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Introductory Material
[42: 314–17] Most thinking people have been repeatedly disappointed in anticipations which were based upon their understanding of the American character and tendencies. This has been almost as much the case in America as in Europe. Indeed few if any Americans now appear to have been as far sighted as several of the friends of the Union in Europe were early in the war. Few of the enemies of the Union prophesied as foolishly as Mr Seward and if his prophecies were not altogether sincere, events have equally proved the weakness of the grounds of policy which induced such insincerity. Nothing was more evident during the whole war than that the Members of Congress and most of the popular leaders never trod on any firm ground of conviction about the popular character. Except Mr Lincoln, no prominent public man ever seemed to confidently understand from day to day what the people wanted, what they could be expected to sustain, and what to renounce. If we look at the accounts of travellers, we shall find that intelligent observers, going over the same ground, note quite different classes of facts as peculiar and significant and come to the most opposite conclusions as to the cause and bearing of those which they agree in regarding as important.
This is all to be in great part accounted for by the fact that the constitution of society in different parts of the land is varied; is in all parts, different from that of any part of Europe, and is everywhere rapidly changing, while the field is so large, that it is impossible for any observer to so far comprehend the whole as to readily determine the bearing upon the whole of any particular facts of his observation.
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This difficulty is increased by the circumstance that Society in America is everywhere in a pioneer condition. Society in all its varied forms, everywhere. This grand fact of society is especially apt to readily fall out of sight where the familiar exterior habits of an old society are much worn, as they are especially in some of the larger towns. Some “men of the world”—the old world—whether they are so by personal contact with it, or, as in the case of our own scholars, by the indirect acquaintance of books, are generally very ignorant of the real conditions of the pioneer stage of society, and therefore unable to appreciate the influence of those conditions upon human character. They are thus led to measure men’s manners and attainments in all respects with relation to conditions of life which, oweing to physical circumstances and not merely to intellectual, moral and esthetic circumstances, are impossible in the New World.
If a farm laborer is called by any duty into the house of a man of refinement and wealth, it may be hoped that he will have the grace to take in as little dirt as is practicable, but if he is called directly from the field in rainy weather, it cannot be attributed to want of grace if he comes with soiled boots. His character is not to be judged by a simple application to his appearance of the standard of neatness which is usually applied within the house. We must go back to the antecedent conditions.
[42: 322] There are certain classes of such antecedent conditions of all society and of all the constituents of Society in America which appear to me to be almost universally insufficiently considered in discussions about that Society. The principal reason for this must be that these conditions are not well understood, and my main object in the preparation of this book is to help to a better understanding of some of them and to point out in what respect through an insufficient consideration of them much discussion of American Society is fruitless of wisdom.
[42: 70–71] I propose in this volume to offer a small contribution to the general discussion of the two questions:
1 st In what respects have Europeans in America gained ground and in what respect lost ground.
2d To what conditions are the gain and loss respectively to be attributed.
The offer of such a contribution would be futile unless author and reader could be presumed to have a common understanding of how the gain and loss in question should be measured.
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As the basis of a chapter which shall be devoted to the furtherance of such an understanding, I take this text from Guizot:
Take all the facts of which the history of a nation is composed, all the facts which we are accustomed to consider as the elements of its existence—take its institutions, its commerce, its industry, its wars, the various details of its government; and if you would form some idea of them as a whole, if you would see their various bearings on each other, if you would appreciate their value, if you would pass a judgment upon them, what is it you desire to know? Why, what they have done to forward the progress of civilization—what part they have acted in this great drama,—what influence they have exercised in aiding its advance. It is not only by this that we form a general opinion of these facts, but it is by this standard that we try them, that we estimate their true value. These are, as it were, the rivers of whom we ask how much water they have carried to the ocean.
What then is civilization and what are the marks by which we may judge of progress in civilization? The word is used to express so much that no simple definition of it would perhaps be generally accepted, but the chief distinctions between a civilized and a barbarous state of mankind are understood alike by most readers, and by analyzing these, ideas of graduation between what is highly civilized and highly barbarous or uncivilized may be fixed to which reference can be afterwards made with some approach to exactness.
[42: 319] I have in my mind three audiences. First, those in England who wish to understand the Americans better, and to be just, and who, to judge from the number of books that English travellers have written for them, must be a numerous class. Second, some students of history who a century or two hence may fish up what I shall write from the great pit of the past, and be helped to the same end. Third, and more especially, the young Americans who have it in their power to sustain and establish what is good and to bring to an end much that is bad in their country. And as I write for these last especially, I may write many things which would be properly omitted in a book written for well equipped students.
[41: 638–42] My own opportunities of observation have been unusually extended. None of the travellers whose narratives and opinions have been given to the public have had nearly as good. And although my
[596]inclinations (as may appear in what I have heretofore written for the public) and my own judgment of my abilities would lead me rather to attempt to faithfully report personal observations, leaving their significance to be weighed by others, I think that this is less needed at present by the public than reflections which will guide toward the true significance of well-known facts,—and enforce considerations which are apt to be slighted.
Much has been said and written of American national character and its causes which is unsatisfactory oweing to a want of exactness in the idea of national character, to inexactness of the terms employed, and to want of definite information.
Even De Tocqueville, who is the clearest and most painstaking writer on the subject, sometimes appears inconsistent.
I hope to help in what I am now to write toward clearer and exacter debate of the subject.
Among my books there are several written by travellers in the United States. These generally consist of a personal narrative followed by several chapters of discussion of matters of opinion. The value of the latter depends considerably upon the extent of observation which the writer has previously had in the United States, and the previous narrative enables the reader to measure this with some accuracy.
As my own suggestions must depend for their value in like manner, in many cases, at least upon the extent of my observations, I shall here indicate what my opportunities have been for studying the field which I have in view.
I have lived for a period of six months [or] more in twenty different communities of the United States, each being geographically and otherwise distinctly seperated from the others.
[During the last year and a half I have been living among the California Sierras and as circumstances have brought them to my mind have written many suggestions which, in a period of comparative liberty from other duties now before me, I propose to collate, embody and extend into a book.] My library here is such as was likely to be brought on a journey of several thousand miles in a few trunks. My neighbors are not well-read, and I know that a man suffers greater deprivation than he is himself conscious of under such circumstances and is unfitted by it for duties which he might under other circumstances not be presumptuous in assuming. What I do must be done therefore incompletely and suggestively. So I find must everything be done here, or not at all. Incompleteness, makeshift effort, that is the law where civilization encounters the wilderness. It is useless to try to go beyond it, hate it as we may.
To indicate the extent of my opportunities of observation, I mention that I have resided for lengthened periods in four different states of the Union, having been a citizen of three of them, I have travelled in
[597]most of the other states, a distance of over twenty five thousand miles altogether, much of it on horseback or on foot. I have been in the position of a working man, associating intimately with working men; I have been during (6) years in charge of large works, employing at one time nearly four thousand men and altogether more than thirty thousand. I have been manager of a large mercantile business and in dealings which involved intimacy with merchants and bankers; I have been Secretary and Executive Manager of the largest benevolent institution in the country in which the selection, appointment, instruction and supervision of some hundred men and women of education, disciplined habits and discretion for grave responsibilities devolved upon me, as well as correspondence or personal association with many thousand agents of benevolence in various parts of the continent and of Europe. A large majority of those I have employed and for whom I have been responsible have been of European birth and among these have been included many who have been my immediate assistants. A study and comparison of the character, capacities, inclinations and habits of various men in the United States in detail has thus been for many years a large part of my business and this volume will consist in a considerable degree of a review, organization and classification of the results of this detailed study. I have held official positions placing me in direct and more or less intimate and confidential relations with several executive and legislative departments of the Federal government, of two state governments and of several counties, towns and villages. I have travelled a distance of over forty thousand miles by sea and land beyond the American continent. I have lived a year in England, having travelled in that country a distance of over a thousand miles on foot.
The principal subject matter of this book first received my careful thought while studying the condition & character of the people of the Slave States and its causes. I then for instance formed and in the introduction to my account of Texas expressed the opinion that the chief evil manifestly resulting from slavery was the prolongation which it caused of the unfavorable circumstances of a pioneer condition of civilized Society. My attention was also called while pursuing that branch of my enquiry, a part of the results of which was published in the chapter on the Experience of Virginia, to the manner in which the white stock of the United States had been selected from the European stocks. These and other matters treated of in the present volume have since held my interest, while I have been placed in circumstances favorable for their study in certain respects, though quite unfavorable for obtaining the benefit of the study of others.
Scientific exactness is not to be expected and the most I hope to do is to help to make more clear the way toward a scientific method of enquiry.
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[41: 630] Of matter written with the ostensible purpose of aiding a comprehensive understanding of the drift of men in America, ten times as much has been published in Europe and by European observers as in America and by American observers. It is wonderful how superficial, careless, almost childish, the most of it is, and these terms are applicable to the books of authors of the highest repute, to men who in other directions have thought carefully, closely, accurately & profoundly. But they were not men of scientific habits, not statesmen, philosophers or even politicians. When we come to a De Tocqueville, or a Lyell, how very different is the character of the facts recorded? They have an obvious bearing upon general conclusions, they are accompanied with whatever is essential to fix their true weight and the immediate questions to which they relate are of positive importance as part of a series.
[41: 511–12] What is the reason of the strong feeling which is excited in America by the books of most English travellers in America? We all say it is absurd. Why are we so absurd? I think it is oweing in part to a perception of the fact that the observations of these travellers have been generally influenced by a dull purpose—not often acknowledged and often not in the slightest degree consciously held—to find evidence which will tend to satisfy themselves that a democratic and republican form of government is less favorable to the civilization, happiness and virtue of the people than a constitutional method of government in which there is an aristocratic element, and that in pursuit of this purpose they are led to write often unjustly of the Americans as men. This injustice being not of direct intention, showing itself sometimes in a careless neglect to penetrate the surface where a superficial view is tranquilizing to an Englishman’s predilictions, and specious, far-fetched and fallacious arguments where it is not,—is received by Americans, with a correspondingly confused and somewhat inconsequential indignation, and leads to a corresponding unjust and misdirected inclination of criticism.
The popular opinion of America for instance is that Mr Dickens, Mr Thackery, Mr Trollope and Mr Russell are in their references to America habitually unjust, that is to say, they write in such a way as to produce an unjust impression in the minds of English readers who have not visited America, of what they saw in their travels here. It may be admitted that they have had no intention to do so, nor are they careless writers.
Without clearly meeting the question, English travellers all vaguely have in view the question of the failure of Democracy. Their
[599]observations are often plainly influenced by their disposition to assume that failure. They thus help to confirm the prevalent belief of England, and to sustain doubts of Americans. Whether the English writer is conscious of it or not, his playful allusions to American weakness and defects are all quiet and insidious arguments to most readers against Democracy. One cannot but be conscious that this question underlies all. He does not assert that there is any logical relation of cause and effect between Democracy & Tobacco, Democracy & insolent servants, Democracy and indigestion, but the impression that he thinks there is such a relation is conveyed & an influence is quietly, insidiously exercised against our respect for Democracy. Is he dishonest? No. Then what acts upon him to lead him to this?
[41: 514–21] England has an aristocracy. What does that mean? What are Lords & Earls, Dukes & Princes and Viscounts? Baronets and Knights? What is a gentry? Certainly something artificially—legally withdrawn in some measure from competition—protected in something. English writers generally seem to think this protection of no account, Americans think that they see its effect with all Englishmen, and all men living in English society, especially in Americans who have been for some time living in or close upon it. We certainly see something which we all agree in relating to that cause. What is this relation? Let us try to clearly understand it.
What is success in life to an Englishman? What is the ambition of an Englishman in distinction from that of an American? Titles are not sought for now in England as they formerly were. Gentlemen have declined to be knighted; gentlemen have declined baronetcies. But when one has done so, is he not commonly believed to be more distinguished than those who have accepted the title? Is it not commonly said: “His social standing is quite [as] high as if he had a title?” that: “He does not need it.” Is not this what he is thought to really claim before the world, when he declines it in most cases? There are, then, men who do need the title which he refuses. But why has he no need of it? Because he thinks in most cases (unless common report of Englishmen belies him) that he has already established a claim for a higher position than the title would give him. He already goes where he likes and no thanks to a title. A Baronetcy would rather fasten him down than lift him up. After all, then, it is his ability to associate with people of a certain grade that marks his attainments of ambition. It being fixed that he is the social equal of Baronets, he can afford to despise, or to affect to despise, the title. It is even better that he should be able to say, “I hold my position in society by virtue of no title received as the gift of another. Let a baronet undertake
[600]to put me down; to-morrow, the duke shall make him know that I can move a step or two above him.” Illustrations of this abound in English novels; the last I read was in Mrs Gaskell’s, A Dark Night’s Work.
The degree of approach to or relationship with the hereditary nobility, then, to which a man attains is acknowledged by common consent of English society to be a measure, and the readiest and commonest measure of his success in life. But there are other measures of this relationship than that of titles. The Book of Snobs is a catalogue raisonee of false measures in common use for this purpose. But what does the author of it leave us to understand to be the true standard of measure? Habits and manners and character and actions, like those of a peer and which a peer would respect, these truly bring a man near a peer. “Save my lord’s life from a bull, and show modesty, heroism and good manners in doing so, and you may eat a mutton chop with him, afterwards. Eat your chop like a man, without any fluster, and you may be allowed, after dinner, to hear him snore in his chair,” says Mr Trollope, in The Small House at Allington. “Nay,” he adds, “under these circumstances, even an evening dress may be dispensed with.” And the very manliest of English novels teach the same lesson. The better fellow you are, the nearer you are to a nobleman; the nearer you are to a nobleman, the better fellow you are. So say they all. Let twenty peers show themselves daily for a week in the park, with turbans on their heads, and it is not to be doubted that by the end of the week twenty thousand commoners of London would be wearing turbans. How is it with the gentleman who declines to be knighted but who rides and drives and dines and smokes and argues and is closeted with the peers? Does he adopt nothing from them? Is he under no temptation to do so? Does he not extend an influence from the peers to his own commoner’s household? Are not the habits of peers peculiarly influential upon the habits of people of social grades below them? If not, half the claims of aristocracy are fallacious. Is there not an inclination to imitate them, even from their transmitted forms, in all below from all above? Other things being equal, does not every English gentleman like to possess that which likens him to a nobleman? Does he not enjoy to exercise and display it? There are men like the “poet and radical Hewson” in the Bothy of Tober no Fuolich, who kick against this influence. Yes, they kick against it—because they recognize it to be an inconvenience to the perfectly fair working of their judgment. With men who do not so recognize it, who are unconscious of it, it yet exists. And thus it is propagated through all English society and we see it cropping out sometimes where we would have thought it most deeply overlaid and even by Democracy itself. Philosophy manfully overcomes it, but it never dies and the philosophy of Englishmen is always working up against it—always has it to work up against.
Other things being equal, a man likes to be of the same opinions,
[601]to possess the same habits, to have the same prejudices, as his social superiors. The noblemen instinctively and by understanding stand by their order. Democracy opposes their order. They are not inclined to think well of Democracy. They are inclined to believe that Democracy would have a bad effect on manners; that Democracy would lead vulgar and ignorant and weak men to resist being put in the proper place in society of such men. This inclination from a self and class- self-interest, unquestionably affects their judgments. They adopt decided opinions in that direction. They express these opinions and they are propagated and by imitative descent, they become at last familiarly current, with some prestige from their origin, through all English Society, and wherever English Society extends its influence—to New York, for instance, very notably. But Philosophy overcomes them in a great measure, as in the case of Mr Mill. Then here comes an Englishman like Mr Trollope, who “professes to use a light pen and to manufacture articles for general readers” in the English market.
He comes to America and meets with people in place of servants totally untrained as servants, with vulgar, weak and ignorant men, who are silent and unobliging to him. More so than he has been accustomed to find such men to be. Why should they be so? He goes to Canada and meets the same phenomenon and his philosophy takes the occasion to drive at it. Why should they be so? What more natural than that the word should pop into his head—Democracy?
[41: 574–85] Once on a time my father took me with him on a journey which carried us into Canada. While there we had for several days as a travelling companion an Englishman, animated, amiable, frank and engaging. As I think of our intercourse now, I can see plainly that he looked upon me as a new specemin and was drawing me out and turning me over with the interest of a naturalist. It is clear also that he got some new ideas from me and often when our conversation was interrupted, he took notes. My experience with men in America, though I was a youngster, had been various, and I was then fresh from association with a large number of youngsters—youngsters merely, but gathered from all parts of the Union, and from various classes. With these I had been made intimate at foot-ball and boat-club, in long walks, trouting excursions, duck-shooting, long winter night talks over the stove and more formal debates of our “Society.” My experience of mankind and my views of men were crude and bigoted but they were obviously sincere and simple convictions, and they were as strange to the Englishman, as average English country gentlemen’s convictions would surely be to me.
What most surprised both of us was the difference of our experience as to the opinions held by thinking and intelligent men in America,
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—in which I include, for my part, the Sophomore Class of Yale College—about Democracy. He was just ending a tour in the United States in which he assured me that I was the first intelligent native American whom he had met who did not seem to him to be entirely satisfied of the failure of Republicanism, and to desire & hope for a change of government which would introduce an aristocracy if not a monarchy. What still more surprised me, he said that he had always held the conviction unquestioned that a state church was necessary to the maintenance of sound religion with a people, and he had met with no Christian gentleman before in America who did not acknowledge that the experience of America justified that conviction. I think that he had been somewhat troubled to reconcile this experience with the absence of any organization or apparent effort or purpose of effort to reform the government in matters so important and where the conviction of intelligent men was so unanimous and decided. Hence the interest with which he reviewed my experience. I assured him that the opinions he had found so generally prevalent had been encountered by me but in two instances, first in a young man born deformed; of eccentric genius, given in everything to crotchets, and exceedingly vain and assuming—that is to say of clearly exceptional character, and secondly in a friend of mine, who from the training of a Puritan family had run into Puseyism and who held that no country should be called Christian the government of which was not essentially hyerarchical.
We were both interested and puzzled to find how this difference of experience could be accounted for. His had been short. He had landed at New York, visited Newport, Saratoga and Niagara, had brought letters to his bankers, to a bishop and to a distinguished officer of the American army, had met with great hospitality from them. They were estimable people. While at their houses he would scarcely have known that he was not in England. But it was very much otherwise at the watering places, and he supposed he had seen at these and while on the rail and boats a fair sample of the better class of Americans. I had no idea at that time how exceedingly little it was possible for a man to see of what is most essentially characteristic of Americans under such circumstances. We were, therefore, quite unable to account for the difference of our experience. We parted at Montreal and I don’t think that his book was ever published. Since then I have met numbers of men and women in America who held the views which the Englishman had found so common but which were then so novel to me, and with many more, of whom it is certain that an English gentleman could not have found that they did not firmly hold whatever they supposed to be proper and fashionable English views of America or anything else, yet I have seldom met an English gentleman who had travelled in America, whose conclusions from his experience did not give renewed occasion for something of the same
[603]perplexity that first came to me in this pleasant way while enjoying my first visit to a foreign land.
It is not all due to a base kind of hospitality, servility and sycophancy, nor to indolence and the disinclination to vigorous conversation, which all Englishmen alledge that they find in America, for I have heard Mr Cobden say that when revisiting America after an interval of twenty years, he found that most of the intelligent gentlemen he met here seemed to be deeply impressed with the opinion that the country had greatly degenerated and that everything was going in a most unsatisfactory way. The fact of this general opinion, he added, though his own observation of the changes occurring between his first and second visits constantly counteracted its influence upon his own convictions, was the most unfavorable and melancholy circumstance that he found in the condition of the country. No American whom Mr Cobden would style an intelligent gentleman could be so ignorant of his character and opinions as to suppose that depressed views of the results of Republican government would be welcome to him.
The subject is one, in truth, of great perplexity, the field of study is so vast, the considerations of times and circumstances, required in any comparison between the condition of the present people of the United States, and that of past generations, and with the present & past condition of the people of different European nations, are so numerous and complicated, that it may be doubted if any man has yet had the courage, patience and opportunities necessary for the making of such a comparison in a manner which would entitle his conclusions to be received with very great deference.
To this fact may be attributed much of the melancholy experience of Mr Cobden and the similar experience of other English travellers. The society into which these travellers almost invariably come with the most ease and satisfaction, on their arrival in this country, is that of men who have grown rich in commerce, men who have been during all the more vigorous and penetrative period of their lives engrossed with strictly commercial matters of interest. These have been in the habit of considering every public question with regard to its relations direct or remote to their own business. The rebellion overcame this to a certain extent, but even in the Presidential election of 1864, I was much struck by the certain drift of conversation among bankers, merchants & manufacturers whenever politics or the war was introduced to a discussion of the immediate influence of commercial interests upon politics, or the influence of political events or the progress of the war upon business. I happened at this time to be thrown in with two men much superior in their ability to take broad and distant views to most of this class, and whose business interests were of the most comprehensive character, giving them unusual inducements to study the whole world and to look far into the future. One of
[604]them hoped for the election of Lincoln, the other for that of McLellan, and it was as obvious with them as it was with the Irish laborer who openly offered his vote to the highest bidder that the real arguments by which they were mainly influenced and by which they expected others to be influenced were those which regarded the effect the election was to have upon commercial interests within the next year. Beyond that, if their view extended at all, either as to time or morality, it was in hasty and hazy glimpses only, from which they constantly inclined to return to the present short-sighted money market view. This clearly was the habit of their minds. I don’t say that they were not influenced by higher or more extended considerations, but that it was only upon these that their mind was actively & clearly occupied and upon these only could they converse with ease, ability & satisfaction.
The same habit, the same indisposition to original study of the abstract, the obscure and the distant, pervades the whole class and the whole society in which this class of men dominate. And in this society is included nearly all of the people of the United States, in the Northern states at least, who have acquired sufficient wealth to live in the style & carry about with them the appearances which Englishmen are accustomed to regard as the unfailing concomitants of the superior classes—the intelligent classes—the best people.
This will be strikingly illustrated to anyone who reads the first chapter of Mr Russell’s Diary, yet the illustration will be faint to him unless he is able to recognize the people to whom Mr Russell refers, whose opinions he quotes as those of “men who represent great wealth, much ability, and high intelligence in the State” and by contact with whom he shows that his own opinions were then controlled. The most prominent indeed are no more Americans, have no more common interest with Americans, no more represent Americans, than the British minister resident in Constantinople is a Turk. Not a few are foreigners-born; the most prominent and leading person is a German Jew by birth and has always had his eyes turned ten times as much on Europe as America. Another resided abroad as a merchant during his years of greatest vigor, married abroad and has always been associated in his commercial and domestic interests more with foreigners than Americans. And of all these men the majority not only had been in all their period of manhood occupied in commerce but with regard to affairs beyond their own domestic circle, had been more deeply & habitually exercised about those of other countries than their own.
Their profound ignorance of the American people, their entire want of sympathy with the great body of the people, was established by events within a month after this chapter of Mr Russell’s book was written, in the most conclusive manner. Their opinions upon the drift of public opinion, their convictions of what would result from events then occurring,
[605]the opinions which they forced Mr Russell to adopt on every subject which it was possible to submit to the test of the progress of events, was shown to be without the smallest value. They knew nothing of the state of the country, nothing of the character or disposition of its people. They were not merely profoundly ignorant, they were profoundly misinformed and profoundly unintelligent.
I could illustrate this ignorance and blindness still more effectively if it were needed by facts of my own experience at the time. I met Mr Russell in Washington and gave him in answer to an enquiry, my opinion of what would occur in a certain event. “If you are right, all I can say,” he replied, “is that nearly every gentleman I have met since I came into the country is grossly ignorant of the real state of things, and I think I have seen some of your best people.” I returned to New York and a week afterwards sent him a statement of facts, vouched for, on the best authority, which was completely inconsistent with the assurances which he had received and accepted, but before it reached him, if it ever did, the gun was fired at Fort Sumpter, and ten thousand men were hurrying to resent the insult to their flag from the very city of which Mr Russell had been induced to write, “she would do anything rather than fight; her delight is to eat her bread & honey, and count her dollars in peace,” and in which he assured me he had been led to believe that if a call for volunteers to fight against the South should be made, there was not a man who could be depended upon to respond.
It was the general opinion of the intelligent class with whom Mr Russell had associated that if the President should be so foolish as to attempt to raise forces to resist the gentlemen who were leading the movements in progress at the South, only a few New England fanatics would be at his disposal. Of the President himself they undoubtedly spoke to Mr Russell, with no respect—a mere narrow-minded, vulgar, country attorney, and in many respects, he really had less of the English gentleman about him than the hard-working, pinched and humble lawyer of an English market-town, and yet Mr Lincoln, as events soon proved, was infinitely wiser than these people whom Mr Russell was led to compare, somewhat unfavorably it is true, with the aristocratic societies of Europe.
Our wealthier citizens, that is to say our successful bankers, speculators and merchants, are indeed, by their habits, exceedingly ill-informed and unwise as to the deeper drift of our public affairs and of the character, disposition and mental movements of the great body of the people. They are by their habits disinclined to study deeply anything beyond the circumstances, the effect of which on their business interests can be regarded with confidence and clearness—can be “calculated upon.”
In Europe, political administration is a business almost wholly in the hands of “the superior class,” it is consequently the most prominent
[606]interest of the superior class; and again consequently whatever contributes to success in that business, becomes of interest to that class. Whatever is thus of interest to or with people of the superior class becomes a fashionable topic of conversation with the class or classes below it. Certain sentiments and ideas thus become also fashionable or usual, within the limits of which only is there much play of original thought. Among these usual sentiments and ideas, there are some, especially in England, with regard to America, and republicanism. They are familiar to English gentlemen, and influence them in their habits of judgment of many things, with which they have no distinct or direct connection. They are in their nature somewhat comprehensive, because they descend and bear an influence from the really profound and comprehensive study of those with whom the science of politics is the immediate capital stock of their business, more than even their wealth. When therefore our mercantile gentlemen, who are the more obvious representatives of the best society of Europe in their houses, and dresses, & furniture & manners and in many of their habits, are forced to converse with English gentlemen upon the science of politics, or matters of fact relating to that science, being incapable from their habits of original, far reaching or comprehensive views, they naturally and unconsciously give a hospitable entertainment to the political common-places of their guests, being incapable of making a creditable or satisfactory resistance to them. This applies to men of superior ability in their own business and in those things wherein they are accustomed to engage as recreations, even literary recreations.
[41: 523–32] More than thirty years ago, Captain Basil Hall, whose travels in America had made him an authority on American questions, was asked what appeared to him to constitute the greatest difference between Englishmen and Americans, and replied, “like a gallant sailor,” as Mrs Trollope says, “the want of loyalty.”
Captain Hall meant, with the Americans, of course.
I have known many Americans, especially New Yorkers, men of high standing in their professions and in society, men whom I could not but greatly respect and look up to for their astuteness in many directions, who speaking candidly to an English traveller, would have confessed with sorrow that they believed Captain Hall to be right. I heard a man standing high in the councils of the Republican party, a man who had sacrificed much to his radical democratic convictions, confess, at his own dinner-table, shortly before the rebellion became unquestionably formidable, that he believed the people of the free states had lost all real loyalty in
[607]their long habits of devotion to their private interests and forgetfulness of their dependence on the commonwealth. I heard another, of similar position and character, holding a most honorable & responsible Federal office, say, after the war had well commenced: “What we have seen is a demonstration of temporary romantic enthusiasm, and if the South is in earnest, we shall never set to work seriously to fight it. Do you suppose these men don’t value their lives and limbs and the chances of success they see in the several lines of enterprise they have had before them at home, too highly, to allow themselves to be kept long at this boy’s play of soldiering? They are not like European peasants to be led about, as the wisdom of others may see fit. They are of too much value, and each man knows his own value too well to make a business of shooting at others or of being shot at, because we say that the interests of the nation require it. Every man has been too long a nation to himself in this country for that!”
If this has been the view of such men as I have described, what has been that of those fashionable men of New York, who assume before foreigners a position of leadership in American Society and who did not, before the war, conceal their sympathy for the South & their contempt for the people’s choice of a Chief Magistrate?
In the winter before the inauguration of Mr Lincoln I heard three of these men, all recognized leaders of the Democratic party, two of them having occupied high federal offices, utter under confidential circumstances, the most contemptuous opinions possible of the republican system of government, declaring that it was a pure mob-rule, that the only way in which intelligent men could exercise an influence at elections was by useing their money to buy votes; two of them predicting and one of them expressing the hope, that if the Republicans did not yield to the demands of the Southerners, New York would go with the South and the prominent Republican leaders in the city would be butchered by the mob. These were men of the highest Fifth Avenue respectability—men living more than any other Americans in the style of the leaders of Society in European capitals—men whose opinions no foreigner, even if prejudiced against them, could disregard.
That this judgment had been formed without a fair study of the facts, however, it is not presumptuous now to argue, since it is evident that just these people have been more disappointed by the events of the war, from first to last, than anyone else. Mr Russell’s reports to the Times of their anticipations, and the facts of history since chronicled by the Times, sufficiently prove this.
Before I read Mrs Trollope’s book—I have never seen Captain Hall’s—I travelled during five months on foot through England, at an expense of three & sixpence a day, thus making myself somewhat intimate with the mass of the people. What an entirely different view from
[608]that of Captain Hall, I was there led to form, the following extract from my notes will show. It is a tap-room scene, in an agricultural village of England, that I am describing.
“Why,” continued the soldier, “isn’t every country in Europe against England? don’t they all hate her? and isn’t every Frenchman a soldier?” Then he described the inefficient state of the national defences, and showed how easy it would be for a fleet of steamers, some dark night the next week, to land an army somewhere on the coast of Wales, and before they heard of it, it might be right there amongst them! He would like to know what there was to oppose them. The miller said there was—“gammon.” The sergeant, on being asked, admitted that he was not aware of any respectable force stationed in that vicinity, and the miller told him he was a “traitor then.” The soldier said the miller knew nothing about war, anyway, and the company unanimously aquiesced. The soldier then resumed his speech—asked if Government would dare to give arms to the people, and pictured an immense army of Chartists arising in the night, and with firebrands and Frenchmen, sweeping the government, queen and all, out of the land, and establishing “a republican Kingdom,” where the poor man was as good as the rich. The company all thought it very probable, and each added something to make the picture more vivid. A coarse joke about the queen’s bundling off with her children produced much laughter; and the hope that the parsons and lawyers would have to go to work for a living was much applauded.
It was strange what a complete indifference they all seemed to have about it, as if they would be mere spectators, outsiders, and not, in any way, personally interested. They spoke of the Government and the Chartists, and the landlords and the farmers, but not a word of themselves.
Late in the evening there was some doleful singing, and a woman came in and performed some sleight-of-hand tricks, everyone giving her a penny when she had concluded. We were obliged to sleep two in a bed, one of us with a Methodist young man, who travelled to make sales of tea among country grocers and innkeepers, for a Liverpool house. He said that what we had seen in the tap-room would give us a very good notion of the character of a large part of the labouring class about here.
The painful impression I here received of the absolute indifference of a large class of the people of England about their government—often more than indifference, a positive feeling of hostility—was frequently renewed. Nothing I met with in England surprised and shocked me more—and I believe that I felt nothing to be in stronger contrast to the ruling spirit of the people of my own country. I have since for several years been in the most intimate relations with foreigners of every European country—most of them, probably, naturalized citizens of the United States—and as a city officer of New York under Fernando Wood’s administration of the mayoralty, have had the most painful personal experience of the most degraded and detestable development of democratic
[609]government which has ever existed, but I have never ceased to think that Captain Hall and all, English and American, Southern or Northern, who had adopted his opinion, had done so upon a very inefficient study of the circumstances.
It has been the custom of American writers to denounce the Times, as willfully blind and prejudiced in its whole course with regard to the war. It was not half as much so as many of the Democratic leaders themselves were, and to me it has always appeared that the editor of the Times, much more even than Mr Russell, was forming his judgment of facts and events under the influence of the judgment of American citizens whom he regarded as the most unprejudiced and cosmopolitan gentlemen of the country and whose standing socially as well as in the Stock boards certainly warranted a foreigner in paying great respect to their opinions.
The opinions of these men perfectly accorded with the faith, in which every educated English Gentleman is nourished as by the milk of his Alma Mater, that loyalty is the peculiar fruit of aristocratic institutions and that democracy must be destructive to it. In this faith the Editor of the Times formed his theory of American politics, and he found this theory substantiated by the opinions and apparently by the experience of a class of men in New York who had high claims to his consideration. Having planned and predicted the events of the threatened civil war upon this theory, finding that his plans and predictions were identical with those formed by the gentlemen to whom Mr Russell naturally turned for advice immediately on his arrival, he could not be expected to readily yield it, or to see what they refused to see, the complete inconsistency of events not only with the terms of their common predictions, but with the theory & the political faith, out of which they had arisen.
It was not till more than two years had elapsed that the editor of the Times was driven to acknowledge that there was something that he did not quite understand about the democratic army.
Never, we should think, in the history of man, were five such battles as these, compressed into six successive days. It is hard to conceive how nature could have supported the exhaustion and the strain . . . . No mere indifferent or disaffected mercenaries could have been led from a battle like that of the Wilderness to three more such battles at Spottsylvania. Be the impulse what it may, the Federals are fighting in stern reality.
Times, May 25th 1864.
His friends in New York—following just then, with what respect we will not ask, the sweet and decorous remains of their former neighbor, General Wordsworth, on their route from the battlefield of the Wilderness to the tomb, would hardly dare to ask what is this impulse? lest that other question, what has been my impulse, in these years of peril to my
[610]country? should press too hard upon them, but there are thousands of doubters who will do so, both in Europe and America.
The question comes to me, on the day that a man has been staggering through the village street before me, gesticulating with a revolver and shouting, “Hurrah for the Southern Confederacy! I’d like to see the man that’ll stop me!” Nobody attempted to stop him, but when an hour later he assaulted a negro, who was passing by without noticing him, he was promptly arrested, taken twelve miles to a justice’s office, was tried and fined, not for the insult to the loyal people but for the illegal assault.
What is loyalty? Those who hold Captain Hall’s opinion, I believe, cannot dissociate it from peculiar respect for and deference to a certain person or persons, but its root is law—loy—and its essential meaning is fidelity to duties under a government of laws.
I have pushed the enquiry—What is the impulse of this stern resolution of the men of the North—before now, with many wounded men and with many men in the field, who were grumbling and homesick—What did you enlist for? The final answer generally has been: “Because I thought that if the South had anything to complain of, it ought to have got it set right in the lawful way, I thought we ought all of us to stand by our government, and I must do my share.” There are many impulses undoubtedly and they are much confused in the minds of the men, but it has appeared clearly to me that their more commonly ruling impulse is that of loyalty, not devotion to a person, not to particular laws, but to our institution of laws—Government. With the new-comers, the foreign-born, this is much weaker than with the men of the country regiments, the rural and settled Americans. But with the whole army I believe it to be the grand co-hering impulse, more than any other.
[41: 536–38] No sadder verdict can be pronounced upon a nation than that its wisest and most considerate men, have lost faith in it, have ceased to interest themselves in its government, or to be—directly or indirectly—the strongest power in its government.
Unquestionably such is the verdict of most Englishmen who have studied the subject amongst us, and it certainly would not be so, anywhere nearly to the degree it is, if it were not true that a great number of American citizens having from their wealth, education & social position, the most important duty to perform for the country, did not habitually look & avow they look upon the Republic as a failure.
[611]
A change apparent since the war—this doesn’t touch grounds of the conviction—with peace these return except as war developed facts, and if it has, these should be set out. Besides a large class of facts that war does not alter, and it is obvious that experience of Englishmen during the war has not led to different convictions from those formerly confirmed in their minds while travelling here.
What then are the facts referred to & the class of facts—the observations of travellers, for instance, which are supposed to confirm it?
All of them I cannot undertake to enumerate and many of them, addressing myself to candid minds, it is needless to refer to. Most of them are included under the following heads:
The great commonness of vulgar people
The want of respect for government
Insubordination & insolence of public and private servants
Uncivilized habits, diet, spitting, clothing, moroseness, uncommunicativeness; want of social accomplishments; want of cleanliness, ventilation &c; want of civility.
Want of integrity, of sound commercial qualities. Knavery, over-reaching smartness. Western swindlers.
The licentiousness, vulgarity, flippancy, superficiality and poverty of the public press.
Physical Degeneracy—men & women, lankness &c, languidness, heels up, lounging habits.
Mercurialness.
The above all apply to aspects of the American people, extra-governmental, judicial & political. There are then the alledged facts of:
the miserable, undignified, ignorant, base and tyrannical character of many administrative, legislative & judicial officers
the inefficiency, the corruption, the recklessness and the extravagance of various branches of our government, the weakness of law, the frequency and terrific character of our mobs and the prevalence of mob-spirit.
[42: 44–45] Being grandchildren of peasants and educated subject to many of the privations of the peasant classes of Europe, retaining in many families owing to sparsity of settlement more of the language of the peasants of the last and previous centuries than their descendants in Europe, it is only by comparison with the peasant classes of Europe—not the higher—that the influence on character of American conditions of life can be understood.
It is a noteworthy fact therefore, here to be recalled as well as
[612]anywhere, that when English travellers of the present day take the measure of these men, even in regard to manners and evidences of refinement, they do so not by the standard customarily applied in Europe to peasants but to people of the higher classes. Scarcely ever does their enquiry take the form “How much is this man above a peasant but in what does he fall below a gentleman?”
[41: 587–88] There can be no doubt that there is a large number of Americans born, who habitually hold a more unfavorable judgment of American affairs, and especially of what they regard as the results of democracy, than that of the English writers, which when expressed by them, is generally regarded in America as unfair and as giving evidence of national prejudice, jealousy and envy. A very much larger number of Americans, while they participate in the general feeling towards English writers which is thus established, are still very weak in the faith of democracy and take a discontented view of the development of national character, being quite satisfied that it has undergone of late a great and rapid degeneration.
The views of the former class have never had distinct public utterance. The only newspapers or periodical publications in which they appear or are favored directly or indirectly, so far as I have seen, are edited by Englishmen or Irishmen and are published for an English or Irish market. Some extreme Episcopalian or ultra-montane Roman Catholic journal may supply an exception, but if so it is of no general influence or significance. This may be the chief cause of the wavering faith & despondent reflections of the larger body I have spoken of, and on other accounts is much to be regretted.
That there are great and special social evils & political evils in the United States no one can doubt. I have suffered very much and peculiarly from some of them myself and hate them with my whole heart. I desire nothing so much as their remedy. I am willing to accept aristocracy or monarchy if either or both will supply a remedy without bringing greater evils. This desire and the consciousness of this willingness, with a somewhat indignant conviction of the senselessness and meanness of the way in which much good tempered and I believe sincere criticism of English writers upon America have been received by many of our newspapers and even by some of our public representatives and officers, has led me to a careful study of the faults which are found with our condition and to a search for their surest remedy. That in this study I have been perfectly fair is too much to hope. But as my main conscious purpose is to lead to the remedy and I am sure that this can never be found by hiding or disguising or comparatively underrating the faults or their causes,
[613]I think my collection of evidence and my conclusions will fail less in fairness than in thoroughness. In the latter respect, I lack much in training and knowledge of what has been written and of history but I believe that few men address the public who know the common life of both the American and the English people as well as I and are less likely to be deceived as to connection of cause and effect relating thereto.