Lands of the Slave and the Free Part 23

A portion of the cadets are instructed every day in fencing and riding.

When well advanced in the latter, they are taught spearing rings or stuffed heads at the gallop, and the same with the sword. The riding-school is perfectly abominable, being dark, full of pillars, and most completely out of harmony with all the rest of the establishment, which is excellent in every detail. On Sundays all the cadets attend church, unless excused on conscientious motives, and with the approval of their parents. The minister is selected by the President, and may be of any denomination. I was told that an Episcopalian had been most frequently chosen. The present minister is, I believe, a Presbyterian.

During the months of July and August the cadets all turn out of their barracks, pitch their tents, and live regular camp life--only going to the barracks to eat their meals. During the time they are tented, the education is exclusively military practice; the same hours are kept as in the barracks; the tents are boarded, and two cadets sleep in each.

They are all pitched with scrupulous accuracy, and they are obliged to keep their camp as clean as a new pin--performing among themselves every duty of a complete regiment--cleaning their own shoes, fetching their own water, &c. They were all in tents at the time of my visit, and I fear not particularly comfortable, for there had been two days and nights' hard rain, and the wet mattresses were courting the warm rays of the afternoon sun. Whatever jobbery is attempted in the selection of candidates for admission to the Academy, is soon corrected by the Academy itself; for, though the entrance examination is simple to a degree, the subsequent examinations are very severe, and those who cannot come up to the mark get notice to quit; and the unerring tell-tale column of demerit soon obliges the turbulent to "clear out."

The result of this system is, that when I saw them under arms, their soldierlike appearance struck me very much; and the effect produced upon them by discipline was very marked. You might almost guess the time they had been there by their gentlemanly bearing, a quality which they do not readily lose; for the officers of the American army who have been educated at West Point, enjoy a universal reputation for intelligence and gentlemanly bearing wherever they are to be met with.

The discipline here is no fiction; they do not play at soldiers; they all work their way up from the ranks, performing every duty of each rank, and the most rigid obedience is exacted. In the calculations for demerit, while idleness in the Academy obtains a mark of three, disobedience to a superior officer is marked eight. There is no bullying thought of here; the captain of his company would as soon think of bullying the cadet private as a captain of a regiment of the line would of bullying any private under his command. An officer who had been for many years connected with West Point, told me that among all the duels which unfortunately are so prevalent in the United States, he had never either known or heard of one between any two gentlemen who had received their education at this Academy--tricks, of course, are sometimes played, but nothing oppressive is ever thought of.

I did hear a story of a cadet, who, by way of a joke, came and tried to take away the musket of a wiry young Kentuckian, who was planted sentry for the first time; but he found a military ardour he had little antic.i.p.ated; for the novice sentry gave him a crack on the side of the head that turned him round, and before he could recover himself, he felt a couple of inches of cold steel running into the bank situated at the juncture of the hips and the back-bone; and thus not only did he suffer total defeat and an ignominious wound, but he earned a large figure on the demerit roll. From the way the story was told to me, I imagine it is a solitary instance of such an outrage being attempted; for one of the first things they seek to inculcate is a military spirit, and the young Kentuckian at all events proved that he had caught the spirit; nor can it be denied that the method he took to impress it upon his a.s.sailant, as a fundamental principle of action, was equally sharp and striking.

Happening to be on the ground at the hour of dinner, I saw them all marched off to their great dining-ball, where the table was well supplied with meat, vegetables, and pudding; it was all substantial and good, but the _tout-ensemble_ was decidedly very rough. If the intention is to complete the soldier life by making them live like well-fed privates of the line, the object is attained; but I should be disposed to think, they might dispense with a good deal of the roughness of the style with great advantage; though doubtless, where the general arrangements are so good, they have their own reasons for keeping it as it is. I paid a visit in the course of the afternoon to the fencing-room; but being the hour of recreation, I found about thirty l.u.s.ty cadets, votaries to Terpsich.o.r.e, all waltzing and polking merrily to a fiddle, ably wielded by their instructor: as their capabilities were various, the confusion was great, and the master bewildered; but they all seemed heartily enjoying themselves.

The professors and military instructors, &c., have each a small comfortable house with garden attached, and in the immediate vicinity of the Academy. There is a comfortable hotel, which in the summer months is constantly filled with the friends and relatives of the cadets; and occasionally they get permission to give a little _soiree dansante_ in the fencing-room. The hotel is prohibited from selling any spirituous liquors, wines, &c.

The Government property at West Point consists of about three thousand acres: the Academy, professors' houses, hotel, &c., are built upon a large plateau, commanding a magnificent view of the Hudson both ways.

The day I was there, the scene was quite lovely; the n.o.ble stream was as smooth as a mirror; a fleet of rakish schooners lay helpless, their snow-white sails hanging listlessly in the calm; and, as the clear waters reflected everything with unerring truthfulness, another fleet appeared beneath, lying keel to keel with those that floated on the surface. With such beautiful scenery, and so far removed from the bustle and strife of cities, I cannot conceive any situation better adapted for health and study, pleasure and exercise.

The great day of the year is that of the annual review of the cadets by a board of gentlemen belonging to the different States of the Union, and appointed by the Secretary of War; it takes place early in June, I believe, and consequently before the cadets take the tented field. The examination goes on in the library hall, which is a very fine room, and hung with portraits of some of their leading men; the library is a very fair one, and the cadets have always easy access to it, to a.s.sist them in their studies. I could have spent many more hours here with much pleasure, but the setting sun warned us no time was to be lost if we wished to save the train; so, bidding adieu, to the friends who had so kindly afforded me every a.s.sistance in accomplishing the object of my visit, I returned to the great Babylon, after one of the most interesting and gratifying days I had spent in America.[AW]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote AV: By the published cla.s.s-list the numbers at present are 224.]

[Footnote AW: An account of a visit to this Academy, from the pen of Sir J. Alexander, is published in Golburn's _United Service Magazine,_ September, 1854.]

CHAPTER XXIII.

_Watery Highways and Metallic Intercourse._

There is perhaps scarcely any feature in which the United States differ more from the nations of the Old World, than in the unlimited extent of their navigable waters, the value of which has been incalculably increased by the introduction of steam. By ma.s.sing these waters together, we shall be the better able to appreciate their importance; but in endeavouring to do this, I can only offer an approximation as to the size of the lakes, from the want of any official information, in the absence of which I am forced to take my data from authorities that sometimes differ widely. I trust the following statement will be found sufficiently accurate to convey a tolerably correct idea.

The seaboard on each ocean may be estimated at 1500 miles; the Mississippi and its tributaries, at 17,000 miles; Lake Ontario, at 190 miles by 50; Lake Erie, at 260 miles by 60; Lake Huron, at 200 miles by 70; the Georgian Bay, at 160 miles, one half whereof is about 50 broad; Lake Michigan, at 350 miles by 60; and Lake Superior, at 400 miles by 160, containing 32,000 square miles, and almost capable of floating England, if its soil were as buoyant as its credit. All the lakes combined contain about 100,000 square miles. The rate at which the tonnage upon them is increasing, appears quite fabulous. In 1840 it amounted to 75,000 tons, from which it had risen in 1850 to 216,000 tons. Besides the foregoing, there are the eastern rivers, and the deep bays on the ocean board. Leaving, however, these latter out of the question, let us endeavour to realize in one sum the extent of soil benefited by this bountiful provision of Providence; to do which it is necessary to calculate both sides of the rivers and the sh.o.r.es of the lakes, which, of course, must be of greater extent than double the length of the lakes: nevertheless, if we estimate them at only double, we shall find that there are 40,120 miles washed by their navigable waters; and by the const.i.tution of the Union these waters are declared to be "common property, for ever free, without any tax, duty, or impost whatever."

The Americans are not free from the infirmities of human nature; and having got a "good thing" among them, in process of time it became a bone of contention, which it still remains: the Whigs contending that the navigable waters having been declared by the const.i.tution "for ever free," are national waters, and as such, ent.i.tled to have all necessary improvements made at the expense of the Union; their opponents a.s.serting, that rivers and harbours are not national, but local, and that their improvements should be exclusively committed to the respective States. This latter opinion sounds strange indeed, when it is remembered that the Mississippi and its tributaries bathe the sh.o.r.es of some thirteen States, carrying on their bosoms produce annually valued at 55,000,000l. sterling, of which 500,000l. is utterly destroyed from the want of any sufficient steps to remove the dangers of navigation.[AX]

Mr. Ruggles has always been a bold and able advocate of the Whig doctrine of nationality; and, in a lecture delivered by him upon the subject, he states that during the recent struggle to pa.s.s the River and Harbour Bill through the Senate, Mr. Douglas, a popular democrat from Illinois, offered as a subst.i.tute an amendment giving the consent of Congress "to the levy of local tonnage dues, not only by each of the separate States, but even by the authorities of any city or town." One can hardly conceive any man of the most ordinary intellect deliberately proposing to inflict upon his country the curse of an unlimited legion of custom-houses, arresting commerce in every bend of the river and in every bay of the sea; yet such was the case, though happily the proposition was not carried. How inferior does the narrow mind which made the above proposition in 1848 appear, when placed beside the prescient mind which in 1787 proposed and carried, "That navigable waters should be for ever free from any tax or impost whatever!"

One of the most extraordinary instances of routine folly which I ever read or heard of, and which, among so practical and unroutiney a people as the Americans, appears all but incredible, is the following:--Congress having resisted the Harbour Improvement Bill, but acknowledged its duties as to certain lights and beacons, "Ordered, that a beacon should be placed on a rock in the harbour of New Haven. The engineer reported, that the cost of removing the rock would be less than the cost of erecting the beacon; but the President was firm--a great party doctrine was involved, and the rock remains to uphold the beacon--a naked pole, with an empty barrel at its head--a suitable type of the whole cla.s.s of const.i.tutional obstructions."[AY]

The State of New York may fairly claim the credit of having executed one of the most--if not the most--valuable public works in the Union--the Erie Ca.n.a.l. At the time of its first proposal, it received the most stubborn opposition, especially from that portion of the democratic party known by the appellation of "Barn-burners," whose creed is thus described in a pamphlet before me:--"All acc.u.mulations of wealth or power, whether in a.s.sociations, corporate bodies, public works, or in the state itself, are anti-democratic and dangerous.... The construction of public works tends to engender a race of demagogues, who are sure to lead the people into debt and difficulty," &c. The origin of their name I have not ascertained.

Another party, possessing the equally euphonical name of "Old Hunkers,"

are thus described:--"Standing midway between this wing of the Democracy and the Whig party, is that portion who have taken upon themselves the comfortable t.i.tle of 'Old Hunkers.' The etymological origin of this epithet is already lost in obscurity. They embrace a considerable portion of our citizens who are engaged in banking and other active business, but at the same time decided lovers of political place and power. At heart they believe in progress, and are in favour of a liberal prosecution of works of improvement, but most generally disguise it, in order to win the Barn-burners' votes. They are by no means deficient in intelligence or private worth, but are deeply skilled in political tactics; and their creed, if it is rightly understood, is that public works ought to be 'judiciously' prosecuted, provided they themselves can fill all the offices of profit or honour connected with their administration."[AZ]

Such is the description given of these two parties by the pen of a political opponent, who found in them the greatest obstacles to the enlargement of the ca.n.a.l.

The name of De Witt Clinton will ever be a.s.sociated with this great and useful work, by which the whole commerce of the ocean lakes is poured into the Hudson, and thence to the Atlantic. After eight years' hard struggle, and the insane but undivided opposition of the city of New York, the law for the construction of the ca.n.a.l was pa.s.sed in the year 1817. One opponent to the undertaking, when the difficulty of supplying water was started as an objection, a.s.sisted his friend by the observation, "Give yourself no trouble--the tears of our const.i.tuents will fill it." Many others opposed the act on the ground that, by bringing the produce of the States on the lake sh.o.r.es so easily to New York, the property of the State would be depreciated; which appears to me, in other words, to be--they opposed it on the ground of its utility.

Others again grounded their objections on the doubt that the revenue raised by the tolls would be sufficient to justify the expense.

Fortunately, however, the act was carried; and in seven years, the ca.n.a.l, though not quite completed, was receiving tolls to the amount of upwards of 50,000l. In 1836 the ca.n.a.l debt was paid, and produce valued at 13,000,000l.--of which 10,000,000l. belonged to the State of New York--was carried through it; the tolls had risen to 320,000l.

per annum, and 80,000l. of that sum was voted to be appropriated to the general purposes of the State, the total cost having been under one and a half million sterling.

One might imagine that such triumphant success would have made the State ready to vote any reasonable sum of money to enlarge it if required; but the old opponents took the field in force when the proposition was made. Even after a certain sum had been granted, and a contract entered into, they rescinded the grant and paid a forfeit to the contractor of 15,000l. It was in vain that the injury to commerce, resulting from the small dimensions of the ca.n.a.l,[BA] was represented to them; it was in vain that statistics were laid before them, showing that the 7,000,000 miles traversed by the 4500 ca.n.a.l-boats might, if the proposed enlargement took place, reduce the distance traversed to two millions of miles, and the boats employed to 1500; Barn-burners triumphed, and it was decided that the enlargements should only be made out of the surplus proceeds of the tolls and freight; by which arrangement this vast commercial advantage will be delayed for many years, unless the fruits of the ca.n.a.l increase more rapidly than even their present wonderful strides can lead one to antic.i.p.ate, although amounting at this present day to upwards of 1,000,000l. yearly.[BB] Such is a short epitome of a ca.n.a.l through which, when the Sault St. Marie Channel between Lakes Superior and Huron is completed, an unbroken watery highway will bear the rich produce of the West from beyond the 90 meridian of longitude to the Atlantic Ocean.[BC]

Although the Erie is perhaps the ca.n.a.l which bears the most valuable freight, it is by no means the greatest undertaking of the kind in the Union. The Chesapeake and Ohio ca.n.a.l, uniting Washington and Pittsburg, has nearly 400 locks, and is tunnelled four miles through the Alleghanies; and the Pennsylvania ca.n.a.l, as we have already seen in a former chapter, runs to the foot of the same ridge, and being unable to tunnel, uses boats in compartments, and drags them by stationary engines across the mountains. Nothing daunts American energy. If the people are once set upon having a ca.n.a.l, go ahead it must; "can't" is an unknown expression.[BD]

However important the works we have been considering may be to the United States, there can be no doubt that railways are infinitely more so; I therefore trust the following remarks upon them may have some interest.

By the statement of the last Census, it appears that there are no less than 13,266 miles of railroad in operation, and 12,681 in progress, giving a total of nearly 26,000 miles; the cost of those which are completed amounts to a little less than 75,000,000l., and the estimate for those in progress is a little above 44,000,000l. We thus see that the United States will possess 26,000 miles of railroad, at the cost of about 120,000,000l. In England we have 8068 miles of railway, and the cost of these amounts to 273,860,000l., or at the rate of 34,020l.

per mile. This extraordinary difference between the results produced and the expenses incurred requires some little explanation. By the Census report, I learn that the average expense of the railways varies in different parts of the Union; those in the northern, or New England States, costing 9250l. per mile; those in the middle States, 8000l.; and those in the southern and western States, 4000l. per mile. The railway from Charleston to Augusta, on the Savannah River, only cost 1350l. per mile. From the above we see clearly that the expenses of their railways are materially affected by density of population and the consequent value of land, by the comparative absence of forest to supply material, and by the value of labour. If these three causes produce such material differences in a country comparatively unoccupied like the United States, it is but natural to expect that they should be felt with infinitely more force in England. Moreover, as it has been well observed by Captain D. Galton, R.E.,[BE] "railways originated in England, and therefore the experience which is always required to perfect a new system has been chiefly acquired in this country, and has increased the cost of our own railways for the benefit of our neighbours."--Some conception may be formed of the irregular nature of the expense on the lines in England from the statement subjoined, also taken from the same paper, viz.:--

Name of Railway. Land and Total Cost Compensation. Works. Rails. per Mile.

London } and } 113,500 98,000 1,000 253,000[BF]

Blackwall }

Leicester } and } 1,000 5,700 700 8,700[BF]

Swannington }

From the table on the opposite page, it will be seen that the cost of construction and engineering expenses amounted to 35,526,535l. out of 45,051,217l. Taking the railways quoted as representing a fair average of the whole, we ascertain that more than one-fourth of the expense of our railways is incurred for extras comparatively unknown in the United States. At a general meeting of the London and North Western, in 1854, Mr. Glyn mentioned as a fact, that a chairman of a certain line, in giving evidence, had stated that a compet.i.tion for the privilege of making 28 miles of railway had cost 250,000l. Such an item of expenditure can hardly enter into the cost of a railway in a country as thinly populated as the Republic. There are also two other important facts which are apt to be overlooked: first, that a great portion of the railways in the United States are single lines; and secondly, that the labour performed is of a far less solid and enduring character. A most competent civil engineer told me that the slovenly and insecure nature of many of the railway works in the United States was perfectly inconceivable, and most unquestionably would not stand the inspection required in England. A friend of mine has travelled upon a railway in America, between Washington and Virginia, of which a great portion was composed of merely a wooden rail with a bar of iron screwed on to the surface.[BG] The carriages are also far less expensive and comfortable; a carriage in the United States, which carries fifty people, weighs twelve tons, and costs 450l.; in England it may be fairly a.s.serted, that for every fifty people in a mixed train there is a carriage weight of eighteen tons, at a cost of 1500l.

The following Table, extracted from a Return moved for by Lord Brougham, may help to give a better general idea of the reason why our Railroads have been so costly:--

Name of London & Great Midland, South Eastern Total Railway. North Western, and 12 and 6 Western, and 3 branches branches and 12 branches branches

Length/Miles 433 215-3/4 449-1/4 198-1/2 1296-1/2

Cost of Con- struction. 13,302,313 6,961,011 9,064,089 5,375,366 34,702,779

Conveyance and Law Charges. 143,479 105,269 119,344 138,034 506,128

Cost of Land. 3,153,226 1,132,964 1,764,582 1,458,627 7,509,399

Parliamentary Expenses. 555,698 245,139 287,853 420,467 1,509,157

Engineering and Sur- veying. 289,698 201,909 216,110 116,039 823,756

Total Cost. 17,444,414 8,646,292 11,451,978 7,508,533 45,051,217

When all the foregoing facts are taken into consideration, it must appear clear to the reader, that until the efficiency of the work done, the actual number of miles of rail laid down, and the comfort enjoyed are ascertained, any comparison of the relative expenses of the respective railways must be alike useless and erroneous; at the same time, it can scarcely be denied that it is impossible to give the Republic too much credit for the energy, engineering skill, and economy with which they have railway-netted the whole continent. Much remains for them to do in the way of organizing the corps of officials, and in the erection of proper stations, sufficient at all events, to protect travellers from the weather, for which too common neglect the abundance of wood and their admirable machinery leave them without excuse; not that we are without sin ourselves in this last particular. The uncovered station at Warrington is a disgrace to the wealthy London and North Western Company, and the inconveniences for changing trains at Gretna junction is even more disreputable; but these form the rare exceptions, and as a general rule, there cannot be the slightest comparison between the admirably arranged corps of railway servants in England, and the same cla.s.s of men in the States; nor between the excellent stations in this country, and the wretched counterpart thereof in the Republic.

Increased intercourse with Europe will, it is to be hoped, gradually modify these defects; but as long as they continue the absurd system of running only one cla.s.s of carriage, the incongruous hustling together of humanities must totally prevent the travelling in America being as comfortable as that in the Old World.

Let us now turn from that which carries our bodies at the rate of forty miles an hour, to that last giant stride of science by which our words are carried quick as thought itself--the Telegraph. The Americans soon discovered that this invention was calculated to be peculiarly useful to them, owing to their enormous extent of territory; and having come to this conclusion, their energy soon stretched the electric messenger throughout the length and breadth of the land, and by the last Census the telegraphic lines extend 16,735 miles, and the length of wires employed amounts to 23,281. _The Seventh Census_ gives the expense of construction as 30l. per mile.[BH] The systems in use are Morse's, House's, and Bain's; the two former of American invention, the latter imported from this country. Of these three the system most generally employed is Morse's, the others being only worked upon about 2000 miles each. It would be out of place to enter into any scientific explanation of their different methods in these pages; suffice it to say, that all three record their messages on ribands of paper; Morse employing a kind of short-hand symbol which indents the paper; Bain, a set of symbols which by chemical agency discolour the paper instead of indenting it; and House printing Roman letters in full by the discolouring process.