At Louisville we called on Prentice with a letter from C. M. Clay—an elderly, bright, keen, sorrowed looking man. He said he had written to Greeley and to Raymond to know if they could recommend any talented young man to him to assist in editorship of the Journal. He much wanted to find one. Probably would pay well. Raymond had not replied to him at all.

We also called on Dr. Short, a wealthy old hunker at a beautiful place 5 miles out of town—introduced to him by Dr. Grey.

From Louisville, rather than start two nights’ coaching, we came to Nashville by the river down Ohio & Cumberland. Were laid up every night by fogs and were aground two days, so were a week getting to Nashville. Very tedious & disappointing.

At Nashville [we met] a classmate of John’s, Allison. A good specimen of the first class gentleman of the South. We spent nearly all our time in Nashville, two days, in conversation with him, and he gave us a dinner at the hotel. He is wealthy, a bachelor, connected with the largest slaveholding in Tennessee: chivalric and believes in pistols and bowie knives. His argument being similar to Cooper’s.

We confess to each other that he silenced us and showed us that our own position was by no means consistent and satisfactory. He has lately been running for Congress and though running very honorably ahead of his ticket, was beaten by Zollicoffer, a Whig and veteran politician who last year shot a man across the street at his office door. He gave us an amusing account of the canvass.

He and Z. went in company to all parts of the district, each speaking twice at a place in opposition to each other (such places as “T. Golb’s Grocery,” “the second gate on the Tobroke ’pike”) &c., the crowd varying from 50 to 2000 in number—men, women, children & niggers, all excited and betting. His own body servant came to him after the election and asked him to lend him $10, as he had lost his watch on the election & he could get it back for that.

He carried a pair of pistols loaded in his pocket for a few days as Zollicoffer had the reputation of a fighting man. But he found them such a bore to carry that he put them in his saddlebags and he got through without any “difficulty.”

In the cars in Kentucky a modest young man was walking through with the hand[le] of a Colt out of his pocket-skirt behind. It made some laugh & [233]a gentleman with us called out, “You’ll lose your Colt, Sir.” The man turned and after a moment joined the laugh and pushed the handle into the pocket.

John said, “There might be danger in laughing at him.” “Oh no,” replied our companion, evidently supposing him serious, “he would not mind a laugh.” “It’s the best place to carry your pistol, after all,” said he. “It’s less in your way than anywhere else. And as good a place for your knife as anywhere else is down your back, so you can draw over your shoulder.”

“Are pistols and knives generally carried here?”

“Yes, very generally.”

Allison said commonly, but he thought not generally.

Allison declared himself a Democrat very strongly, but we confused him by proving to him that he was not; that he believed in two distinct and widely separated classes of society. He afterwards defined his Democracy to consist in holding to a strict construction of the Constitution (nevertheless he favored the building of Pacific R. R. by the government) and following the views of Jefferson rather than the Federalists. He admitted that practically there was no difference between the parties at the present time.

He and other gentlemen in Nashville hated Seward as “a devil incarnate.” He thought he ought to be hung as a traitor. He was guilty of treason in the Senate—the gravest of all crimes. He thought it a deep misfortune to the country that he could be reelected to the Senate. D. S. Dickinson he thought a true Statesman and the only prominent man at the North who had been true at all times to the country—consistent, reliable, patriotic and unselfish, free from demagogism. He remarked at another time regarding the next President that he had been in correspondence with leading Southern Democrats upon the subject and that there was a general disposition to look to Dickinson as the Democratic candidate for next President. At any rate there was no other northern man the Southern Democrats would support.

Allison and other gentlemen I have seen in Nashville & Kentucky have changed the views I had with regard to the feelings of the South about extension of territory. Allison said they must have more slave territory. It was a necessity upon the South which every one saw. He thought California would be a Slave State. He also looked to the Amazon as a promising field for Slave labor. There was no disposition to hasten the matter.

There was a general dislike on the part of the South to a general war in Europe such as was now imminent because it would injure the value of cotton & of course of negroes & everything else. But on some accounts they would like it. In case of a general war which would involve France & England & perhaps Spain, advantage would be taken of it to get possession of Cuba and perhaps of Mexico, as England & France could not then interfere. He hated England & liked France & thought the South did generally. It seems to me probable that the Government at Washington is acting on similar views. He evidently supposed so. He wouldn’t go to fighting without some honorable excuse.

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His whole idea of honor is of this sort. Mere deference to time honored rules and conventionalisms it seems to me, though he thinks them spontaneous honorable impulses. Oddly enough, with all his hodge podge of honor & morality, he was reading secretly (as he confessed to us) Strauss’ life of Christ and some of Parker’s books.

Most moral people at the South were Church members. Not that they believed much in particular, but thought that was on the whole the best way. Every man could not expect to [have] his individual opinions accommodated in systems, & systems were necessary. He was not a church member himself. He thought there was a happy gentlemanly medium in which a man would be sufficiently religious (that is, sufficiently to satisfy his poetical nature, I suppose) and yet not deny himself sensual and social pleasures—“spree moderately,” I think he expressed it.

He did not believe there was a gentleman in the whole Northwest (the western free states), especially including Cincinnati. And he evidently thought there were very few, and they but poorly developed, anywhere at the North. There was not a man in Yale College who had anything of the appearance or manners of a gentleman, from the North, except a few sons of professional and commercial people who had been brought up in the large towns. There were no gentlemen at the North out of the large towns. He had once met some of the old Dutch aristocracy of New York (your Schuylers, &c.) and he did think them thoroughly well bred people.

There is a great deal of truth in his view. I tried to show him that there were compensations in the general elevation of all classes at the North, but he did not seem to care for it. He is, in fact, a thorough Aristocrat. And altogether, the conversation making me acknowledge the rowdyism, ruffianism, want of high honorable sentiment & chivalry of the common farming & laboring people of the North, as I was obliged to, made me very melancholy. With such low, material, and selfish aims in statesmanship [as the best men of the South have] and with such a low, prejudiced, party enslaved and material people [at the North], what does the success of our Democratic nationality amount to—and what is to become of us. Of course, I have told you but little of the whole conversation that so impressed me.

I must be either an Aristocrat or more of a Democrat than I have been—a Socialist Democrat. We need institutions that shall more directly assist the poor and degraded to elevate themselves. Our educational principle must be enlarged and made to include more than these miserable common schools. The poor & wicked need more than to be let alone.

It seemed to me that what had made these Southern gentlemen Democrats was the perception that mere Democracy as they understand it (no checks or laws upon the country more than can be helped) was the best system for their class. It gave capital every advantage in the pursuit of wealth—and money gave wisdom & power. They could do what they liked. It was only necessary for them, the gentlemen, to settle what they wanted. Or if they disagreed, the best [235] commander of the people carried his way. The people doing nothing but choose between them. He had no conception of higher than material interests entering into politics. All that these sort of free traders want is protection to capital. Agrarianism would suit them better if they could protect that and use what they consider their rights.

But I do very much [feel] inclined to believe that Government should have in view the encouragement of a democratic condition of society as well as of government—that the two need to go together as they do at the North in much greater degree than at the South or I suppose anywhere else. But I don’t think our state of society is sufficiently Democratic at the North or likely to be by mere laisser aller. The poor need an education to refinement and taste and the mental & moral capital of gentlemen.

I have been blundering over this and have not, I think, expressed at all what I wanted to. In a steamboat cabin—dark, shaking, and gamesters and others talking about the table—I can’t collect my ideas. But to put some shape to it. Hurrah for Peter Cooper and Hurrah for the Reds.

The great difference I feel between such fellows as these gentlemanly, well informed, true and brave Southern gentlemen, whom I admire in spite of my Democratic determination, whom I respect in spite of my general loathing of humbugging dignity; the great difference between them & those I like and wish to live among & wish to be is the deficiency in one & the sense in the other of what I must call Religion (the intrinsic religious sense) as a distinct thing from Belief, Obedience, Reverence, and Love to Personal Deity. The quality which God must have himself. They do not seem to have a fundamental sense of right. Their moving power and the only motives which they can comprehend are materialistic or Heavenalistic—regard for good (to themselves or others or to God) in this world or in another.

I have something which distinguishes me from them, whether the above explains it or not. So have you. So has Field, Elliott, all our earnest fellows. Allison couldn’t approach to it and therefore he is a Conservative and a Democrat of the American School.

I am a Democrat of the European School—of the school of my brave porter of Bingen. And these so-called Democrats are not. They are of another sort; material, temporary, temporizing, conservative. I wish I had Victor Hugo’s speech now to read you.

The Southern sort are perhaps larger—more generous and braver minds than ours—and they act up to their capabilities better. But ours are more expansive and have need to be more humble as being less true to their principles and feelings.

Allison & his friends evidently had no power of comprehending a hatred of Slavery in itself—no I can’t think that. Put themselves in the place of the slave and they would cut their own throats, if there was no other way out, without hesitation. But they didn’t & I believe couldn’t imagine that the North would be governed by any purpose beyond a regard for self interest (including [236] the gratification of pride, envy, spiritual pride, &c.) with regard to slavery. They could not see how the North could be so foolish as to determinedly prevent the extension of Slavery. Its own interest would suffer so much—commerce be injured, market for manufactures not enlarged, &c. Individuals might profit, but the whole would so certainly be injured by this injury for commerce, and beyond this they could not be got. So completely had they swallowed the whole hog of Free Trade. Admitting commerce & trade on the whole to be benefitted, it was a corollary that the measure would be for the highest good. What on the whole injured capital, consols, niggers, State credit, was wicked. What benefitted it, was Godlike. This was the end of their track.

Well, the moral of this damnedly drawn out letter is, I believe, go ahead with the Children’s Aid and get up parks, gardens, music, dancing schools, reunions which will be so attractive as to force into contact the good & bad, the gentlemanly and the rowdy.

And the state ought to assist these sort of things as it does Schools and Agricultural Societies—on the same plan, with the same precaution that the State of New York now does. I believe that it can do so safely. I don’t believe the friction compensates for the increased power of the machinery.

And we ought to have that Commentator as an organ of a higher Democracy and a higher religion than the popular. And it ought to be great—sure of success—well founded. Bound to succeed by its merit, by its talent. A cross between the Westminster Review & the Tribune, is my idea. Weekly, I think, to give it variety & scope enough for this great country & this cursedly little people. Keep it before you.