University of Virginia Library

7. AN UNPUBLISHED CHAPTER OF COL. HAMILTON.

[PICKED UP BY THE CHAMBERMAID, AT HIS LODGINGS.]

No intelligent traveller can fail to be struck on his arrival in
this country, with the wretched condition of the lower order
of the natives. The baleful effects of democracy can be
read at once in their pale, emaciated countenances. Instead
of the industry and honest ambition of European countries,
their badge and brand is an indolent and thievish indigence.
In no city in the world are there so many paupers as in New
York. A stranger is constantly beset by them, and finds his
own safety in the distribution of the contents of his purse.
The precarious supplies obtained in this manner, support a
large majority of the population. Great numbers of what
are called the respectable classes, subsist entirely upon a
kind of poor, small, yellow oysters, which are found in great
abundance, at low water, upon a flat on the west side of the
city, called the Canal Street Plan. I have seen thousands
of people, men, women and children, floundering and flapping
through the mud, on the Plan in the middle of the hottest
days, toiling and sweating, and eating their truly republican
dinners. Not unfrequently, more than one piscivorous
gourmand dashes at the same shell-fish; and then are
enacted scenes that shock a civilized beholder. Oyster-knives
and blood become well acquainted. It is not uncommon
for hundreds of people to be murdered in one of
these conflicts.

It is really refreshing, after witnessing these distressing
evidences of the turbulent spirit of democracy, to turn to
the contemplation of a people that has felt the happy influence

of king and lords, game-laws, taxes and tithes. I
often go down to the Liverpool packet ships, to relieve my
disgust by a sight of something human. “Home, sweet home,”
rushes upon my memory, when I see these castles of the sea
disembogue their freights of wholesome emigrants from the
United Kingdoms. These hardy, enterprising, adventurous
subjects of our glorious sovereign, are the only salt to be
found on American earth. It is delightful to see them, as
they stream along the wharves, dressed in their neat green
frocks, white vests, and whole corduroy breeches, with a
steadiness and solemnity which nothing could have taught
but the influence of a sound government, and a bench of
bishops. Immense sums of money are brought into the
States by the emigrants; and I was informed by Mr. Biddle
the cashier of the National Republican Bank, that a
greater revenue was drawn from the deposits made by these
new comers than from any other source. From this class of
individuals, too, have sprung all the distinguished men of the
country. They are the only exception from the general
charge of poverty and crime, which must be recorded against
the United States. I have the best authority for this; for
the district attorney of New York told me, in confidence,
that not a single individual of the three kingdoms had had
a charge preferred against him, in the police office, for seven
years and a half. These remarks cannot be applied to any other
of the foreigners who flock to this land of liberties. Their
condition is not much superior to that of the natives themselves.
The Dutch and the Swiss struggle through a miserable
existence, in New Jersey, and Pensylvania; living principally
upon cotton pods and the exterior filaments of the
sugar cane, which these states produce in abundance. They
are the mere helots of the Yankees in New England, who
own all the southern and middle states, and who treat the
wretched inhabitants with brutal tyranny. This very fully
appears from the report of Captain Hayne, a member of
congress from Florida, on bringing in a bill to provide for the
sowing of grass in the streets of Charleston.

One caste of the indigenous population of the country,
I ought, perhaps, to except from the general denunciation.
I refer to the negroes, and to those who build their hopes
of preferment here and hereafter upon their immediate emancipation
from slavery. These elect people have come out
from the common herd of their fellow citizens, and shaken
off the dust of their feet against them. With a magnanimous
disregard of means and consequences, they have determined
that every bondman shall be free. No blow has
yet been struck, but active preparations are on foot. Military
academies and Sunday schools are extensively established
among the free blacks, and the best poets and philosophers
now living in the country, bear the sable hue of
Africa. Major Jack Downing, who—as Colonel Lapis informed
me—is an intimate friend and cabinet counsellor of
the president, is an emancipated slave of John Randolph, the
late catholic bishop of Massachusetts. The Jackson party,
however, deny the friendship. A young lady in Vermont, of
considerable accomplishment for a Yankee, has established a
school of poetry and manners, for the good society portion of
the negroes. This really “new academy” is watched with
great jealousy by the government. The rabble have burned
the school-house down no less than thirteen times, and the
young lady herself is treated with all manner of indignity. She
bears it all, however, with the spirit of a martyr; and so justly
flattering to her is the notoriety she has acquired, that rumor
speaks of a matrimonial contract soon to be consummated,

which will certainly secure to her an everlasting reputation.
These solitary instances of endeavors to improve the population
of the country, are oases in this desert of selfishness and
sloth. I visited the school in Vermont, in company with a
distinguished philanthropist from New York, and was delighted
with the arrangement and order of the establishment.
The temperature of the school-room was rather too high, considering
the number of the pupils; but there was a peculiar
aroma in the air,—which my companion told me was not to
be snuffed but in the region of the Green Mountains—that
made my two hours' stay exceedingly pleasant. What the
result of all this will be, it is really fearful to anticipate.
There will be bloodshed, no doubt; but I cannot, as a man,
refrain from going the whole length with my before-mentioned
friend; and with him, I hope soon to see the sons of Africa
placed, in all respects, upon an equality with the whites—
marrying their daughters, ruling in their councils, giving judgment
in their courts, and feasting at their festive boards.
Such millenial glories would, to be sure, be out of place in
England, but in this boasted land of liberty and equality they
would be appropriate and practically useful. Besides, as I
have already intimated, all the brains in the country, with a
few exceptions, are lodged in Ethiopian skulls.

I paid a visit, yesterday, to one of the courts, and witnessed
a glorious manifestation of the fierce spirit of liberty. An
action of assault and battery was on trial. The defendant
was a tall, broad, raw-boned, big-whiskered individual, who
had formerly been sheriff of Buffalo county. He came originally,
from the city of Kentucky, and was born, I am told,
upon one of the numerous sawyers on the Mississippi, where
most of the families in that barbarous region reside. This
was the thirty-seventh action against him, tried during this

court; and yet, notwithstanding he had knocked down two of
the judges on the bench, and maimed all the constables but
one, during this very term, not a single conviction could be
had against him. His personal prowess made him invulnerable
and irresponsible. When I entered the court room, I
was startled by the unusual appearance of the forms of justice.
Instead of the gravity of bag-wigs and hair-powder, and
the grace of silk gowns, which adorn our king's bench, I
found the judge dressed in a pea-jacket, with black stock, and
pantaloons that might have once been white, and without a
symptom of a shirt. The jury was drinking gin and smoking
cigars, and the lawyers and the defendant were apparently
preparing for a fight. Presently the judge got up, in a tremendous
fury, and leaning over his desk, shook his fist at
the combatants in the arena below him, and abusing the defendant
in stentorian style, swore he'd “be— if he'd stand
it any longer!” No sooner was this done, than up rose a
general cry of “make a ring, make a ring!” and the deed
followed the word instantaneously. To my utter astonishment,
the lawyers made a circle, and the judge pulling off his
coat, leaped over the bar, and throttled his antagonist in a
twinkling. The confusion and uproar were so appalling to
me, that—not being accustomed to see fights in my own
country—I am scarcely able to say what blows were struck,
and what blood followed. After the lapse of five or ten minutes,
I saw the judge again on the bench, and the defendant
—who must have been worsted in the encounter—making a
precatory speech to the court, gesticulating with his left
hand, while with his right he endeavored to keep a dislodged
eyeball in its socket. His discomfiture had a salutary effect
upon the jury; who, now that he was no longer an object of
admiration or fear, gave a verdict against him for thirty thousand
dollars.