The captain told me it was rough work abroad sometimes with “sports” and chaps of that kind; but “God bless you,” said he, “the river now is not what it used to be a few years ago, when we’d have three or four difficulties of an afternoon, and may-be now and then a regular free fight all up and down the decks, that would last a couple of hours, so that when we came to a town we would have to send for all the doctors twenty miles round, and may-be some of them would die in spite of that. It was the rowdies used to get these fights up; but we’ve put them pretty well down. The citizens have hunted them out, and they’s gone away west.” “Well, then, captain, one’s life was not very safe on board sometimes.” “Safe! Lord bless you!” said the captain; “if you did not meddle, just as safe as you are now, if the boiler don’t collapse. You must, in course, know how to handle your weepins, and be pretty spry in taking your own part.” “Ho, you Bill!” to his coloured servant, “open that clothes-press.” “Now, here,” he continued, “is how I travel; so that I am always easy in my mind in case of trouble on board.” Putting his hand under the pillow of the bed close beside him, he pulled out a formidable looking double-barrelled pistol at half-cock, with the caps upon it. “That’s as purty a pistol as Derringer ever made. I’ve got the brace of them—here’s the other;” and with that he whipped out pistol No. 2, in an equal state of forwardness, from a little shelf over his bed; and then going over to the clothes-press, he said, “Here’s a real old Kentuck, one of the old sort, as light on the trigger as gossamer, and sure as deeth—Why, law bless me, a child would cut a turkey’s head off with it at a hundred yards.” This was a huge lump of iron, about five feet long, with a small hole bored down the centre, fitted in a coarse German-fashioned stock. “But,” continued he, “this is my main dependence; here is a regular beauty, a first-rate, with ball or buckshot, or whatever you like—made in London; I gave two hundred dollars for it; and it is so short and handy and straight shooting, I’d just as soon part with my life as let it go to anybody” and, with a glow of pride in his face, the captain handed round again a very short double-barrelled gun, of some eleven or twelve bore, with back action locks, and an audacious “Joseph Manton, London,” stamped on the plate. The manner of the man was perfectly simple and bonâ fide; very much as if Inspector Podger were revealing to a simpleton the mode by which the London police managed refractory characters in the station-house.
From such matters as these I was diverted by the more serious subject of the attitude taken by England in this quarrel. The concession of belligerent rights was, I found, misunderstood, and was considered as an admission that the Southern States had established their independence before they had done more than declare their intention to fight for it.
It is not within my power to determine whether the North is as unfair to Great Britain as the South; but I fear the history of the people, and the tendency of their institutions, are adverse to any hope of fair-play and justice to the old country. And yet it is the only power in Europe for the good opinion of which they really seem to care. Let any French, Austrian, or Russian journal write what it pleases of the United States, it is received with indifferent criticism or callous head-shaking. But let a London paper speak, and the whole American press is delighted or furious.
The political sentiment quite overrides all other feelings; and it is the only symptom statesmen should care about, as it guides the policy of the country. If a man can put faith in the influence for peace of common interests, of common origin, common intentions, with the spectacle of this incipient war before his eyes, he must be incapable of appreciating the consequences which follow from man being an animal. A war between England and the United States would be unnatural; but it would not be nearly so unnatural now as it was when it was actually waged in 1776 between people who were barely separated from each other by a single generation; or in 1812-14, when the foreign immigration had done comparatively little to dilute the Anglo-Saxon blood. The Norman of Hampshire and Sussex did not care much for the ties of consanguinity and race when he followed his lord in fee to ravage Guienne or Brittany.
The general result of my intercourse with Americans is to produce the notion that they consider Great Britain in a state of corruption and decay, and eagerly seek to exalt France at her expense. Their language is the sole link between England and the United States, and it only binds the England of 1770 to the American of 1860.
There is scarcely an American on either side of Mason and Dixon’s line who does not religiously believe that the colonies, alone and single-handed, encountered the whole undivided force of Great Britain in the revolution, and defeated it. I mean, of course, the vast mass of the people; and I do not think there is an orator or a writer who would venture to tell them the truth on the subject. Again, they firmly believe that their petty frigate engagements established as complete a naval ascendancy over Great Britain as the latter obtained by her great encounters with the fleets of France and Spain. Their reverses, defeats, and headlong routs in the first war, their reverses in the second, are covered over by a huge Buncombe plaster, made up of Bunker’s Hill, Plattsburg, Baltimore, and New Orleans.
Their delusions are increased and solidified by the extraordinary text-books of so-called history, and by the feasts, and festivals, and celebrations of their every-day political life, in all of which we pass through imaginary Caudine Forks; and they entertain towards the old country at best very much the feeling which a high-spirited young man would feel towards the guardian who, when he had come of age, and was free from all control, sought to restrain the passions of his early life.
Now I could not refuse to believe that in New Orleans, Montgomery, Mobile, Jackson, and Memphis there is a reckless and violent condition of society, unfavourable to civilisation, and but little hopeful for the future. The most absolute and despotic rule, under which a man’s life and property are safe, is better than the largest measure of democratic freedom, which deprives the freeman of any security for either. The state of legal protection for the most serious interests of man, considered as a civilised and social creature, which prevails in America, could not be tolerated for an instant, and would generate a revolution in the worst governed country in Europe. I would much sooner, as the accidental victim of a generally disorganized police, be plundered by a chance diligence robber in Mexico, or have a fair fight with a Greek Klepht, suffer from Italian banditti, or be garroted by a London ticket-of-leave man, than be bowie-knifed or revolvered in consequence of a political or personal difference with a man, who is certain not in the least degree to suffer from an accidental success in his argument.
On our return to the hotel I dined with the General and his staff at the public table, where there was a large assemblage of military men, Southern ladies, their families, and contractors. This latter race has risen up as if by magic, to meet the wants of the new Confederacy; and it is significant to measure the amount of the dependence on Northern manufacturers by the advertisements in the Southern journals, indicating the creation of new branches of workmanship, mechanical science, and manufacturing skill.