The Southerners have got a strange charge de plus against the Irish. It appears that the regular army of the United States is mainly composed of Irish and Germans; very few Americans indeed being low enough, or martially disposed enough, to “take the shilling.” In case of a conflict, which these gentlemen think inevitable, “low Irish mercenaries would,” they say, “be pitted against the gentlemen of the South, and the best blood in the States would be spilled by fellows whose lives are worth nothing whatever.” Poor Paddy is regarded as a mere working machine, fit, at best, to serve against Choctaws and Seminoles. His facility of reproduction has to compensate for the waste which is caused by the development in his unhappy head of the organs of combativeness and destructiveness. Certainly, if the war is to be carried on by the United States’ regulars, the Southern States will soon dispose of them, for they do not number 20,000 men, and their officers are not much in love with the new Government. But can it come to War? Mr. Mitchell assures me I shall see some “pretty tall fighting.”
The most vehement Northerners in the steamer are Germans, who are going to the States for the first time, or returning there. They have become satisfied, no doubt, by long process of reasoning, that there is some anomaly in the condition of a country which calls itself the land of liberty, and is at the same time the potent palladium of serfdom and human chattelry. When they are not sea-sick, which is seldom, the Teutons rise up in all the might of their misery and dirt, and, making spasmodic efforts to smoke, blurt out between the puffs, or in moody intervals, sundry remarks on American politics. “These are the swine,” quoth Garnett, “who are swept out of German gutters as too foul for them, and who come over to the States and presume to control the fate and the wishes of our people. In their own country they proved they were incapable of either earning a living, or exercising the duties of citizenship; and they seek in our country a licence denied them in their own, and the means of living which they could not acquire anywhere else.”
And for myself I may truly say this, that no man ever set foot on the soil of the United States with a stronger and sincerer desire to ascertain and to tell the truth, as it appeared to him. I had no theories to uphold, no prejudices to subserve, no interests to advance, no instructions to fulfil; I was a free agent, bound to communicate to the powerful organ of public opinion I represented, my own daily impressions of the men, scenes, and actions around me, without fear, favour, or affection of or for anything but that which seemed to me to be the truth. As to the questions which were distracting the States, my mind was a tabula rasa, or, rather, tabula non scripta. I felt indisposed to view with favour a rebellion against one of the established and recognised governments of the world, which, though not friendly to Great Britain, nor opposed to slavery, was without, so far as I could see, any legitimate cause of revolt, or any injury or grievance, perpetrated or imminent, assailed by States still less friendly to us, which the slave States, pure and simple, certainly were and probably are. At the same time, I knew that these were grounds which I could justly take, whilst they would not be tenable by an American, who is by the theory on which he revolted from us and created his own system of government, bound to recognise the principle that the discontent of the popular majority with its rulers, is ample ground and justification for revolution.
It was on the morning of the fourteenth day that the shores of New York loomed through the drift of a cold wintry sea, leaden-grey and comfortless, and in a little time more the coast, covered with snow, rose in sight. Towards the afternoon the sun came out and brightened the waters and the sails of the pretty trim schooners and coasters which were dancing around us. How different the graceful, tautly-rigged, clean, white-sailed vessels from the round-sterned, lumpish billyboys and nondescripts of the eastern coast of our isle! Presently there came bowling down towards us a lively little schooner-yacht, very like the once famed “America,” brightly painted in green, sails dazzling white, lofty ponderous masts, no tops. As she came nearer, we saw she was crowded with men in chimney-pot black hats, and coats, and the like—perhaps a party of citizens on pleasure, cold as the day was. Nothing of the kind. The craft was our pilot-boat, and the hats and coats belonged to the hardy mariners who act as guides to the port of New York. Their boat was lowered, and was soon under our mainchains; and a chimney-pot hat having duly come over the side, delivered a mass of newspapers to the captain, which were distributed among the eager passengers, when each at once became the centre of a spell-bound circle.
CHAPTER II. Arrival at New York
Arrival at New York—Custom-house—General impressions as to North and South—Street in New York—Hotel—Breakfast—American women and men—Visit to Mr. Bancroft—Street-railways.
The entrance to New York, as it was seen by us on 16th March, is not remarkable for beauty or picturesque scenery, and I incurred the ire of several passengers, because I could not consistently say it was very pretty. It was difficult to distinguish through the snow the villas and country houses, which are said to be so charming in summer. But beyond these rose a forest of masts close by a low shore of brick houses and blue roofs, above the level of which again spires of churches and domes and cupolas announced a great city. On our left, at the narrowest part of the entrance, there was a very powerful case-mated work of fine close stone, in three tiers, something like Fort Paul at Sebastopol, built close to the water’s edge, and armed on all the faces—apparently a tetragon with bastions. Extensive works were going on at the ground above it, which rises rapidly from the water to a height of more than a hundred feet, and the rudiments of an extensive work and heavily armed earthen parapets could be seen from the channel. On the right hand, crossing its fire with that of the batteries and works on our left, there was another regular stone fort with fortified enceinte, and higher up the channel, as it widens to the city on the same side, I could make out a smaller fort on the water’s edge. The situation of the city renders it susceptible of powerful defence from the sea-side, and even now it would be hazardous to run the gauntlet of the batteries unless in powerful iron-clad ships favoured by wind and tide, which could hold the place at their mercy. Against a wooden fleet New York is now all but secure, save under exceptional circumstances in favour of the assailants.
It was dark as the steamer hauled up alongside the wharf on the New Jersey side of the river; but ere the sun set I could form some idea of the activity and industry of the people from the enormous ferry-boats moving backwards and forwards like arks on the water, impelled by the great walking-beam engines, the crowded stream full of merchantmen, steamers, and small craft, the smoke of the factories, the tall chimneys—the net-work of boats and rafts—all the evidences of commercial life in full development. What a swarming, eager crowd on the quay-wall! what a wonderful ragged regiment of labourers and porters, hailing us in broken or Hibernianized English! “These are all Irish and Germans,” anxiously explained a New Yorker. “I’ll bet fifty dollars there’s not a native-born American among them.”
With Anglo-Saxon disregard of official insignia, American Custom House officers dress very much like their British brethren, without any sign of authority as faint as even the brass button and crown, so that the stranger is somewhat uneasy when he sees unauthorised-looking people taking liberties with his plunder, especially after the admonitions he has received on board ship to look sharp about his things as soon as he lands. I was provided with an introduction to one of the principal officers, and he facilitated my egress, and at last I was bundled out through a gate into a dark alley, ankle deep in melted snow and mud, where I was at once engaged in a brisk encounter with my Irish porter-hood, and, after a long struggle, succeeded in stowing my effects in and about a remarkable specimen of the hackney-coach of the last century, very high in the axle, and weak in the springs, which plashed down towards the river through a crowd of men shouting out, “You haven’t paid me yet, yer honour. You haven’t given anything to your own man that’s been waiting here the last six months for your honour!” “I’m the man that put the lugidge up, sir,” &c., &c. The coach darted on board a great steam ferry-boat, which had on deck a number of similar vehicles, and omnibuses, and the gliding, shifting lights, and the deep, strong breathing of the engine, told me I was moving and afloat before I was otherwise aware of it. A few minutes brought us over to the lights on the New York side—a jerk or two up a steep incline—and we were rattling over a most abominable pavement, plunging into mud-holes, squashing through snow-heaps in ill-lighted, narrow streets of low, mean-looking, wooden houses, of which an unusual proportion appeared to be lager-bier saloons, whisky-shops, oyster-houses, and billiard and smoking establishments.