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- Herausgeber: Arcadia Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Before he became America's foremost landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) was by turns a surveyor, merchant seaman, farmer, magazine publisher, and traveling newspaper correspondent. In 1856–57 he took a saddle trip through Texas to see the country and report on its lands and peoples. His description of the Lone Star State on the eve of the Civil War remains one of the best accounts of the American West ever published. Unvarnished by sentiment or myth making, based on firsthand observations, and backed with statistical research, Olmsted's narrative captures the manners, foods, entertainments, and conversations of the Texans, as well as their housing, agriculture, business, exotic animals, changeable weather, and the pervasive influence of slavery. Back and forth from the Sabine to the Rio Grande, through San Augustine, Nacogdoches, San Marcos, San Antonio, Neu-Braunfels, Fredericksburg, Lavaca, Indianola, Goliad, Castroville, La Grange, Houston, Harrisburg, and Beaumont, Olmsted rode and questioned and listened and reported. Texas was then already a multiethnic and multiracial state, where Americans, Germans, Mexicans, Africans, and Indians of numerous tribes mixed uneasily. Olmsted interviewed planters, scouts, innkeepers, bartenders, housewives, drovers, loafers, Indian chiefs, priests, runaway slaves, and emigrants and refugees from every part of the known world—most of whom had "gone to Texas" looking for a fresh start.
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Frederick Law Olmsted
A JOURNEYTHROUGH TEXAS
OR, A SADDLE-TRIP ON THE SOUTHWESTERN FRONTIER
Copyright © Frederick Law Olmsted
A Journey Through Texas
(1857)
Arcadia Press 2019
www.arcadiapress.eu
Storewww.arcadiaebookstore.eu
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A JOURNEY THROUGH TEXAS
PREFACE
This work is designed further to promote the mutual acquaintance of the North and South. The great extent and capacities of Texas, as well as its distinct position and history, have induced the author to devote to it a separate volume.
It has not been thought necessary to load the narrative with extended remarks and deductions upon the economical experience of the young State, but while the facts presented are suffered to speak for themselves, some of the more obvious conclusions to which their examination leads have been thrown into the form of a letter, for the reader’s consideration.
Owing to the pressure of other occupations, the preparation of the volume from the author’s journal has been committed, with free scope of expression and personality, to his brother, Dr. J. H. Olmsted, his companion upon the trip.
NOTE BY THE EDITOR
The editor’s motive for this journey was the hope of invigorating weakened lungs by the elastic power of a winter’s saddle and tent-life. His present duty has been simply that of connecting, by a slender thread of reminiscence, the copious notes of facts placed in his hands, and in doing this he has drawn frankly upon memory for his own sensations. The lapse of two years may have breathed a little dullness on the pictures thus recalled, but it has served, also, to cool and harden any glow in the statements.
A sort of alter-egotism in the book was unavoidable, and some details that may seem rather trivial and spiritless have been preserved, because a traveler’s own impressions depend so much on those unconsidered but characteristic trifles. The notes upon slavery in the volume are incidental, but the extraordinary effect upon federal policy produced by fluctuation in the local market, where ownership in forced labor is the principal investment, imparts to observations within these new limits a peculiar interest.
A LETTER TO A SOUTHERN FRIEND
New York, December 29th, 1856.
My Dear Friend: — I regret that I cannot respond to the congratulatory, nor yet entirely to the conciliatory, expressions of your recent letter.
The character and reputation of the nation, and with it the character, the social claims, and the principles, of every individual citizen, have been seriously compromised in the eyes of the civilized world, by recent transactions growing out of the unsettled state of our policy with regard to slavery-extension. The recent Presidential election decided nothing with respect to this, as you seem to suppose, because the vital question which really divides the country was not presented in its integrity by the party which triumphed. No person, therefore, claiming for himself a respectable and responsible position in society, can, with decency, it seems to me, when brought near the field of discussion, affect to be indifferent, or avoid a respectful expression of his own judgment upon the grave issues in debate. For instance, the extension of slavery into Texas, commenced, for good or evil, in our own day; and when we of the North had the power and the constitutional right to prevent it. Our interest in its results cannot of course be deemed impertinent by its most jealous partisan. Offering to the public a volume of recent observations in Texas, I do not, therefore, see how I can, as you seem to suggest I should, avoid all discussion of slavery.
At the same time, I do not desire to engage in it, as I hardly need assure you, in a spirit at all inconsistent with a desirable friendship. Rather, in explaining the significance which, in my own mind, attaches to my narrative of facts, relative to the question upon which we have the misfortune to be divided in judgment, I shall hope to lessen, instead of aggravating, the causes of our difference.
Many of the comforts demanded by people in a moderate state of civilization are necessarily purchased at a greater cost, in a newly-settled region, than in the midst of a long-established community. We cannot expect to find a grist-mill, much less a baker’s shop, still less a printing-office or a bookseller’s shop, in an actual wilderness. The cost of good bread, therefore, or of intellectual sustenance, will be greater than where the constant demand to be expected from a numerous population has induced labor (or capital, which represents labor) to establish such conveniences.
For the same reason, the usual means of civilized education, both for young and for mature minds, will be procured with difficulty in the early days of any country. Consequently, though we may perceive some compensations, certain fallings-short from the standard of comfort and of character in older communities are inevitable.
The prosperity of a young country or state is to be measured by the rapidity with which these deficiencies are supplied, and the completeness with which the opportunity for profitable labor is retained.
An illustration will best enable me to explain how slavery prolongs, in a young community, the evils which properly belong only to a frontier. Let us suppose two recent immigrants, one in Texas, the other in the young free State of Iowa, to have both, at the same time, a considerable sum of money — say five thousand dollars — at disposal. Land has been previously purchased, a hasty dwelling of logs constructed, and ample crops for sustenance harvested. Each has found communication with his market interrupted during a portion of the year by floods; each needs an ampler and better house; each desires to engage a larger part of his land in profitable production; each needs some agricultural machinery or implements; in the neighborhood of each, a church, a school, a grist-mill, and a branch railroad are proposed.
Each may be supposed to have previously obtained the necessary materials for his desired constructions: and to need immediately the services of a carpenter. The Texan, unable to hire one in the neighborhood, orders his agent in Houston or New Orleans to buy him one: when he arrives, he has cost not less than two of the five thousand dollars. The Iowan, in the same predicament, writes to a friend in the East or advertises in the newspapers, that he is ready to pay better wages than carpenters can get in the older settlements; and a young man, whose only capital is in his hands and his wits, glad to come where there is a glut of food and a dearth of labor, soon presents himself. To construct a causeway and a bridge, and to clear, fence, and break up the land he desires to bring into cultivation, the Texan will need three more slaves — and he gets them as before, thereby investing all his money. The Iowan has only to let his demand be known, or, at most, to advance a small sum to the public conveyances, and all the laborers he requires — independent, small capitalists of labor — gladly bring their only commodity to him and offer it as a loan, on his promise to pay a better interest, or wages, for it than Eastern capitalists are willing to do.
The Iowan next sends for the implements and machinery which will enable him to make the best use of the labor he has engaged. The Texan tries to get on another year without them, or employs such rude substitutes as his stupid, uninstructed, and uninterested slaves can readily make in his ill-furnished plantation work-shop. The Iowan is able to contribute liberally to aid in the construction of the church, the school-house, the mill, and the railroad His laborers, appreciating the value of the reputation they may acquire for honesty, good judgment, skill and industry, do not need constant superintendence, and he is able to call on his neighbors and advise, encourage and stimulate them. Thus the church, the school, and the railroad are soon in operation, and with them is brought rapidly into play other social machinery, which makes much luxury common and cheap to all.
The Texan, if solicited to assist in similar enterprises, answers truly, that cotton is yet too low to permit him to invest money where it does not promise to be immediately and directly productive.
The Iowan may still have one or two thousand dollars, to be lent to merchants, mechanics, or manufacturers, who are disposed to establish themselves near him. With the aid of this capital, not only various minor conveniences are brought into the neighborhood, but useful information, scientific, agricultural, and political; and commodities, the use of which is educative of taste and the finer capacities of our nature, are attractively presented to the people.
The Texan mainly does without these things. He confines the imports of his plantation almost entirely to slaves, corn, bacon, salt, sugar, molasses, tobacco, clothing, medicine, hoes and plow-iron. Even if he had the same capital to spare, he would live in far less comfort than the Iowan, because of the want of local shops and efficient systems of public conveyance which cheapen the essentials of comfort for the latter.
You will, perhaps, say that I neglect to pay the Iowan laborers their wages. It is unnecessary that I should do so: those wages remain as capital to be used again for the benefit of the community in Iowa. Besides, the additional profit which has accrued to the farmer by reason of the more efficient tools and cattle he has acquired, the greater cheapness with which the railroad will transport his crops to be sold, the smaller subtractions from stock and crops he will have met with from the better employment of his neighbors, and the influence of the church and school upon them, will go far towards paying these debts.
The difficulty of obtaining a profitable return for labor, applied with the disadvantages which thus result from slavery, is such that all but the simplest, nearest, and quickest promises of profit are neglected in its direction. As a general, almost universal, rule, the Texan planter, at the beginning of any season, is in debt, and anxious to acquire money, or its equivalent, to meet his engagements. The quickest and surest method of getting it before the year ends, is to raise cotton — for cotton, almost alone, of all he can produce under these disadvantages, bears the cost of transportation to cash customers. He will rarely, as I have supposed, invest in a carpenter; he will rarely undertake the improvement of a road. He will content himself with his pioneer’s log-cabin, and wait the pleasure of nature at the swamp and the ford. His whole income will be reinvested in field-hands.
He plants cotton largely — quite all that his laborers can cultivate properly. Generally, a certain force will cultivate more than it can pick, pack, and transport to public conveyance. Unwilling to lose the overplus, he obtains, upon credit again, another addition to his slave force. Thus the temptation constantly recurs, and constantly the labor is directed to the quickest and surest way of sustaining credit for more slaves.
After a certain period, as his capital in slaves increases, and his credit remains unimpaired, the dread of failure, and the temptation to accumulate capital become less, and he may begin to demand the present satisfaction of his tastes and appetites. Habit, however, will have given him a low standard of comfort, and a high standard of payment for it; and he will still be satisfied to dispense with many conveniences which have long before been acquired by the Iowan; and to pay a higher price for those he demands, than more recent, or less successful, immigrants to his vicinity can afford.
Thus he will have personally grown rich, perhaps; but few, if any, public advantages will have accrued from his expenditures. It is quite possible that, before he can arrive at that point of liberality in expenditure which the Iowan started with, the fertility of his soil will have been so greatly reduced that the results of labor upon it are no longer accumulative of profit, but simply enable him to sustain the mode of life to which he and his slaves are accustomed.
This occurs, I again remind you, not merely because labor is applied to the end of immediately realizing a return in slaves, but because it continues constantly to be applied without the advantage of efficient machinery, and the cheapest means of marketing its results; also, because the planter’s mind, which, by a freer expenditure of capital at an early day, would have been informed and directed to a better method of agriculture, remains in ignorance of it, or locked against it by the prejudice of custom and habit.
I have described to you the real condition, and its historical rationale, of a majority of the better class of planters in Texas, as, after many favorable opportunities of acquaintance with them, I have apprehended it. My knowledge of Iowan proprietors, of similar capital, is not personal, but inferential and from report. It may be there are none such, but it makes little difference in the end whether the five thousand dollars to be expended is held by one proprietor, or divided among a number. It is so much capital disengaged.
I have made circumstantial inquiry of several persons who have resided both in Iowa and in Texas, and have ascertained, most distinctly, that the rapidity with which the discomforts of the frontier are overcome, the facility with which the most valuable conveniences, and the most important luxuries, moral, mental, and animal, of old communities, are reobtained, is astonishingly greater in the former than the latter.
Comparing Texas with New York, I can speak entirely from personal observation. I believe it is a low estimate, that every dollar of the nominal capital of the substantial farmers of New York represents an amount of the most truly valuable commodities of civilization, equal to five dollars in the nominal wealth of Texas planters. And this, notwithstanding that the climate of Texas has a great superiority over that of New York or Iowa. I think that the labor of one man in Texas will more easily produce adequate sustenance and shelter for a family and an ordinary farm-stock of working cattle, than that of two anywhere in the Free States.
And this, again, without regard to that quality of the climate which enables the Texan to share in the general monopoly of the South in the production of cotton — a quality so valuable that Texans sell scarcely anything out of the State but cotton, which they even find it profitable to exchange for corn raised in Ohio, and taxed with the expense of a great transportation, and several exchanges. Not that corn is produced with less labor in Ohio, but that cotton is produced with so much more profit in Texas. Corn, and every other valuable staple production of the soil of the Free States, except, perhaps, oats and potatoes, for which there are special substitutes, may be grown extensively, and with less expenditure of labor, in Texas. Nor did we — my medical companion and myself — have reason to retain the common opinion, after careful attention to the subject, that the health of white people, or their ability to labor, was less in the greater part of Texas than in the new Free States. We even saw much white and free labor applied to the culture of cotton with a facility and profit at least equal to that attending the labor of enslaved negroes, at the same distance from market.
All things considered, I believe that the prosperity of Texas, measured by the rapidity with which the inconveniences and discomforts, inevitable only in a wilderness or an uncivilized state of society, are removed, would have been ten times greater than it is, had it been, at the date of its annexation, thrown open, under otherwise equally favorable circumstances, to a free immigration, with a prohibition to slavery. I think that its export of cotton would have been greater than it now is; that its demand from, and contribution to, commerce would have been ten times what it now is; that it would possess ten times the length of railroad; ten times as many churches; ten times as many schools, and a hundred times as many school-children as it now has.
You may think it too soon to form a judgment of any value upon the prosperity of Texas, as measured by the other criterion I proposed — namely, “the completeness with which the opportunity for profitable labor is retained.” But what do you say to the fact that, in the eastern counties, that spectacle so familiar and so melancholy in your own State, in all the older Slave States, is already not unfrequently seen by the traveler — an abandoned plantation of “worn-out” fields, with its little village of dwellings, now a home only for wolves and vultures?
This but indicates a large class of observations, by which I hold myself justified in asserting that the natural elements of wealth in the soil of Texas will have been more exhausted in ten years, and with them the rewards offered by Providence to labor will have been more lessened than, without slavery, would have been the case in two hundred. Do not think that I use round numbers carelessly. After two hundred years’ occupation of similar soils by a free-laboring community, I have seen no such evidences of waste as, in Texas, I have after ten years of slavery. And indications of the same kind I have observed, not isolated, but general, in every Slave State but two — which I have seen only in parts yet scarcely at all settled. Moreover, I have seen similar phenomena following slavery in other countries and in other climates.
It is not at all improbable, my good friend, that children of yours, in, perhaps, the tenth generation, will have to work, whatever may be their occupation, one hour a day more, during all their working lives, than they would have done but for this your policy of extending slavery over Texas, and thereby permanently diminishing the rightful profits of labor. Bread is to cost them more by the pound, cotton and wool stuffs more by the yard.
Will you say that no superficial observations of a passing stranger can shake your confidence in the great higher law of demand and supply? That slavery cannot be forced by any legislation to exist for an injurious period in any country or region where free labor would, on the whole, be more economical? That free labor, on the other hand, cannot be restrained? That the climate of Texas demands African laborers, and that Africans are incapable of persistent labor, unless they are controlled, directed, and forced by a superior will? There are a few facts mentioned in these pages which bear on both these points, and to which I will simply beg you to give a fair consideration. Especially, I would be glad to have you ponder the experience of the German colonists, of which, though the narration is influenced, perhaps, by an irresistible enthusiasm of admiration, the details have been carefully obtained and verified.
As to the needlessness of legal restrictions upon slavery where its introduction would be uneconomical, let me ask, do you consider public lotteries of money economical institutions? They exist in every civilized community wherein they are not prohibited by law. Gambling-houses, and places of traffic in stolen goods, you will hardly deem economical conveniences in any climate; yet laws are everywhere required to restrict their increase.
I consider that slavery is no less disastrous in its effects on industry — no less destructive to wealth. The laws and forces sustaining it, where it has been long established, may have become a temporary necessity, as poisons are to the life of some unfortunate invalids. Judge you of that. But laws intended to extend its field of improvidence are unjust, cruel, and oppressive. Revolutionary resistance to them by all men whose interest it is to have industry honestly paid, can only be wrong while likely to be unsuccessful.
There are two reasons, both of which, you have confessed to me, operate on your own mind, why, the power to hold slaves being secured, men employ them in preference to the much cheaper free labor, and why the vitality of slavery need be nowhere dependent on its mere economy as a labor system.
First: Slavery educates, or draws out, and strengthens, by example and exercise, to an inordinate degree, the natural lust of authority, common as an element of character in all mankind. To a degree, that is, which makes its satisfaction inconvenient and costly — costly of other means of comfort, not only to the individual, but to the community.
Thus, a man educated under the system will be disposed no longer than he is forced, by law or otherwise, to employ servants or laborers who may make demands upon him, and if those demands are refused, may in their turn legally refuse to obey him. He will prefer to accept much smaller profits, much greater inconveniences, than would a man otherwise educated, rather than submit to what he considers to be the insolence of a laborer, who maintains a greater self-respect, and demands a greater consideration for his personal dignity, than it is possible for a slave to do.
Secondly: The power of exercising authority in this way is naturally overmuch coveted among you. It gives position and status in your society more than other wealth — (wealth being equivalent to power). It is fashionable with you to own slaves, as it is with the English to own land, with the Arabs, horses; and as beads and vermilion have a value among the Indians which seems to us absurd, so, among you, has the power of commanding the service of slaves. Consequently you are willing to pay a price for it which, to one not educated as you have been, seems absurdly high. Nor are you more likely to dispense with slaves, when you have it in your power to possess them, than the Chinese with their fashion of the queue, Turks with their turban, or Englishmen with their hats.
We need no restrictions upon fashions like these, which are oppressive only to those who obey them. Such is not the case with the fashion of slavery.
But still you may doubt if slavery can long remain where it is uneconomical; the influences I have mentioned might, you will reflect, induce a Southerner to continue to employ his slaves while he is able; but his ability to do so would soon be exhausted if the institution were really uneconomical; in a new country the opportunity of employing slaves would soon be lost, owing to the superior advantages those would have who employed the cheaper labor of freemen; in fact, capital would be rapidly exhausted in the effort to sustain the luxury of commanding slaves.
Such, precisely, is the case. How, then, does it continue? Do not be offended if I answer, by constantly borrowing and never paying its debts.
Look at any part of the United States where slavery has predominated for a historic period; compare its present aspect with that it bore when peopled only by “heathen salvages,” and you will see that the luxury of slaves, and what other luxury through their labor has therein been enjoyed, have been acquired at an immense cost beyond that of mere labor. You will see that what has been called the profit of slave labor has been obtained only by filching from the nation’s capital — from that which the nation owes its posterity — many times the gross amount of all the production of that labor.
Governor Adams, in a recent message to the legislature of South Carolina, intimates that, at ten cents a pound, English manufacturers are paying too little for the cotton this country sends them. I think twice that amount would be too little to recompense the country for the loss of capital at present involved in its production. I believe that, with free labor in Texas, unembarrassed by the inconveniences attending slavery, it could have been profitably exported at half that price.
You will still ask how slavery, laboring under such economical disadvantages, can take possession of any country, to the exclusion or serious inconvenience of free labor?
Plainly, it may do so by fraud and violence — by disregard of the rights of citizens. I will not say that these are necessities of its existence, only that they are alleged to be so by those who have carried slavery into Texas, as well as by those who have sought to establish it in Kansas. These missionaries of the institution voluntarily make the declaration, and put it deliberately on record, that lawless violence and repudiation of state pledges must be permitted in order to maintain slavery in these regions. Whether with reason or not, the purpose to maintain slavery is constantly offered and received as a sufficient excuse for disregarding not merely personal rights under the Constitution, but the most solemn treaty-obligations with a foreign nation.
When you demand of us to permit slavery in our territory, we know that you mean to take advantage of our permission, to forbid freedom of discussion, and freedom of election; to prevent an effective public educational system; to interrupt and annoy our commerce, to establish an irresponsible and illegal censorship of the press; and to subject our mails to humiliating surveillance.
And you ask — nay, you demand, and that with a threatening attitude — that we shall permit you to do all this; for what purpose?
Not because you need an extension of your field of labor. Governor Adams, in the message to which I have referred, alleges that the poverty and weakness of the South are chiefly due to its deficiency of laborers. To say that it has too few laborers is to say that it has too much territory. And that is true.
I learn from trustworthy and unprejudiced sources, that the gentlemen who have carried slaves to Kansas have not done so because they believe it to be the most promising field of labor for slaves open to them; they do not hesitate to admit it to be otherwise. But they have gone there as a chivalric duty to their class and to the South — that South to which alone their patriotism acknowledges a duty. If they succeed in once establishing slavery as a state institution, they have reason for thinking that Kansas will be thereafter avoided, as a plague country would be, by free labor. For, to say to an emigrating farmer, “Kansas is a slave state,” is to tell him that if he goes thither he will have to pay a dear price for everything but land; for tools, for furniture, for stock; that he may have to dispense during his life — as may his children after him — with convenient churches, schools, mills, and all elaborate mechanical assistance to his labor. Thus they calculate — and this is their only motive — that two more senators may be soon added to the strength of slavery in the government. They are only wrong in forgetting that free laborers are no longer constrained, by a compact with them, to quietly permit this curse to be established in Kansas.
Danger from insurrection is supposed by some to be proportionate to density of population, and your demand is sometimes urged on the plea that an extension of the area subject to the waste of slavery is necessary to be made in order to avoid this calamity.
If one-third of the land included in the present Slave States be given up to the poor whites and the buffaloes, and the remainder be divided into plantations averaging a square mile in size, the present slave population must double in number before each of these plantations will be provided with a laboring force equal to five able-bodied men and women.
If the policy of thus dispersing capital and labor, withholding so much wealth as it does from the service of commerce, and involving so much unnecessary expenditure, be really persisted in, from a fear of a slave rebellion, I think we have a right to ask you, the gentlemen who own this hazardous property, to provide some less expensive means of meeting the danger with which it threatens you. For, where will this way of meeting it carry us? You are unsafe now: if safety is to be obtained by greater dispersion, how great must it be? In another generation you will require the continent, and the tide of white immigration will be returning to the old world. There is a great significance in the emigration driven, even now, from the Slave States, contrary to the normal inclination of immigration, which is always southward and outward, into the colder Free States, which already have more than twice their density of population.
But this is not the reason given by the most ardent and talented extensionists. Your favorite statistician, Mr. DeBow, agrees with the South Carolina professor, Drew, who, he says, has fully shown how “utterly vain” are the fears of those who apprehend danger from a great increase in the number of slaves. So say many others, especially when arguing the military strength of the Slave States.
The only argument steadily and boldly urged in the South itself, is that slavery must be extended in order to preserve the equality of the South in the republic. It would be folly, your editors and orators constantly assure us, to think that the South will remain in association with the North, unless she can retain such an equality.
There can be no dishonor for 1,100,000 citizens (the number voting in the Slave States at the recent election) to have less power of control in the government of a republic than 2,900,000 (the number of Northern voting citizens). The alleged folly of permitting the greater number of citizens to obtain a power of controlling the federal government is founded solely in the rumor, that it is the purpose of those who oppose the extension of slavery to force an abolition of slavery where it exists under the sanction of the sovereign state governments.
I trust you are not one of those who credit this rumor. My acquaintance with the people of the North is extensive and varied. I know, so far as it is within the ability of a man to be informed of the purposes of other men, that this rumor is still, as Daniel Webster declared it to be twenty-five years ago, a wicked device of unprincipled politicians. I lose respect for gentlemen whom I find to have been imposed upon by it. There are men, who, it is constantly asserted, are notoriously leaders among those having this purpose, whom I have happened to meet often, under circumstances favorable to a free expression of their political views and intentions. I have heard from them never the slightest suggestion of a desire to interfere by force, or any action of the central government, with the constitutional rights of the state governments to maintain slavery.
Since the attempt to extend slavery in Kansas, by the repeal of our old compromise with you, I have heard one man express the conviction, to which others may be approaching, that we shall never have done with this constantly recurring agitation, till we place ourselves in an offensive position towards the South, threatening the root of the national nuisance. This man, however, was not one of those who are considered the special enemies of the South, nor a politician by profession, but an honest, direct-minded old farmer, who has heretofore been numbered among those the South chooses to deem its friends; a man, too, who, as it happens, has seen the South, knows its condition, and maintains friendly communication with slaveholders.
This indicates, in my opinion, the only way in which the people of the North can be tempted to use the control they already actually possess, and by their numbers are justly entitled to, in the confederate government, in the unconstitutional and revolutionary manner these lying political speculators are so ready to anticipate.
The chief object of this false accusation, is to excite the ignorant masses of your own citizens to act, with blindly-zealous concert, in favor of measures to which, if honestly presented, they would be equally opposed with the intelligent people of the North. Its danger is now made sufficiently obviously the conspiracies, among the slaves, which, since the election, have been discovered in Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas — perhaps elsewhere.
These are the first general and formidable insurrectionary movements since 1820, when, as your rumor is, the machinations of the abolitionists commenced. Many general and formidable insurrections are matters of history previous to 1820. The improbability that the abolitionists have been engaged in stimulating insurrections, between 1820 and the present time, is apparent. When you consider that, in all the districts wherein these conspiracies are now discovered, there have been large and excited public meetings, harangued by loud-voiced speakers, whose principal topic was the imminent danger of an interference by Fremont, and the people of the North, in behalf of the slaves against their masters — Fremont’s name being already familiar in their ears as that of a brave and noble man — remembering this — how can you doubt whether the abolitionists, or your own recklessly ambitious politicians, are most responsible for your present danger?
The late message of President Pierce to Congress has been distributed in the government publication and the newspapers by hundreds of thousands in the Slave States, and has fallen directly into the hands of half your house-servants, or may have been given to any slave who purchases a plug of tobacco at a grocery. This message, or almost any of the speeches made by Southern members in the debate upon it, which have, in like manner, been freely scattered, will give the confident impression to any man, not otherwise better informed, who reads it, or hears it read or talked of, that a formidable proportion of the white people of the North are determined “to effect a change in the relative condition of the white and the black race in the Slaveholding States;” that they are prepared to accomplish this “through burning cities, and ravaged fields, and slaughtered populations, and all that is terrible in foreign, complicated with civil and servile war, devastation, and fratricidal carnage.” If he have any disposition to obtain his liberty, it will at once be suggested to him that he and his fellows should be prepared to take advantage of the suggestions thus made — the encouragement to fight their way northward, thus published to them by a thoughtless Northern ally of their masters. Is it the abolitionists or the politicians you have most reason to fear?
Be assured, all attempts to extend slavery can only increase the very danger which it is pretended they are made to avert.
In denying that a formidable number of the citizens of the Free States are disposed to interfere between the slaves and the citizens in other States, I do not wish you to understand me to say that there is not a large number of abolitionists among us: using the word, as has lately become the custom, to mean those who have formed a distinct judgment, that slavery is an evil, the continuance of which it is proper, desirable, and possible for you to more or less distinctly limit; who also think it proper to express this opinion; who also think it their duty to prevent those who hold the opinion that slavery is wholly a good thing, desirable for indefinite perpetuation and extension, from exercising the influence they endeavor to do, in our common government, for the purpose of extending and perpetuating it. I suppose about one-half of all the people of the Free States are now distinctly and intelligently abolitionists, of this kind, and nine-tenths of the remaining number are as yet simply too little interested in the subject to have formed a judgment, by which, they can be reliably classed. Out of a few localities, where a commercial sympathy with planters is very direct, there is no society in which an avowal of positive anti-abolition opinion would not be considered eccentric.
Even of those voting at the late election for Mr. Buchanan, among my acquaintance, more than half have expressed opinions to me which would at once range them as abolitionists, and expose them to disagreeable treatment if uttered in Southern society. These voted as they did, not so much, I think, from fear that a division of the Union would result from Mr. Fremont’s election, as because, being influential men in their party, and having been successful in obtaining the nomination of the candidate they deemed least dangerous of those advanced for the nomination, they felt bound in honor to sustain him.
Which way the progress of opinion tends, it is easy to see, and you need not trust my judgment. Examine the vote of the North in connection with statistics indicating the degree of intelligence and the means of transmitting and encouraging intelligence among — not the commercial or wealthy class, but — the general working people, and you will find Mr. Fremont’s vote bears a remarkable correspondence to the advantage of any district or state in this particular. Now. our means of improving education, of transmitting intelligence, and of stimulating reflection are very steadily increasing. The young men, attaining their majority in the next four years, will have enjoyed advantages, in these respects, superior to their predecessors. The effect of railroads, and cheaper postage — significantly resisted by those who are most violent partisans of the extension of slavery — and of cheaper books and newspapers, is, as to this question, almost all one way. It is our young men who are most sensitive to the insulting tone which the South thinks it proper to assume in all debates with those members of congress who are known to best represent the North. It is among those whose interest in public affairs is of recent date, that the old party terms of outcry are least expressive of evil.
It is not long since you yourself held in the highest respect and profoundest confidence as true citizens, such men as Chief Justice Parker and Judge Kent; Presidents Walker, Woolsey and King; James Hamilton, James S. Wadsworth, and John M. Read; Washington Irving, Longfellow and Bryant, and even Mr. Fremont — all now strongly sympathizing and openly cooperating with the party of the “abolitionists.” There are many thousand young men who must still hold these honored names in as high respect as ever you did, who have lately acquired their first distinct political associations. Consider that, with these, the terms Abolitionist and Disunionist, Black Republican and Nigger-worshiper, must thus be hereafter irrevocably attached to names and characters once as familiar to the South as the North, and ever commanding, everywhere, the completest popular confidence, as the first gentlemen, the purest patriots, and the soundest thinkers in the land. Reflect, that at least nine out of ten of the clergy of every denomination, and of the lay-teachers, in the North, have been enrolled as “abolitionists,” and probably a majority have thought it proper to publicly profess the faith now so denominated, and which the South has chosen to make the subject of the most violent, reckless, and relentless denunciation and persecution.
Do you think we shall go backward? Consider, that in those States which gave the only Northern majorities to Mr. Buchanan, an efficient public-school system has been a creation entirely of the last fifteen years: that in Southern Illinois and Indiana, where the vote against Mr. Fremont was heavier than elsewhere, the majority of living voters were born and lived in their early life, subject only to such educational advantages as existed — and exist — in the States of Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. That the proportion of citizens who were educated in those States themselves, since schools became conveniently frequent, and newspapers and books a common luxury, will now very rapidly increase.
Very many other considerations might be adduced, if you do not believe that the policy of forcing an extension of slavery is necessary to the honor of the people of the South, and a duty to be performed without flinching, whatever sad consequences it may involve, why you should join me in pleading for its immediate and decisive abandonment.
I have said that already full one-half of the citizens of the North are decisively abolitionists in their convictions. You have led thein to consider the moral question involved in maintaining slavery where it is, by forcing them to think of the material profit or otherwise which will result to themselves and their children from carrying it where it is not, and their verdict is against you. I believe that, rather than be parties to its extension, rather than shift the responsibility of a decision upon those who are so unintelligent or uninformed as to be willing to settle in a territory where its prohibition is yet undecided — unless they are patriotic enough to go for the purpose of deciding it — they will accept anything else that you may place in the alternative. Be it disunion, be it war, foreign or domestic, it will not divert them from their purpose.
Any further extension or annexation of slavery, under whatever pretense or covering it is attempted, will only be effected in contemptuous defiance of the people of the Free States.
I am, and I trust long to remain,
Your fellow-citizen, and friend,
Fred. Law Olmsted.
CHAPTER I
ROUTE TO TEXAS
SOUTHERN PHENOMENA
In entering new precincts, the mind instinctively looks for salient incidents to fix its whereabouts and reduce or define its vague anticipations. Last evening’s stroll in Baltimore, from the absence of any of the expected indications of a slave state, left a certain restlessness which two little incidents this morning speedily dissipated. On reaching the station, I was amused to observe that the superintendent was, overseer-like, bestride an active little horse, clattering here and there over the numerous rails, hurrying on passengers, and issuing from the saddle his curt orders to a gang of watchful locomotives.
And five minutes had not elapsed after we were off at a wave of his hand, before a Virginia gentleman by my side, after carelessly gauging, with a glance, the effort necessary to reach the hinged ventilator over the window of the seat opposite us, spat through it without a wink, at the sky. Such a feat in New England would have brought down the house. Here it failed to excite a thought even from the performer.
Here was rest for the mind. Scene, the South; bound West. It could be nowhere else. The dramatis persons at once fell into place. The white baby drawing nourishment from a black mamma on the train; the tobacco wagons at the stations; the postillion driving; the outside chimneys and open-centre houses; the long stop toward noon at a railway country inn; the loafing nobles of poor whites, hanging about in search of enjoyment or a stray glass of whisky or an emotion; the black and yellow boys, shy of baggage, but on the alert for any bit of a lark with one another; the buxom, saucy, slipshod girls within, bursting with fat and fun from their dresses, unable to contain themselves even during the rude ceremonies of dinner; the bacon and sweet potatoes and corn-bread that made for most of the passengers the substantials of that meal; the open kitchen in the background, and the unstudied equality of black and white that visibly reigned there: nothing of this was now a surprise.
BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad runs for some eighty miles through a fine farming country, with its appropriate, somewhat tame, rural scenery. At Harper’s Ferry, the Potomac hurries madly along high cliffs over a rocky bed, and the effect, as you emerge from a tunnel and come upon the river, is startling and fine. Jefferson pronounced it the finest scenery he had seen — but he was a Virginian. After this the road follows up the valley as far as Cumberland, coming upon new and wilder beauties at every bend of the stream. But a day in a railway car is, in the best surroundings, a tedious thing, and it is with great pleasure that the traveler, in the early evening, shakes the dust from his back, and partakes of a quietly-prolonged supper in the St. Nicholas, the gaudy but excellent new inn at
CUMBERLAND
This Cumberland, whence comes so much winter-evening comfort to us of the North, has itself the aspect of a most comfortless place. The houses of its 3,000 inhabitants are scattered among and upon steep hills, and show little of the taste their picturesque situations suggest. There is a certain dinginess and a slow, fixed, finished look arising from absence of new constructions, that remind you, especially in the dim light of a November rainy day, of the small manufacturing towns of England. Judging from the tones we heard and the signs we saw in some parts of the town, some portion of its population seems to have come from Wales or the West of England, and to possess, legitimately, a slow-going propensity.
The mines, from which the chief supply of bituminous coal is drawn for the use of the Atlantic coast, lie ten miles from the town, and communicate with it and the world by a branch railway. The transportation of this material forms one of the chief items of the income of the B. and O. Railroad. The price of the coal, for which we in New York were paying nine dollars a tun, was in the town one dollar and a half; at the mines, unselected, half a dollar — a difference which, for my own part, I gladly pay.
Unattractive as is the town of Cumberland, it is not easily forgotten, from its romantic position. From the cultivated hills adjoining it, is seen a view which is, in its way, unsurpassed, and, but a few minutes’ walk above it, is a wooded gorge, into which a road enters as into monstrous jaws, and, after sunset, the heart fairly quakes, spite of reason, to intrude, defiant of such scowls of nature.
OVER THE BLUE RIDGE
From Cumberland the rails plunge into the wild Blue Ridge Mountains, and only by dint of the most admirable persistence in tunneling, jumping, squeezing, and winding, do they succeed in forming a path for the locomotive over to the great basin of the Ohio. Vast sums and incredible Southern pains have laid this third great social artery from the West, and New York, after all, receives the blood.
Rocks, forests, and streams, alone, for hours, meet the eye. The only stoppages are for wood and water, and the only way-passengers, laborers upon the road. The conquered solitude becomes monotonous. It is a pleasure to get through and see again the old monotony of cultivation.
Broader grow the valleys, wider and richer the fields, as you run down with the waters the Western slope. At length the fields are endless, and you are following upward a big and muddy stream which must be — and is, the Ohio. You have reached the great West. Here are the panting, top-heavy steamboats, surging up against wind and current. The train slips by them as if they were at anchor. Here are the flat-boats, coal laden from Pittsburgh, helpless as logs, drifting patiently down the tide. And here is
WHEELING
A dark clouded day, a “first-class hotel” of the poorest sort, a day which began coldly by a dim candle four hours before sunrise, and ended beyond midnight, after ten hours’ waiting on steamboat promises, are not conducive to the most cheering recollections of any town; but the brightest day would not, I believe, relieve the bituminous dinginess, the noisiness, and straggling dirtiness of Wheeling. Its only ornament is the suspension bridge, which is as graceful in its sweep as it is vast in its design and its utility.
THE OHIO
The stage of water in the river was luckily ample for first-class boats, and we embarked upon the David L. White, when at length she came, on her long way from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. She was a noble vessel, having on board every arrangement for comfortable travel, including a table of which the best hotel would not be ashamed. The passage to Cincinnati occupies thirty-six hours. From some conversational impressions, our anticipations as to enjoyment of scenery on the Ohio were small, and we were most agreeably disappointed to find the book that nature offered occupying us during all our daylight, to the exclusion of those paper-covered ones we had thought it necessary to provide. Primeval forests form the main feature, but so alternating with farms and villages as not to tire. Limestone hills and ranges bluff frequently in bold wooded or rocky masses upon the river, terminating by abrupt turns the stately vistas of the longer reaches. For a first day, the rafts, “the flats,” all the varieties of human river-life, are a constant attraction. The towns, almost without exception, are repulsively ugly and out of keeping with the tone of mind inspired by the river. Each has had its hopes, not yet quite abandoned, of becoming the great mart of the valley, and has built in accordant style its one or two tall brick city blocks, standing shabby-sided alone on the mud-slope to the bank, supported by a tavern, an old storehouse, and a few shanties. These mushroom cities mark only a night’s camping-place of civilization.
The route, via Baltimore to Cincinnati, we found, on the whole, a very agreeable one. The time is somewhat longer than by the more northern routes; but the charming scenery and the greater quiet and comfort, amply repay the delay.
THE OHIO VINEYARDS
Twenty miles above Cincinnati begin the vines. They occupy the hill-slopes at the river’s edge, and near the city cover nearly the whole ground that can be seen under cultivation. They are grown as on the Rhine, attached to small stakes three or four feet high, and some three by six feet apart. What a pity the more graceful Italian mode of swinging long vine-branches from tree to tree, could not be adopted. But profit and beauty are, as often, here again at war. The principal cultivators are naturally Germans. For the most part the land is held by them in small parcels; but much is also rented for a fixed share of the crop. Only the large owners bottle their own crop. The grape juice is mostly sold to dealers who have invested in the necessary storehouses and apparatus. The principal dealer, as well as the largest landholder and grower of vines, is Nicholas Longworth. To his perseverance in prolonged experiments we are indebted for all this success in the production of native wine. It is pleasant to find now and then a case where the deserved fame and fortune have followed intelligent efforts of such a kind, before the hand that exerted them is laid low. The value of the wine crop in its present youth is little known.
In 1855, the crop about Cincinnati is estimated at $150,000. There are about 1,500 acres of vines planted; 1,000 in full bearing, producing this year about 150 gallons only, to the acre. In 1853, the average crop was 650 gallons; the extreme yield 900 gallons to the acre. The acres planted in 1845, 350; in 1852, 1,200. Missouri and Illinois have also (1855) 1,100 acres planted. Mr. Longworth is said to have at the end of 1855, 300,000 bottles stored in his cellars; one-half bottled during the year. It will not be many years, I hope, before the famous hog crop will be of less value to this region in comparison. Let us pray for the day when honest wine and oil shall take the place of our barbarous whisky and hog-fat.
The approach to Cincinnati is announced by the appearance of villas, scattered on the hills that border the north side of the river, and by the concentration of human life and motion along the bank. But a moment after these indications attract your attention, the steamer rounds with a great sweep to the levee, and, before you appreciate your arrival, is pushing its nose among the crowd of boats, butting them unmercifully hither and thither in the effort for an inside place.
CINCINNATI
From the edge of the stream rises the levee — a paved open hill of gentle inclination, allowing steamboats and carmen to carry on their usual relations at all stages of water. Then extends backward, on a gently-rising plateau, a square mile or two of brick blocks and hubbub. Then rise steeply the hills by which, in semicircle, the city is backed. At their base is a horrid debateable ground, neither bricks and mortar nor grass, but gaunt clay, before whose tenacity the city has paused, uncertain whether to “grade” or mount the obstinate barrier.
There is a prevalent superstition in Cincinnati that the hindermost citizen will fall into the clutches of the devil. A wholesome fear of this dire fate, secret or acknowledged, with more or less candor, actuates the whole population. A ceaseless energy pervades the city and gives its tone to everything. A profound hurry is the marked characteristic of the place. I found it difficult to take any repose or calm refreshment, so magnetic is the air. “Now then, sir!” everything seems to say. Men smoke and drink like locomotives at a relay-house. They seem to sleep only like tops, with brains in steady whirl. There is no pause in the tumultuous life of the streets. The only quiet thing I found was the residence of Mr. Longworth — a delicious bit of rural verdure, lying not far from the heart of the town, like a tender locket heaving on a blacksmith’s breast.
What more need be said of Cincinnati? Bricks, hurry, and a muddy roar make up the whole impression. The atmosphere, at the time of our visit, was of damp coal smoke, chilly and dirty, almost like that of the same season in Birmingham. I was interested in inquiries about its climate, and learned that extreme variations of temperature were as common as upon the sea-board. That during one long season it was exposed to a fierce sun and a penetrating dust, and during another to piercing winds from the northwest. Snow falls abundantly, but seldom survives its day. On the whole, it was doubted if anxious lungs were better here than in New York. The environs, the purgatory of red clay once passed, are agreeable enough, even at this season, to be called charming — tasteful houses, standing on natural lawns among natural park-groups of oak, with river views and glimpses. The price of land for such places, within thirty or forty minutes’ drive of town, was, I was told, $1,000 per acre; and, of all eligible land, within ten miles around, $200. Cheap soil cannot, therefore, be an inducement for settlers here. These are New York prices.
PORK
Pork-packing in Cincinnati was, at the time of our visit, nearly at a stand-still, owing to the mild and damp weather unusual at the season. One establishment we found in partial operation. We entered an immense low-ceiled room and followed a vista of dead swine, upon their backs, their paws stretching mutely toward heaven. Walking down to the vanishing point, we found there a sort of human chopping-machine where the hogs were converted into commercial pork. A plank table, two men to lift and turn, two to wield the cleavers, were its component parts. No iron cog-wheels could work with more regular motion. Plump falls the hog upon the table, chop, chop; chop, chop; chop, chop, fall the cleavers. All is over. But, before you can say so, plump, chop, chop; chop, chop; chop, chop, sounds again. There is no pause for admiration. By a skilled sleight of hand, hams, shoulders, clear, mess, and prime fly off, each squarely cut to its own place, where attendants, aided by trucks and dumbwaiters, dispatch each to its separate destiny — the ham for Mexico, its loin for Bordeaux. Amazed beyond all expectation at the celerity, we took out our watches and counted thirty-five seconds, from the moment when one hog touched the table until the next occupied its place. The number of blows required I regret we did not count. The vast slaughter-yards we took occasion not to visit, satisfied at seeing the rivers of blood that flowed from them.
TO LEXINGTON
We left Cincinnati at daybreak of a cloudy November day, upon the box of the coach for Lexington, Ky. After waiting a long time for the mail and for certain dilatory passengers, we crossed the river upon a dirty little high pressure ferry-boat, and drove through the streets of Covington. This city, with its low and scattered buildings, has the aspect of a suburb, as in fact it is. It is spread loosely over a level piece of ground, and is quite lacking in the energy and thrift of its free-state neighbor. Whether its slowness be legitimately traced to its position upon the slave side of the river, as is commonly done; or only in principal part to the caprice of commerce, is not so sure. It is credible enough, that men of free energy in choosing their residence, should prefer free laws when other things are equal; but 200 miles further down the river, we find (as again at St. Louis) that things are not equal, and that the thrift and finery are upon the slave side. Leaving it behind, we roll swiftly out upon one of the few well-kept macadamized roads in America, and enter with exhilaration the gates of magnificent Kentucky.
THE WOODLAND PASTURES OF KENTUCKY
Here spreads, for hundreds of miles before you, an immense natural park, planted, seeded to sward, drained, and kept up by invisible hands for the delight and service of man. Travel where you will for days, you find always the soft, smooth sod, shaded with oaks and beeches, noble in age and form, arranged in vistas and masses, stocked with herds, deer, and game. Man has squatted here and there over the fair heritage, but his shabby improvements have the air of poachers’ huts amidst this luxuriant beauty of nature. It is landscape gardening on the largest scale. The eye cannot satiate itself in a whole day’s swift panorama, so charmingly varied is the surface, and so perfect each new point of view. Midway of the route, the land is high and rougher in tone, and the richest beauty is only reached at the close of the day, when you bowl down into the very garden of the state — the private grounds, as it were, of the demesne. Here accumulation has been easy, and wealth appears in more suitable mansions, occupied by the lords of Durham. and Ayrshire herds, as well as of a black feudal peasantry, unattached to the soil. There is hardly, I think, such another coach ride as this in the world, certainly none that has left a more delightful and ineffaceable impression on my mind.
THE ROAD
Coach and teams were good, and we made excellent time. The weather was mild, and we were enabled to keep the box through the day. Our first driver, waked, probably, too early, was surly and monosyllabic. The second was gay, with a ringing falsetto, which occupied all his attention.
