We sometimes speak of "the Western cities," as though the word "Western" was sufficiently descriptive, and as though the cities west of the Alleghany Mountains were all alike. This is far from being the case. Every city in the Western country, as well as every State, county, and neighborhood, has a character of its own, derived chiefly from the people who settled it. Berlin is not more different from Vienna, Lyons is not more different from Marseilles, Birmingham is not more different from Liverpool, than Cincinnati is from Chicago or St. Louis; and all these differences date back to the origin of those cities. The Ohio, formed by the junction of two Pennsylvania rivers, is the natural western outlet for the redundant population of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and consequently the first twenty thousand inhabitants of Cincinnati were chiefly from those States,—honest, plodding, saving Protestants, with less knowledge and less public spirit than the people of New England. The Swedes, the Danes, the Germans, the Protestant Irish, who poured into Pennsylvania and New Jersey in Franklin's time, attracted by the perfect toleration established by William Penn, were excellent people; but they had not the activity of mind nor the spiritual life of the English Puritans. Shrewd calculators and of indomitable industry, they were more able to accumulate property than disposed to risk it in bold, far-reaching enterprises, and took more pride in possessing than in displaying wealth,—in having a large barn than an attractive residence. They were more certain to build a church than a school-house, and few of them wanted anything of the book-pedler except an almanac. The descendants of such men founded Cincinnati, and made it a thriving, bustling, dull, unintellectual place. Then came in a spice of Yankees to enliven the mass, to introduce some quickening heresies, to promote schools, to found libraries, to establish new manufactures and stimulate public improvements. That wondrous tide of Germans followed that has made in each of the cities of the West a populous German quarter,—a town within a town. Meanwhile, young men from the Southern States, in considerable numbers, settled in Cincinnati, between whom and the daughters of the rich "Hunkers" of the town marriages were frequent, and the families thus created were, from 1830 to 1861, the reigning power in the city.
Perhaps there was no town of its size and wealth in Christendom which had less of the higher intellectual life and less of an enlightened public spirit than Cincinnati before the war. It had become exceedingly rich. Early in its career the great difficulty and expense of transporting goods across the mountains and down the winding Ohio had forced the people into manufacturing, and Cincinnati became the great workshop, as well as the exchange, of the vast and populous valley of the Ohio. Its wealth was legitimately earned. It was Cincinnati which originated and perfected the system which packs fifteen bushels of corn into a pig, and packs that pig into a barrel, and sends him over the mountains and over the ocean to feed mankind. Cincinnati imported or made nearly all that the people of three or four States could afford to buy, and received from them nearly all that they could spare in return, and made a profit on both transactions. This business, upon the whole, was done honestly and well. Immense fortunes were made. Nicholas Longworth died worth twelve millions, and there are now in that young city sixty-four persons whose estate is rated at a million dollars or more. But, with all this wealth and this talent for business, the people of Cincinnati displayed little of that spirit of improvement which has converted Chicago, in thirty years, from a quagmire into a beautiful city, and made it accessible to all the people of the prairies. There was too much ballast, as it were, for so little sail. People were intent on their own affairs, and were satisfied if their own business prospered. Such a thing even as a popular lecture was rare, and a well-sustained course of lectures was felt to be out of the question. Books of the higher kind were in little demand (that is, little, considering the size and great wealth of the place); there was little taste for art; few concerts were given, and there was no drama fit to entertain intellectual persons. Cincinnati was the Old Hunkers' paradise. Separated from a Slave State only by a river one third of a mile wide, with her leading families connected by marriage with those of Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland, and her business men having important relations with the South, there was no city—not even Baltimore—that was more saturated with the spirit of Hunkerism,—that horrid blending of vanity and avarice which made the Northern people equal sharers in the guilt of slavery, while taking the lion's share of the profit. It was at Cincinnati, in 1836, that a mob of most respectable citizens, having first "resolved" in public meeting that "Abolition papers" should neither be "published nor distributed" in the town, broke into the office of James G. Birney's "Philanthropist," and scattered the types, and threw the press into the river. It was at Cincinnati, in 1841, that the authorities were compelled to fill the prisons with negroes to protect them from massacre. Similar scenes have occurred in other cities, but violence of this kind meant more at Cincinnati than in most places, for the people here have always been noted for their orderly habits and their regard for law.
The war regenerated Cincinnati. We do not say began to regenerate it, because the word "regeneration" means but the beginning of a new life. There were few of the leading families which did not furnish to the Rebellion one adherent, and all men, of whatever class, were compelled to choose between their country and its foes. The great mass of the people knew not a moment of hesitation, and a tide of patriotic feeling set in which silenced, expelled, or converted the adherents of the Rebellion. The old business relations with the South, so profitable and so corrupting, were broken up, and Cincinnati found better occupation in supplying the government with gunboats and military stores. The prestige of the old "aristocracy" was lost; its power was broken; it no longer controlled elections, nor monopolized offices, nor lowered the tone of public feeling. Cincinnati was born again,—began a new life. There is now prevalent among the rulers of the city that noblest trait of freemen, that supreme virtue of the citizen,—Public Spirit; the blessed fruits of which are already apparent, and which is about to render the city a true metropolis to the valley of the Ohio, the fostering mother of all that aids and adorns civilization.
Cincinnati, like New York, is a cluster of towns and cities, bearing various names, and situated in different States. Persons ambitious of municipal offices would do well to remove to this place; since, within the limits of what is really Cincinnati, there are seven mayors, seven boards of aldermen, seven distinct and completely organized cities. A citizen of New York might well stand aghast at the announcement of such a fact as this, and only recover his consciousness to try mentally an impossible sum in the double rule of three: If one mayor and corporation, in a city of a million and a half of inhabitants, steal ten millions of dollars per annum, how much will seven mayors and seven corporations "appropriate" in a city of three hundred thousand inhabitants? The reader is excused from "doing" this hard sum, and we hasten to assure him that Cincinnati is governed by and for her own citizens, who take the same care of the public money as of their own private store. We looked into the Council Chamber of Cincinnati one morning, and we can testify that the entire furniture of that apartment, though it is substantial and sufficient, cost about as much as some single articles in the councilmen's room of the New York City Hall,—say the clock, the chandelier, or the chairman's throne. The people of Cincinnati are so primitive in their ideas, that they would regard the man who should steal the public money as a baser thief than he who should merely pick a private pocket. They have actually carried "this sort of thing" so far as to elect and re-elect as Mayor of the city proper that honest, able, generous Republican, Charles F. Wilstach, a member of the great publishing house of Moore, Wilstach, and Baldwin,—a gentleman who, though justly proud of the confidence of his fellow-citizens, and enjoying the honor they have conferred upon him, uses the entire power, influence, and income of his office in promoting the higher welfare of the city. He is the great patron of the Mechanics' Institute, which gave instruction last winter to two hundred and fifty evening pupils in drawing, mathematics, and engineering, at three dollars each for four months, besides affording them access to a library and pleasant rooms. Charles Wilstach, in short, is what Mr. Joseph Hoxie would call "a Peter Cooper sort of man." Imagine New York electing Peter Cooper mayor! It was like going back to the primitive ages,—to that remote period when Benjamin Franklin was printer and public servant, and when Samuel Adams served the State,—to see the Mayor of Cincinnati performing his full share of the labor of conducting a business that employs a hundred and fifty persons, and yet punctual at his office in the City Hall, and strictly attentive to its duties during five of the best hours of the day.
There are seven mayors about Cincinnati for the reasons following. On the southern bank of the Ohio, opposite the city, many large manufactories have found convenient sites, and thus the city of Covington has grown up, divided into two towns by the river Licking. Then there are five clusters of villas in the suburbs of Cincinnati, over the hill, each of which has deemed it best to organize itself into a city, in order to keep itself select and exclusive, and to make its own little laws and regulations. The mayors and aldermen of these minute rural villages are business men of Cincinnati, who drive in to their stores every morning, and home again in the evening. Thus you may meet aldermen at every corner, and buy something in a store from a mayor, and get his autograph at the end of a bill, without being aware of the honor done you. No autographs are more valued in Cincinnati than the signatures of these municipal magnates.
But let us look at the city. The river presents a novel and animated scene. On the Kentucky shore lies Covington, dark and low, a mass of brick factories and tall chimneys, from which the blackest smoke is always ascending, and spreading over the valley, and filling it with smoke. Over Cincinnati, too, a dense cloud of smoke usually hangs, every chimney contributing its quota to the mass. The universal use of the cheap bituminous coal (seventeen cents a bushel,—twenty-five bushels to a ton) is making these Western cities almost as dingy as London. Smoke pervades every house in Cincinnati, begrimes the carpets, blackens the curtains, soils the paint, and worries the ladies. Housekeepers assured us that the all-pervading smoke nearly doubles the labor of keeping a house tolerably clean, and absolutely prevents the spotless cleanliness of a Boston or Philadelphia house. A lady who wears light-colored garments, ribbons, or gloves in Cincinnati must be either very young, very rich, or very extravagant: ladies of good sense or experience never think of wearing them. Clean hearts abound in Cincinnati, but not clean hands. The smoke deposits upon all surfaces a fine soot, especially upon men's woollen clothes, so that a man cannot touch his own coat without blackening his fingers. The stranger, for a day or two, keeps up a continual washing of his hands, but he soon sees the folly of it, and abandons them to their fate. A letter written at Cincinnati on a damp day, when the Stygian pall lies low upon the town, carries with it the odor of bituminous smoke to cheer the homesick son of Ohio at Calcutta or Canton. This universal smoke is a tax upon every inhabitant, which can be estimated in money, and the sum total of which is millions per annum. Is there no remedy? Did not Dr. Franklin invent a smoke-consuming stove? Are there no Yankees in the West?
Before the traveller loitering along the levee has done wondering at the smoke, his eye is caught by the new wire suspension bridge, which springs out from the summit of the broad, steep levee to a lofty tower (two hundred feet high) near the water's edge, and then, at one leap, clears the whole river, and lands upon another tower upon the Covington side. From tower to tower the distance is one thousand and fifty-seven feet; the entire length of the bridge is two thousand two hundred and fifty-two feet; and it is hung one hundred feet above low-water mark by two cables of wire. Seen from below and at a little distance, it looks like gossamer work, and as though the wind could blow it away, and waft its filmy fragments out of sight. But the tread of a drove of elephants would not bend nor jar it. The Rock of Gibraltar does not feel firmer under foot than this spider's web of a bridge, over which trains of cars pass one another, as well as ceaseless tides of vehicles and pedestrians. It is estimated that, besides its own weight of six hundred tons, it will sustain a burden of sixteen thousand tons. In other words, the whole population of Cincinnati might get upon it without danger of being let down into the river. This remarkable work, constructed at a cost of one million and three quarters, was begun nine years ago, and has tasked the patience and the faith of the two cities severely; but now that it is finished, Cincinnati looks forward with confidence to the time when it will be a connecting link between Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico, and when Cincinnati will be only thirty hours from Mobile.
The levee, which now extends five or six miles around the large "bend" upon which the city stands, exhibits all the varieties of Western steamboats. It exhilarated the childish mind of the stranger to discover that the makers of school-books were practising no imposition upon the infant mind when they put down in the geography such names as the "Big Sandy." It was cheering, also, to know that one could actually go to Maysville, and see how General Jackson's veto had affected it. A traveller must indeed be difficult to please who cannot find upon the Cincinnati levee a steamboat bound to a place he would like to visit. From far back in the coal mines of the Youghiogheny (pronounced Yok-a-gau-ny) to high up the Red River,—from St. Paul to New Orleans, and all intermediate ports,—we have but to pay our money and take our choice of the towns upon sixteen thousand miles of navigable water. Among the rest we observed a steamboat about as large as an omnibus, fitted up like a pedler's wagon, and full of the miscellaneous wares which pedlers sell. Such little boats, it appears, steam from village to village along the shores of those interminable rivers, and, by renewing their supplies at the large towns, make their way for thousands of miles, returning home only at the end of the season. They can ascend higher up the streams than the large boats, and scarcely any "stage" of water is too low for them. Often as we had admired the four-horse pedlers' wagons of New England, with their plated harness and gorgeous paint, we resolved that, when we turned pedler, it should be in such a snug little steamboat upon the rivers of the West. Other steamboats, as probably the reader is aware, are fitted up as theatres, museums, circuses, and moral menageries, and go from town to town, announcing their arrival by that terrific combination of steam-whistles which is called in the West a Cally-ope. What an advance upon the old system of strolling players and the barn! "Then came each actor on his ass." On the Ohio he comes in a comfortable stateroom, to which when the performance is over he retires, waking the next morning at the scene of new triumphs.
Along the summit of the steep levee, close to the line of stores, there is a row of massive posts—three feet thick and twenty high—which puzzle the stranger. The swelling of the river brings the steamboats up to the very doors of the houses facing the river, and to these huge posts they are fastened to keep them from being swept away by the rushing flood. From the summit of the levee we advance into the town, always going up hill, unless we turn to the right or left.
Here is Philadelphia again, with its numbered streets parallel to the river, and the cross-streets named after the trees which William Penn found growing upon the banks of the Delaware,—"Walnut," "Locust," "Sycamore." Here are long blocks of wholesale stores in the streets near the river, of Philadelphian plainness and solidity; and as we ascend, we reach the showier retail streets, all in the modern style of subdued Philadelphian elegance. It is a solid, handsome town,—the newer buildings of light-colored stone, very lofty, and well built; the streets paved with the small pebbles ground smooth by the rushing Ohio, and as clean as Boston. In Fourth Street there is a dry-goods store nearly as large, and five times as handsome, as Stewart's in New York, and several other establishments on the greatest scale, equal in every respect to those of the Atlantic cities. The only difference is, that in New York we have more of them. By the time we have passed Fifth Street, which is about half a mile from the river, we have reached the end of the elegant and splendid part of the city; all beyond and around is shabby Philadelphia, begrimed with soot, and "blended in a common element" of smoke. The extensive and swarming German quarter is precisely like the German quarter of Philadelphia, (though the Cincinnati lager-bier is better,) and the wide, square, spacious old mansions are exactly such as the older houses of Philadelphia would be if Philadelphia burned bituminous coal.