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North America

A >> Anthony Trollope >> North America




I cannot see at what point the North first sinned; nor do I think
that had the North yielded, England would have honored her for her
meekness. Had she yielded without striking a blow, she would have
been told that she had suffered the Union to drop asunder by her
supineness. She would have been twitted with cowardice, and told
that she was no match for Southern energy. It would then have
seemed to those who sat in judgment on her that she might have
righted everything by that one blow from which she had abstained.
But having struck that one blow, and having found that it did not
suffice, could she then withdraw, give way, and own herself beaten?
Has it been so usually with Anglo-Saxon pluck? In such case as
that, would there have been no mention of those two dogs, Brag and
Holdfast? The man of the Northern States knows that he has
bragged--bragged as loudly as his English forefathers. In that
matter of bragging, the British lion and the star-spangled banner
may abstain from throwing mud at each other. And now the Northern
man wishes to show that he can hold fast also. Looking at all this
I cannot see that peace has been possible to the North.

As to the question of secession and rebellion being one and the
same thing, the point to me does not seem to bear an argument. The
confederation of States had a common army, a common policy, a
common capital, a common government, and a common debt. If one
might secede, any or all might secede, and where then would be
their property, their debt, and their servants? A confederation
with such a license attached to it would have been simply playing
at national power. If New York had seceded--a State which
stretches from the Atlantic to British North America--it would have
cut New England off from the rest of the Union. Was it legally
within the power of New York to place the six States of New England
in such a position? And why should it be assumed that so suicidal
a power of destroying a nationality should be inherent in every
portion of the nation? The Slates are bound together by a written
compact, but that compact gives each State no such power. Surely
such a power would have been specified had it been intended that it
should be given. But there are axioms in politics as in
mathematics, which recommend themselves to the mind at once, and
require no argument for their proof. Men who are not argumentative
perceive at once that they are true. A part cannot be greater than
the whole.

I think it is plain that the remnant of the Union was bound to take
up arms against those States which had illegally torn themselves
off from her; and if so, she could only do so with such weapons as
were at her hand. The United States army had never been numerous
or well appointed; and of such officers and equipments as it
possessed, the more valuable part was in the hands of the
Southerners. It was clear enough that she was ill provided, and
that in going to war she was undertaking a work as to which she had
still to learn many of the rudiments. But Englishmen should be the
last to twit her with such ignorance. It is not yet ten years
since we were all boasting that swords and guns were useless
things, and that military expenditure might be cut down to any
minimum figure that an economizing Chancellor of the Exchequer
could name. Since that we have extemporized two if not three
armies. There are our volunteers at home; and the army which holds
India can hardly be considered as one with that which is to
maintain our prestige in Europe and the West. We made some natural
blunders in the Crimea, but in making those blunders we taught
ourselves the trade. It is the misfortune of the Northern States
that they must learn these lessons in fighting their own
countrymen. In the course of our history we have suffered the same
calamity more than once. The Round-heads, who beat the Cavaliers
and created English liberty, made themselves soldiers on the bodies
of their countrymen. But England was not ruined by that civil war;
nor was she ruined by those which preceded it. From out of these
she came forth stronger than she entered them--stronger, better,
and more fit for a great destiny in the history of nations. The
Northern States had nearly five hundred thousand men under arms
when the winter of 1861 commenced, and for that enormous multitude
all commissariat requirements were well supplied. Camps and
barracks sprang up through the country as though by magic.
Clothing was obtained with a rapidity that has I think, never been
equaled. The country had not been prepared for the fabrication of
arms, and yet arms were put into the men's hands almost as quickly
as the regiments could be mustered. The eighteen millions of the
Northern States lent themselves to the effort as one man. Each
State gave the best it had to give. Newspapers were as rabid
against each other as ever, but no newspaper could live which did
not support the war. "The South has rebelled against the law, and
the law shall be supported." This has been the cry and the
heartfelt feeling of all men; and it is a feeling which cannot but
inspire respect.

We have heard much of the tyranny of the present government of the
United States, and of the tyranny also of the people. They have
both been very tyrannical. The "habeas corpus" has been suspended
by the word of one man. Arrests have been made on men who have
been hardly suspected of more than secession principles. Arrests
have, I believe, been made in cases which have been destitute even
of any fair ground for such suspicion. Newspapers have been
stopped for advocating views opposed to the feelings of the North,
as freely as newspapers were ever stopped in France for opposing
the Emperor. A man has not been safe in the streets who was known
to be a secessionist. It must be at once admitted that opinion in
the Northern States was not free when I was there. But has opinion
ever been free anywhere on all subjects? In the best built
strongholds of freedom, have there not always been questions on
which opinion has not been free; and must it not always be so?
When the decision of a people on any matter has become, so to say,
unanimous--when it has shown itself to be so general as to be
clearly the expression of the nation's voice as a single chorus,
that decision becomes holy, and may not be touched. Could any
newspaper be produced in England which advocated the overthrow of
the Queen? And why may not the passion for the Union be as strong
with the Northern States, as the passion for the Crown is strong
with us? The Crown with us is in no danger, and therefore the
matter is at rest. But I think we must admit that in any nation,
let it be ever so free, there may be points on which opinion must
be held under restraint. And as to those summary arrests, and the
suspension of the "habeas corpus," is there not something to be
said for the States government on that head also? Military arrests
are very dreadful, and the soul of a nation's liberty is that
personal freedom from arbitrary interference which is signified to
the world by those two unintelligible Latin words. A man's body
shalt not be kept in duress at any man's will, but shall be brought
up into open court, with uttermost speed, in order that the law may
say whether or no it should be kept in duress. That I take it is
the meaning of "habeas corpus," and it is easy to see that the
suspension of that privilege destroys all freedom, and places the
liberty of every individual at the mercy of him who has the power
to suspend it. Nothing can be worse than this: and such
suspension, if extended over any long period of years, will
certainly make a nation weak, mean spirited, and poor. But in a
period of civil war, or even of a widely-extended civil commotion,
things cannot work in their accustomed grooves. A lady does not
willingly get out of her bedroom-window with nothing on but her
nightgown; but when her house is on fire she is very thankful for
an opportunity of doing so. It is not long since the "habeas
corpus" was suspended in parts of Ireland, and absurd arrests were
made almost daily when that suspension first took effect. It was
grievous that there should be necessity for such a step; and it is
very grievous now that such necessity should be felt in the
Northern States. But I do not think that it becomes Englishmen to
bear hardly upon Americans generally for what has been done in that
matter. Mr. Seward, in an official letter to the British Minister
at Washington--which letter, through official dishonesty, found its
way to the press--claimed for the President the right of suspending
the "habeas corpus" in the States whenever it might seem good to
him to do so. If this be in accordance with the law of the land,
which I think must be doubted, the law of the land is not favorable
to freedom. For myself, I conceive that Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward
have been wrong in their law, and that no such right is given to
the President by the Constitution of the United States. This I
will attempt to prove in some subsequent chapter. But I think it
must be felt by all who have given any thought to the Constitution
of the States, that let what may be the letter of the law, the
Presidents of the United States have had no such power. It is
because the States have been no longer united, that Mr. Lincoln has
had the power, whether it be given to him by the law or no.

And then as to the debt; it seems to me very singular that we in
England should suppose that a great commercial people would be
ruined by a national debt. As regards ourselves, I have always
looked on our national debt as the ballast in our ship. We have a
great deal of ballast, but then the ship is very big. The States
also are taking in ballast at a rather rapid rate; and we too took
it in quickly when we were about it. But I cannot understand why
their ship should not carry, without shipwreck, that which our ship
has carried without damage, and, as I believe, with positive
advantage to its sailing. The ballast, if carried honestly, will
not, I think, bring the vessel to grief. The fear is lest the
ballast should be thrown overboard.

So much I have said wishing to plead the cause of the Northern
States before the bar of English opinion, and thinking that there
is ground for a plea in their favor. But yet I cannot say that
their bitterness against Englishmen has been justified, or that
their tone toward England has been dignified. Their complaint is
that they have received no sympathy from England; but it seems to
me that a great nation should not require an expression of sympathy
during its struggle. Sympathy is for the weak rather than for the
strong. When I hear two powerful men contending together in
argument, I do not sympathize with him who has the best of it; but
I watch the precision of his logic and acknowledge the effects of
his rhetoric. There has been a whining weakness in the complaints
made by Americans against England, which has done more to lower
them as a people in my judgment than any other part of their
conduct during the present crisis. When we were at war with
Russia, the feeling of the States was strongly against us. All
their wishes were with our enemies. When the Indian mutiny was at
its worst, the feeling of France was equally adverse to us. The
joy expressed by the French newspapers was almost ecstatic. But I
do not think that on either occasion we bemoaned ourselves sadly on
the want of sympathy shown by our friends. On each occasion we
took the opinion expressed for what it was worth, and managed to
live it down. We listened to what was said, and let it pass by.
When in each case we had been successful, there was an end of our
friends' croakings.

But in the Northern States of America the bitterness against
England has amounted almost to a passion. The players--those
chroniclers of the time--have had no hits so sure as those which
have been aimed at Englishmen as cowards, fools, and liars. No
paper has dared to say that England has been true in her American
policy. The name of an Englishman has been made a by-word for
reproach. In private intercourse private amenities have remained.
I, at any rate, may boast that such has been the case as regards
myself. But, even in private life, I have been unable to keep down
the feeling that I have always been walking over smothered ashes.

It may be that, when the civil war in America is over, all this
will pass by, and there will be nothing left of international
bitterness but its memory. It is sincerely to be hoped that this
may be so--that even the memory of the existing feeling may fade
away and become unreal. I for one cannot think that two nations
situated as are the States and England should permanently quarrel
and avoid each other. But words have been spoken which will, I
fear, long sound in men's ears, and thoughts have sprung up which
will not easily allow themselves to be extinguished.



CHAPTER XIV.

NEW YORK.


Speaking of New York as a traveler, I have two faults to find with
it. In the first place, there is nothing to see; and, in the
second place, there is no mode of getting about to see anything.
Nevertheless, New York is a most interesting city. It is the third
biggest city in the known world, for those Chinese congregations of
unwinged ants are not cities in the known world. In no other city
is there a population so mixed and cosmopolitan in their modes of
life. And yet in no other city that I have seen are there such
strong and ever visible characteristics of the social and political
bearings of the nation to which it belongs. New York appears to me
as infinitely more American than Boston, Chicago, or Washington.
It has no peculiar attribute of its own, as have those three
cities--Boston in its literature and accomplished intelligence,
Chicago in its internal trade, and Washington in its Congressional
and State politics. New York has its literary aspirations, its
commercial grandeur, and, Heaven knows, it has its politics also.
But these do not strike the visitor as being specially
characteristic of the city. That it is pre-eminently American is
its glory or its disgrace, as men of different ways of thinking may
decide upon it. Free institutions, general education, and the
ascendency of dollars are the words written on every paving-stone
along Fifth Avenue, down Broadway, and up Wall Street. Every man
can vote, and values the privilege. Every man can read, and uses
the privilege. Every man worships the dollar, and is down before
his shrine from morning to night.

As regards voting and reading, no American will be angry with me
for saying so much of him; and no Englishman, whatever may be his
ideas as to the franchise in his own country, will conceive that I
have said aught to the dishonor of an American. But as to that
dollar-worshiping, it will of course seem that I am abusing the New
Yorkers. We all know what a wretchedly wicked thing money is--how
it stands between us and heaven--how it hardens our hearts and
makes vulgar our thoughts! Dives has ever gone to the devil, while
Lazarus has been laid up in heavenly lavender. The hand that
employs itself in compelling gold to enter the service of man has
always been stigmatized as the ravisher of things sacred. The
world is agreed about that, and therefore the New Yorker is in a
bad way. There are very few citizens in any town known to me which
under this dispensation are in a good way, but the New Yorker is in
about the worst way of all. Other men, the world over, worship
regularly at the shrine with matins and vespers, nones and
complines, and whatever other daily services may be known to the
religious houses; but the New Yorker is always on his knees.

That is the amount of the charge which I bring against New York;
and now, having laid on my paint thickly, I shall proceed, like an
unskillful artist, to scrape a great deal of it off again. New
York has been a leading commercial city in the world for not more
than fifty or sixty years. As far as I can learn, its population
at the close of the last century did not exceed 60,000, and ten
years later it had not reached 100,000. In 1860 it had reached
nearly 800,000 in the City of New York itself. To this number must
be added the numbers of Brooklyn, Williamsburg, and Jersey City, in
order that a true conception may be had of the population of this
American metropolis, seeing that those places are as much a part of
New York as Southwark is of London. By this the total will be
swelled to considerably above a million. It will no doubt be
admitted that this growth has been very fast, and that New York may
well be proud of it. Increase of population is, I take it, the
only trustworthy sign of a nation's success or of a city's success.
We boast that London has beaten the other cities of the world, and
think that that boast is enough to cover all the social sins for
which London has to confess her guilt. New York, beginning with
60,000 sixty years since, has now a million souls--a million
mouths, all of which eat a sufficiency of bread, all of which speak
ore rotundo, and almost all of which can read. And this has come
of its love of dollars.

For myself I do not believe that Dives is so black as he is painted
or that his peril is so imminent. To reconcile such an opinion
with holy writ might place me in some difficulty were I a
clergyman. Clergymen, in these days, are surrounded by
difficulties of this nature--finding it necessary to explain away
many old-established teachings which narrowed the Christian Church,
and to open the door wide enough to satisfy the aspirations and
natural hopes of instructed men. The brethren of Dives are now so
many and so intelligent that they will no longer consent to be
damned without looking closely into the matter themselves. I will
leave them to settle the matter with the Church, merely assuring
them of my sympathy in their little difficulties in any case in
which mere money causes the hitch.

To eat his bread in the sweat of his brow was man's curse in Adam's
day, but is certainly man's blessing in our day. And what is
eating one's bread in the sweat of one's brow but making money? I
will believe no man who tells me that he would not sooner earn two
loaves than one--and if two, then two hundred. I will believe no
man who tells me that he would sooner earn one dollar a day than
two--and if two, then two hundred. That is, in the very nature of
the argument, caeteris paribus. When a man tells me that he would
prefer one honest loaf to two that are dishonest, I will, in all
possible cases, believe him. So also a man may prefer one quiet
loaf to two that are unquiet. But under circumstances that are the
same, and to a man who is sane, a whole loaf is better than half,
and two loaves are better than one. The preachers have preached
well, but on this matter they have preached in vain. Dives has
never believed that he will be damned because he is Dives. He has
never even believed that the temptations incident to his position
have been more than a fair counterpoise, or even so much as a fair
counterpoise, to his opportunities for doing good. All men who
work desire to prosper by their work, and they so desire by the
nature given to them from God. Wealth and progress must go on hand
in hand together, let the accidents which occasionally divide them
for a time happen as often as they may. The progress of the
Americans has been caused by their aptitude for money-making; and
that continual kneeling at the shrine of the coined goddess has
carried them across from New York to San Francisco. Men who kneel
at that shrine are called on to have ready wits and quick hands,
and not a little aptitude for self-denial. The New Yorker has been
true to his dollar because his dollar has been true to him.

But not on this account can I, nor on this account will any
Englishman, reconcile himself to the savor of dollars which
pervades the atmosphere of New York. The ars celare artem is
wanting. The making of money is the work of man; but he need not
take his work to bed with him, and have it ever by his side at
table, amid his family, in church, while he disports himself, as he
declares his passion to the girl of his heart, in the moments of
his softest bliss, and at the periods of his most solemn
ceremonies. That many do so elsewhere than in New York--in London,
for instance, in Paris, among the mountains of Switzerland, and the
steppes of Russia--I do not doubt. But there is generally a vail
thrown over the object of the worshiper's idolatry. In New York
one's ear is constantly filled with the fanatic's voice as he
prays, one's eyes are always on the familiar altar. The
frankincense from the temple is ever in one's nostrils. I have
never walked down Fifth Avenue alone without thinking of money. I
have never walked there with a companion without talking of it. I
fancy that every man there, in order to maintain the spirit of the
place, should bear on his forehead a label stating how many dollars
he is worth, and that every label should be expected to assert a
falsehood.

I do not think that New York has been less generous in the use of
its money than other cities, or that the men of New York generally
are so. Perhaps I might go farther and say that in no city has
more been achieved for humanity by the munificence of its richest
citizens than in New York. Its hospitals, asylums, and
institutions for the relief of all ailments to which flesh is heir,
are very numerous, and beyond praise in the excellence of their
arrangements. And this has been achieved in a great degree by
private liberality. Men in America are not as a rule anxious to
leave large fortunes to their children. The millionaire when
making his will very generally gives back a considerable portion of
the wealth which he has made to the city in which he made it. The
rich citizen is always anxious that the poor citizen shall be
relieved. It is a point of honor with him to raise the character
of his municipality, and to provide that the deaf and dumb, the
blind, the mad, the idiots, the old, and the incurable shall have
such alleviation in their misfortune as skill and kindness can
afford.

Nor is the New Yorker a hugger-mugger with his money. He does not
hide up his dollars in old stockings and keep rolls of gold in
hidden pots. He does not even invest it where it will not grow but
only produce small though sure fruit. He builds houses, he
speculates largely, he spreads himself in trade to the extent of
his wings--and not seldom somewhat farther. He scatters his wealth
broadcast over strange fields, trusting that it may grow with an
increase of a hundredfold, but bold to bear the loss should the
strange field prove itself barren. His regret at losing his money
is by no means commensurate with his desire to make it. In this
there is a living spirit which to me divests the dollar-worshiping
idolatry of something of its ugliness. The hand when closed on the
gold is instantly reopened. The idolator is anxious to get, but he
is anxious also to spend. He is energetic to the last, and has no
comfort with his stock unless it breeds with Transatlantic rapidity
of procreation.

So much I say, being anxious to scrape off some of that daub of
black paint with which I have smeared the face of my New Yorker;
but not desiring to scrape it all off. For myself, I do not love
to live amid the clink of gold, and never have "a good time," as
the Americans say, when the price of shares and percentages come up
in conversation. That state of men's minds here which I have
endeavored to explain tends, I think, to make New York
disagreeable. A stranger there who has no great interest in
percentages soon finds himself anxious to escape. By degrees he
perceives that he is out of his element, and had better go away.
He calls at the bank, and when he shows himself ignorant as to the
price at which his sovereigns should be done, he is conscious that
he is ridiculous. He is like a man who goes out hunting for the
first time at forty years of age. He feels himself to be in the
wrong place, and is anxious to get out of it. Such was my
experience of New York, at each of the visits that I paid to it.

But yet, I say again, no other American city is so intensely
American as New York. It is generally considered that the
inhabitants of New England, the Yankees properly so called, have
the American characteristics of physiognomy in the fullest degree.
The lantern jaws, the thin and lithe body, the dry face on which
there has been no tint of the rose since the baby's long-clothes
were first abandoned, the harsh, thick hair, the thin lips, the
intelligent eyes, the sharp voice with the nasal twang--not
altogether harsh, though sharp and nasal--all these traits are
supposed to belong especially to the Yankee. Perhaps it was so
once, but at present they are, I think, more universally common in
New York than in any other part of the States. Go to Wall Street,
the front of the Astor House, and the regions about Trinity Church,
and you will find them in their fullest perfection.

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