Another memory of those days has to do with music. This was the coming of Jenny Lind to America. It seemed an event. When she reached Washington Mr. Barnum asked at the office of my father's newspaper for a smart lad to sell the programs of the concert--a new thing in artistic showmanry. "I don't want a paper carrier, or a newsboy," said he, "but a young gentleman, three or four young gentlemen." I was sent to him. We readily agreed upon the commission to be received--five cents on each twenty-five cent program--the oldest of old men do not forget such transactions. But, as an extra percentage for "organizing the force," I demanded a concert seat. Choice seats were going at a fabulous figure and Barnum at first demurred. But I told him I was a musical student, stood my ground, and, perhaps seeing something unusual in the eager spirit of a little boy, he gave in and the bargain was struck.
Two of my pals became my assistants. But my sales beat both of them hollow. Before the concert began I had sold my programs and was in my seat. I recall that my money profit was something over five dollars.
The bell-like tones of the Jenny Lind voice in "Home, Sweet Home," and "The Last Rose of Summer" still come back to me, but too long after for me to make, or imagine, comparisons between it and the vocalism of Grisi, Sontag and Parepa-Rosa.
Meeting Mr. Barnum at Madison Square Garden in New York, when he was running one of his entertainments there, I told him the story, and we had a hearty laugh, both of us very much pleased, he very much surprised to find in me a former employee.
One of my earliest yearnings was for a home. I cannot recall the time when I was not sick and tired of our migrations between Washington City and the two grand-paternal homesteads in Tennessee. The travel counted for much of my aversion to the nomadic life we led. The stage-coach is happier in the contemplation than in the actuality. Even when the railways arrived there were no sleeping cars, the time of transit three or four days and nights. In the earlier journeys it had been ten or twelve days.
Chapter the Second
Slavery the Trouble-Maker--Break-Up of the Whig Party and Rise of the Republican--The Key--Sickle's Tragedy--Brooks and Sumner--Life at Washington in the Fifties
I
Whether the War of Sections--as it should be called, because, except in Eastern Tennessee and in three of the Border States, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, it was nowise a civil war--could have been averted must ever remain a question of useless speculation. In recognizing the institution of African slavery, with no provision for its ultimate removal, the Federal Union set out embodying the seeds of certain trouble. The wiser heads of the Constitutional Convention perceived this plainly enough; its dissonance to the logic of their movement; on the sentimental side its repugnancy; on the practical side its doubtful economy; and but for the tobacco growers and the cotton planters it had gone by the board. The North soon found slave labor unprofitable and rid itself of slavery. Thus, restricted to the South, it came to represent in the Southern mind a "right" which the South was bound to defend.
Mr. Slidell told me in Paris that Louis Napoleon had once said to him in answer to his urgency for the recognition of the Southern Confederacy: "I have talked the matter over with Lord Palmerston and we are both of the opinion that as long as African slavery exists at the South, France and England cannot recognize the Confederacy. They do not demand its instant abolition. But if you put it in course of abatement and final abolishment through a term of years--I do not care how many--we can intervene to some purpose. As matters stand we dare not go before a European congress with such a proposition."