Chapter II: Part 2

At eleven o'clock on this the ninth and last day of our voyage we passed Paducah, in Kentucky, a small neat settlement on the point of junction of the Tennessee and Ohio. Preparations were going on before our eyes for our leaving the boat; our luggage and that of the L.'s, who joined company with us, was brought out; cold beef and negus were provided for us in the ladies' cabin, the final sayings were being said, and we paid our fare, fifty dollars each, for our voyage of twelve hundred miles. Smithland, at the mouth of the Cumberland river, soon appeared; and, as we wished to ascend to Nashville without delay, we were glad to see a small steamboat in waiting. We stepped on shore, and stood there, in spite of a shower, for some time, watching the "Henry Clay" ploughing up the river, and waving our handkerchiefs in answer to signals of farewell from several of the multitude who were clustered in every part of the noble vessel.

If there be excess of mental luxury in this life, it is surely in a voyage up the Mississippi, in the bright and leafy month of May.

COMPROMISE.

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."

--_Hosea_ viii., 7.

The greatest advantage of long life, at least to those who know how and wherefore to live, is the opportunity which it gives of seeing moral experiments worked out, of being present at the fructification of social causes, and of thus gaining a kind of wisdom which in ordinary cases seems reserved for a future life. An equivalent for this advantage is possessed by such as live in those critical periods of society when retribution is hastened, or displayed in clear connexion with the origin of its events. The present seems to be such an age. It is an age in which the societies of the whole world are daily learning the consequences of what their fathers did, the connexion of cause and effect being too palpable to be disputed; it is an age when the active men of the New World are beholding the results of their own early counsels and deeds. It seems, indeed, as if the march of events were everywhere accelerated for a time, so as to furnish some who are not aged with a few complete pieces of experience. Some dispensation--like the political condition of France, for instance--will still be centuries in the working out; but in other cases--the influence of eminent men, for example--results seem to follow more closely than in the slower and quieter past ages of the world. It is known to all how in England, and also in America, the men of the greatest intellectual force have sunk from a higher to a far lower degree of influence from the want of high morals. It seems as if no degree of talent and vigour can long avail to keep a man eminent in either politics or literature, unless his morals are also above the average. Selfish vanity, double-dealing, supreme regard to expediency, are as fatal to the most gifted men in these days, and almost as speedily fatal, as intellectual capacity to a pretender. Men of far inferior knowledge and power rise over their heads in the strength of honesty; and by dint of honesty (positive or comparitive) retain the supremacy, even through a display of intellectual weakness and error of which the fallen make their sport. This is a cheering sign of the times, indicating that the days are past when men were possessed by their leaders, and that the time is coming when power will be less unfairly distributed, and held on a better tenure than it has been. It indicates that traitors and oppressors will not, in future, be permitted to work their will and compass their purposes at the expense of others, till guilty will and purpose are prostrated on the threshold of eternity. It indicates that that glorious and beautiful spectacle of judgment may be beheld in this world which religious men have referred to another, when the lowly shall be exalted; when, unconscious of their dignity, they shall, with amazement, hear themselves greeted as the blessed of the Father, and see themselves appointed to a moral sovereignty in comparison with whose splendour

"Grows dim and dies
All that this world is proud of. From their spheres
The stars of human glory are cast down;
Perish the roses and the flowers of kings,
Princes, and emperors, and the crowns and palms
Of all the mighty, withered and consumed."

However long it may be before the last shred of tinsel may be cast into the fire, and the last chaff of false pretence winnowed away, the revolution is good and secure as far as it goes. Moral power has begun its long series of conquests over physical force and selfish cunning, and the diviner part of man is a guarantee that not one inch of the ground gained shall ever be lost. For our encouragement, we are presented with a more condensed evidence of retribution than has hitherto been afforded to the world. Moral causes seem to be quickened as well as strengthened in their operation by the new and more earnest heed which is given to them.

In the New World, however long some moral causes may be in exhibiting their results, there have been certain deeds done which have produced their consequences with extraordinary rapidity and an indisputable clearness. May all men open their eyes to see them, and their hearts to understand them!

The people of the United States were never under a greater temptation to follow temporary expediency in preference to everlasting principle than in the case of the admission of Missouri, with slave institutions, into the Union. To this temptation they yielded, by a small majority of their representatives. The final decision rested, as it happened, in the hands of one man, Mr. Clay; but it is to the shame of the North (which had abolished slavery) that it did so happen. The decision was made to prefer custom and expediency to principle; it was hoped that, if the wind were once got under confinement, something would prevent its bursting forth as the whirlwind.

The plea of slaveholders, and a plausible one up to the year 1820, was that slavery was not an institution of their choice or for which they were answerable: it was an inherited institution. Since the year 1820 this plea has become hypocrisy; for in that year a deliberate vote was passed by Congress to perpetuate slavery in the Union by admitting a new state whose institutions had this basis. The new states northwest of the Ohio were prohibited from introducing slavery by the very act of cession of the land; and nothing could have been easier than to procure the exclusion of slavery from Missouri by simply refusing to admit any new state whose distinguishing institution was one incompatible in principle with the principles on which the American Constitution was founded. Missouri would undoubtedly have surrendered slavery, been admitted, and virtuously flourished, like her neighbour Illinois. But there was division of opinion; and, because the political device of the Union seemed in danger, the eternal principles of justice were set aside, and protection was deliberately pledged to slavery, not only in Missouri, but, as a consequence, in Arkansas and Florida. The Constitution and Declaration of Rights of Missouri, therefore, exhibit the following singular mixture of declarations and provisions. It will be seen afterward how they are observed.

"The general assembly shall not have power to pass laws,

"1. For the emancipation of slaves without the consent of the owners; or without paying them, before such emancipation, a full equivalent for such slaves so emancipated; and,

"2. To prevent _bonâ fide_ emigrants to this state, or actual settlers therein, from bringing from any of the United States, or from any of their territories, such persons as may there be deemed to be slaves, so long as any persons of the same description are allowed to be held as slaves by the laws of this state.

"It shall be their duty, as soon as may be, to pass such laws as may be necessary,

"1. To prevent free negroes and mulattoes from coming to and settling in this state, under any pretext whatsoever."

"Schools and the means of education shall for ever be encouraged in this state.

"That the right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate.

"That the accused cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land.

"That cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted.

"That the free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man, and that every person may freely speak, write, and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty."

The consequences of the compromise began to show themselves first in the difference between the character of the population in Missouri and Illinois, the latter of which is two years older than the former. They lie opposite each other on the Mississippi, and both are rich in advantages of soil, climate, and natural productions. They showed, however, social differences from the very beginning of their independent career, which are becoming more striking every day. Rapacious adventurers, who know that the utmost profit of slaves is made by working them hard on a virgin soil, began flocking to Missouri, while settlers who preferred smaller gains to holding slaves sat down in Illinois. When it was found, as it soon was, that slavery does not answer so well in the farming parts of Missouri as on the new plantations of the South, a farther difference took place. New settlers perceived that, in point of immediate interest merely, the fine lands of Missouri were less worth having, with the curse of slavery upon them, than those of Illinois without it. In vain has the price of land been lowered in Missouri as that in Illinois rose. Settlers go first and look at the cheaper land; some remain upon it; but many recross the river and settle in the rival state. This enrages the people of Missouri. Their soreness and jealousy, combined with other influences of slavery, so exasperate their prejudices against the people of colour as to give a perfectly diabolical character to their hatred of negroes and the friends of negroes. That such is the temper of those who conduct popular action in the state is shown by some events which happened in the year 1836. In the very bottom of the souls of the American statesmen who admitted Missouri on unrighteous terms, these events must kindle a burning comparison between what the social condition of the frontier states of their honourable Union is and what it might have been.

A man of colour in St. Louis was arrested for some offence, and rescued by a free man of his own colour, a citizen of Pennsylvania, named Mackintosh, who was steward on board a steamboat then at St. Louis. Mackintosh was conveyed to jail for rescuing his comrade, whose side of the question we have no means of knowing. Mackintosh appears to have been a violent man, or, at least, to have been in a state of desperation at the time that he was on his way to jail, guarded by two peace-officers. He drew a knife from his side (almost every man on the western frontier being accustomed to carry arms), killed one of the officers, and wounded the other. He was immediately lodged in the prison. The wife and children of the murdered officer bewailed him in the street, and excited the rage of the people against Mackintosh. Some of the citizens acknowledged to me that his colour was the provocation which aggravated their rage so far beyond what it had ever been in somewhat similar cases of personal violence, and that no one would have dreamed of treating any white man as this mulatto was treated. The citizens assembled round the jail in the afternoon, demanding the prisoner, and the jailer delivered him up. He was led into the woods on the outskirts of the city; and, when there, they did not know what to do with him. While deliberating they tied him to a tree. This seemed to suggest the act which followed. A voice cried out, "Burn him!" Many tongues echoed the cry. Brushwood was rooted up, and a heap of green wood piled about the man. Who furnished the fire does not seem to be known. Between two and three thousand of the citizens of St. Louis were present. Two gentlemen of the place assured me that the deed was done by the hands of not more than six; but they could give no account of the reasons why the two or three thousand stood by in silence to behold the act of the six, further than that they were afraid to interfere!

The victim appears to have made no resistance nor entreaty. He was, some say twenty minutes, some say half an hour, in dying; during the whole of which time he was praying or singing hymns in a firm voice. This fact was the ground of an accusation made by magistrates of his being "connected with the abolitionists." When his legs were consumed so that his body dropped into the fire, and he was no longer seen, a bystander observed to another, "There! it is over with him: he does not feel any more now." "Yes, I do," observed the man's quiet voice from out of the flames.

I saw the first notice which was given of this in the St. Louis newspapers. The paragraph briefly related that a ruffian of colour had murdered a citizen, had been demanded by the indignant fellow-citizens of the murdered man, and burned in the neighbourhood of the city; that this unjustifiable act was to be regretted, but that it was hoped that the veil of oblivion would be drawn over the deed. Some of the most respectable of the citizens were in despair when they found that the newspapers of the Union generally were disposed to grant the last request; and it is plain that, on the spot, no one dared to speak out about the act. The charge of Judge Lawless (his real name) to the grand jury is a sufficient commentary upon the state of St. Louis society. He told the jury that a bad and lamentable deed had been committed in burning a man alive without trial, but that it was quite another question whether they were to take any notice of it. If it should be proved to be the act of the few, every one of those few ought undoubtedly to be indicted and punished; but if it should be proved to be the act of the many, incited by that electric and metaphysical influence which occasionally carries on a multitude to do deeds above and beyond the law, it was no affair for a jury to interfere in. He spoke of Mackintosh as connected with the body of abolitionists. Of course, the affair was found to be electric and metaphysical, and all proceedings were dropped.

All proceedings in favour of law and order; others of an opposite character were vigorously instituted by magistrates, in defiance of some of those clauses of the constitution which I have quoted above. The magistrates of St. Louis prosecuted a domiciliary inquisition into the periodical publications of the city, visiting the newspaper offices, prying and threatening, and offering rewards for the discovery of any probability that the institution of slavery would be spoken against in print. In the face of the law, the press was rigidly controlled.

Information was given, while the city was in this excited state, of every indication of favour to the coloured people, and of disapprobation of slavery; and the savages of St. Louis were on the alert to inflict vengeance. In Marion College, Palmyra (Missouri), two students were undoubtedly guilty of teaching two coloured boys to read. These boys were carried by them to the college for service, the one being employed on the farm, and the other in the college, to clean shoes and wait on the young men. One afternoon a large number of citizens from St. Louis, well mounted, appeared on the Palmyra road, and they made no secret of their intention to Lynch the two students who taught their servants to read. The venerable Dr. Nelson, who was, I believe, at the head of the institution, came out of his house to implore the mob with tears not to proceed, and the ladies of his family threw themselves down in the road in the way of the horses. The way was forcibly cleared, and the persecutors proceeded. The young men came forth as soon as summoned. They were conducted to the edge of the forest where it opens upon a prairie. There a circle was formed, and they were told that they stood in a Lynch court.

The younger one was first set in the midst. He acknowledged the act with which he was charged. He was offered the alternative of receiving twenty lashes with the horrid cowhide (which was shown him), or of immediately leaving the state for ever. He engaged to leave the state for ever, and was set across the river into Illinois.

The elder student made his trial a longer one. He acknowledged the act of teaching his servant to read, and made himself heard while he defended it. He pleaded that he was a citizen of Missouri, being of age, and having exercised the suffrage at the last election. He demanded a fair trial in a court of law, and pledged himself to meet any accusation there. At last it came to their binding him to a tree, and offering him the choice of two hundred lashes with the cowhide, or of promising to leave the state, and never to return to it. He knew that a sentence of two hundred lashes meant death by torture (it is so understood in Lynch courts), and he knew that a promise thus extorted was not binding; so he promised. He was also set across the river, where he immediately published a narrative of the whole transaction, and declared his intention of returning to his state, to resume the duties and privileges of citizenship, as soon as he could be personally safe.

The St. Louis Lynchers next ordered the heads of Marion College to hold a public meeting, and declare their convictions and feelings on the subject of slavery. They were obeyed, and they put pretty close questions to the professors, especially to Dr. Ely, who was a suspected man.

Dr. Ely came from one of the Eastern states, and was considered by the abolitionists of his own religious persuasion to be one of their body. Some time after he went into Missouri, it appeared incidentally in some newspaper communications that he had bought a slave. His friends at the East resented the imputation, and were earnest in his vindication; but were presently stopped and thrown into amazement by his coming out with an acknowledgment and defence of the act. He thought that the way in which he could do most good was by purchasing negroes for purposes of enlightenment. So he bought his man Abraham, designing to enlighten him for nine years, and then set him free, employing the proceeds of his nine years' labour in purchasing two other slaves, to be enlightened and robbed in the same manner, for the purpose of purchasing four more at the expiration of another series of years, and so on. It seems astonishing that a clergyman should thus deliberately propose to confer his charities through the medium of the grossest injustice: but so it was. When, at the enforced meeting, he was questioned by the Lynchers as to his principles, he declared himself opposed to the unchristian fanaticism of abolitionism; spurned the imputation of being one of the body, and, in proof of his sincerity, declared himself to be the master of one slave, and to be already contracting for more.

The Lynchers returned to St. Louis without having committed murder. They had triumphantly broken the laws, and trodden under foot their constitution of sixteen years old. If it could be made known at what expense they were saved from bloodshed; if it could be revealed what violence they offered to conscience, what feelings they lacerated, what convictions they stifled, what passions they kindled, what an undying worm they fixed at the core of many a heart, at the root of many a life, it might have been clear to all eyes that the halter and the cowhide would have been mercy in comparison with the tortures with which they strewed their way.

I have told enough to show what comes of compromise. There is no need to lengthen out my story of persecutions. I will just mention that the last news from Missouri that I saw was in the form of an account of the proceedings of its legislature, but which yet seems to me incredible. It is stated to have been enacted that any person of any complexion, coming into or found in the State of Missouri, who shall be proved to have spoken, written, or printed a word in disapprobation of slavery or in favour of abolition, shall be sold into slavery for the benefit of the state. If, in the fury of the moment, such a law should really have been passed, it must speedily be repealed. The general expectation is that slavery itself will soon be abolished in Missouri, as it is found to be unprofitable and perilous, and a serious drawback to the prosperity of the region.

What a lesson is meantime afforded as to the results of compromise! Missouri might now have been a peaceful and orderly region, inhabited by settlers as creditable to their country as those of the neighbouring free states, instead of being a nest of vagabond slavedealers, rapacious slavedrivers, and ferocious rioters. If the inhabitants think it hard that all should be included in a censure which only some have deserved, they must bestir themselves to show in their legislature, and by their improved social order, that the majority are more respectable than they have yet shown themselves to be. At present it seems as if one who might have been a prophet preaching in the wilderness had preferred the profession of a bandit of the desert. But it should never be forgotten whence came the power to inflict injury, by a permission being given where there should have been a prohibition. Whatever danger there ever was to the Union from difference of opinion on the subject of the compromise is now increased. The battle has still to be fought at a greater disadvantage than when a bad deed was done to avert it.

CINCINNATI.

"'Sir,' said the custom-house officer at Leghorn, 'your papers are
forged! there is no such place in the world! your vessel must be
confiscated!' The trembling captain laid before the officer a map
of the United States; directed him to the Gulf of Mexico, pointing
out the mouth of the Mississippi; led him 1000 miles up it to the
mouth of the Ohio, and thence another 1000 to Pittsburg. 'There,
sir, is the port whence my vessel cleared out.' The astonished
officer, before he saw the map, would as soon have believed that
this ship had been navigated from the moon."

--CLAY'S _Speeches_.

We reached Cincinnati by descending the Ohio from Maysville, Kentucky, whence we took passage in the first boat going down to the great City of the West. It happened to be an inferior boat; but, as we were not to spend a night on board, this was of little consequence. We were summoned by the bell of the steamer at 9 A.M., but did not set off till past noon. The cause of the delay forbade all complaint, though we found our station in the sun, and out of any breeze that might be stirring, oppressively hot, in the hottest part of a midsummer day. The captain had sent nine miles into the country for his mother, whom he was going to convey to a place down the river, where her other son was lying sick of the cholera. At noon the wagon with the old lady and her packages appeared. We were prepared to view her situation with the kindest feelings, but our pity scarcely survived the attempts she made to ensure it. I suppose the emotions of different minds must always have different modes of expression, but I could comprehend nothing of such a case as this. While there were apartments on board where the afflicted mother might have indulged her feelings in privacy, it was disagreeable to see the parade of hartshorn and water, and exclamations and sensibilities, in the presence of a company of entire strangers. Her son and a kind-hearted stewardess were very attentive to her, and it was much to be wished that she had been satisfied with their assiduities.

The scenery was fully equal to my expectations; and when we had put out into the middle of the river, we found ourselves in the way of a breeze which enabled us to sit outside, and enjoy the luxury of vision to the utmost. The sunny and shadowy hills, advancing and retiring, ribbed and crested with belts and clumps of gigantic beech; the rich bottoms always answering on the one shore to the group of hills on the other, a perfect level, smooth, rich, and green, with little settlements sprinkled over it; the shady creeks, very frequent between the hills, with sometimes a boat and figures under the trees which meet over it; these were the spectacles which succeeded each other before our untiring eyes.

We touched at a number of small places on the banks to put out and take in passengers. I believe we were almost as impatient as the good captain to get to Richmond, where his sick brother was lying, that the family might be out of suspense about his fate. A letter was put into the captain's hand from the shore which did not tend to raise his spirits. It told him of the death, by cholera, of a lady whom he had just brought up the river. The captain's brother, however, was better. We were all committed to the charge of the clerk of the boat; and as we put out into the stream again, we saw the captain helping his mother up the hill, and looking a changed man within a few minutes!

The moral plagues consequent on pestilence are an old subject, but one ever new to the spectator. The selfishness of survivers, the brutality of the well to the sick in a time of plague, have been held up to the detestation of the untried from the days of Defoe downward at least; but it seems as if the full horror of such a paroxysm of society had been left to be exhibited in America. Not that the ravages of the cholera were or could be fiercer there than in the plague-seasons of the Old World; but that, in a country so much more Christianized in a spirit of helpfulness than any other, examples of selfish desertion show a more ghastly aspect than elsewhere. The disease was met there, and its inflictions sustained in the noblest spirit of charity, courage, and wisdom. A thousand-and-one tales might be told of the devotion of the clergy to their flocks, of masters to their slaves, of physicians to the poor, of neighbours to each other; but, in fearful contrast to these, stood out some of the gloomy facts which belong to such a time. In the West the disease was particularly fatal, and the panic was not stilled when I was there, two years after the most destructive season. In the vicinity of Lexington, Kentucky, I saw a large white house, prettily placed, and was told of the dismal end of its late occupier, a lady who was beloved above everybody in the neighbourhood, and who, on account of her benevolent deeds, would have been previously supposed the last person likely to want for solace on her dying bed. In this house lived Mrs. J., with her sister, Miss A. Miss A. died of cholera at nine in the evening, and was buried in the garden during the night by the servants. Mrs. J. was taken ill before the next evening, and there was no female hand near to tend her. The physician, who knew how much he was wanted in the town, felt it right to leave her when the case became entirely hopeless. He told the men who were assisting that she could not survive the night, and directed them to bury her immediately after her death. As soon as the breath was out of her body, these men wrapped her in the sheet on which she was lying, put her into a large box, and dug a hole in the garden, where they laid her beside her sister. Forty-eight hours before, the sisters had been apparently in perfect health, and busy providing aid for their sick neighbours. Thus, and thus soon, were they huddled into their graves.

From the time of our leaving Richmond the boat went on at good speed. We ceased to wear round, to take in casks and deals at the beck of everybody on shore. The dinner was remarkably disagreeable: tough beef, skinny chickens, gray-looking potatoes, gigantic radishes, sour bread, and muddy water in dirty tumblers. The only eatable thing on the table was a saucerful of cranberries, and we had a bottle of claret with us. It was already certain that we should not reach Cincinnati so as to have a daylight view of it: our hopes were bounded to not being obliged to sit down to another meal on board.

The western sky faded while we were watching the Hunter pursuing the Coquette, two pretty little steamboats that were moving along under the shadow of the banks. Some time after dark we came in sight of long rows of yellow lights, with a flaring and smoking furnace here and there, which seemed to occupy a space of nearly two miles from the wharf where we at length stopped. I had little idea how beautiful this flaring region would appear in sunshine.

After waiting some time in the boat for the arrival of a hack, we proceeded up the steep pavement above the wharf to the Broadway Hotel and Boarding-house. There we were requested to register our names, and were then presented with the cards of some of the inhabitants who had called to inquire for us. We were well and willingly served, and I went to rest intensely thankful to be once more out of sight of slavery.

The next morning was bright, and I scarcely remember a pleasanter day during all my travels than this 16th of June. We found ourselves in a large boarding-house, managed by a singularly zealous and kindly master. His care of us was highly amusing during the whole time of our stay. His zeal may be judged of by a circumstance which happened one morning. At breakfast he appeared heated and confused, and looked as if he had a bad headache. He requested us to excuse any forgetfulness that we might observe, and mentioned that he had, by mistake, taken a dangerous dose of laudanum. We begged he would leave the table, and not trouble himself about us, and hoped he had immediately taken measures to relieve himself of the dose. He replied that he had had no time to attend to himself till a few minutes ago. We found that he had actually put off taking an emetic till he had gone to market and sent home all the provisions for the day. He had not got over the consequences of the mistake the next morning. The ladies at the breakfast-table looked somewhat vulgar; and it is undeniable that the mustard was spilled, and that the relics of the meal were left in some disorder by the gentlemen who were most in a hurry to be off to business. But every one was obliging; and I saw at that table a better thing than I saw at any other table in the United States, a lady of colour breakfasting in the midst of us!

I looked out from our parlour window, and perceived that we were in a wide, well-built street, with broad foot-pavements and handsome houses. A house was at the moment going up the street; a rather arduous task, as the ascent was pretty steep. There was an admirable apparatus of levers and pulleys; and it moved on, almost imperceptibly, for several yards, before our visiters began to arrive, and I had to give up watching its march. When the long series of callers came to an end, the strolling house was out of sight.

The first of our visiters was an English gentleman, who was settled in business in Cincinnati. He immediately undertook a commission of inquiry, with which I had been charged from England, about a family of settlers, and sent me a pile of new books, and tickets for a concert which was to be held in Mrs. Trollope's bazar the next evening but one. He was followed by a gentleman of whom much will be told in my next chapter; and by Dr. Drake, the first physician in the place; and Miss Beecher, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Beecher, head of Lane Seminary, near Cincinnati, then on his trial for heresy, and justly confident of acquittal. Miss Beecher is a lady eminent for learning and talents, and for her zeal in the cause of education. These were followed by several merchants, with their ladies, sisters, and daughters. The impression their visits left on our minds was of high respect for the society of Cincinnati, if these were, in manners, dress, and conversation, fair specimens. Dr. Drake and his daughter proposed to call for us for an afternoon's drive, and take us home to tea with them; a plan to which we gladly agreed.

After dinner, we first arranged ourselves in a parlour which was larger and better furnished than the one we first occupied, and then walked down to the river while waiting for Dr. Drake's carriage. The opposite Kentucky shore looked rich and beautiful; and the bustle on the river, covered with every kind of craft; the steamboats being moored six or more abreast, gave us a highly respectful notion of the commerce of the place.

Dr. Drake took us a delightful drive, the pleasure of which was much enhanced by his very interesting conversation. He is a complete and favourable specimen of a Westerner. He entered Ohio just forty-seven years before this time, when there were not above a hundred white persons in the state, and they all French, and when the shores were one expanse of canebrake, infested by buffalo. He had seen the foundations of the great city laid; he had watched its growth till he was now able to point out to the stranger, not only the apparatus for the exportation of 6,000,000 dollars' worth a year of produce and manufactures, but things which he values far more: the ten or twelve edifices erected for the use of the common schools, the new church of St. Paul, the two fine banking-houses, and the hundred and fifty handsome private dwellings, all the creations of the year 1835. He points to the periodicals, the respectable monthlies, and the four daily and six weekly papers of the city. He looks with a sort of paternal complacency on the 35,000 inhabitants, scarcely one of whom is without the comforts of life, the means of education, and a bright prospect for the future. Though a true Westerner, and devoutly believing the _buckeyes_ (natives of Ohio) to be superior to all others of God's creatures, he hails every accession of intelligent members to his darling society. He observed to me, with his calm enthusiasm (the concomitant of a conviction which has grown out of experience rather than books), on the good effects of emigration on the posterity of emigrants; and told how, with the same apparent means of education, they surpass the descendants of natives. They combine the influences of two countries. Thus believing, he carries a cheerful face into the homes of his Welsh, Irish, English, German, and Yankee patients; he bids them welcome, and says, from the bottom of his heart, that he is glad to see them. His knowledge of the case of the emigrant enables him to alleviate, more or less, with the power which an honest and friendly physician carries about with him, an evil which he considers the worst that attends emigration. He told me that, unless the head of the emigrant family be timely and judiciously warned, the peace of the household is broken up by the pining of the wife. The husband soon finds interests in his new abode; he becomes a citizen, a man of business, a man of consequence, with brightening prospects; while the poor wife, surrounded by difficulties or vexed with hardships at home, provided with no compensation for what she has left behind, pines away, and wonders that her husband can be so happy when she is so miserable. When there is an end of congeniality, all is over; and a couple who would in their own land have gone through life cheerily, hand in hand, become uneasy yoke-fellows in the midst of a much-improved outward condition or prospect.

Dr. Drake must be now much older than he looks. He appears vigorous as ever, running beside his stout black gig-horse in difficult bits of forest road, head uncovered and coat splashed, like any farmer making his way to market. His figure is spare and active; his face is expressive of shrewdness, humour, and kindliness. His conversation is of a high order, though I dare say it never entered his head that conversation is ever of any order at all. His sentences take whatever form fate may determine; but they bear a rich burden of truth hard won by experience, and are illumined by gleams of philosophy which shine up from the depths of his own mind. A slight degree of western inflation amuses the stranger; but there is something so much more loving than vain in the magniloquence, that it is rather winning than displeasing to strangers, not to Yankees, who resent it as sectional prejudice, and in whose presence it might be as well forborne. The following passage, extracted from an address delivered by Dr. Drake before the Literary Convention of Kentucky, gives some idea of the spirit of the man in one of its aspects, though it has none of the pithy character of his conversation:--

"The relations between the upper and lower Mississippi States, established by the collective waters of the whole valley, must for ever continue unchanged. What the towering oak is to our climbing winter grape, the 'Father of Waters' must ever be to the communities along its trunk and countless tributary streams; an imperishable support, an exhaust-less power of union. What is the composition of its lower coasts and alluvial plains, but the soil of all the upper states and territories, transported, commingled, and deposited by its waters? Within her own limits Louisiana has, indeed, the rich mould of ten sister states, which have thus contributed to the fertility of her plantations. It might almost be said, that for ages this region has sent thither a portion of its soil, where, in a milder climate, it might produce the cotton, oranges, and sugar which, through the same channel, we receive in exchange for the products of our cornfields, workshops, and mines; facts which prepare the way, and invite to perpetual union between the West and South.

"The state of Tennessee, separated from Alabama and Mississippi on the south and Kentucky on the north by no natural barrier, has its southern fields overspread with floating cotton, wafted from the first two by every autumnal breeze; while the shade of its northern woods lies for half the summer day on the borders of the last. The songs and uproar of a Kentucky _husking_ are answered from Tennessee; and the midnight racoon-hunt that follows, beginning in one state, is concluded in the other. The Cumberland, on whose rocky banks the capital of Tennessee rises in beauty, begins and terminates in Kentucky; thus bearing on its bosom at the same moment the products of the two states descending to a common market. Still farther, the fine river Tennessee drains the eastern half of that state, dips into Alabama, recrosses the state in which it arose, and traverses Kentucky to reach the Ohio river; thus uniting the three into one natural and enduring commercial compact.

"Farther north, the cotton-trees, which fringe the borders of Missouri and Illinois, throw their images towards each other in the waters of the Mississippi: the toiling emigrant's axe in the depths of the leafless woods, and the crash of the falling rail-tree on the frozen earth, resound equally among the hills of both states; the clouds of smoke from their burning prairies mingle in the air above, and crimson the setting sun of Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio.

"The Pecan-tree sheds its fruit at the same moment among the people of Indiana and Illinois, and the boys of the two states paddle their canoes and fish together in the Wabash, or hail each other from opposite banks. Even villages belong equally to Indiana and Ohio, and the children of the two commonwealths trundle their hoops together in the same street.

"But the Ohio river forms the most interesting boundary among the republics of the West. For a thousand miles its fertile bottoms are cultivated by farmers who belong to the different states, while they visit each other as friends or neighbours. As the schoolboy trips or loiters along its shores, he greets his playmates across the stream, or they sport away an idle hour in its summer waters. These are to be among the future, perhaps the opposing statesmen of the different commonwealths. When, at low water, we examine the rocks of the channel, we find them the same on both sides. The plants which grow above drop their seeds into the common current, which lodges them indiscriminately on either shore. Thus the very trees and flowers emigrate from one republic to another. When the bee sends out its swarms, they as often seek a habitation beyond the stream as in their native woods. Throughout its whole extent, the hills of Western Virginia and Kentucky cast their morning shadows on the plains of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. The thunder-cloud pours down its showers on different commonwealths; and the rainbow, resting its extremities on two sister states, presents a beautiful arch, on which the spirits of peace may pass and repass in harmony and love.

"Thus connected by nature in the great valley, we must live in the bonds of companionship or imbrue our hands in each other's blood. We have no middle destiny. To secure the former to our posterity, we should begin while society is still tender and pliable. The saplings of the woods, if intertwined, will adapt themselves to each other and grow together; the little bird may hang its nest on the twigs of different trees, and the dewdrop fall successively on leaves which are nourished by distinct trunks. The tornado strikes harmless on such a bower, for the various parts sustain each other; but the grown tree, sturdy and set in its way, will not bend to its fellow, and, when uprooted by the tempest, is dashed in violence against all within its reach.

"Communities, like forests, grow rigid by time. To be properly trained, they must be moulded while young. Our duty, then, is quite obvious. All who have moral power should exert it in concert. The germes of harmony must be nourished, and the roots of present contrariety or future discord torn up and cast into the fire. Measures should be taken to mould a uniform system of manners and customs out of the diversified elements which are scattered over the West. Literary meetings should be held in the different states, and occasional conventions in the central cities of the great valley be made to bring into friendly consultation our enlightened and zealous teachers, professors, lawyers, physicians, divines, and men of letters, from its remotest sections. In their deliberations the literary and moral wants of the various regions might be made known, and the means of supplying them devised. The whole should successively lend a helping hand to all the parts on the great subject of education, from the primary school to the university. Statistical facts bearing on this absorbing interest should be brought forward and collected; the systems of common school instruction should be compared, and the merits of different schoolbooks, foreign and domestic, freely canvassed. Plans of education, adapted to the natural, commercial, and social condition of the interior, should be invented; a correspondence instituted among all our higher seminaries of learning, and an interchange established of all local publications on the subject of education. In short, we should foster Western genius, encourage Western writers, patronise Western publishers, augment the number of Western readers, and create a Western heart.

"When these great objects shall come seriously to occupy our minds, the union will be secure, for its centre will be sound, and its attraction on the surrounding parts irresistible. Then will our state governments emulate each other in works for the common good; the people of remote places begin to feel as the members of one family; and our whole intelligent and virtuous population unite, heart and hand, in one long, concentrated, untiring effort to raise still higher the social character, and perpetuate for ever the political harmony of the green and growing West."

How strange is the feeling to the traveller in wild regions of having his home associations unexpectedly connected with the scene before him! Here, in this valley of the Mississippi, to my eye wild and luxuriant in beauty as I fancy Ceylon or Juan Fernandez, Dr. Drake pointed out to me two handsome dwellings with gardens, built by artisans from Birmingham, and he presently alighted to visit a Welsh patient. What a vision of brassfounding, teaurns, and dingy streets, and then of beaver hats and mob caps, did these incidents call up! And again, when we were buried in a beechen wood, where "a sunbeam that had lost its way" streaked the stems and lighted up the wild vines, Dr. Drake, in telling me of the cholera season in Cincinnati, praised a medical book on cholera which happened to be by a brother-in-law of mine. It was an amusing incident. The woods of Ohio are about the last place where the author would have anticipated that I should hear accidental praises of his book.

The doctor had at present a patient in Dr. Beecher's house, so we returned by the Theological Seminary. Dr. Beecher and his daughters were not at home. We met them on the road in their cart, the ladies returning from their school in the city, and we spent an evening there the next week. The seminary (Presbyterian) was then in a depressed condition, in consequence of the expulsion of most of the pupils for their refusal to avoid discussion of the slavery question. These expelled youths have since been founders and supporters of abolition societies; and the good cause has gained even more than the seminary has lost by the absurd tyranny practised against the students.

From this the Montgomery road there is a view of the city and surrounding country which defies description. It was of that melting beauty which dims the eyes and fills the heart--that magical combination of all elements--of hill, wood, lawn, river, with a picturesque city steeped in evening sunshine, the impression of which can never be lost nor ever communicated. We ran up a knoll, and stood under a clump of beeches to gaze; and went down, and returned again and again, with the feeling that, if we lived upon the spot, we could never more see it look so beautiful.

We soon entered a somewhat different scene, passing the slaughter-houses on Deer Creek, the place where more thousands of hogs in a year than I dare to specify are destined to breathe their last. Deer Creek, pretty as its name is, is little more than the channel through which their blood runs away. The division of labour is brought to as much perfection in these slaughter-houses as in the pin-manufactories of Birmingham. So I was told. Of course I did not verify the statement by attending the process. In my childhood I was permitted, by the carelessness of a nursemaid, to see the cutting up of the reeking carcass of an ox, and I can bear witness that one such sight is enough for a lifetime. But--to tell the story as it was told to me--these slaughter-houses are divided into apartments communicating with each other: one man drives into one pen or chamber the reluctant hogs, to be knocked on the head by another whose mallet is for ever going. A third sticks the throats, after which they are conveyed by some clever device to the cutting-up room, and thence to the pickling, and thence to the packing and branding, a set of agents being employed for every operation. The exportation of pickled pork from Cincinnati is enormous. Besides supplying the American navy, shiploads are sent to the West India Islands and many other parts of the world. Dr. Drake showed me the dwelling and slaughter-house of an Englishman who was his servant in 1818, who then turned pork-butcher, and was, in a few years, worth ten thousand dollars.

The teatable was set out in the garden at Dr. Drake's. We were waited upon, for the first time for many months, by a free servant. The long grass grew thick under our feet; fireflies were flitting about us, and I doubted whether I had ever heard more sense and eloquence at any Old World teatable than we were entertained with as the twilight drew on.

As we walked home through the busy streets, where there was neither the apathy of the South nor the disorder consequent on the presence of a pauper class, I felt strongly tempted to jump to some hasty conclusions about the happiness of citizenship in Cincinnati. I made a virtuous determination to suspend every kind of judgment: but I found each day as exhilarating as the first, and, when I left the city, my impressions were much like what they were after an observation of twenty-four hours.

The greater part of the next morning was occupied with visiters; but we found an interval to go out, under the guidance of friends, to see a few things which lay near at hand. We visited the Museum, where we found, as in all new museums whose rooms want filling up, some trumpery among much which is worthy to remain. There was a mermaid not very cleverly constructed, and some bad wax figures, posted like sentinels among the cases of geological and entomological specimens; but, on the whole, the Museum is highly creditable to the zeal of its contributors. There is, among other good things, a pretty complete collection of the currency of the country, from the earliest colonial days, and some of other countries with it. I hope this will be persevered in, and that the Cincinnati merchants will make use of the opportunities afforded by their commerce of collecting specimens of every kind of currency used in the world, from the gilt and stamped leather of the Chinese and Siberians to the last of Mr. Biddle's twenty-dollar notes. There is a reasonable notion abroad that the Americans are the people who will bring the philosophy and practice of exchanges to perfection; and theirs are the museums in which should be found a full history of currency, in the shape of a complete set of specimens.

We visited Mr. Flash's bookstore, where we saw many good books, some very pretty ones, and all cheap. We heard there good accounts of the improved and improving literary taste of the place, shown in the increasing number of book societies, and the superior character of the works supplied to their orders. Mr. Flash and his partner are in favour of the protection of foreign literary property, as a matter of interest as well as principle.