Canada; its Defences, Condition, and Resources / Being a third and concluding volume of "My Diary, North and South"

by Sir William Howard Russell

General Totten, an officer of the United States Engineers, well known for his ability, was understood to be engaged on a very elaborate plan of works along the frontier. Colonel Gordon, whose name will be for ever associated with the left attack at the siege of Sebastopol, aided by an experienced staff, was employed on our side, studying the capabilities of the frontier, and maturing a plan for the consideration of the Government in case of an American war.

There were reasons, too, of a personal character for my visiting Canada. I had a fever, which was contracted at Washington and laid me prostrate at New York. It was of the low typhoid type, which proved fatal to so many in the Federal army at the same time, and its effects made me weaker for the time than I ever remember to have been. There was no promise whatever of military operations, and I read every day of the arrival of friends and acquaintances in Canada, whose faces it would be pleasant to see, after the endurance of so many hostile glances and such public exhibition of ill-will.

I do not wish to dwell on private annoyances, but as an instance of the feeling displayed towards me in New York I may mention one circumstance. On my arrival in 1861 I was elected an honorary member of the club which derives its name from the state or city, and was indebted to its members for many acts of courtesy and for more than one entertainment. Returning to the city from Washington early this year, I was invited to dine at the same club by one or two of my friends. Certain members, as I afterwards heard, took umbrage at my presence, and fastened a quarrel on my entertainers. A day or two subsequently the people of New York were called on, by the notorious journalist who had honoured me with his animosity ever since I refused the dishonour of his acquaintance, to express their indignation at the conduct of the club; and the members received a characteristic reprimand for their presumption in letting me into the club, from which they had kept their censor and his clientele carefully out. My offence was rank; and public opinion—or what is called so—perhaps was in favour of the ostracism at that moment; for, as far as I know, the people must have believed I was the sole cause of the Federal defeat and flight at Bull Run.

There was some novelty in the idea of starting for Canada in the midst of the bitter winter wind and the dazzling snow; but I would have gone to Nova Zembla at the time to have escaped the monotony of New York, which the effects of recent illness rendered more irksome.

New York is among cities, what one of the lower order of molluscous animals, with a single intestinal canal, is to a creature of a higher development, with various organs, and full of veins and arteries. Up and down the Broadway passes the stream of life to and from the heart in Wall-street. In the narrow space from water to water on either side of this dry canal there is comparatively little animation, and nothing at all to reward the researches of a stranger.

Johnson’s remark about Fleet-street would apply with truth to the gawky thoroughfare of the Atlantic Tyre. In the Broadway or its “west-end” extensions are to be found all the hotels, which are the ganglia of the feverish nervous system so incessantly agitated by the operations of the journalistic insects living in secret cysts nigh at hand. All day the great tideway is rolling in, headed by a noisy crest of little boys, with extras under their arms, and heralded by a confused surfy murmur of voices telling “lies” for cents, and enunciating “Another Great Union Victory!” in one great bore; or it is rushing out again with a dismal leaden current, laden with doubts and fears, as the news of some disaster breaks through the locks of government reservoirs and floods the press.

In my hotel, where I was fain to seclude myself in my illness, and to follow the very un-American practice of living in a suite of private rooms, there was but little conflict of opinion on any great event, real or fictitious, which turned up from day to day. The guests and visitors were well-nigh all of one way of thinking. They were of the old conservative party, so oddly denominated Democrats, who believed in States Rights: in the right of states to create and maintain their domestic institutions—to secede, if they pleased, from the Union—to resist the attempts of the General Government of the other states to coerce them by force of arms.

Some of these gentlemen were satisfied the South would not be coerced; some hoped the South would resist successfully. None, I fear, were “loyal” to President Lincoln and Mr. Seward, and I am sure none would have said so much for either of them or their friends as I would.

The majority principle forces people who hold similar views to meet together, and to select the same hotels to live in. This is unfortunate for a stranger who desires to hear the views of both sides. In the New York, from the highly artistic and skilful operator who flashed out cocktails at the bar, up to the highest authority, there was no man who would like to say that he was on good terms with Mr. Sumner, or that he did not think Mr. Seward the representative of evil principles. The rule was proved by the exceptions: two I suspect there were—stout Irish waiters, who did not approve of the attempts to destroy “our glorious Union,” but who did not find the atmosphere of the place quite favourable to the free expression of the opinion they mildly hinted at to myself.

The sameness of ideas, of expressions, of faces, became unbearable. I could tell quite well by the look of men’s faces what news they had heard, and what they were saying or going to say about it. Here were crafty politicals and practical men of business, and persons of a philosophical and reflective temperament, as well as the foolish, the mere pleasure-hunters, and the unthinking mass of an hotel world, all looking forward to a near to-morrow to end the woes of the state, always waiting for a “decisive” battle or “an indignant uprising of the people” to drive the Republicans out of power and office.