitute of steam-power, whilst America was fighting, as it were, on her own soil, close at hand, with a full opportunity of putting forth all her strength, the complete defeat of the American invasion of Canada was more honourable to our arms than the successes which the Americans achieved in resisting aggressive demonstrations.
In the great hotel of Clifton we had every day a little war of our own, for there were——but why should I mention names? Has not government its bastiles? There were in effect men, and women too, who regarded the people of the Northern States and the government they had selected very much as the men of ’98 looked upon the government and people of England; but withal these strong Southerners were not very favourable to a country which they regarded as the natural ally of the abolitionists, simply because it had resolved to be neutral.
On the Canadian side these rebels were secure. British authority was embodied in a respectable old Scottish gentleman, whose duty it was to prevent smuggling across the boiling waters of the St. Lawrence, and who performed it with zeal and diligence worthy of a higher post. There was indeed a withered triumphal arch which stood over the spot where the young Prince of our royal house had passed on his way to the Table Rock, but beyond these signs and tokens there was nothing to distinguish the American from the British side, except the greater size and activity of the settlements upon the right bank. There is no power in nature, according to great engineers, which cannot be forced to succumb to the influence of money. The American papers actually announce that “Niagara is to be sold;” the proprietors of the land upon their side of the water have resolved to sell their water privileges! A capitalist could render the islands the most beautifully attractive places in the world.
Life at Niagara is like that at most watering-places, though it is a desecration to apply such a term to the Falls, and there is no bathing there, except that which is confined to the precincts of the hotels and to the ingenious establishment on the American side, which permits one to enjoy the full rush of the current in covered rooms with sides pierced, to let it come through with undiminished force and with perfect security to the bather. There are drives and picnics, and mild excursions to obscure places in the neighbourhood, where only the roar of the Falls gives an idea of their presence. The rambles about the islands, and the views of the boiling rapids above them, are delightful, but I am glad to hear from one of the guides that the great excitement of seeing a man and boat carried over occurs but rarely. Every year, however, hapless creatures crossing from one shore to the other, by some error of judgment or miscalculation of strength, or malign influence, are swept away into the rapids, and then, notwithstanding the wonderful rescues effected by the American blacksmith and unwonted kindnesses of fortune, there is little chance of saving body corporate or incorporate from the headlong swoop to destruction.
Next to the purveyors of curiosities and hotel keepers, the Indians, who live in a village at some distance from Niagara, reap the largest profit from the crowds of visitors who repair annually to the Falls. They are a harmless and by no means elevated race of semi-civilised savages, whose energies are expended on whiskey, feather fans, bark canoes, ornamental moccasins, and carved pipe stems. I had arranged for an excursion to see them in their wigwams one morning, when the news was brought to me that General Scott had ordered, or been forced to order the advance of the Federal troops encamped in front of Washington, under the command of M‘Dowell, against the Confederates, commanded by Beauregard, who was described as occupying a most formidable position, covered with entrenchments and batteries in front of a ridge of hills, through which the railway passes to Richmond.
The New York papers represent the Federal army to be of some grand indefinite strength, varying from 60,000 to 120,000 men, full of fight, admirably equipped, well disciplined, and provided with an overwhelming force of artillery. General Scott, I am very well assured, did not feel such confidence in the result of an invasion of Virginia, that he would hurry raw levies and a rabble of regiments to undertake a most arduous military operation.
The day I was introduced to the General he was seated at a table in the unpretending room which served as his boudoir in the still humbler house where he held his head-quarters. On the table before him were some plans and maps of the harbour defences of the Southern ports. I inferred he was about to organise a force for the occupation of positions along the coast. But when I mentioned my impression to one of his officers, he said, “Oh, no, the General advised that long ago; but he is now convinced we are too late. All he can hope, now, is to be allowed time to prepare a force for the field, but there are hopes that some compromise will yet take place.”
The probabilities of this compromise have vanished: few entertain them now. They have been hanging Secessionists in Illinois, and the court-house itself has been made the scene of Lynch law murder in Ogle county. Petitions, prepared by citizens of New York to the President, for a general convention to consider a compromise, have been seized. The Confederates have raised batteries along the Virginian shore of the Potomac. General Banks, at Baltimore, has deposed the police authorities “proprio motu,” in spite of the protest of the board. Engagements have occurred between the Federal steamers and the Confederate batteries on the Potomac. On all points, wherever the Federal pickets have advanced in Virginia, they have encountered opposition and have been obliged to halt or to retire.
As I stood on the verandah this morning, looking for the last time on the Falls, which were covered with a grey mist, that rose from the river and towered unto the sky in columns which were lost in the clouds, a voice beside me said, “Mr. Russell, that is something like the present condition of our country, mists and darkness obscure it now, but we know the great waters are rushing behind, and will flow till eternity.” The speaker was an earnest, thoughtful man, but the country of which he spoke was the land of the South. “And do you think,” said I, “when the mists clear away the Falls will be as full and as grand as before?” “Well,” he replied, “they are great as it is, though a rock divides them; we have merely thrown our rock into the waters,—they will meet all the same in the pool below.” A coloured boy, who has waited on me at the hotel, hearing I was going away, entreated me to take him on any terms, which were, I found, an advance of nine dollars, and twenty dollars a month, and, as I heard a good account of him from the landlord, I installed the young man into my service. In the evening I left Niagara on my way to New York.
July 2nd.—At early dawn this morning, looking out of the sleeping car, I saw through the mist a broad, placid river on the right, and on the left high wooded banks running sharply into the stream, against the base of which the rails were laid. West Point, which is celebrated for its picturesque scenery, as much as for its military school, could not be seen through the fog, and I regretted time did not allow me to stop and pay a visit to the academy. I was obliged to content myself with the handiwork of some of the ex-pupils. The only camaraderie I have witnessed in America exists among the West Point men. It is to Americans what our great public schools are to young Englishmen. To take a high place at West Point is to be a first-class man, or wrangler. The academy turns out a kind of military aristocracy, and I have heard complaints that the Irish and Germans are almost completely excluded, because the nominations to West Point are obtained by political influence; and the foreign element, though powerful at the ballot box, has no enduring strength. The Murphies and Schmidts seldom succeed in shoving their sons into the American institution. North and South, I have observed, the old pupils refer everything military to West Point. “I was with Beauregard at West Point. He was three above me.” Or, “M‘Dowell and I were in the same class.” An officer is measured by what he did there, and if professional jealousies date from the state of common pupilage, so do lasting friendships. I heard Beauregard, Lawton, Hardee, Bragg, and others, speak of M‘Dowell, Lyon, M‘Clellan, and other men of the academy, as their names turned up in the Northern papers, evidently judging of them by the old school standard. The number of men who have been educated there greatly exceeds the modest requirements of the army. But there is likelihood of their being all in full work very soon.
At about nine a.m., the train reached New York, and in driving to the house of Mr. Duncan, who accompanied me from Niagara, the first thing which struck me was the changed aspect of the streets. Instead of peaceful citizens, men in military uniforms thronged the pathways, and such multitudes of United States’ flags floated from the windows and roofs of the houses as to convey the impression that it was a great holiday festival. The appearance of New York when I first saw it was very different. For one day, indeed, after my arrival, there were men in uniform to be seen in the streets, but they disappeared after St. Patrick had been duly honoured, and it was very rarely I ever saw a man in soldier’s clothes during the rest of my stay. Now, fully a third of the people carried arms, and were dressed in some kind of martial garb.
The walls are covered with placards from military companies offering inducements to recruits. An outburst of military tailors has taken place in the streets; shops are devoted to militia equipments; rifles, pistols, swords, plumes, long boots, saddle, bridle, camp beds, canteens, tents, knapsacks, have usurped the place of the ordinary articles of traffic. Pictures and engravings—bad, and very bad—of the “battles” of Big Bethel and Vienna, full of furious charges, smoke and dismembered bodies, have driven the French prints out of the windows. Innumerable “General Scotts” glower at you from every turn, making the General look wiser than he or any man ever was. Ellsworths in almost equal proportion, Grebles and Winthrops—the Union martyrs—and Tompkins, the temporary hero of Fairfax court-house.
The “flag of our country” is represented in a coloured engraving, the original of which was not destitute of poetical feeling, as an angry blue sky through which meteors fly streaked by the winds, whilst between the red stripes the stars just shine out from the heavens, the flag-staff being typified by a forest tree bending to the force of the blast. The Americans like this idea—to my mind it is significant of bloodshed and disaster. And why not! What would become of all these pseudo-Zouaves who have come out like an eruption over the States, and are in no respect, not even in their baggy breeches, like their great originals, if this war were not to go on? I thought I had had enough of Zouaves in New Orleans, but dîs aliter visum.
They are overrunning society, and the streets here, and the dress which becomes the broad-chested, stumpy, short-legged Celt, who seems specially intended for it, is singularly unbecoming to the tall and slightly-built American. Songs “On to glory,” “Our country,” new versions of “Hail Columbia,” which certainly cannot be considered by even American complacency a “happy land” when its inhabitants are preparing to cut each other’s throats; of the “star-spangled banner,” are displayed in booksellers’ and music-shop windows, and patriotic sentences emblazoned on flags float from many houses. The ridiculous habit of dressing up children and young people up to ten and twelve years of age as Zouaves and vivandières has been caught up by the old people, and Mars would die with laughter if he saw some of the abdominous, be-spectacled light infantry men who are hobbling along the pavement.
There has been indeed a change in New York: externally it is most remarkable, but I cannot at all admit that the abuse with which I was assailed for describing the indifference which prevailed on my arrival was in the least degree justified. I was desirous of learning how far the tone of conversation “in the city” had altered, and soon after breakfast I went down Broadway to Pine Street and Wall Street. The street in all its length was almost draped with flags—the warlike character of the shops was intensified. In front of one shop window there was a large crowd gazing with interest at some object which I at last succeeded in feasting my eyes upon. A grey cap with a tinsel badge in front, and the cloth stained with blood was displayed, with the words, “Cap of Secession officer killed in action.” On my way I observed another crowd of women, some with children in their arms standing in front of a large house and gazing up earnestly and angrily at the windows. I found they were wives, mothers, and sisters, and daughters of volunteers who had gone off and left them destitute.
The misery thus caused has been so great that the citizens of New York have raised a fund to provide food, clothes, and a little money—a poor relief, in fact, for them, and it was plain they were much needed, though some of the applicants did not seem to belong to a class accustomed to seek aid from the public. This already! But Wall Street and Pine Street are bent on battle. And so this day, hot from the South and impressed with the firm resolve of the people, and finding that the North has been lashing itself into fury, I sit down and write to England, on my return from the city. “At present dismiss entirely the idea, no matter how it may originate, that there will be, or can be, peace, compromise, union, or secession, till war has determined the issue.”
As long as there was a chance that the struggle might not take place, the merchants of New York were silent, fearful of offending their Southern friends and connections, but inflicting infinite damage on their own government and misleading both sides. Their sentiments, sympathies, and business bound them with the South; and, indeed, till “the glorious uprising” the South believed New York was with them, as might be credited from the tone of some organs in the press, and I remember hearing it said by Southerners in Washington, that it was very likely New York would go out of the Union! When the merchants, however, saw that the South was determined to quit the Union, they resolved to avert the permanent loss of the great profits derived from their connection with the South by some present sacrifices. They rushed to the platforms—the battle-cry was sounded from almost very pulpit—flag raisings took place in every square, like the planting of the tree of liberty in France in 1848, and the oath was taken to trample Secession under foot, and to quench the fire of the Southern heart for ever.
The change in manner, in tone, in argument, is most remarkable. I met men to-day who last March argued coolly and philosophically about the right of Secession. They are now furious at the idea of such wickedness—furious with England, because she does not deny their own famous doctrine of the sacred right of insurrection. “We must maintain our glorious Union, sir.” “We must have a country.” “We cannot allow two nations to grow up on this Continent, sir.” “We must possess the entire control of the Mississippi.” These “musts,” and “can’ts,” and “won’ts,” are the angry utterances of a spirited people who have had their will so long that they at last believe it is omnipotent. Assuredly, they will not have it over the South without a tremendous and long-sustained contest, in which they must put forth every exertion, and use all the resources and superior means they so abundantly possess.
It is absurd to assert, as do the New York people, to give some semblance of reason to their sudden outburst, that it was caused by the insult to the flag at Sumter. Why, the flag had been fired on long before Sumter was attacked by the Charleston batteries! It had been torn down from United States’ arsenals and forts all over the South; and but for the accident which placed Major Anderson in a position from which he could not retire, there would have been no bombardment of the fort, and it would, when evacuated, have shared the fate of all the other Federal works on the Southern coast. Some of the gentlemen who are now so patriotic and Unionistic, were last March prepared to maintain that if the President attempted to re-inforce Sumter or Pickens, he would be responsible for the destruction of the Union. Many journals in New York and out of it held the same doctrine.
One word to these gentlemen. I am pretty well satisfied that if they had always spoke, written, and acted as they do now, the people of Charleston would not have attacked Sumter so readily. The abrupt outburst of the North and the demonstration at New York filled the South, first with astonishment, and then with something like fear, which was rapidly fanned into anger by the press and the politicians, as well as by the pride inherent in slaveholders.
I wonder what Mr. Seward will say when I get back to Washington. Before I left, he was of opinion—at all events, he stated—that all the States would come back, at the rate of one a month. The nature of the process was not stated; but we are told there are 250,000 Federal troops now under arms, prepared to try a new one.
Combined with the feeling of animosity to the rebels, there is, I perceive, a good deal of ill-feeling towards Great Britain. The Southern papers are so angry with us for the Order in Council closing British ports against privateers and their prizes, that they advise Mr. Rust and Mr. Yancey to leave Europe. We are in evil case between North and South. I met a reverend doctor, who is most bitter in his expressions towards us; and I dare say, Bishop and General Leonidas Polk, down South, would not be much better disposed. The clergy are active on both sides; and their flocks approve of their holy violence. One journal tells with much gusto of a blasphemous chaplain, a remarkably good rifle shot, who went into one of the skirmishes lately, and killed a number of rebels—the joke being in the fact, that each time he fired and brought down his man, he exclaimed, piously, “May Heaven have mercy on your soul!” One Father Mooney, who performed the novel act for a clergyman of “christening” a big gun at Washington the other day, wound up the speech he made on the occasion, by declaring “the echo of its voice would be sweet music, inviting the children of Columbia to share the comforts of his father’s home.” Can impiety and folly, and bad taste, go further?