Diary in America, Series Two

It is singular that I have not found in any one book, written by English, French, or German travellers, any remarks made upon a custom which the Americans have of almost entirely living, I may say, in the basement of their houses; and which is occasioned by their difficulties in housekeeping with their insufficient domestic establishments. I say custom of the Americans, as it is the case in nine houses out of ten; only the more wealthy travelled, and refined portion of the community in their cities deviating from the general practice.

I have before observed that, from the wish of display, the American houses are generally speaking, too large for the proprietors and for the domestics which are employed. Vying with each other in appearance, their receiving rooms are splendidly furnished, but they do not live in them.

The basement in the front area, which with us is usually appropriated to the housekeeper’s-room and offices, is in most of their houses fitted up as a dining-room; by no means a bad plan, as it is cool in summer, warm in winter, and saves much trouble to the servants. The dinner is served up in it, direct from the kitchen, with which it communicates. The master of the house, unless he dines late, which is seldom the case in American cities, does not often come home to dinner, and the preparations for the family are of course not very troublesome. But although they go on very well in their daily routine, to give a dinner is to the majority of the Americans really an effort, not from the disinclination to give one, but from the indifference and ignorance of the servants; and they may be excused without being taxed with want of hospitality. It is a very common custom, therefore, for the Americans to invite you to come and “take wine” with them, that is to come after dinner, when you will find cakes, ices, wine, and company, already prepared. But there is something unpleasant in this arrangement; it is too much like the bar of the tavern in the west, with—“Stranger, will you drink?” It must, however, be recollected that there are many exceptions to what I have above stated as the general practice. There are houses in the principal cities of the States where you will sit down to as well-arranged and elegant a dinner as you will find in the best circles of London and Paris; but the proprietors are men of wealth, who have in all probability been on the old continent, and have imbibed a taste for luxury and refinement generally unknown and unfelt in the new hemisphere.

I once had an instance of what has been repeatedly observed by other travellers of the dislike to be considered as servants in this land of equality.

I was on board of a steam-boat from Detroit to Buffalo, and entered into conversation with a young woman who was leaning over the taffrail. She had been in service, and was returning home.

“You say you lived with Mr W.?”

“No, I didn’t,” replied she, rather tartly; “I said I lived with Mrs. W.”

“Oh, I understand. In what situation did you live?”

“I lived in the house.”

“Of course you did, but what as?”

“What as? As a gal should live.”

“I mean what did you do?”

“I helped Mrs W.”

“And now you are tired of helping others?”

“Guess I am.”

“Who is your father?”

“He’s a doctor.”

“A doctor! and he allows you to go out?”

“He said I might please myself.”

“Will he be pleased at your coming home again?”

“I went out to please myself, and I come home to please myself. Cost him nothing for four months; that’s more than all gals can say.”

“And now you’re going home to spend your money?”

“Don’t want to go home for that, it’s all gone.”

I have been much amused with the awkwardness and nonchalant manners of the servants in America. Two American ladies who had just returned from Europe, told me that shortly after their arrival at Boston, a young man had been sent to them from Vermont to do the duty of footman. He had been a day or two in the house, when they rang the bell and ordered him to bring up two glasses of lemonade. He made his appearance with the lemonade, which had been prepared and given to him on a tray by a female servant, but the ladies, who were sitting one at each end of a sofa and conversing, not being ready for it just then, said to him—“We’ll take it presently, John.”—“Guess I can wait,” replied the man, deliberately taking his seat on the sofa between them, and placing the tray on his knees.

When I was at Tremont House, I was very intimate with a family who were staying there. One morning we had been pasting something, and the bell was rung by one of the daughters, a very fair girl with flaxen hair, who wanted some water to wash her hands. An Irish waiter answered the bell. “Did you ring, ma’am?”—“Yes, Peter, I want a little warm water.”—“Is it to shave with, miss?” inquired Paddy, very gravely.

But the emigration from the old continent is of little importance compared to the migration which takes place in the country itself.

As I have before observed, all America is working west. In the north, the emigration by the lakes is calculated at 100,000 per annum, of which about 30,000, are foreigners; the others are the natives of New England and the other eastern States, who are exchanging from a sterile soil to one “flowing with milk and honey.” But those who migrate are not all of them agriculturalists; the western States are supplied from the north-eastern with their merchants, doctors, schoolmasters, lawyers, and, I may add, with their members of congress, senators, and governors. New England is a school, a sort of manufactory of various professions, fitted for all purposes—a talent bazaar, where you have every thing at choice; in fact, what Mr Tocqueville says is very true, and the States fully deserve the compliment.

“The civilisation of New England has been like a beacon lit upon a hill, which, after it has diffused its warmth around, tinges the distant horizon with its glory.”

From the great extent of this emigration to the west, it is said that the female population in the New England states is greater than the male. In the last returns of Massachusetts the total population was given, but males and females were not given separately, an omission which induces one to believe that such was the truth.8

But it is not only from the above States that the migration takes place; the fondness for “shifting right away,” the eagerness for speculation, and the by no means exaggerated reports of the richness of the western country, induce many who are really well settled in the States of New York, Pennsylvania, and other fertile States, to sell all and turn to the west. The State of Ohio alone is supposed to have added many more than a million to her population since the last census. An extensive migration of white population takes place from North and South Carolina and the adjacent States, while from the eastern Slave States, there is one continual stream of black population pouring in, frequently the cavalcade headed by the masters of their families.

As the numerous tributary streams pour their waters into the Mississippi, so do rivers of men from every direction continually and unceasingly flow into the west. It is indeed the promised land, and that the whites should have been detained in the eastern States so long without a knowledge of the fertile soil beyond the Alleghanines, reminds you of the tarrying of the Jewish nation in the wilderness before they were permitted to take possession of their inheritance.

Here there is matter for deep reflection. I have already given my opinion upon the chances of the separation of the northern and Southern States upon the question of slavery; but it appears to me, that while the eyes of their legislators have been directed with so much interest to the prospects arising from the above question, that their backs have been turned to a danger much more imminent, and which may be attended by no less consequences than a convulsion of the whole Union.

The Southern and Northern States may separate on the question of slavery, and yet be in reality better friends than they were before: but what will be the consequence, when the Western States become, as they assuredly will, so populous and powerful, as to control the Union; for not only population, but power and wealth, are fast working their way to the west. New Orleans will be the first maritime port in the universe, and Cincinnati will not only be the Queen of the West, but Queen of the Western World. Then will come the real clashing of interests, and the Eastern States must be content to succumb and resign their present power, or the Western will throw them off, as an useless appendage to her might. This may at present appear chimerical to some, and would be considered by many others as too far distant; but be it remembered, that ten years in America, is as a century; and even allowing the prosperity of the United States to be checked, as very probably it may soon be, by any quarrel with a foreign nation, the Western States will not be those who will suffer. Far removed from strife, the population hardly interfered with, when the Eastern resources are draining, they will continue to advance in population, and to increase in wealth. I refer not to the Slave States bordering on the Mississippi, although I consider that they would suffer little from a war, as neither England, nor any other nation, will ever be so unwise in future as to attack in a quarter, where she would have extended the olive branch, even if it were not immediately accepted. Whether America is engaged in war, therefore, or remains in peace, the Western States must, and will soon be the arbiters, and dictate as they please to the Eastern.

At present, they may be considered as infants, not yet of age, and the Eastern States are their guardians; the profits of their produce are divided between them and the merchants of the Eastern cities, who receive at least thirty per cent. as their share. This must be the case at present, when the advances of the Eastern capitalists are required by the cotton growers, who are precisely in the same position with the Eastern States, as the West India planters used to be with the merchants of London and Liverpool, to whom they consigned their cargoes for advances received. But the Western States (to follow up the metaphor) will soon be of age, and no longer under control: even last year, vessels were freighted direct from England to Vicksburg, on the Mississippi; in a few years, there will be large importing houses in the Far West, who will have their goods direct from England at one half the price which they now pay for them, when forwarded from New York, by canal, and other conveyances.9 Indeed, a very little inquiry will prove, that the prosperity of the Eastern free States depends in a great measure upon the Western and Southern. The Eastern States are the receivers and transporters of goods, and the carriers of most of the produce of the Union. They advance money on the crops, and charge high interest, commissions, etcetera. The transport and travelling between the Eastern, Southern, and Western States, are one great source of this prosperity, from the employment on the canals, rail roads, and steam boats.

All these are heavy charges to the Western States, and can be avoided by shipping direct from, and sending their produce direct to, the Old Continent. As the Western States advance in wealth, so will they advance in power, and in proportion as they so do, will the Eastern States recede, until they will be left in a small minority, and will eventually have little voice in the Union.

Here, then, is a risk of convulsion; for the clashing of interests, next to a war, is the greatest danger to which a democracy can be exposed. In a democracy, every one legislates, and every one legislates for his own interests. The Eastern States will still be wealthy and formidable, from their population; but the commerce of the principal Eastern cities will decrease, and they will have little or no staple produce to return to England, or elsewhere, whereas the Western States can produce every thing that the heart of man can desire, and can be wholly independent of them. They have, in the West, every variety of coal and mineral, to a boundless extent; a rich alluvial soil, hardly to be exhausted by bad cultivation, and wonderful facilities of transport; independent of the staple produce of cotton, they might supply the whole world with grain; sugar they already cultivate; the olive flourishes; wine is already produced on the banks of the Ohio, and the prospect of raising silk is beyond calculation. In a few days, the manufactures of the Old World can find their way from the mouth of the Mississippi by its thousand tributary streams, which run like veins through every portion of the country, to the confines of Arkansas and Missouri, to the head of navigation at St. Peter’s, on again to Wisconsin, Michigan, and to the Northern lakes, at a much cheaper rate than they are supplied at present.

One really is lost in admiration when one surveys this great and glorious Western country, and contemplates the splendour and riches to which it must ultimately arrive.

As soon as the Eastern States are no longer permitted to remain the factors of the Western, they must be content to become manufacturing states, and probably will compete with England. The Western States, providentially, I may say, are not likely to be manufacturers to any great extent, since they have not water powers; the valley of the Mississippi is an alluvial flat, and although the Missouri and Mississippi are swift streams, in general the rivers are sluggish, and, at all events, they have not the precipitate falls of water necessary for machinery, and which abound in the North-eastern States; indeed, if the Western States were to attempt to manufacture, as well as to produce, they would spoil the market for their own produce. Whatever may be the result, whether the Eastern States submit quietly to be shorn of their greatness, (a change which must take place,) or to contest the point until it ends in a separation, this is certain, that the focus of American wealth and power will eventually be firmly established in the Free States on the other side of the Alleghany mountains.