First impressions of the New World on two travellers from the Old, in the autumn of 1858

by Isabella Strange Trotter

LETTER XII.

INDIANAPOLIS.— LOUISVILLE.— LOUISVILLE AND PORTLAND CANAL.— PORTLAND.— THE PACIFIC STEAMER.— JOURNEY TO LEXINGTON.— ASHLAND.— SLAVE PENS AT LEXINGTON.— RETURN TO CINCINNATI.— PENNSYLVANIA CENTRAL RAILWAY.— RETURN TO NEW YORK.

Lexington, Kentucky, Nov. 13th, 1858.

My last letter was closed at Indianapolis, but despatched from Louisville. On the morning after I wrote we had time, before starting for Louisville, to take a walk through the principal streets of Indianapolis. The Capitol or state-house is the only remarkable building; and here, as in most other towns in America, we were struck by the breadth of the streets. In the centre of Indianapolis there is a large square, from which the four principal streets diverge, and from the centre of this, down these streets, there are views of the distant country which on all sides bounds the prospect. This has a fine effect, but all these capital cities of states have an unfinished appearance: great cities have been planned, but the plans have never been adequately carried out. The fact is, they have all a political, and not a commercial origin, and they want the stimulus of commercial enterprise to render them flourishing towns, or to give them the finished appearance of cities of much more recent date, such as Chicago and others.

We left Indianapolis at about half-past ten, and reached Jeffersonville, on the north side of the Ohio at four. The country at first was entirely prairie, but became a good deal wooded as we journeyed south. It is much more peopled than the wide tracts which we have been lately traversing, for neat towns with white wooden houses and white wooden churches here succeeded each other at very short distances; we crossed several large rivers, tributaries of the Wabash; one, the White river, was of considerable size, and the banks were very prettily wooded. At Jeffersonville we got into a grand omnibus with four splendid white horses, and drove rapidly down a steepish hill, straight on board the steamboat which was to carry us across the Ohio. The horses went as quietly as on dry land, and had to make a circuit on the deck, as we were immediately followed by another similar equipage, four in hand, for which ours had to make room. This was followed by two large baggage waggons and a private vehicle; and all these carriages were on one side of the engine-room. At the other end there was space for as many more, had there been any need for it; and all this on a tiny little steamboat compared with the Leviathans that were lying in the river.

On reaching Louisville we were comfortably established in a large handsome hotel. As there was still daylight, we took a walk through the principal streets, and found ourselves, as usual, in a bookseller's shop; for not only are these favourite lounges of papa's, but we generally find the booksellers intelligent and civil people, from whom we can learn what is best worth seeing in the town. The one at Louisville lauded very much the pork packing establishments in this town, and said those at Chicago, and even those of Cincinnati, are not to be compared with them; but without better statistics we must leave this question undecided, for papa saw quite enough at Chicago to deter him from wishing to go through the same sight at Louisville; we, however, availed ourselves of the address he gave us of the largest slave-dealer, and went to-day to see a slave-pen.

We have lately been reading a most harrowing work, called the "Autobiography of a Female Slave," whose experience was entirely confined to Kentucky—indeed, to Louisville and the adjoining country within a few miles of the Ohio. She describes Kentucky as offering the worst specimen of a slave's life, and gives a horrid account of the barbarity of the masters, and of the almost diabolical character of the slave-dealers, and of those who hold subordinate situations under them. We were hardly prepared, therefore, on reaching this pen to be received, in the absence of the master, by a good-looking coloured housekeeper, with a face as full of kindness and benevolence as one could wish to see, but "the pen" had yesterday been cleared out, with the exception of one woman with her six little children, the youngest only a year old, and two young brothers, neither of whom the dealer had sold, as he had been unable to find a purchaser who would take them without separating them, and he was determined not to sell them till he could. In the case both of the woman and of the two boys, their sale to the dealer had been caused by the bankruptcy of the owner. The woman had a husband, but having a different master, he retained his place, and his master promised that when his wife got a new home he would send him to join her.

No doubt this separation of families is a crying evil, and perhaps the greatest practical one, as respects hardship, to which the system is necessarily subject; but certainly, from what we have seen and heard to-day, it does not seem to be harshly done, and pains are taken to avoid it: the woman said she had been always kindly treated, and there was not the slightest difficulty made by the dark duenna to our conversing with the slaves as freely as we liked, and she left us with the whole group. The woman took us to see her baby, and we found it in a large and well ventilated room, and she said they had always as much and as good food as they could wish. She said she was forty-five years old, and had ten children living, but the four eldest were grown up. The eldest of those she had with her was a little girl of about thirteen; she said, in answer to a question from papa, that the children had made a great piece of work at parting with their father, but the woman herself seemed quite cheerful and satisfied with her prospects.

On our journey here there were a great many slaves in the car with us, coming to pass their Sunday at Lexington. They seemed exceedingly merry, and one, whom papa sat next, said he had accumulated $950, and that when he got $1900, he would be able to purchase his freedom. He said his master was a rich man, having $300,000, and that he was very well treated; but that some masters did behave very badly to their slaves, and often beat them whether they deserved it or not. From the specimen we had of those in the cars, they seemed well-conditioned men, and all paid the same fare that we did, and were treated with quite as much attention. They seem to get some sort of extra wages from their masters besides their food and raiment, out of which they can lay by if they are provident, so as to be able to purchase their freedom in time; but they do not seem always to care about this, as one man here has $4000, which would much more than suffice to buy his freedom; but he prefers remaining a slave. We shall probably see a good deal more of the condition of the slaves within the next few days, so I shall say no more upon the subject at present, excepting that all this does not alter the view which we cannot help taking of the vileness of the institution, though it certainly does not appear so very cruel in practice as it is often represented to be by the anti-slavery party.

There are only two great sights to be seen at Louisville. One, the famous artesian well, 2086 feet deep, bored to reach a horrid sulphur spring, which is, however, a very strong one as there are upwards of 200 grains of sulphates of soda and magnesia in each gallon of water, and upwards of 700 grains of chlorides of sulphur and magnesia. There is a fountain over the well, in which the water rises 200 feet, but whether by external pressure or by the natural force of the water, the deponent sayeth not. It comes out in all sorts of forms, sometimes imitating flowers, and sometimes a shower of snow, on which the negro who showed it to us expatiated with great delight. When I said there were only two sights to see, I alluded to this well, and to the magnificent steam vessel, the "Pacific," which was lying at Portland, about three miles down the Ohio, below the Falls; but I forgot altogether the Falls themselves, and the splendid canal described in papa's book, through which vessels are obliged to pass to get round them, which I ought not to pass without some notice. The river here is upwards of a mile wide, but the falls are most insignificant; and though the Guide Book describes them as "picturesque in appearance," and that the islands give the Ohio here "the appearance of a great many broken rivers of foam, making their way over the falls, while the fine islands add greatly to the beauty of the scene;" neither papa with his spectacles, nor I with my keen optics, could see more than a ripple on the surface of the water. These falls, however, are sufficient to prevent vessels of any great burden ascending or descending beyond this point of the river, and hence the necessity of the canal: but this splendid work, about which papa's interest was very great, in consequence of what he had written about it, proved as great a disappointment as the falls themselves. It must, however, have been a work of great difficulty, as it is cut through a solid bed of rock.[13] The locks are sufficiently capacious to allow of the passage of steamers 180 feet long by 40 feet in breadth, one of which we saw in the lock, and there were three others waiting to pass through.