To this, I think, it will come at last. The Common School economy is a remnant of the old Church-and-State system, which has not been entirely swept away. But for this impression I should feel some uneasiness, lest it should prove the germ of a new order of things leading back to State-Churchism. It appeared to me quite natural to say, "Here is a State provision for schools,—why not have a similar provision for churches? It works well for the one,—why not for the other? Is it not as important that our churches should rely, not alone on the capricious and scanty efforts of the voluntary principle, but also on the more respectable and permanent support of the State, as it is that our Common Schools should adopt this course?" To me it seemed that the arguments which recommended the one supported the other; but when I have mentioned to intelligent men the possibility, not to say probability, of the one step leading to the other, they have invariably been surprised at my apprehensions, and have assured me that nothing was more unlikely to take place.
But, to show the jealousy with which on other grounds the system begins to be viewed, I will close by a short quotation from a writer in the New Englander, a respectable Quarterly, to which I have before referred. "It will, doubtless, be thought strange to say that the systems of public common-school education now existing, and sought to be established throughout our country, may yet, while Christians sleep, become one of the greatest, if not the greatest, antagonism in the land to all evangelical instruction and piety. But how long before they will be so,—when they shall have become the mere creatures of the State, and, under the plea of no sectarianism, mere naturalism shall be the substance of all the religious, and the basis of all the secular teaching which they shall give? And let it not be forgotten that strong currents of influence, in all parts of the country, acting in no chance concert, are doing their utmost to bring about just this result."
4. I admire their temperance.
I confess that I felt humbled and ashamed for my own country, when, so soon as I trod on British ground, or British planks, the old absurd drinking usages again saluted my eye. In all the States I met with nothing more truly ludicrous than some of these. For instance, when A.B.'s mouth happens to be well replenished with, "flesh, fish, or fowl," potatoes, pudding, or pastry, at one table, C.D., from another table far away across the room, at the top of his voice, calls out, "Mr. A.B., allow me the pleasure to take a glass of wine with you." A.B. makes a very polite bow, fills his glass in a great hurry, holds it up with his right hand, C.D. doing the same thing with his; and then A.B. and C.D., making another polite bow to each other, simultaneously swallow their glasses of wine! Were we not accustomed to the sight, it would appear as laughable as anything travellers tell us of the manners and customs of the least enlightened nations. Surely, if this childish practice is still a rule in polite society, it is one "more honoured in the breach than the observance." In no city on the Eastern side of the Alleghany Mountains did I meet a single drunken American in the street. The few whom I did detect in that plight were manifestly recent importations from Great Britain and Ireland!
5. I also greatly admire their secular enterprise. They afford a fine illustration of the idea conveyed in their own indigenous phrase, "Go a-head."
LETTER XXXVII.
Slavery—Responsibility of the North—District of Columbia—Preponderance of the Slave Power—Extermination of the Indians—President Taylor and his Blood-hounds—Conclusion.
But there is a class of things among them which men of well-regulated minds and habits cannot but detest. These, as they have come under my notice, I have pointed out. The chief of all is slavery. This stared me in the face the moment I entered the States; and it presses itself on my notice now that I have retired from the American shore. It is the beginning and the ending of all that is vile and vicious in this confederation of Republics. In England, you have been often told by American visiters that the Northern States of the Union are not at all identified with slavery, and are, in fact, no more responsible for its existence in the South than we are for the existence of a like system in the colonies of some of our European Allies. Than this representation nothing can be further from the truth. There is really no analogy whatever between the two cases. Each State, it is true, has its own distinct and independent legislature; but all the States are united in one federation, which has a thoroughly pro-slavery government. The constitution is pledged to maintain the execrable system, and the Northern States are pledged to maintain the hypocritical constitution.
That no preponderance of influence might be given to any one State over the rest, by making it the seat of the central government, a district of 10 miles square was partitioned out, partly from Virginia and partly from Maryland, for that purpose. This district, called the District of Columbia, has no government and no representation of its own, but is under the absolute control and regulation of the United Government or Congress, "exclusive jurisdiction over it in all cases whatsoever" having been given by the constitution. In this absolute government of the "ten miles square," embracing the site of Washington the capital, the Northern States, by their representatives in Congress, have their full share. Now, not merely does slavery exist in that District, but it exists there under statutes so barbarous and cruel that the neighbouring slave States have actually abolished the like within the bounds of their separate jurisdiction, leaving to the free States the unenviable responsibility of enforcing laws too horrible for kidnappers. Take a specimen,—"A slave convicted of any petit treason, or murder, or wilful burning of a dwelling-house, to have the right hand cut off, to be hanged in the usual manner, the head severed from the body, the body divided into four quarters, and the head and quarters set up in the most public places of the county where such act was committed." Take another,—"A free negro may be arrested, and put in jail for 3 months, on suspicion of being a runaway; and if he is not able to prove his freedom in 12 months, he is to be sold as a slave TO PAY HIS JAIL FEES!" Are there not hundreds of free men, both black and white, who could not prove their freedom under such circumstances? Yet, for this crime, they are reduced to perpetual bondage by authority of Congress. And all this the North upholds!
Washington, the capital, thus governed, is but the great mart of the national man-trade. From the adjoining port of Alexandria, 7 miles off, the victims are shipped for the South. Listen to the Gazette of that place,—"Here you may behold fathers and brothers leaving behind them the dearest objects of affection, and moving slowly along in the mute agony of despair,—there the young mother sobbing over the infant, whose innocent smiles seem but to increase her misery. From some you will hear the burst of bitter lamentation; while from others the loud hysteric laugh breaks forth, denoting still deeper agony."