Last winter in the United States

by F. Barham Zincke

CHAPTER VI.

RICHMOND—WAY BY THE BATTLE-FIELDS—HANDINESS OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS—EFFECT OF SLAVERY ON THE VIRGINIAN LANDSCAPE—APPEARANCE OF AMERICAN FOREST—REPUBLICAN RELATIONS OF FATHER AND SON—STATE OF FEELING IN VIRGINIA—BILLIARDS IN AMERICA—WHY RICHMOND MILLERS UNDERSOLD BY CALIFORNIAN—WHY AMERICAN CITIES ARE LARGE—AMERICAN LIVING—PROSPECTS OF RICHMOND—INDICATIONS OF SOUTHERN CLIMATE IN RICHMOND—CHURCH MATTERS IN RICHMOND—INTEREST THAT ATTACHES TO RICHMOND AND TO THE HEROISM OF THE SOUTH.

To Richmond by the Battle-fields.

In going to Richmond I made the circuit by Gordonsville, that I might visit the battle-fields of the late war which lie so thickly on that route from Washington. I went by Bull’s Run, Culpepper Court House, Manassas Junction, the Rapahannock, the Rapidan, &c. This ground was several times contested. Nothing strikes one now in these sites except the extent of the breastworks and rifle-pits, and of the earthworks for batteries. I was told by a general of engineers who went through the whole war, that American soldiers, especially those in the Northern armies, were always eager of themselves to throw up these defences. It was their custom to set to work upon them even when tired with a long day’s march or severe fighting; and there were occasions when they did this without tools. They acted in this way because they had sufficient intelligence to be fully aware of the advantage to themselves of earthworks of this kind, and therefore were desirous of being provided with them as speedily as possible. Most of the men, too, being young farmers or sons of farmers, had been accustomed to felling timber, and working on the land, so that every regiment was full of ready-made pioneers.

Another advantage possessed in a preeminent degree by the Northern armies, was that—their soldiers having been drawn from all classes and trades—if a corps for wheelwrights’, millwrights’, harness-makers’, or almost for any other kind of work required on the field, was suddenly wanted, it was always to be had ready-made at a moment’s notice.

On passing over these battle-fields one quickly understands why in the late war cavalry was so little used for improving a victory, and why also the attacking army generally appeared to have so great an advantage. In this part of Virginia—and I found it to be so everywhere throughout the South—the clearings are small and few, and far between, all the rest of the country being covered with forest, or with abandoned clearings returning to forest. In such a country cavalry could not have acted, even if, which was seldom the case, the victorious army had had more than was required for outpost duty and other work of the kind. And there being cover everywhere, an advancing force, in coming up for an attack on the enemy, could everywhere find concealment and shelter.

How Slavery Modified the Landscape.

As soon as you enter Virginia you see unmistakable evidences of the recent existence of slavery. The country is not cleared, cultivated, and inhabited in the marvellous manner which so much surprises and pleases one in the North, where each man holds a plot of about a hundred acres, more or less, with his neat homestead planted in the middle of it. Here only a very small proportion of the land is under cultivation: far the greater part has, on the wasteful Southern system (where men owned large estates of several thousand acres, many times as much as they could keep in hand), been worked out, and then abandoned and allowed to return to wood. A respectable house is hardly ever seen along this line of railway. One gets tired of the monotony of the forest, and of the ever-recurring reflection how differently things would have looked, if this glorious State, blessed so highly in its soil and climate, had not been cursed with the blight of slavery.

I was surprised to find how closely the American forests resemble those of Europe. I suppose this settles the point that at some remote epoch of geological time the two continents were united. The two commonest species, and which often constitute the whole forest, are the never-failing pine and the oak. They both reach from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The former, to unscientific eyes, is only a small edition of the Scotch fir; and the oak, in its several varieties, as you pass along the railway, has much the same physiognomy as our English oak. The same may be said of the elm, the ash, the birch, the maples and the poplars. In the woods there is generally no undergrowth; on the embankments and outskirts of the woods a rubus, very like some forms of our English blackberry, is abundant. What is most striking in the forests is the want of fine trees. Except in the Rocky Mountains, I never saw one in the United States. Their oaks and pines die at the top before they have got much beyond what we should call poles. They never seem to branch freely. I suppose their progenitors having grown in the forest for so many thousand years, the race has acquired the habit of growing straight. In the heart, however, of the city of New York, in Broadway between the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the Coleman House, I noticed the trunk (for not much more is now left) of an occidental plane that must once have been a noble specimen of its kind. I was told that in Kentucky and Ohio there were fine trees, but I saw none. I have heard from travelled Americans similar remarks to those I have just been making on the dearth of large trees in the United States. This of course is said of those States that lie to the east of the Alleghany Mountains.

Republican Relations of Father and Son.