"But the Ohio river forms the most interesting boundary among the republics of the West. For a thousand miles its fertile bottoms are cultivated by farmers who belong to the different states, while they visit each other as friends or neighbours. As the schoolboy trips or loiters along its shores, he greets his playmates across the stream, or they sport away an idle hour in its summer waters. These are to be among the future, perhaps the opposing statesmen of the different commonwealths. When, at low water, we examine the rocks of the channel, we find them the same on both sides. The plants which grow above drop their seeds into the common current, which lodges them indiscriminately on either shore. Thus the very trees and flowers emigrate from one republic to another. When the bee sends out its swarms, they as often seek a habitation beyond the stream as in their native woods. Throughout its whole extent, the hills of Western Virginia and Kentucky cast their morning shadows on the plains of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. The thunder-cloud pours down its showers on different commonwealths; and the rainbow, resting its extremities on two sister states, presents a beautiful arch, on which the spirits of peace may pass and repass in harmony and love.
"Thus connected by nature in the great valley, we must live in the bonds of companionship or imbrue our hands in each other's blood. We have no middle destiny. To secure the former to our posterity, we should begin while society is still tender and pliable. The saplings of the woods, if intertwined, will adapt themselves to each other and grow together; the little bird may hang its nest on the twigs of different trees, and the dewdrop fall successively on leaves which are nourished by distinct trunks. The tornado strikes harmless on such a bower, for the various parts sustain each other; but the grown tree, sturdy and set in its way, will not bend to its fellow, and, when uprooted by the tempest, is dashed in violence against all within its reach.
"Communities, like forests, grow rigid by time. To be properly trained, they must be moulded while young. Our duty, then, is quite obvious. All who have moral power should exert it in concert. The germes of harmony must be nourished, and the roots of present contrariety or future discord torn up and cast into the fire. Measures should be taken to mould a uniform system of manners and customs out of the diversified elements which are scattered over the West. Literary meetings should be held in the different states, and occasional conventions in the central cities of the great valley be made to bring into friendly consultation our enlightened and zealous teachers, professors, lawyers, physicians, divines, and men of letters, from its remotest sections. In their deliberations the literary and moral wants of the various regions might be made known, and the means of supplying them devised. The whole should successively lend a helping hand to all the parts on the great subject of education, from the primary school to the university. Statistical facts bearing on this absorbing interest should be brought forward and collected; the systems of common school instruction should be compared, and the merits of different schoolbooks, foreign and domestic, freely canvassed. Plans of education, adapted to the natural, commercial, and social condition of the interior, should be invented; a correspondence instituted among all our higher seminaries of learning, and an interchange established of all local publications on the subject of education. In short, we should foster Western genius, encourage Western writers, patronise Western publishers, augment the number of Western readers, and create a Western heart.
"When these great objects shall come seriously to occupy our minds, the union will be secure, for its centre will be sound, and its attraction on the surrounding parts irresistible. Then will our state governments emulate each other in works for the common good; the people of remote places begin to feel as the members of one family; and our whole intelligent and virtuous population unite, heart and hand, in one long, concentrated, untiring effort to raise still higher the social character, and perpetuate for ever the political harmony of the green and growing West."
How strange is the feeling to the traveller in wild regions of having his home associations unexpectedly connected with the scene before him! Here, in this valley of the Mississippi, to my eye wild and luxuriant in beauty as I fancy Ceylon or Juan Fernandez, Dr. Drake pointed out to me two handsome dwellings with gardens, built by artisans from Birmingham, and he presently alighted to visit a Welsh patient. What a vision of brassfounding, teaurns, and dingy streets, and then of beaver hats and mob caps, did these incidents call up! And again, when we were buried in a beechen wood, where "a sunbeam that had lost its way" streaked the stems and lighted up the wild vines, Dr. Drake, in telling me of the cholera season in Cincinnati, praised a medical book on cholera which happened to be by a brother-in-law of mine. It was an amusing incident. The woods of Ohio are about the last place where the author would have anticipated that I should hear accidental praises of his book.
The doctor had at present a patient in Dr. Beecher's house, so we returned by the Theological Seminary. Dr. Beecher and his daughters were not at home. We met them on the road in their cart, the ladies returning from their school in the city, and we spent an evening there the next week. The seminary (Presbyterian) was then in a depressed condition, in consequence of the expulsion of most of the pupils for their refusal to avoid discussion of the slavery question. These expelled youths have since been founders and supporters of abolition societies; and the good cause has gained even more than the seminary has lost by the absurd tyranny practised against the students.
From this the Montgomery road there is a view of the city and surrounding country which defies description. It was of that melting beauty which dims the eyes and fills the heart—that magical combination of all elements—of hill, wood, lawn, river, with a picturesque city steeped in evening sunshine, the impression of which can never be lost nor ever communicated. We ran up a knoll, and stood under a clump of beeches to gaze; and went down, and returned again and again, with the feeling that, if we lived upon the spot, we could never more see it look so beautiful.
We soon entered a somewhat different scene, passing the slaughter-houses on Deer Creek, the place where more thousands of hogs in a year than I dare to specify are destined to breathe their last. Deer Creek, pretty as its name is, is little more than the channel through which their blood runs away. The division of labour is brought to as much perfection in these slaughter-houses as in the pin-manufactories of Birmingham. So I was told. Of course I did not verify the statement by attending the process. In my childhood I was permitted, by the carelessness of a nursemaid, to see the cutting up of the reeking carcass of an ox, and I can bear witness that one such sight is enough for a lifetime. But—to tell the story as it was told to me—these slaughter-houses are divided into apartments communicating with each other: one man drives into one pen or chamber the reluctant hogs, to be knocked on the head by another whose mallet is for ever going. A third sticks the throats, after which they are conveyed by some clever device to the cutting-up room, and thence to the pickling, and thence to the packing and branding, a set of agents being employed for every operation. The exportation of pickled pork from Cincinnati is enormous. Besides supplying the American navy, shiploads are sent to the West India Islands and many other parts of the world. Dr. Drake showed me the dwelling and slaughter-house of an Englishman who was his servant in 1818, who then turned pork-butcher, and was, in a few years, worth ten thousand dollars.
The teatable was set out in the garden at Dr. Drake's. We were waited upon, for the first time for many months, by a free servant. The long grass grew thick under our feet; fireflies were flitting about us, and I doubted whether I had ever heard more sense and eloquence at any Old World teatable than we were entertained with as the twilight drew on.
As we walked home through the busy streets, where there was neither the apathy of the South nor the disorder consequent on the presence of a pauper class, I felt strongly tempted to jump to some hasty conclusions about the happiness of citizenship in Cincinnati. I made a virtuous determination to suspend every kind of judgment: but I found each day as exhilarating as the first, and, when I left the city, my impressions were much like what they were after an observation of twenty-four hours.