North America — Volume 1

by Anthony Trollope

I left Boston with a sad feeling at my heart that a quarrel was imminent between England and the States, and that any such quarrel must be destructive to the cause of the North. I had never believed that the States of New England and the Gulf States would again become parts of one nation, but I had thought that the terms of separation would be dictated by the North, and not by the South. I had felt assured that South Carolina and the Gulf States, across from the Atlantic to Texas, would succeed in forming themselves into a separate confederation; but I had still hoped that Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri might be saved to the grander empire of the North, and that thus a great blow to slavery might be the consequence of this civil war. But such ascendancy could only fall to the North by reason of their command of the sea. The northern ports were all open, and the southern ports were all closed. But if this should be reversed. If by England's action the southern ports should be opened, and the northern ports closed, the North could have no fair expectation of success. The ascendancy in that case would all be with the South. Up to that moment,—the Christmas of 1861,—Maryland was kept in subjection by the guns which General Dix had planted over the city of Baltimore. Two-thirds of Virginia were in active rebellion, coerced originally into that position by her dependence for the sale of her slaves on the cotton States. Kentucky was doubtful, and divided. When the federal troops prevailed, Kentucky was loyal; when the Confederate troops prevailed, Kentucky was rebellious. The condition in Missouri was much the same. Those four States, by two of which the capital, with its district of Columbia, is surrounded, might be gained, or might be lost. And these four States are susceptible of white labour,—as much so as Ohio and Illinois,—are rich in fertility, and rich also in all associations which must be dear to Americans. Without Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky, without the Potomac, the Chesapeake, and Mount Vernon, the North would indeed be shorn of its glory! But it seemed to be in the power of the North to say under what terms secession should take place, and where should be the line. A senator from South Carolina could never again sit in the same chamber with one from Massachusetts; but there need be no such bar against the border States. So much might at any rate be gained, and might stand hereafter as the product of all that money spent on 600,000 soldiers. But if the Northerners should now elect to throw themselves into a quarrel with England, if in the gratification of a shameless braggadocio they should insist on doing what they liked, not only with their own, but with the property of all others also, it certainly did seem as though utter ruin must await their cause. With England, or one might say with Europe, against them, secession must be accomplished, not on northern terms, but on terms dictated by the South. The choice was then for them to make; and just at that time it seemed as though they were resolved to throw away every good card out of their hand. Such had been the ministerial wisdom of Mr. Seward. I remember hearing the matter discussed in easy terms by one of the United States senators. "Remember, Mr. Trollope," he said to me, "we don't want a war with England. If the choice is given to us, we had rather not fight England. Fighting is a bad thing. But remember this also, Mr. Trollope—that if the matter is pressed on us, we have no great objection. We had rather not, but we don't care much one way or the other." What one individual may say to another is not of much moment, but this senator was expressing the feelings of his constituents, who were the legislature of the State from whence he came. He was expressing the general idea on the subject of a large body of Americans. It was not that he and his State had really no objection to the war. Such a war loomed terribly large before the minds of them all. They knew it to be fraught with the saddest consequences. It was so regarded in the mind of that senator. But the braggadocio could not be omitted. Had he omitted it, he would have been untrue to his constituency.

When I left Boston for Washington nothing was as yet known of what the English Government or the English lawyers might say. This was in the first week in December, and the expected voice from England could not be heard till the end of the second week. It was a period of great suspense, and of great sorrow also to the more sober-minded Americans. To me the idea of such a war was terrible. It seemed that in these days all the hopes of our youth were being shattered. That poetic turning of the sword into a sickle, which gladdened our hearts ten or twelve years since, had been clean banished from men's minds. To belong to a peace-party was to be either a fanatic, an idiot, or a driveller. The arts of war had become everything. Armstrong guns, themselves indestructible, but capable of destroying everything within sight, and most things out of sight, were the only recognized results of man's inventive faculties. To build bigger, stronger, and more ships than the French was England's glory. To hit a speck with a rifle bullet at 800 yards' distance was an Englishman's first duty. The proper use for a young man's leisure hours was the practice of drilling. All this had come upon us with very quick steps, since the beginning of the Russian war. But if fighting must needs be done, one did not feel special grief at fighting a Russian. That the Indian mutiny should be put down was a matter of course. That those Chinese rascals should be forced into the harness of civilization was a good thing. That England should be as strong as France,—or perhaps, if possible, a little stronger,—recommended itself to an Englishman's mind as a State necessity. But a war with the States of America! In thinking of it I began to believe that the world was going backwards. Over sixty millions sterling of stock—railway stock and such like—are held in America by Englishmen, and the chances would be that before such a war could be finished the whole of that would be confiscated. Family connections between the States and the British isles are almost as close as between one of those islands and another. The commercial intercourse between the two countries has given bread to millions of Englishmen, and a break in it would rob millions of their bread. These people speak our language, use our prayers, read our books, are ruled by our laws, dress themselves in our image, are warm with our blood. They have all our virtues; and their vices are our own too, loudly as we call out against them. They are our sons and our daughters, the source of our greatest pride, and as we grow old they should be the staff of our age. Such a war as we should now wage with the States would be an unloosing of hell upon all that is best upon the world's surface. If in such a war we beat the Americans, they with their proud stomachs would never forgive us. If they should be victors, we should never forgive ourselves. I certainly could not bring myself to speak of it with the equanimity of my friend the senator.

I went through New York to Philadelphia and made a short visit to the latter town. Philadelphia seems to me to have thrown off its Quaker garb, and to present itself to the world in the garments ordinarily assumed by large cities; by which I intend to express my opinion that the Philadelphians are not in these latter days any better than their neighbours. I am not sure whether in some respects they may not perhaps be worse. Quakers,—Quakers absolutely in the very flesh of close bonnets and brown knee-breeches,—are still to be seen there; but they are not numerous, and would not strike the eye if one did not specially look for a Quaker at Philadelphia. It is a large town, with a very large hotel,—there are no doubt half-a-dozen large hotels, but one of them is specially great,—with long straight streets, good shops and markets, and decent comfortable-looking houses. The houses of Philadelphia generally are not so large as those of other great cities in the States. They are more modest than those of New York, and less commodious than those of Boston. Their most striking appendage is the marble steps at the front doors. Two doors as a rule enjoy one set of steps, on the outer edges of which there is generally no parapet or raised curb-stone. This, to my eye, gave the houses an unfinished appearance,—as though the marble ran short, and no further expenditure could be made. The frost came when I was there, and then all these steps were covered up in wooden cases.

The city of Philadelphia lies between the two rivers, the Delaware and the Schuylkill. Eight chief streets run from river to river, and twenty-four cross-streets bisect the eight at right angles. The long streets are, with the exception of Market Street, called by the names of trees,—chesnut, walnut, pine, spruce, mulberry, vine, and so on. The cross-streets are all called by their numbers. In the long streets the numbers of the houses are not consecutive, but follow the numbers of the cross streets; so that a person living in Chesnut Street between Tenth Street and Eleventh Street, and ten doors from Tenth Street, would live at No. 1010. The opposite house would be No. 1011. It thus follows that the number of the house indicates the exact block of houses in which it is situated. I do not like the right-angled building of these towns, nor do I like the sound of Twentieth Street and Thirtieth Street; but I must acknowledge that the arrangement in Philadelphia has its convenience. In New York I found it by no means an easy thing to arrive at the desired locality.

They boast in Philadelphia that they have half a million inhabitants. If this be taken as a true calculation, Philadelphia is in size the fourth city in the world,—putting out of the question the cities of China, as to which we have heard so much and believe so little. But in making this calculation the citizens include the population of a district on some sides ten miles distant from Philadelphia. It takes in other towns connected with it by railway but separated by large spaces of open country. American cities are very proud of their population, but if they all counted in this way, there would soon be no rural population left at all. There is a very fine bank at Philadelphia,—and Philadelphia is a town somewhat celebrated in its banking history. My remarks here, however, apply simply to the external building, and not to its internal honesty and wisdom, or to its commercial credit.

In Philadelphia also stands the old house of Congress,—the house in which the Congress of the United States was held previous to 1800, when the Government, and the Congress with it, were moved to the new city of Washington. I believe, however, that the first Congress, properly so called, was assembled at New York in 1789, the date of the inauguration of the first President. It was, however, here, in this building at Philadelphia, that the independence of the Union was declared in 1776, and that the constitution of the United States was framed.

Pennsylvania, with Philadelphia for its capital, was once the leading State of the Union,—leading by a long distance. At the end of the last century it beat all the other States in population, but has since been surpassed by New York in all respects,—in population, commerce, wealth, and general activity. Of course it is known that Pennsylvania was granted to William Penn, the Quaker, by Charles II. I cannot completely understand what was the meaning of such grants,—how far they implied absolute possession in the territory, or how far they confirmed simply the power of settling and governing a colony. In this case a very considerable property was confirmed, as the claim made by Penn's children after Penn's death was bought up by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania for £130,000; which in those days was a large price for almost any landed estate on the other side of the Atlantic.

Pennsylvania lies directly on the borders of slave land, being immediately north of Maryland. Mason and Dixon's line, of which we hear so often, and which was first established as the division between slave soil and free soil, runs between Pennsylvania and Maryland. The little State of Delaware, which lies between Maryland and the Atlantic, is also tainted with slavery; but the stain is not heavy nor indelible. In a population of a hundred and twelve thousand there are not two thousand slaves, and of these the owners generally would willingly rid themselves if they could. It is, however, a point of honour with these owners, as it is also in Maryland, not to sell their slaves; and a man who cannot sell his slaves must keep them. Were he to enfranchise them and send them about their business, they would come back upon his hands. Were he to enfranchise them and pay them wages for work, they would get the wages but he would not get the work. They would get the wages, but at the end of three months they would still fall back upon his hands in debt and distress, looking to him for aid and comfort as a child looks for it. It is not easy to get rid of a slave in a slave State. That question of enfranchising slaves is not one to be very readily solved.

In Pennsylvania the right of voting is confined to free white men. In New York the coloured free men have the right to vote, providing they have a certain small property qualification, and have been citizens for three years in the State;—whereas a white man need have been a citizen but for ten days, and need have no property qualification; from which it is seen that the position of the negro becomes worse, or less like that of a white man, as the border of slave land is more nearly reached. But in the teeth of this embargo on coloured men, the constitution of Pennsylvania asserts broadly that all men are born equally free and independent. One cannot conceive how two clauses can have found their way into the same document so absolutely contradictory to each other. The first clause says that white men shall vote, and that black men shall not, which means that all political action shall be confined to white men. The second clause says that all men are born equally free and independent!

In Philadelphia I for the first time came across live secessionists,—secessionists who pronounced themselves to be such. I will not say that I had met in other cities men who falsely declared themselves true to the Union; but I had fancied, in regard to some, that their words were a little stronger than their feelings. When a man's bread,—and much more, when the bread of his wife and children,—depends on his professing a certain line of political conviction, it is very hard for him to deny his assent to the truth of the argument. One feels that a man under such circumstances is bound to be convinced, unless he be in a position which may make a stanch adherence to opposite politics a matter of grave public importance. In the North I had fancied that I could sometimes read a secessionist tendency under a cloud of unionist protestations. But in Philadelphia men did not seem to think it necessary to have recourse to such a cloud. I generally found in mixed society, even there, that the discussion of secession was not permitted; but in society that was not mixed, I heard very strong opinions expressed on each side. With the unionists nothing was so strong as the necessity of keeping Slidell and Mason. When I suggested that the English Government would probably require their surrender, I was talked down and ridiculed. "Never that; come what may." Then, within half an hour, I would be told by a secessionist that England must demand reparation if she meant to retain any place among the great nations of the world; but he also would declare that the men would not be surrendered. "She must make the demand," the secessionist would say, "and then there will be war; and after that we shall see whose ports will be blockaded!" The Southerner has ever looked to England for some breach of the blockade, quite as strongly as the North has looked to England for sympathy and aid in keeping it.