UC-NRLF EflE 1D7 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class WORD FROM THE NORTH-WEST TO DE. ETJSSELL; >METIME AMERICAN CORRESPONDENT OF THE TIMES/ A LETTER TO WM. HOWARD RUSSELL LL, D, ON PASSAGES IX HIS DIARY NORTH AND SOUTH. BY AITOEEW DIOKSON WHITE, PROF. OF HISTORY AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY. FROM THE LONDON EDITION. SYRACUSE: SUMMERS & BROTHER, PRINTERS, DAILY STANDARD OFFICE. 1863. **% VrtNrt LIBRARIAN S FUi;0 A LETTER. SIR : A recent writer in a London journal having sketched the tricks of a Parisian juggler, spake on this wise : " M. Ed- mond might have been a Spurgeon, a Gumming, a Hume, a Morrison (of the pills,) a Montalembert, a D* Israeli, or a news paper correspondent." This bit of phrasing is, as you see, in the most approved London style jaunty, knowing, and so thrown as to befoul slightly two men of whom Europe has reason to be proud, and who were not in the least concerned in the subject discussed. But it is chiefly interesting as a confession regarding the worth of much of the famed correspondence published in certain London newspapers a confession from one of those who know it best From such eminent authority I dare not dissent as regards the manufacture of London correspondence in general*; but it is precisely because I have dissented in regard to your correspon dence in particular, and because you have not been placed in the same categoiy with your quackish imitators, that I takej-the liberty of writing }^ou upon your " Diary North and South." No sane man cares to answer the letters which your succes sors are writing from America. It would be absurd to refute them when they so abundantly refute themselves ; and it would be unjust to blame them when they merely manufacture the ex act article for which they are paid. But the justification for writing you is simple. Your " Diary," while it gives lessons for which thoughtful Americans thank you, contains errors in observation, deduction, and, worst of all, in preliminary judg ment, which ought to be shoAvn. My excuse for writing at so late a day is that I have hoped to see you opposed by some champion better armed. To clear the way toward your smaller errors let me show what Americans think of your great error. This great mistake mother of a vast brood of wrong judg ments is that, before the present war, there was throughout the United States a hate for every thing English ; that it had become morbid ; that the present bitterness is but that old chronic hate made acute by disappointments in our civil war. The importance of a right understanding is my excuse for asking you to look back along our common history. No candid man can wonder that an anti-English spirit lin gered in America after the War of Independence. Every statesman s mind bore remembrances of that peculiarly English series of insults of which Wedderburn s treatment of Franklin was the climax ; every hamlet had its traditions of the allied British and Indians. No man could forget that at Wyoming the British were to the Indians as three to one. No more is it matter for surprise that the war of 1812, and the policy which led to it, revived the old spirit. In the light of their own feelings at the " Trent" affair the unauthorized seizure of two men not British subjects, from a packet ship, in a distant sea, Englishmen can hardly be surprised that the Americans were exasperated at the " Chesapeake" affair the authorized- seizure of their own citizens, upon then- own coasts, from an imperfectly equipped American frigate. Nor can it be wondered at that English employment of In dians in this second war, after the dreadful experiences of the first ; and the abuse heaped by the greater portion of the Eng lish press on everything which Americans venerated, made matters still worse. When bitter things are said in America of the British Government, it would, perhaps, but be fair to remember that many men are still living who saw the mangled bodies of women and children victims of the British allies ; and that there are thousands who remember seeing even worse names applied by English journals to Jackson and Clay than the same journals gave, a few years since, to Napoleon the Third ; or than they now give to Lincoln, Butler, and Seward. And, even if all this could have been forgotten in a day (would that it might have been!) what chance has since been given for any growth of gocd feeling ? Look at the tourists who have preceded you ! and at their books ! Two or three have been kindly and fair. One was so witty that, though we winced as he stung us, we joined in the world s laugh afterward and confessed ourselves foolish ever to have been offended. But the others poor souls ! a week in one great state, a day in another, an hour in a third pirouetting from great city to great city not deigning to look at the vast intervening spaces where the strongest elements in the new civ ilization were developing gathering husks and rinds to be pa- raded in England as fruit too dignified to suffer acquaintance with the sturdy men who were grappling with the great prob lems presented ; only condescending in noting the idioms of wagon-drivers and bar-keepers ; too careless to reason upon the great work going on ; only careful to blame the nation for not abolishing slavery, despite the Constitution, as they now blame us for having striven to restrict it, in accordance with the Con stitution ; too blind to see that a country might be, in many details unlike England, and yet have some life ; only keen in seeing spittle, and hearing the nasal twang. Candidly, Sir, can you wonder that a nation, nevv r , and pardonably sensitive to the opinion of the world, should be irritated against a nation of whom these were almost the only representatives it knew ? Even if the dislike had been far deeper, would it have been at all strange, seeing that thereby Americans would but have ranged themselves with almost all other nations ? Leaving out of the question Germany, Spain, and Italy, where it can hard ly be pretended that love for England is very hearty, take the great ally France. Choose your Frenchman as Carlyle would have you choose a statesman the first specimen hit with ran dom orangepeel. Get under the surface of his thoughts bring out his pet ideas and, be he a gamin of the Faubourg St. Antoine, or a rag-picker of the Faubourg St. Marceau, or a bluff merchant of jthe Faubourg Montmartre, or a noble of the Faubourg St. Germain Legitimist, Orleanist, Napoleonist, or Republican, you find that the idea he at this moment fondles most is that "the Emperor, remembering 1815, has humbled Russia, has punished Austria, and is now making ready to take revenge on England/ Or take Russia, bound to England by many common strug gles and interests. It was my fortune during the Crimean war, to look out on Russian things and thoughts with whatever ad vantages were then given to those attached to the American Legation, and it was no small surprise to find that though all Russians allowed that France was striking far harder blows than England, France was respected and England hated. And the last news from Rio 1 Sir. Christie in his glory, and the Brazilians running through the streets crying " Death to the English!" May it not be that England has been somewhat in fault ? May not the reasons for this American dislike, which is seen to be shared by so many other nations, be found quite as much in 6 certain English ways of dealing with the world, as in the utter perverseness of all other nations ? So much to show how that American dislike was born how It was fed how it was not the morbid thing you seem to sup pose. Now let me show how it was dying out nay, how that old dislike was killed before the present civil war commenced. And, first, the common language, when a chance was given it, did its work in uniting tbe Free States to England, and I cannot but be surprised that one, who rejoices in so learned a title as yours should have been content with so superficial a view as that contained in the statement that " Their language is the sole link between England and the United States, and it only binds the England of 1770 to the American of I860.* The sole link ! even grant that but do you not see Dr. Jlussell, that a common language gives something more than the same words for bread and butter ; that it must produce community or similarity of view on a vast range of subjects from greatest to least, and that, when the thoughts of two na tions are thus tied together, the men of the two nations begin to be tied together ? No Western hamiet so rude that it does not contain admirers of Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dickens, Hughes, and the rest; few pulpits so remote that the spirit of Selwyn, or Kingsley, or Chalmers, or Robertson, or Noel, or Colenso has not reached them ; few men so ignorant as not to know when a valiant blow is struck in England for truth or right. A few years since when one of my colleagues died, it was inscribed on his monument as a thing to insure veneration, " He was a scholar of Arnold, of Rugby." A few months since I saw a strong man in a little interior village ready to shed tears at the death of Buckle, and at the loss America had thereby sustained. A few weeks since I heard a young American mer chant say very naively to a Woolwich functionary, who was expounding certain regulations concerning foreigners, But you don t consider Americans foreigners, do you?" Thousands of examples could be given to show that the common language, instead of the filmy thread you think, was a strong cord extend ing from every great mind in England to the best minds of ev ery one of our little villages, drawing them and the men they influenced out of the old dislike into sympathy, not, perhaps, with the English Government, but with all that was good and true in the English people. * Vol. ii. p. 37-8. Nay, you seem yourself to get a glimpse of this when you say, " And yet it (England) is the only power in Europe, for the food opinion of which they really seem to care. Let any Yench, 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."* Despite a too evident partiality for a portion of the London press, there is great truth in that. Would that it had pleased you to get at it and make it known, rather than to encrust it with showy phrases. And, kind as were the feelings spreading among the people at large, there was even a better spirit in the young men who during the last ten years have been issuing from the Northern Colleges to lay hold upon public opinion. The Anglo-mania of the Eastern Colleges has been notorious. During the past five years I have stood in the midst of nearly six hundred stu dents brought together upon the munificent foundation laid by the Government of the United States in one of the Western States. In this body of young men, constantly receiving and constantly sending out the best blood of the North- West, there was gratitude to LaFayette, there was wonder at Napoleon, but toward England there was a tendency by all their habits of thought. I remember well how in scholarly discussion of Gui- zot s idea, that French civilization leads in Europe and has been superior to English civilization, the partizans of England were to those of France as five to one. But to this growth in good feeling there was one exception. There was one pail of the United States whence hatred for England was never eliminated the Slave States. The reason is simple. England was the " hot-bed of aboli tionism," English newspapers were opposed to slavery (I refer, of course, to a period anterior to the late Scriptural defence of slavery by some of the foremost,) Englishmen were bent on thwarting filibusters, English women had written a monster let- terurging emancipation, England had sent us George Thompson, and had received Frederick Douglas and Mrs. Beecher Stowe. Therefore the hatred of the South for England was always fervent ; and the two men who wrought most vigorously, and spoke most fiercely to keep this hatred at the boiling point, were Mr. Jefferson Davis and Mr. James M. Mason ;t and among * Vol. ii. p. 37. f The present " Confederate Commissioner" in London. the choicest results of the spirit they kept alive was the outrage on Captain Aldham in the Southern commercial capital and the insult to the Prince of Wales in the Southern political capital. There were, indeed, some men in the North who followed the Southern leaders in this, but it was simply because they followed them in everything. Whenever a man was found in a free state reviling England, it was at once generally under stood that he supported the South and slavery. It must be owned however that these men spoke with much force. They told us that leading Englishmen would not regret to see our land divided, that the sweet speeches at international dinners were humbug, that in case America got into trouble English ill-will would show itself, that if there was a liking for emancipation there was a passion for cotton. But in those days before the civil war began, the disciples^of these men had become a mere handful, and it was only at rare intervals that they were strong enough to take advantage of some overbearing act of England, and bring out a little of the old ill-will. Having shown how the old currents of anti-English feeling were almost entirely dried up, let me show you how the new currents of ill-feeling began to flow the new currents which you mistake for the old. You judge rightly when you say, " They seemed to think that England was bound by her anti-slavery antecedents to discourage to the utmost any attempts of the South to establish its independence on a basis of slavery." 4 Quite true. No man among us except the small party of anti-English croakers doubted that, despite sundry minor mistakes, England would be heartily with us. England s help we did not want. Eng land s sympathy we expected as a thing of course. Of course England would spurn the claims to sympathy of a band of men willing to deluge their country in blood sooner than see the slighcst barrier to the spread of slavery ; of course England would loathe a Government whose chief" corner-stone," accord ing to the official declaration of its greatest statesman, was slavery, Few American patriots will forget the sadness with which they came out of that dream. As unpleasant symptoms were seen in the English press earnest men said triumphantly, " Wait for Lord John E-ussell to speak !" Lord John Ilussell spoke, * Vol. 1. p. 65. 9 and we were informed that the war was a mere struggle for do minion on one side and independence on the other ; that it was like the Grecian struggle Northerners resembling Turks, Southerners Greeks. Then flitted over news that a majority of the journals had declared against us ; that Mr. Lincoln had been hissed and Mr. Davis applauded by the assembled youth ful wisdom of Oxford : that an overwhelming majority of a de bating union at Cambridge had decided their question in favour of the South ; then came huzzas as peaceful American ships were burned by a privateer ; then soft reproofs of Southern atrocities, and loud praise for the vigorous Southern policy of which these atrocities were the essential part : then denuncia tions at any severity on the part of the North, and taunts for Northern weakness in policy, caused by reluctance to be severe ; then a high carnival of abuse and caricature. Thus began the new current of dislike for England. It was this new current which you saw, not the old. Even if this dislike were far stronger, it would not, I think, approach the ill-feeling shown by great numbers in England to ward America. No one can fail to be struck by it in railway cars, steamers, omni busses, shops, debating clubs, private resi dences. I have never heard in America any sueh bitter ex pressions against England, as in England against America. The first kindness shown me on a recent visit to England was when an Englishman pointed out and exulted over a steamer prepar ing to run the blockade. I have heard a speaker rejoice be cause " that republic of blackguards is gone forever." I have heard a Bond-street bookseller, while bowing an aristocratic patron to the door, declare that the news from Fredericksburg did not please him, that he was sorry the Yankees had not lost more. You may say that these were men of a low class. Grant it ; but I never saw in America the man of a class so low as to rejoice over the blood of ten thousand Englishmen slain in one battle, and to clamor for more. This awakening of old hates on both sides both of us regret ; my only hope is that the voices of the "nobodies" who fear not to brave the storm, and to show their good-will toward a nation struggling for life or death with slavery, will ring out louder and longer than the voices of our revilers, and that the kind words of the minority will be remembered when the scoffs of the majority are forgotten. So long as Mill, and Bright, and Forster, and Milnes, and the rest of the heroic brood of " no bodies" live, America cannot utterly hate England. 10 Let me call your attention to another error in your " Diary," also fundamental. You convey the idea that Americans are utterly intolerant of criticism, that so long as a tourist praises everything all goes well ; that so soon as he blames anything all goes ill ; you support the idea by a quotation from De Toc- queville.* The remark of the great French writer was doubtless made, like some harsh criticisms toward the end of your second vol ume, during a momentary loss of temper. The Avhole force of his statement was broken at once* by the reception of his book in America. No man has cut more mercilessly than he into some of the most cherished theories of American Democracy. No man has laboured more vigorously to prove many things defects which we consider beauties. Yet you find the " De mocracy in America * on the shelves of every earnest collegian and every aspiring lawyer. The name of De Tocqueville is honoured from one end of the land to the other. Why ? Simply because he had a mind large enough to be fair. At neither of his visits did he seek to please a coterie in Europe, nor did he allow his view to be obstructed by a coterie in America. Whether in Judge Spencer s library at Albany, or in DeBcaumont s canoe at Saginaw, his whole aim was to get at the great truths good for all men to hear. He traveled much and endured much, but lie never pours out his soul in dis sertations on the horrors of milk-drinking and tobacco-chewing. So too Von Raumer, Michel Chevalier, Ampere. They said many severe things, but they were none the less honoured. In them there was none of that patronizing way, which seems the predestined sin of English tourists ; none of those attempts at wit, which compare with the real thing, as London Porter with sparkling St. Peray. Let me tell you frankly why you and your sprightly letters were disliked. It was desired on all sides that you should be as accurate as possible in your criticisms ; but the idea soon spread that you had much unction in prophesying difficulties which never came, and in making great use of the " I told you so" style over those which did come. It was thought that when the question was between a body of men avowedly right ing their country to perpetuate slavery, and a body of men seeking to save their country, and quite generally hoping to cripple slavery, you preferred - the side where you found * Vol. ii. p. 298. 11 the canvass-backed ducks, the mellowed Burgundy, the men most resembling members of the London Clubs. It was known that the newspaper which employed you had commenced a cru sade against our country, and it was thought that you some times showed something of its spirit looking down upon us as Jupiter upon frogs. Undoubtedly, also, the non-fulfilment of so many of your early prophecies, and the awkward work which the national patriotism made with your famous statement regarding the com plete apathy of our people, shook national respect for your in fallibility. Then, too, the hardy farmers, into whose life you penetrated far enough to see that they wore sombre clothing, and whittled on court-days but whom I saw, when the news came from Fort Sumpter, with tears streaming down their cheeks, hurrying from their farms to offer themselves and their sons to their country those men whom I saw, in one of the little unromantic towns you caricature, form two companies on Sunday after service those men did not stop to learn your merits, but simply considered you as but one more English tou rist of the old sort, skipping joyfully from North to South, and South to North, buzzing unpleasantly over the battle-fields where lay their dead sons and brothers, and so at last they lifted up their hard hands and tried to brush you off. Such were the reasons why you were not always treated as you should have been ; and I cannot forbear adding that, in the opinion of men whom we both hold in respect, had there been, both in your "letters" and " Diary,* a little less stress laid on your petty discomforts and our petty barbarisms a lit tle broader view on the great questions at issue a little more allowance for pardonable faults, and, above all, a little better preservation of your temper toward the last, you would have gained for your criticisms close study and for yourself lasting esteem. Yet I think you are mistaken in supposing that the feeling toward you was entirely or mainly a feeling of dislike. A man so frank as yourself in declaring the truth to others will not blame me for assuring you that at last you were far more fre quently laughed at than scolded at. Your account of the nick names and caricatures bestowed upon you is correct. The people generally figured you as the traditionally stout English gentleman, fussy, meddlesome, making much of a learned title, using that English accent which is not duly appreciated by 12 Americans, making prophecies wliicli constantly came to nought. The threatening letters on which you naturally lay so much stress, were, without doubt additional evidences of that fault in our people which you condemn elsewhere want of respect for distinguished men in short, a poor sort of practical jokes. The assertion that there was needed in your book somewhat more kindliness may be thought unjust. To cite proofs from the end of the book, where Mr. Stanton s course causes an evi dent ebullition, would be unfair. Let me cite them from the first part from the story of your first hour in New York. You say that, after leaving the Jersey City ferry, you went "rattling over a most abominable pavement, plunging into mud- holes, squashing throughs now-hcaps in ill-lighted narrow streets of low, mean-looking, wooden houses,"* &c. I have passed scores of times to and from the aforesaid ferry, "up all manner o streets," by every avenue which the most bewildered coachman could take ; many of them I have found narrow, ill-lighted and muddy nearly as much so as some far more pretentious streets in London. In some of them one might find a few houses of wood ; but anything like "streets of low, mean-looking, wooden houses " no one has seen there within twenty years. This is, indeed, but a straw. Let me show another straw in the current flowing throw the next page. 4 At intervals there towered up a block of brickwork and stucco, with long rows of windows lighted up, tier above tier, and a swarming crowd passing in and out of the portals, which were recognized as the barrack-like glory of American civiliza tion a Broadway monster hotel."! You may think it over-scnitiveness, but the phrase "barrack- like glory of American civilization " seems far more sonorous than kind. American civilization is as yet far from what we hope for it but its glory is not the hotel. And if that part of your first hour betrays want of kindli ness, another part betokens want of fairness. You know well that in England, more than in any other country, the culture, of other nations is judged by the reality of their architecture. Why then rob the great Broadway hotels of what little merit they possess by speaking of them as "blocks of brickwork and stucco ?" You certainly saw them often enough by daylight to know that not one is stuccoed. Not one has any of the * Vol. i. p. 12. t Yol. i. p. 13. 13 yellow plastered magnificence of Regent-street. Nearly every one is of granite, or brownstone, or marble. Then, the frequent mention of mud, in the passage quoted and elsewhere. That the streets in the better American cities after a snow-storm, are bad, must be allowed ; but that their main streets are ever muddy, when judged by a London stand ard, must be denied. It is probably the excellent water-supply in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and many smaller cities, which has so accustomed the people to tolerably clean streets, that a day of the mire so common during winter in Piccadilly, Regent-street, the Strand, and Oxford-street, would almost provoke a rebellion. I have walked in Broadway when re cently-fallen snow was troublesome, and have at various times seen proofs that street-commissioners are not immaculate, but anything to equal the sticky paste of mud and soot in which one slips and is bespattered during winter, in the main streets of London, I never saw. As to mud in Washington, we all acknowledge that the usu ally bad state of the streets there, must have been rendered far worse by the tramp of thousands on thousands of soldiers. Of your being carried oil your legs by the water of a street gutter, "which was literally above my hips"* and the rest, all declare it inexplicable ; but we are willing to believe it for the same reason that Sir James Stephen believed in the miracles of the Arch deacon Paris, or that so many good men hold to Mr. Arrow- smith s vision of a series of duels in an American railway car that is, because the testimony is unimpeachable. Having found fault with so many statements, I make haste to thank you for quite as many. You complain of our system of street conveyance, and justly. A worse system exists not in the civilized world. The cab system, so useful and reason able in Europe, is, in America thanks to the monopoly en joyed by hackmen unknown. A more inconvenient plan for the public, and a more short-sighted plan for the owners of public vehicles, could not be devised. Your criticism, too, of our hotel system is just. An Ameri can hotel before organization is very often excellent, but after organization it is frequently wretched. For the first step taken by the proprietors is frequently to enthrone in it some individ ual with little brains, much gold chain, and immense self-es teem, and to invest him with the powers of a Neapolitan Bour- * Vol. ii. p. 279. 14 bon. Mr. Everett, Mr. Bancroft, or Mr. Seward, enter in gen tlemen s dress and style, and, if unrecognized, they are merci lessly relegated to the skies, or to apartments as near them as the sovereign in the office controls. Wash. Goss, Conductor on the Saccharissa and Swampville Railroad, or Jeff. Boss, Agent of the Hoosier River Steamboat Company, enter loud and radiant with jewels, and they are waited upon to the first floor. Then, too, the bill of fare is often splendid, but to catch the waiters frequently enough to get a Christian man s dinner, or to make them understand the names of any but the plainest dishes, is in very many hotels a miracle. You are also entirely right in blaming the wretched arrange ments for warmth and ventilation on almost all our railways. I trust that Mr. John Murray will, some day, by means of his hand-book indications, aid in reforming these abuses in Ameri ca, as he has done in the rest of the world. It is also gratifying to see that you are sound on the saliva question. But I come to some of your judgments on more important matters in American life where you are manifestly Avrong. Having stated that "in New Orleans, Montgomery, Mobile, Jackson, and Memphis, there is a reckless and violent condi tion of society unfavorable to civilization, and but little hopeful of the future," you say, " The state of legal protection for the most serious interests of man, considered as a civilized and social creature, which prevails in America, could not be tolera ted for an instant, and would generate a revolution in the worst governed country in Europe."* Now, Dr. Russell, although the portly Englishman with whom I recently crossed the ocean might be excused for taking a bowie-knife to England as a souvenir of his trip from New York to Niagara, and although it was the most natural thing in the world for him to have a pocket made for it at the back of his neck, wherewith to astonish his English friends, you have no excuse. Though the state of things be so terrible as you describe it in the Southern cities you have named, you know that throughout the Free States there is no such insecurity. Why not have stated this ? Why not have stated the great reason WHY for years life and property have been in the North secure, and in the South the sport of pistol and bowie-knife ? That you should neglect this all-important distinction in your * Vol. ii. p. 39. 15 "Letters" Americans can understand; but your "Diary" was not to be published in the Times. And if that neglect was owing to lack of time or space, why drag iii the statement that, "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." For this proclamation in this place must seem as utterly su perfluous to any fair man, as the Excelsior banner in the hands of Longfellow s Alpine climber seemed useless to Albert Smith. If it is a statement of your taste in politics, the only answer needed is that the great majority in America can not agree with you, for they would prefer the most stormy democracy to the most sunny despotism. If it is meant to convey the idea that life or property are a whit less safe in the Free States of America than under any European monarchy you can be refuted in an instant. Is life or property more secure in Spain, or Italy, or Russia ? Xay, take your own England. Have not the people of your metropolis been in paroxysms of fear and rage during this whole winter, at the want of security for life and property ? Both of us have trav eled thousands of miles in every direction in America, and neither of us when in the Free States has feared to go where he pleased. Though England has sent America many expert criminals, neither of us, I dare say, ever hesitated to take the nearest way between any two points in any Northern city. How is it in London ? It is but a few weeks since kind friends in the great metropolis made it a part of their duty to tell me what streets were to be avoided after four o clock in the afternoon and those streets were often broad and in the heart of the city. Compare, too, if you will, the security in the country at large. I can name many large counties in America where a murder has not been committed in twenty years ; of how many assem blages of the same size could that be said in England ? And if you speak of security of property from its worse foes, has America ever surpassed the frauds of Paul and Roupell, and a score which have been within a few years paraded in your pub lic prints ? May it not be, Dr. Russell, that in this, as in many other things, you have reasoned rather from your theory of what every republic must be, than from your observation of what the American Republic really is?. 16 You also find fault with a want of veneration in many of our people. It is a fault ; but, after all, is it worse than its oppo site ? No Englishman can be more painfully struck by the want of veneration in many Americans, than Americans are pained by servility in many Englishmen. I recall a guide at one of the great English castles whose mania for taking off his hat and bowing at my least word was so distressing that at last I gave up the dearest privilege a Yankee knows, that of asking questions. It was the only way to be relieved from that nightmare of servility. You lay stress also on the American use of patriotic phrases. As expounding your views take your account of General Scott s speech to a crowd at Washington : "Out the General went to them, and addressed a few words to his audience in the usual style about rallying round, and dying gloriously, arid old nag of our country, and all that sort of thing."* There is in this a trifle too much of the usual English de haul en has manner. Let that pass ; but, Sir, did there never flash into your mind a suspicion that the words you quote might mean something? May it not have been that an old general who had, for half a century, shown that he loved his country better than life, was deeply in earnest ? May it not have been that those listening volunteers assembled from all parts of the North offering property, family-ties, and life, were in earnest, and that the words so ridiculous to you were to them good words appealing to their souls? I saw many of them go from the villages of New York and the West, and from my own lecture-room ; near relatives, dear friends, much-loved pupils were among them. I know what high motives were theirs ; what homes they left ; what hopes they sacrificed ; what sad fate many cheerfully accepted. I have heard quiet last words from them as noble as any in the records of Roman devotion. I think of their graves, and I ask, do you not take too much upon you when you so snecringly speak of that communion be tween the veteran General and men like these, as "in the usual style," and "all that sort of thing?" In various parts of your work you deprecate American boast ing. You are quite right ; yet, would it not have been more fair to own that it is a failing which the Yankee comes by quite naturally ? What are Eule Britannia, " and the like, but moth- * Vol. i. p. 106. 17 ers of Fourth-of-July orations ? What toast of American gen eral or admiral ever resounded so loudly and came to nought so ludicrously as the invitations given by a certain English ad miral to a dinner at St. Petersburg ? I have heard an English speaker boast that English soldiers had never retreated in any battle ; and, though I have heard some amazing specimens of "tall talk" in America, they were merely nothing compared to the calmly majestic brag of an English debater, who, arguing for the enthronement of Prince Alfred in Greece, and speaking of the opposing argument that the Treaty of Vienna opposed it, said "but the Treaty of Vienna has already been broken. It declared that no Bonaparte should ever ascend the throne of France, and yet a Bonaparte now sits on that throne ; though, to confess the truth, I don t think that England ought to have permitted it." What masses of innocent brag were com pressed into that sentence ! But all the audience adopted the idea and applauded ; and so would I, had not all my powers been absorbed in the mental effort I was making to know how England was to hinder France from choosing Napoleon III. And are you not guilty also of something much like it, when you say, "I am opposed to national boasting, but I do firmly believe that 10,000 British regulars, or 12,000 French, with a proper establishment of artillery and cavalry, would not only entirely repulse this army with the greatest ease, under com petent commanders, but that they could attack them and march into Washington over them or with them, whenever they pleased."* In the light of old struggles between "British reg ulars" and the rawest American militia, the statement looks much like boasting ; but when one sees you care to have two thousand more French than English, and remembers the war of the Crimea, you are seen to be the contributor of as splendid a specimen as was ever seen. May it not be that this fault, which you suppose peculiarly American, is inherited, and is, after all, only one among the many proofs that " blood will tell ?" But nowhere are you more vigorous than in denouncing the sins of the American press. In this, too, you are right up to a certain point, but was it fair to involve all in the same condem nation ? One of your successors has chosen to show American sentiment by quoting from a little journal supported by a clique in New York, and whose name was never heard of by one in * Vol. ii. p. 158. 18 ten thousand outside that city ; but do you not commit a simi lar fault in some of your denunciations ? Granted that some of our journals are vile especially in their treatment of yourself, and Great Britain in what attribute of decency are they surpassed by many of the most influential London journals at this moment ? Look at the absurdities regarding Mr. Lincoln s guillotines, and Gen. Butler s executions ; look at the welcome given to a recent importation of American pot-house slang, regarding "long legged Lincoln," "chuckle-headed M Clellan," and "Bill Sew- ard ;" look at the piety shown in the Scripture defence of slave ry ; look at the logic shown in the argument that Wilberforce would, if living, frown upon the Union and Anti-Slavery side, because a son of his chooses to give it the cold shoulder ; as if any Wilberforce now alive would deign to represent the Clap- ham sect" in anything. Or, take matters entirely outside the American question. For decency, take the epithets applied by leading religious jour nals to Bishop Colenso, and by leading political journals to the clergymen and laymen who have taken part in the Emancipa tion meetings ; for hopeful piety take the advertisements of deal ers in Church preferment, and in "lithographed sermons impos sible to be distinguished from ordinary handwriting;" for in corruptibility, the recent proceedings between an English news paper and the representative of France. You make some quiet fun over the carefulness of certain American newspapers in chronicling the doings of Mrs. Lincoln, and we will laugh with you, not doubting that afterward you will laugh with us at far greater absurdities of the sort in the English newspapers. You lay stress also on the unreliabilty of telegraphic news in American papers. It is an evil ; but it seems to me not half so great an evil that, in a nation feverish with civil war, telegrams should catch the general spirit, as that newspapers in England, cool and collected, should submit to receive such telegrams as the Renter agency has often sent them. The bad taste of many American newspaper correspondents, as typified in the attempt made by one of them to draw from you details of an evening at the President s house, you treated as it deserved ;* but to most Americans your merit in the prem- seems somewhat diminished, when they see all those details * Vol- ji. p. 66. 19 Spread out before the world in your "Diary." Indeed, tins letter would be wanting in the frankness which you so much prize, were it to conceal the fact that since the publication of those detairs by yourself, it is very difficult to show to most of my countrymen, that the difference between yourself and that New York correspondent is so much a difference in kind as in degree. This brings me to that part of your work which, among Americans most conversant with English usages, caused more surprise than any other your fulness of detail in regard to sundry social circles, to which you were admitted. It may have been owing to our provincial spirit that one of our own writers was severely criticised among us some years since for doing by England what you have thus done by America. Therefore, let the epithet "Poor President* applied to Mr. Lincoln, the story of Mrs. Lincoln s meanness, told upon the authority of an un named French master of languages, the mention of Mr. Seward as " bursting with the importance of State mysteries" and the tinge of ridicule in your sketches of the conversation of Gen. Scott be acknowledged as in the purest taste, even though, as in Gen. Scott s case, your observations were made while you were his guest. But there is another point, on which Americans can not make such a concession. I take as my text your account of an evening at the house of "Mr. B." Having used the initial and then having de scribed him so that no one can fail to know him having spoken graciously of his pictures, statues, furniture, and guests, you speak of the trouble one would find it to "define exactly the difference between the lustrous, highly-jewelled, well-greaved Achaian of New York, and the very less effective and showy creature, who will in eveiy society over the world pass muster as a gentleman."* Your idea is not entirely clear, but if you intended to con demn the young New Yorkers whom you saw afterwards "at their club dicing for drinks, and oathing for nothing," let me assure you that Mr. George William Curtis taught our people long ago to despise them. But if, as seems more probable, it is a general criticism on those assembled, among whom, by reading the context, we find Mr. Bancroft, Mr. Horatio Sey mour, Mr. Tilden, and "Mr. B.," pardon me for saying that Americans, no matter how bitterly opposed to those gentlemen politically, muSt deny your right. When you came prominently * Vol. i. p. 32. 20 before the public, the main facts of your biography became public property, and Americans see nothing either in your per sonal annals or associations, honorable though they may have been, which authorizes you to sit in judgment upon the quality of those men. And now a few words on the comparisons, into which your readers are led between Free-State and Slave-State society. For two things struck off in the South you deserve praise. First of these is your sketch of a Slave-sale.* That alone would make every patriotic American desire success for your book. Let the whole world accept the errors of the "Diary," since it contains that sketch as their antidote. The second of these meritorious points is that which pricks one of the most laughable bubbles the slave-owning class are so fond of blowing. "We all have our little or big weaknesses. I see no traces of Cavalier descent in the names of Huger. Rose, Manning, Chesnut, and Pickens."f Quite right ; and a little more intercourse with the people of the North would have enabled you to add that were they so foolish as some of their Southern brethren in parading ancestors, they could show quite as many names honored in the history of England, France, and Holland. But while you have thus cut into some Southern follies, I fear that you have strengthened some Southern fallacies, and among them the idea that on the plantations is found a higher civilization than in the North. It is evident from your sketch that you fell upon at least one favorable specimen of Southern country life, but a close study of the whole country would have shown you, for one such abode of refinement in the South, twenty in the North. Many im partial accounts have been given of that peculiar life, and even from these you will find that, outside a few districts into which some rays are thrown from such cities as Charleston, or Savan nah, or New Orleans, it is very far from what is considered by the world at large, a good grade of civilization. Your pictures of planting life have often the fault of Chateaubriand s pictures of Indian life. The difference between the real and ideal planter is quite as great as the difference between the real and ideal Indian. If, instead of whirling through long lines of Northern towns, with a laugh at their comical names, you could have given them * Vol. i. chap. 22. f Vol. i.*p. 171. 21 some of the time bestowed on canvass-backs and prairie-chick ens, you would have found great numbers of men who, in their lives and houses, indicate a much nearer approach to the best European culture than you found on Southern plantations. But to compare the two phases of American civilization at all points would require a quarto ; let me then narrow the com parison to two leading points, which you have yourself sugges ted ; one, as to material, the other, as to intellectual develop ment. Your mistakes on the first can be best illustrated by an ex tract from the account of your journey from the Southern ex tremity of Illinois to Chicago. " It would be very wrong to judge of the condition of a peo ple from the windows of a railway carriage, but the external aspect of the settlements along the line, far superior to that of slave hamlets, does not equal my expectations."* Then follow some sketches not at all flattering to the Illinois villages and farm-houses. Let me call your attention to two very important elements in the comparison which strangely do not seem to have occurred to you. First, the fact that until recently Southern Illinois has been notoriously under the influence of neighboring Slave-State so ciety. Had you looked into its geography, you would have seen that it is deeply wedged into slave-owning regions ; had you looked into its history, you would have seen that the great body of its early inhabitants came from Slave States ; had you asked any of your neighbors on the railway, they would have told you that on account of the mental and moral darkness aris ing from Slave State influences, Southern Illinois has been known throughout the Union under the nick-name of "Egypt." Yet this is the district you choose as representative of the North ! Again, a great number of the towns and farm-houses you noted, have sprung up since the recent opening of the Illinois Central Railway. To be disappointed because they do not yet greatly excel far older towns in the Slave States, is as unreas onable as to lament because a child of four years has not out grown a dwarf of forty. Take now the other leading comparison. Describing a planter s mansion, which was certainly of a type far from common in the South, you say: "Paintings from * Vol. ii. p. 83. 22 Italy illustrate the walls in juxtaposition with interesting por traits, * * * and one portrait of Benjamin West claims for itself such honor as his own pencil can give. An excellent library, filled with collections of French and English classics, and with those ponderous editions of Voltaire, Rousseau, the Memoires pour servir "books of travel and history which de lighted our forefathers in the last century, and many works of American and general history, afford ample occupation for a rainy day."* The idea strengthened by this, in connection with certain other passages is, that though the material development the stalk or trunk of civilization that which comes by working and trading, is stronger at the North, the intellectual development the bloom of civilization that which comes of leisure and cul ture, is stronger at the South. Let me point out an easy way of convincing yourself of the error of this ; let me show how the free system proves its su periority over the slave system, as well in the bloom as in the stalk of civilization. Ask any one conversant with the affairs of Turner, or Ary Scheffer, or Meissonnier, or Aschenbach, in what part of Amer ica are the great majority of their pictures which have crossed the ocean. Ask also the leading sculptors. . Go into the gal leries of Europe, and put the same question to the best copyists. You shall find that an immense majority of their works are spreading good influences in the Free States. I could name to you inland towns, both east and west, where "loan exhibitions" of paintings and sculpture have been held such as no possible combination of planters could have produced. * As to Benjamin West and Copley, whom you mention as contributing to the beauty of the planter s establishment, a very little study of their biographies would show you that their main American works are to be found in the Free States. The picture which many of West s admirers thought his greatest, "gives such honor as his pencil can give" to the collection of a gentleman in Ohio. I might present many similar facts, but I shall simply ask you to look over the list of successful American painters and sculptors, and to note how, for one from the Slave States, there are a dozen from the Free States. So, too, as to books. I will not lay stress on the fact that the Census Reports show the public and private libraries of the * Vol. i. p. 187. 23 newest Free States, in almost eveiy case, superior to those of the oldest Slave States. Question the men in London who have acted as agents for Americans in the purchase of the choi cest books, you shall find some facts still more surprising. There shall be given you the names of several private libraries in the Free States each, more valuable than all the private libra ries of the Slave States together, and you shall find that some of the best of these are far inland. You shall find that there are private libraries a thousand miles and more from the great cities of the East, where are ranged all the books you name as the glories of your planter friend s library, but where the} are by no means the choicest books. To speak only of the newest and least wealthy of the North- Western States, you can find excellent private collections of books, not merely in their prin cipal cities but in the interior which seemed to you so ludicrous ly rude. Come again through them do not content yourself with such an exploration as the one you have already made, hurrying over three hundred miles in ten hours and you shall be shown some of these collections ; and, among others, in a little village twenty miles from a railway, at the house of a gen tleman who, amid the cares of business, has found time for kindlier pursuits, you shall find not only choice paintings and engravings, but a large library of rare works in early English and Shaksperian literature, such as a duke might envy. For these libraries, quietly growing in all parts of the Free States, the shops and stalls of Paris, and London, and Berlin have been ransacked. Many a Caxton or Aldine or Elzevir has been carried oif over the heads of English bidders to grace some little Northern library. Note, too, the fact that within a few years several celebrated private libraries in France and Ger many have been bought^br public or private libraries in Amer ica, and that these have gone almost without exception into the Northern States. Of course I do not claim this as the best growth of civiliza tion. Good is the accumulating of good old books, but far better is the originating of good new books, and here, too, Free- State civilization justifies itself. Look into the list of Ameri can writers known to the world, and make the comparison be tween those who have arisen in the Free and those in the Slave States. And now, in all diffidence, let me make a few notes on a verj different matter your reasoning on American military affairs. 24 After enjoying your descriptions of military scenes in former times, it is too late to deny your excellence in your peculiar de partment, but may you not have erred in the methods of criti cism used in your " Diary ?" An immense army had to be raised in a few weeks, an army which has finally become the largest in the world, and in a nation which had been for many years so devoted to peace, that hardly the germ of a military organization had been preserved. To have given it a fruitful criticism would have been a kindness, but merely sneering at its short comings could do no good. Even when it showed some good symptoms, your praise has a taste not at all pleasant. For example: " The men like artillery and take to it naturally, being in that respect something like the natives of India" I have italicised the portion which could hardly have a pleas ant sound to an American. So eminent an authority as your self could not surely have been at a loss for a comparison far more pleasing. You know, of course, that the desire to serve in the artillery proves not half so strong a resemblance to Se poys as to the more thoughtful portion of European armies. Should you doubt that, go into the lecture-rooms of a German university, and you will find the artillery uniform on nearly ev ery student serving out his military term. As to your account of the battle of Bulls Run, I am willing to allow that, humiliating as was that event, your sketch con trasts most favourably with the comments of some of your countrymen. A prominent Eeview declared that the Americans were showing the world some things such as had never been seen before, and one of these things was the panic at Bulls Bun. It would have been a graceful act for you to have forestalled such criticism in your " Letters," or to.have answered it in your 44 Diary." Not to speak of more recent panics, you could have told them that, at the beginning of the great wars of the French Revolution, two separate armies, one under Dillon, the other under Biron, at the first sight of the enemy threw down their arms, ran with all their might, and in one case murdered the general who attempted to rally them. And you might have added that these were the soldiers who a few years later swept over Europe. But this is a slight sin of omission ; let me show in another criticism a sin of commission. Take your notice of the capture of Fort Clark and Fort Hatteras : 44 It would seem as if the North were perfectly destitute of common sense. Here they are as rampant because they have 25 succeeded with an overwhelming fleet in shelling out the defen ders of some poor unfinished earthworks on a spit of sand on the coast of North Carolina, as if they had already crashed the Southern rebellion. They affect to consider this achievement a counterpoise to Bulls Run."* Now, although the success at Fort Hatteras was not so strik ing as many since, it would seem to be something greater than the petty affair you make it, when it is known that the rebel loss in killed, wounded and prisoners was nearly nine hundred. But far more than that. Your account seems to prove not so clearly that the North is "perfectly destitute of common sense" as that your acknowledged ability to prophesy evils, which did not come, was fully equalled by your inability to prophesy good which did come. For you foresaw not one of the successes to which the Hatteras affair was the necessary prelude, successes like that at Roanoke Island, where the Confederates lost, be side killed and wounded, 2,500 prisoners and 40 cannon; like that at Newben, where they lost what was far more precious to them. Strange that one so gifted in military affairs should not have seen that the conquest was not a "spit of sand," but a most important inland communication by water ! Strange that one so skilled in prophecy should not have foreseen what fol lowed so soon from the Hatteras affair the conquest and occu pancy of the whole North Carolina coast. Some of the most laughable faults of English tourists are made in their sketches of American geography, and you seem to follow here in the steps of your predecessors. Certainly you were as ludicrously at fault in regard to North Carolina, when you reasoned upon the conquest of the "spit of sand," as in regard to Massachusetts when you spoke of one of her regi ments as containing "fisherman from New IIavenJ*\ or as in regard to Kentucky when you mistook Nashville for Louisville. One thing more in this department of your work. Your mode of gaining ideas of the temperament of the army must seem very fallacious to any one who has tried to study a for eign people. To find what information random conversation with grum blers can give you, tiy any army ; but let me suggest an easier way of convincing yourself of the absurdity of your method. Go into the neighborhood of Westminster Abbey, pretend yourself a foreigner, and take one of the guides who lurk there. * Vol. ii. p. 324. | Vol. ii. p. 319. 26 Give him his cue, and you shall be told the most astounding stories of the miseries of the people their hate for monarchy, hierarchy and aristocracy their yearning for democracy ; you shall have not merely hints of treason, but sketches of plots. It is much to be feared that some worthy Americans have, by these individuals, been hindered from the calmness of thought so necessary in those hallowed precincts. But your reasoning on American military matters is by no means so objectionable as your reasoning on political matters. Thus : The American, when he seeks to prove that the Southern States have no right to revolt from a confederacy of States created by revolt, has, by the principles on which he justifies his own revolution, placed between himself and the European a great gulf in the level of argument. According to the deeds and words of Americans, it is difficult to see why South Carolina should not use the rights claimed for each of the Thirteen Colonies."* A true American labors under no such difficulty as you sup pose, for he has taken the pains to examine the subject, and knows that the two cases are entirely different. He knows that in the supreme Executive department, the Colonies had never been allowed a share ; whereas the States now in rebellion have always enjoyed nearly a monopoly 1 He knows that in the supreme Judicial department, the Colonies had no part ; whereas the States in rebellion had far more than their proportion of Judges in the Supreme Court up to the moment of the rebel lion ! He knows that in the Supreme Legislature, the Colonies had not one representative ; whereas the States in rebellion have always had far more than their share of representatives being represented not only for themselves, but for a large pro portion of their slaves, whom, though for other purposes they called property, for this purpose they called persons. The Colonies had been ill-treated ; the rebel States have al ways been petted. The Colonies exhausted every argument, and lingered long before they took up arms ; the rebel States scorned argument and flew to arms at once. The Colonies rose against laws which had been, made ; the rebel States rose against laws which they professed to fear were to be madel- The Colonies revolted to preserve the freedom of three million white men ; the Southern States revolted to perpetuate the en slavement of four million black men. * Vol. i. p. 14. 27 To justify tlie Southern States in revolting for slavery, be cause their ancestors revolted for freedom, is no more logical than to justify your Rebecca riots against toll-gates by the up rising which secured Magna Charta. In order to correct another error, involved in the passage quo ted, it seems necessary to inform you that the American Repub lic is not living under the "Articles of Confederation" that they were discarded nearly eighty years since, having been su perseded in 1787 by the present excellent Constitution. Let me therefore, as briefly as possible, show what you and so many of your countrymen find it so "difficult to see." The. "Articles of Confederation" were made in 1777 for a I^eag ue, and therefore, very naturally, their preamble commen ced with the words, "We the delegates of States /" the "Con stitution" was made for a much stronger General Government, therefore, you find the first words of its preamble, " We the People of the United States." The League, contemplated in the Articles of Confederation, failed utterly ; therefore the preamble of the Constitution de clares that its purpose is to "form a more perfect union." I trust that these first letters of the American Constitutional Alphabet will be a hint to you that the founders of our Repub lic never intended that a State should forcibly seize upon the property of the General Government, tear down its flag, and fire upon its defenders. Americans must also object to your careless way of judging the political capacity of our people. Englishmen in America seem ever in dread of mobs ; but despite regret at the tendency indicated, our people have laughed well over one of the famous prophecies of your "Letters" which you have forgotten to suppress in your "Diary." "I have resolved to go to Boston, being satisfied that a great popular excitement and uprising will, in all probability, take place on the discharge of the Commissioners from Fort Warren."* You seem to have forgotten to chronicle the fact, that not the slightest uprising took place at Boston, or anywhere else, at the discharge of the Commissioners. Our people had wit enough to see that when America gave up two detestable men, England gave up a detestable principle. ISTor do our legislators fare better than our people. Know ing that so many men read books in Talleyrand s fashion by * Vol. ii. p. 428. 28 the index alone it seems hardly fair to put in your table of contents, " An ex-pugilist turned Senator,"* to point out the fact that in your shrewdness you mistook a pugilist for a Sen ator. And if you retort that the mistake was natural, I have only to answer, that there have been four exhibitions in the Senate which have smacked of pugilism Foote against Ben- ton, Borland against Kennedy, Brooks against Sumner, and Salisbury against "all creation;" and the person committing the assault was, in every instance, from the Slave States. So far as I know, the only professional "pugilist turned Sen ator" was, not long since, in the British Parliament. From a recent sketch published in England, I find that John Gully, Esq. was first a butcher, then a prize-fighter taking part in several battles, then an inn-keeper, then connected with the turf whereby he made a fortune : and then, during two ses sions, a very worthy member of Parliament. Had Mr. Gully lived the same life, and gained the same promotion in America, what homilies and psalms should we have heard from the En glish press on the foulness of American politics ! As to the house of Representatives, while acknowledging that in the struggles of these latter years, it has not preserved a decorum at all creditable, I will challenge you to produce, from all its annals, a scene so discreditable as that which took place not long since on the delivery of Lord C. Paget s Speech on the Navy, in the House of Commons. The House of Repre sentatives has often been fiery, but it has never been obscene. Another quality in your book, furnishing ample scope for criticism, is your carelessness in making very important state ments. Thus "I am told a system of torture prevails there"! (at Sing-Sing prison). Why not have taken the hour s ride from New York to that prison, and found that its tendency is toward even too much humanity ? Why not have looked into its his tory to find that not many years since a harsh official received the execration of the entire State ? You were right in expo sing the abominations of the Louisiana prison on examination. You were wrong in condemning the excellencies of the New York prison without examination. And again, of Senator Douglas, "I was told that the enor mously wealthy community, of which he was the idol, were permitting his widow to live in a state not far removed from * Vol. ii. chap. 22, Table of Contents. f Vol. i. p. 37. 29 penury,"* Why not have looked into the matter long enough to find that a subscription was commenced, that the people were only anxious to swell it, but that a published note from the noble wife of the deceased forbade it, declaring that she did not need it. Was it tenderness to that sorrowing widow, which led you in your next sentence to quote from a person whom you call "one of his friends" that " Senator Douglas died of bad whiskey ?" Then there are other statements quite as faulty to which you do not even put the preface : "I am told," as in the sweet mor sel you present to cotton-loving souls, by extolling the land on the Alabama river: "as it yields nine to eleven bales of cotton to the acre worth 10 a bale at present prices, "f I can give you the address of a wealthy planter from that region, now in London, who will prove to you that two bales to the acre is a very high average and that an average of three bales was never known. So, too, take as types of your success in obtaining any real knowledge of the men, with whom you enjoyed most intercourse, certain statements regarding Mr. Seward. For that gentleman having founded some reasonings on state ments regarding society in the South, you say, "I doubt if he was ever in the South ?"J Afterwards, under similar circum stances, you grew bolder, and will not even allow him the ben efit of a doubt saying, - Mr. Seward, the other day, in talk ing of the South, described them as being in every respect be hind the age, with fashions, habits, level of thought, and modes of life belonging to the worst part of the last century. JZut still he has never been there himself !" Now it is true that although the bitterest advocates of slavery have been allowed full scope in the North, Mr. Jefferson Davis having spoken freely in New England, Mr. Yancey, in New York, and minor Southern orators having advocated treason and slavery everywhere, Mr. Seward, since his opposition to the extension of slavery, could not have visited the South much less have spoken there, without almost a certainty of assassi nation- and that therefore he has, of late years, remained at his duties in the Free States. But it is strange that during your whole stay you should have missed so well-known a feature in the biography of the Secretary of State a point so capital in any estimate of his knowledge of the men with whom he grap- * Vol. ii. p. 92. f Vol. i. p. 266. Vol. i. p. 51. g Vol. i. p. 97. 30 pies as the fact, that at the period when his powers were most active, he resided in one of the most important districts of the States now in rebellion, and that as the chief instructor in a High School, he had rare facilities for studying the institutions and characters which are developed under slavery. Then, too, should Macaulay s school-boy visit America, he would certainly secure his oft-threatened whipping if, within a month he had not learned that there was once a national Whig party, that Mr. Seward was one of its chieftains, and that, as such, he was welcome anywhere in the South. All this, added to his many years intercourse with Southern men at Washing ton, will, I hope, relieve your mind of any fear arising from his want of knowledge of the States now in rebellion. There ferments occasionally in your work, a mixture of care lessness and pleasantry somewhat to be regretted on your own account, but which no true American will ever suffer to vex him. Bubbles from that are such phrases as "Bastilles," "lettres de cachet," "quadrennial despot," and the like; also, such bits of philosophy as your illustration of Bayard Taylor s love for America by Prince Leboo s liking for his savage island. Toward the end. of the second volume, come- occasional strong whiffs of haughtiness mingled with ill-temper. Of these is the circumlocution by which you class Mr. Secretary Stanton among "hypocrites." I will do you the justice to say that such passages, now that you have had time to recover your temper, are doubtless far more offensive to yourself than to those at whom you directed them. Passing all this, let us come at the great thing for which your book is remarkable the GREAT OMISSION. The London edition from which I quote is in two volumes ; it should have been in three. What you have written should occupy the first and third ; the second should have been left clean paper to be filled hereafter with the great thing of which you give no sign. Let me hint at it. When you arrived in America there was peace, and as you thought, apathy ; before you left it, hundreds of thousands were marching from all parts of the land toward the theatre of war ; within eighteen months after your arrival, a million of men had been raised in the midst of a peaceful community, to brave the last danger which had ever been expected. The rebellious States, at a very early period in the war, re sorted to a rigid conscription ; the loyal States obtained nearly 31 their whole number of soldiers by volunteering. Men went from every station lawyers and artisans, merchants and cler gymen. From universities abroad, young men hurried home ward to help in the common defence. Every college at home became a nursery of soldiers. Every hamlet had its military committees, every town its barracks. For equipments, for families left, for succour of the wounded, for support of the be reft, money was poured out like water. Of course, so vast a mass of hopes and efforts was tarnished here and there, but time shall remove petty blemishes. The world sliall. yet acknowledge the greatness of the movement and the sacredness of its motives. Of all this great uprising, the truly great thing in this con test, you give really nothing. You get glimpses here and there of the ludicrous side of some accompaniments, but the one great thing you do not see. The fault which explains this astounding omission is appa rently an utter contempt for the law of mental and moral per spective, A fly on your window at the Pincian may hide the dome of St. Peter s ; just so a soiled uniform seems to hide from your mind s eye the quality of a- regiment, and a few boisterous offi cers, the spirit of an army. Worse than that, table-talk, col oured by the prejudices of a clique, is seen more than once to hide from you the spirit of the whole nation. Take one example : "When the merchants, however, saw that the South was determined to quit the Union, they resolved to avert the per manent loss of the great profits derived from the connection with the South by some present sacrifices. They rushed to the platforms, the battle-cry was sounded from almost every pulpit, flag-raisings took place hi every square, like the plant ing of the tree of liberty in France, in 1848, and the oath was taken to trample secession under foot, and to quench the fire of the Southern heart for ever."* This, then, is your explanation ! You looked out upon a struggle to which not only New York, but every other part of the nation had given its best blood a struggle which had been drawing on for seventy years, and you saw a paltry effort " to avert the permanent loss of the great profits derived from their connection with the South * * Vol. ii. p. 111. 32 Clearly, then, having had the best of opportunities to make a great book, good for all men in all time, you have been con tent to make a clever book, the talk of a fortnight. You had a noble chance and lost it. One other Englishman went through a great country on the eve of a fearful revolution, but by his breadth of view, his sei zure of real issues, his study of fruitful sources, and his love for right, he rendered services which the world can never for get. Look at Arthur Young s "Travels in France," and see what you might have done. A truly good book on America would not merely give its au thor fame and fortune, it would also make the world his debtor. Since the world cannot be expected to accept such a work from one of our own nation, let England give us its author. There are, indeed, some difficulties almost inevitable to most English writers difficulties, too, not chargeable to the country they study, When Jean Lemoinne gave his witty sketch of Dr. Gumming monopolizing the fulfilments of prophecy for England, and when Balzac made his shrewd remark, " There are few Englishmen who will not declare to you that gold and silver are better in England than anywhere else," they hinted at one of these difficulties. When you wrote that " the most frequent fault of the stranger in any land is generalizing from a few facts," you named another. But there are in England truly learned men from whom Americans would receive any censure, knowing that we have to fear no prejudice. Send us such a man, and if not Mill or Cairnes, give us, at least, some one with more soul than a Liverpool cotton-broker, and more mind than an Oxford mandarin. So shall the times of frank good feeling return. Among all the nations, England and the United States freed from slavery are the two which ought to stand together. Between their in stitutions, their literatures, their beliefs, their heresies, are such links as bind no other countries. Honoured shall that writer be who, by rendering justice to the Free States, shall remove English haughtiness and Ameri can bitterness. He shall have the glory which you have spurned. . I am, Sir, Yours, very respectfully, A. D. WHITE. LD 21-95m-7 ) 37 20224 n vi 21G