University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XLIII.

At eight o'clock on the morning of the 27th I left Chicago
for Niagara, which was so temptingly near that I resolved to
make a detour by that route to New York. The line from the
city which I took skirts the southern extremity of Lake Michigan
for many miles, and leaving its borders at New Buffalo,
traverses the southern portion of the state of Michigan by Albion
and Jackson to the town of Detroit, or the outflow of Lake
St. Clair into Lake Erie, a distance of 284 miles, which was
accomplished in about twelve hours. The most enthusiastic
patriot could not affirm the country was interesting. The
names of the stations were certainly novel to a Britisher.
Thus we had Kalumet, Pokagon, Dowagiac, Kalamazoo, Ypsilanti,
among the more familiar titles of Chelsea, Marengo, Albion,
and Parma.

It was dusk when we reached the steam ferry-boat at Detroit,
which took us across to Windsor; but through the dusk I
could perceive the Union Jack waving above the unimpressive
little town which bears a name so respected by British ears.
The customs' inspections seemed very mild; and I was not
much impressed by the representative of the British crown,
who, with a brass button on his coat and a very husky voice,
exercised his powers on behalf of Her Majesty at the landing-place
of Windsor. The officers of the railway company received
me as if I had been an old friend, and welcomed me
as if I had just got out of a battle-field. "Well, I do wonder
them Yankees have ever let you come out alive." "May I
ask why?" "Oh, because you have not been praising them all
round, sir. Why even the Northern chaps get angry with a

Britisher, as they call us, if he attempts to say a word against
those cursed niggers."

It did not appear the Americans are quite so thin-skinned,
for whilst crossing in the steamer a passage of arms between
the Captain, who was a genuine John Bull, and a Michigander,
in the style which is called chaff or slang, diverted most
of the auditors, although it was very much to the disadvantage
of the Union champion. The Michigan man had threatened
the Captain that Canada would be annexed as the consequence
of our infamous conduct. "Why, I tell you," said
the Captain, "we'd just draw up the negro chaps from our
barbers' shops, and tell them we'd send them to Illinois if
they did not lick you; and I believe every creature in Michigan,
pigs and all, would run before them into Pennsylvania.
We know what you are up to, you and them Maine chaps;
but Lor' bless you, sooner than take such a lot, we'd give you
ten dollars a head to make you stay in your own country;
and we know you would go to the next worst place before
your time for half the money. The very Bluenoses would
secede if you were permitted to come under the old flag."

All night we travelled. A long day through a dreary, ill-settled,
pine-wooded, half-cleared country, swarming with mosquitoes
and biting flies, and famous for fevers. Just about
daybreak the train stopped.

"Now, then," said an English voice; "now, then, who's for
Clifton Hotel? All passengers leave cars for this side of the
Falls." Consigning our baggage to the commissioner of the
Clifton, my companion, Mr. Ward, and myself resolved to
walk along the banks of the river to the hotel, which is some
two miles and a half distant, and set out whilst it was still so
obscure that the outline of the beautiful bridge which springs
so lightly across the chasm, filled with furious hurrying waters,
hundreds of feet below, was visible only as is the tracery of
some cathedral arch through the dim light of the cloister.

The road follows the course of the stream, which whirls
and gurgles in an Alpine torrent, many times magnified, in a
deep gorge like that of the Tête Noire. As the rude bellow
of the steam-engine and the rattle of the train proceeding on
its journey were dying away, the echoes seemed to swell into
a sustained, reverberating, hollow sound from the perpendicular
banks of the St. Lawrence. We listened. "It is the
noise of the Falls," said my companion; and as we walked
on the sound became louder, filling the air with a strange

quavering note, which played about a tremendous uniform
bass note, and silencing every other. Trees closed in the road
on the river side; but when we had walked a mile or so, the
lovely light of morning spreading with our steps, suddenly
through an opening in the branches there appeared, closing up
the vista—white, flickering, indistinct, and shroud-like—the
Falls, rushing into a grave of black waters, and uttering that
tremendous cry which can never be forgotten.

I have heard many people say they were disappointed with
the first impression of Niagara. Let those who desire to see
the water-leap in all its grandeur, approach it as I did, and I
cannot conceive what their expectations are if they do not
confess the sight exceeded their highest ideal. I do not pretend
to describe the sensations or to endeavor to give the effect
produced on me by the scene or by the Falls, then or subsequently;
but I must say words can do no more than confuse
the writer's own ideas of the grandeur of the sight, and mislead
altogether those who read them. It is of no avail to do
laborious statistics, and tell us how many gallons rush over in
that down-flung ocean every second, or how wide it is, how
high it is, how deep the earth-piercing caverns beneath. For
my own part, I always feel the distance of the sun to be insignificant,
when I read it is so many hundreds of thousands of
miles away, compared with the feeling of utter inaccessibility
to anything human which is caused by it when its setting rays
illuminate some purple ocean studded with golden islands in
dreamland.

Niagara is rolling its waters over the barrier. Larger and
louder it grows upon us.

"I hope the hotel is not full," quoth my friend. I confess,
for the time, I forgot all about Niagara, and was perturbed
concerning a breakfastless ramble and a hunt after lodgings
by the borders of the great river.

But although Clifton Hotel was full enough, there was room
for us, too; and for two days a strange, weird kind of life I
led, alternating between the roar of the cataract outside and
the din of politics within; for, be it known, that at the Canadian
side of the Falls many Americans of the Southern States,
who would not pollute their footsteps by contact with the soil
of Yankee-land, were sojourning, and that merchants and
bankers of New York and other Northern cities had selected
it as their summer retreat, and, indeed, with reason; for after
excursions on both sides of the Falls, the comparative seclusion

of the settlements on the left bank appears to me to render
it infinitely preferable to the Rosherville gentism and
semi-rowdyism of the large American hotels and settlements
on the other side.

It was distressing to find that Niagara was surrounded by
the paraphernalia of a fixed fair. I had looked forward to a
certain degree of solitude. It appeared impossible that man
could cockneyfy such a magnificent display of force and grandeur
in nature. But, alas! it is haunted by what poor Albert
Smith used to denominate "harpies." The hateful race of
guides infest the precincts of the hotels, waylay you in the
lanes, and prowl about the unguarded moments of reverie.
There are miserable little peep-shows and photographers, bird-stuffers,
shell-polishers, collectors of crystals, and proprietors
of natural curiosity shops.

There is, besides, a large village population. There is a
watering-side air about the people who walk along the road
worse than all their mills and factories working their water privileges
at both sides of the stream. At the American
side there is a lanky, pretentious town, with big hotels, shops
of Indian curiosities, and all the meagre forms of the bazaar
life reduced to a minimum of attractiveness which destroy the
comfort of a traveller in Switzerland. I had scarcely been
an hour in the hotel before I was asked to look at the Falls
through a little piece of colored glass. Next I was solicited
to purchase a collection of muddy photographs, representing
what I could look at with my own eyes for nothing. Not finally
by any means, I was assailed by a gentleman who was
particularly desirous of selling me an enormous pair of cow's horns
and a stuffed hawk. Small booths and peep-shows corrupt
the very margin of the bank, and close by the remnant
of the "Table Rock," a Jew (who, by the by, deserves infinite
credit for the zeal and energy he has thrown into the collections
for his museum), exhibits bottled rattlesnakes, stuffed
monkeys, Egyptian mummies, series of coins, with a small
living menagerie attached to the shop, in which articles of
Indian manufacture are exposed for sale. It was too bad to
be asked to admire such lusus naturæ as double-headed calves
and dogs with three necks by the banks of Niagara.

As I said before, I am not going to essay the impossible or
to describe the Falls. On the English side there are, independently
of other attractions, some scenes of recent historic
interest, for close to Niagara are Lundy's Lane and Chippewa.

There are few persons in England aware of the exceedingly
severe fighting which characterized the contests between the
Americans and the English and Canadian troops during the
campaign of 1814. At Chippewa, for example, Major-General
Riall, who, with 2000 men, one howitzer, and two twenty-four-pounders,
attacked a force of Americans of a similar
strength, was repulsed with a loss of 500 killed and wounded;
and on the morning of the 25th of July the action of Lundy's
Lane, between four brigades of Americans and seven field-pieces,
and 3100 men of the British and seven field-pieces,
took place, in which the Americans were worsted, and retired
with a loss of 854 men and two guns, whilst the British lost
878. On the 14th of August following, Sir Gordon Drummond
was repulsed with a loss of 905 men out of his small
force in an attack on Fort Erie; and on the 17th of September
an American sortie from the place was defeated with a
loss of 510 killed and wounded, the British having lost 609.
In effect the American campaign was unsuccessful; but their
failures were redeemed by their successes on Lake Champlain,
and in the affair of Plattsburg.

There was more hard fighting than strategy in these battles,
and their results were not, on the whole, creditable to the
military skill of either party. They were sanguinary in proportion
to the number of troops engaged, but they were very
petty skirmishes considered in the light of contests between
two great nations for the purpose of obtaining specific results.
As England was engaged in a great war in Europe, was far
removed from the scene of operations, was destitute of steam power,
whilst America was fighting, as it were, on her own
soil, close at hand, with a full opportunity of putting forth all
her strength, the complete defeat of the American invasion of
Canada was more honorable to our arms than the successes
which the Americans achieved in resisting aggressive demonstrations.

In the great hotel of Clifton we had every day a little war
of our own, for there were—but why should I mention
names? Has not government its bastiles? There were in
effect men, and women too, who regarded the people of the
Northern States and the government they had selected very
much as the men of '98 looked upon the government and
people of England; but withal these strong Southerners were
not very favorable to a country which they regarded as the
natural ally of the abolitionists, simply because it had resolved
to be neutral.

On the Canadian side these rebels were secure. British
authority was embodied in a respectable old Scottish gentleman,
whose duty it was to prevent smuggling across the boiling
waters of the St. Lawrence, and who performed it with
zeal and diligence worthy of a higher post. There was indeed
a withered triumphal arch which stood over the spot
where the young Prince of our royal house had passed on his
way to the Table Rock, but beyond these signs and tokens
there was nothing to distinguish the American from the British
side, except the greater size and activity of the settlements
upon the right bank. There is no power in nature, according
to great engineers, which cannot be forced to succumb to the
influence of money. The American papers actually announce
that "Niagara is to be sold;" the proprietors of the land
upon their side of the water have resolved to sell their water
privileges! A capitalist could render the islands the most
beautifully attractive places in the world.

Life at Niagara is like that at most watering-places, though
it is a desecration to apply such a term to the Falls; and
there is no bathing there, except that which is confined to the
precincts of the hotels and to the ingenious establishment on
the American side, which permits one to enjoy the full rush
of the current in covered rooms with sides pierced, to let it
come through with undiminished force and with perfect security
to the bather. There are drives and pic-nics, and mild excursions
to obscure places in the neighborhood, where only
the roar of the Falls gives an idea of their presence. The
rambles about the islands, and the views of the boiling rapids
above them, are delightful; but I am glad to hear from one
of the guides that the great excitement of seeing a man and
boat carried over occurs but rarely. Every year, however,
hapless creatures crossing from one shore to the other, by
some error of judgment or miscalculation of strength, or
malign influence, are swept away into the rapids, and then,
notwithstanding the wonderful rescues effected by the American
blacksmith and unwonted kindnesses of fortune, there is
little chance of saving body corporate or incorporate from the
headlong swoop to destruction.

Next to the purveyors of curiosities and hotel-keepers, the
Indians, who live in a village at some distance from Niagara,
reap the largest profit from the crowds of visitors who repair
annually to the Falls. They are a harmless and by no means
elevated race of semi-civilized savages, whose energies are

expended on whiskey, feather fans, bark canoes, ornamental
moccasons, and carved pipe-stems. I had arranged for an excursion
to see them in their wigwams one morning, when the
news was brought to me that General Scott had ordered, or
been forced to order the advance of the Federal troops encamped
in front of Washington, under the command of McDowell,
against the Confederates, commanded by Beauregard,
who was described as occupying a most formidable position,
covered with entrenchments and batteries in front of a ridge
of hills, through which the railway passes to Richmond.

The New York papers represent the Federal army to be of
some grand indefinite strength, varying from 60,000 to 120,000
men, full of fight, admirably equipped, well disciplined, and
provided with an overwhelming force of artillery. General
Scott, I am very well assured, did not feel such confidence in
the result of an invasion of Virginia, that he would hurry raw
levies and a rabble of regiments to undertake a most arduous
military operation.

The day I was introduced to the General he was seated at
a table in the unpretending room which served as his boudoir
in the still humbler house where he held his head-quarters.
On the table before him were some plans and maps of the harbor
defences of the Southern ports. I inferred he was about
to organize a force for the occupation of positions along the
coast. But when I mentioned my impression to one of his
officers, he said, "Oh, no, the General advised that long ago;
but he is now convinced we are too late. All he can hope,
now, is to be allowed time to prepare a force for the field, but
there are hopes that some compromise will yet take place."

The probabilities of this compromise have vanished; few
entertain them now. They have been hanging Secessionists
in Illiniois, and the court-house itself has been made the scene
of Lynch law murder in Ogle county. Petitions, prepared by
citizens of New York to the President, for a general convention
to consider a compromise, have been seized. The Confederates
have raised batteries along the Virginian shore of
the Potomac. General Banks, at Baltimore, has deposed the
police authorities "proprio motu," in spite of the protest of
the board. Engagements have occurred between the Federal
steamers and the Confederate batteries on the Potomac. On
all points, wherever the Federal pickets have advanced in Virginia,
they have encountered opposition and have been obliged
to halt or to retire.

  *  *  *  *  *  *  

As I stood on the veranda this morning, looking for the
last time on the Falls, which were covered with a gray mist,
that rose from the river and towered unto the sky in columns
which were lost in the clouds, a voice beside me said, "Mr.
Russell, that is something like the present condition of our
country, mists and darkness obscure it now, but we know the
great waters are rushing behind, and will flow till eternity."
The speaker was an earnest, thoughtful man, but the country
of which he spoke was the land of the South. "And do you
think," said I, "when the mists clear away the Falls will be as
full and as grand as before?" "Well," he replied, "they are
great as it is, though a rock divides them; we have merely
thrown our rock into the waters,—they will meet all the same
in the pool below." A colored boy, who has waited on me at
the hotel, hearing I was going away, entreated me to take him
on any terms, which were, I found, an advance of nine dollars,
and twenty dollars a month, and, as I heard a good account of
him from the landlord, I installed the young man into my
service. In the evening I left Niagara on my way to New
York.

July 2d.—At early dawn this morning, looking out of
the sleeping car, I saw through the mist a broad, placid river
on the right, and on the left high wooded banks running
sharply into the stream, against the base of which the rails
were laid. West Point, which is celebrated for its picturesque
scenery, as much as for its military school, could not be seen
through the fog, and I regretted time did not allow me to stop
and pay a visit to the academy. I was obliged to content myself
with the handiwork of some of the ex-pupils. The only
camaraderie I have witnessed in America exists among the
West Point men. It is to Americans what our great public
schools are to young Englishmen. To take a high place at
West Point is to be a first-class man, or wrangler. The
academy turns out a kind of military aristocracy, and I have
heard complaints that the Irish and Germans are almost completely
excluded, because the nominations to West Point
are obtained by political influence; and the foreign element,
though powerful at the ballot-box, has no enduring strength.
The Murphies and Schmidts seldom succeed in shoving their
sons into the American institution. North and South, I have
observed, the old pupils refer everything military to West
Point. "I was with Beauregard at West Point. He was
three above me." Or, "McDowell and I were in the same

class." An officer is measured by what he did there, and if
professional jealousies date from the state of common pupilage,
so do lasting friendships. I heard Beauregard, Lawton,
Hardee, Bragg, and others, speak of McDowell, Lyon,
McClellan, and other men of the academy, as their names
turned up in the Northern papers, evidently judging of them
by the old school standard. The number of men who have
been educated there greatly exceeds the modest requirements
of the army. But there is likelihood of their being all in full
work very soon.

At about nine, a. m., the train reached New York, and in
driving to the house of Mr. Duncan, who accompanied me
from Niagara, the first thing which struck me was the changed
aspect of the streets. Instead of peaceful citizens, men in
military uniforms thronged the pathways, and such multitudes
of United States flags floated from the windows and roofs of
the houses as to convey the impression that it was a great
holiday festival. The appearance of New York when I first
saw it was very different. For one day, indeed, after my
arrival, there were men in uniform to be seen in the streets,
but they disappeared after St. Patrick had been duly honored,
and it was very rarely I ever saw a man in soldier's clothes
during the rest of my stay. Now, fully a third of the people
carried arms, and were dressed in some kind of martial garb.

The walls are covered with placards from military companies
offering inducements to recruits. An outburst of military
tailors has taken place in the streets; shops are devoted
to militia equipments; rifles, pistols, swords, plumes, long
boots, saddle, bridle, camp belts, canteens, tents, knapsacks,
have usurped the place of the ordinary articles of traffic.
Pictures and engravings—bad, and very bad—of the "battles"
of Big Bethel and Vienna, full of furious charges, smoke
and dismembered bodies, have driven the French prints out
of the windows. Innumerable "General Scotts" glower at
you from every turn, making the General look wiser than he
or any man ever was. Ellsworths in almost equal proportion,
Grebles and Winthrops—the Union martyrs—and Tompkins,
the temporary hero of Fairfax court-house.

The "flag of our country" is represented in a colored engraving,
the original of which was not destitute of poetical
feeling, as an angry blue sky through which meteors fly
streaked by the winds, whilst between the red stripes the
stars just shine out from the heavens, the flag-staff being typified

by a forest tree bending to the force of the blast. The
Americans like this idea—to my mind it is significant of
bloodshed and disaster. And why not! What would become
of all these pseudo-Zouaves who have come out like an eruption
over the States, and are in no respect, not even in their
baggy breeches, like their great originals, if this war were not
to go on? I thought I had had enough of Zouaves in New
Orleans, but dîs aliter visum.

They are overrunning society, and the streets here, and the
dress which becomes the broad-chested, stumpy, short-legged
Celt, who seems specially intended for it, is singularly unbecoming
to the tall and slightly-built American. Songs "On
to glory," "Our country," new versions of "Hail Columbia,"
which certainly cannot be considered by even American complacency
a "happy land" when its inhabitants are preparing
to cut each other's throats; of the "star-spangled banner," are
displayed in booksellers' and music-shop windows, and patriotic
sentences emblazoned on flags float from many houses.
The ridiculous habit of dressing up children and young people
up to ten and twelve years of age as Zouaves and vivandières
has been caught up by the old people, and Mars would die
with laughter if he saw some of the abdominous, be-spectacled
light infantry men who are hobbling along the pavement.

There has been indeed a change in New York; externally
it is most remarkable, but I cannot at all admit that the abuse
with which I was assailed for describing the indifference which
prevailed on my arrival was in the least degree justified. I
was desirous of learning how far the tone of conversation "in
the city" had altered, and soon after breakfast I went down
Broadway to Pine Street and Wall Street. The street in all
its length was almost draped with flags—the warlike character
of the shops was intensified. In front of one shop window
there was a large crowd gazing with interest at some object
which I at last succeeded in feasting my eyes upon. A gray
cap with a tinsel badge in front, and the cloth stained with
blood was displayed, with the words, "Cap of Secession officer
killed in action." On my way I observed another crowd
of women, some with children in their arms standing in front
of a large house and gazing up earnestly and angrily at the
windows. I found they were wives, mothers, and sisters, and
daughters of volunteers who had gone off and left them destitute.

The misery thus caused has been so great that the citizens

of New York have raised a fund to provide food, clothes, and
a little money—a poor relief, in fact, for them, and it was
plain they were much needed, though some of the applicants
did not seem to belong to a class accustomed to seek aid from
the public. This already! But Wall Street and Pine Street
are bent on battle. And so this day, hot from the South and
impressed with the firm resolve of the people, and finding that
the North has been lashing itself into fury, I sit down and
write to England, on my return from the city. "At present
dismiss entirely the idea, no matter how it may originate, that
there will be, or can be, peace, compromise, union, or secession,
till war has determined the issue."

As long as there was a chance that the struggle might not
take place, the merchants of New York were silent, fearful of
offending their Southern friends and connections, but inflicting
infinite damage on their own government and misleading both
sides. Their sentiments, sympathies, and business bound them
with the South; and, indeed, till "the glorious uprising" the
South believed New York was with them, as might be credited
from the tone of some organs in the press, and I remember
hearing it said by Southerners in Washington, that it was
very likely New York would go out of the Union! When
the merchants, however, saw the South was determined to quit
the Union, they resolved to avert the permanent loss of the
great profits derived from their connection with the South by
some present sacrifices. They rushed to the platforms—the
battle-cry was sounded from almost every pulpit—flag-raisings
took place in every square, like the planting of the tree
of liberty in France in 1848, and the oath was taken to trample
Secession under foot, and to quench the fire of the Southern
heart forever.

The change in manner, in tone, in argument, is most remarkable.
I met men to-day who last March argued coolly
and philosophically about the right of Secession. They are
now furious at the idea of such wickedness—furious with
England, because she does not deny their own famous doctrine
of the sacred right of insurrection. "We must maintain our
glorious Union, sir." "We must have a country." "We
cannot allow two nations to grow up on this Continent, sir."
"We must possess the entire control of the Mississippi."
These "musts," and can'ts, and "won'ts," are the angry utterances
of a spirited people who have had their will so long
that they at last believe it is omnipotent. Assuredly, they

will not have it over the South without a tremendous and
long-sustained contest, in which they must put forth every exertion,
and use all the resources and superior means they so
abundantly possess.

It is absurd to assert, as do the New York people, to give
some semblance of reason to their sudden outburst, that it was
caused by the insult to the flag at Sumter. Why, the flag had
been fired on long before Sumter was attacked by the Charleston
batteries! It had been torn down from United States arsenals
and forts all over the South; and but for the accident which
placed Major Anderson in a position from which he could not
retire, there would have been no bombardment of the fort,
and it would, when evacuated, have shared the fate of all the
other Federal works on the Southern coast. Some of the gentlemen
who are now so patriotic and Unionistic, were last March
prepared to maintain that if the President attempted to reënforce
Sumter or Pickens, he would be responsible for the destruction
of the Union. Many journals in New York and out
of it held the same doctrine.

One word to these gentlemen. I am pretty well satisfied
that if they had always spoken, written, and acted as they do
now, the people of Charleston would not have attacked Sumter
so readily. The abrupt outburst of the North and the
demonstration at New York filled the South, first with astonishment,
and then with something like fear, which was rapidly
fanned into anger by the press and the politicians, as well as
by the pride inherent in slaveholders.

I wonder what Mr. Seward will say when I get back to
Washington. Before I left, he was of opinion—at all events,
he stated—that all the States would come back, at the rate
of one a month. The nature of the process was not stated;
but we are told there are 250,000 Federal troops now under
arms, prepared to try a new one.

Combined with the feeling of animosity to the rebels, there
is, I perceive, a good deal of ill-feeling towards Great Britain.
The Southern papers are so angry with us for the Order in
Council closing British ports against privateers and their
prizes, that they advise Mr. Rust and Mr. Yancey to leave
Europe. We are in evil case between North and South. I
met a reverend doctor, who is most bitter in his expressions
towards us; and I dare say, Bishop and General Leonidas
Polk, down South, would not be much better disposed. The
clergy are active on both sides; and their flocks approve of

their holy violence. One journal tells, with much gusto, of a
blasphemous chaplain, a remarkably good rifle shot, who went
into one of the skirmishes lately, and killed a number of rebels
—the joke being, in fact, that each time he fired and
brought down his man, he exclaimed, piously, "May Heaven
have mercy on your soul!" One Father Mooney, who performed
the novel act, for a clergyman, of "christening" a big
gun at Washington the other day, wound up the speech he
made on the occasion, by declaring "the echo of its voice
would be sweet music, inviting the children of Columbia to
Share the comforts of his father's home." Can impiety and
folly and bad taste go further?