Not one of them could or would see that the contest, when terminated, would give birth to others—that the vast bodies of diverse interests, prejudices, hatreds, and wrongs set in motion by war over so enormous a surface, where they had been kept suspended and inert by the powers of compromise, could never be reconsolidated and restored to the same state as before, and that it would be the work of time, the labour of many years, ere they could settle to rest in any shape whatever.
I am told respectable Americans do not use the word “Britisher,” but I am bound to say I heard Americans who looked very respectable using the word at the time of which I speak, when there was still irritation on both sides in consequence of the surrender of Mason and Slidell—in the minds of the friends of the South, because they were balked in their anticipation of a foreign war; in the Federal mind, because, after much threatening and menaces, they had seen the captives surrendered to the British by the President, or, more properly speaking, by Mr. Seward.
Hence it was, perhaps, that Canada was always mentioned in such a tone of contempt, as though the speakers sought to relieve their feelings by abuse of a British dependency.
“Goin’ to Canada!” exclaimed the faithful Milesian who had been my attendant—in fact, my substitute for a nurse. “Lord help us! That’s a poor place, anyhow. I thought you’d be contint wid the snow we’ve got here. It’s plinty, anyhow. But Canada!” The man had never been there in his life, but he spoke as if it were beyond the bounds of civilisation. He had served in a British regiment for many years; many of his brothers had been, I think he told me, in the service, but now they were all in the States, and to his notion thriving like himself.
In no country on earth is an old nationality so soon absorbed as in America. I am inclined to think the regard professed for England by American literary men is sentimental, and is produced by education and study rather than by any feeling transmitted in families or by society.
The emigrant, it is remarked, speedily forgets—in the hurry of his new life the ways of the old slip out of his memory. One day I said to my man, as a regiment of volunteers was marching down Broadway, “Those fellows are not quite as well set up as the 41st, Pat.” “Well, indeed, and that’s thrue; but they’d fight as well I b’lieve, and better maybe, if they’d the officers, poor craychures! Anyhow,” continued he with great gravity, “they can’t be flogged for nothin’ or for anything.” “Were you ever flogged?” “No, sirir—not a lash ever touched my back, but I’ve known fine sogers spiled by it.” It is likely enough that he had never thought on the subject till he came to the States—a short time before and he would have resented deeply the idea that any regiment on earth could stand before Her Majesty’s 41st.
It was now near the end of January, and as a gleam of fine weather might thaw the glorious Union army of the Potomac, and induce them to advance on the inglorious army of the Confederacy, I resolved to make the best of my way northwards forthwith.
My companions were a young British officer, distinguished in the Crimea, in India, and in China, who represented a borough in Parliament, and had come out to see the great contest which was raging in the United States; and an English gentleman, who happened to be at New York, and was anxious to have a look at Niagara, even in its winter dress.
On the 27th January we were all packed to start by the 5.30 P.M. train by Albany to Niagara, and thence to Toronto. The landlord made me up a small assortment of provisions, as in snow-time trains are not always certain of anything but irregularity. I was regarded as one who was about to make myself needlessly miserable when he might continue in much happiness. “You had better stay, sir, for a few days. I have certain intelligence, let me whisper you, that the Abolitionists will be whipped at the end of this week, and old Abe driven out of Washington.”
The little boys still shout out, “Another great Union victory.” The last, by-the-bye, was of General Thomas, at Somerset, which has gradually sublimed into uncertainty, though he handled his men well, and is not bad at a despatch.