He Has
Not Been Placed Beyond The Pale Of Public Favor By The Record Which
Has Been Made Of His Public Misdeeds.
He is decried by the
Democrats because he is a Republican, and by the anti-abolitionists
because he is an Abolitionist; but he is not decried because he has
shown himself to be dishonest in the service of his government.
He
was dismissed from his command in the West, but men on his side of
the question declare that he was so dismissed because his political
opponents had prevailed. Now, at the moment that I am writing this,
men are saying that the President must give him another command. He
is still a major-general in the army of the States, and is as
probable a candidate as any other that I could name for the next
Presidency.*
* Since this was written, General Fremont has been restored to high
military command, and now holds rank and equal authority with
McClellan and Halleck. In fact, the charges made against him by the
committee of the House of Representatives have not been allowed to
stand in his way. He is politically popular with a large section of
the nation, and therefore it has been thought well to promote him to
high place. Whether he be fit for such place either as regards
capability or integrity, seems to be considered of no moment.
The same argument must be used with reference to the other gentlemen
named. Mr. Welles is still a cabinet minister and Secretary of the
Navy. It has been found impossible to keep Mr. Cameron in the
cabinet, but he was named as the minister of the States government
to Russia, after the publication of the Van Wyck report, when the
result of his old political friendship with Mr. Alexander Cummings
was well known to the President who appointed him and to the Senate
who sanctioned his appointment. The individual corruption of any
one man - of any ten men - is not much. It should not be insisted on
loudly by any foreigner in making up a balance-sheet of the virtues
and vices of the good and bad qualities of any nation. But the
light in which such corruption is viewed by the people whom it most
nearly concerns is very much. I am far from saying that democracy
has failed in America. Democracy there has done great things for a
numerous people, and will yet, as I think, be successful. But that
doctrine as to the necessity of smartness must be eschewed before a
verdict in favor of American democracy can be pronounced. "It
behoves a man to be smart, sir." In those words are contained the
curse under which the States government has been suffering for the
last thirty years. Let us hope that the people will find a mode of
ridding themselves of that curse. I, for one, believe that they
will do so.
CHAPTER VIII.
BACK TO BOSTON.
From Louisville we returned to Cincinnati, in making which journey
we were taken to a place called Seymour, in Indiana, at which spot
we were to "make connection" with the train running on the
Mississippi and Ohio line from St. Louis to Cincinnati. We did make
the connection, but were called upon to remain four hours at Seymour
in consequence of some accident on the line. In the same way, when
going eastward from Cincinnati to Baltimore a few days later, I was
detained another four hours at a place called Crestline, in Ohio.
On both occasions I spent my time in realizing, as far as that might
be possible, the sort of life which men lead who settle themselves
at such localities. Both these towns - for they call themselves
towns - had been created by the railways. Indeed this has been the
case with almost every place at which a few hundred inhabitants have
been drawn together in the Western States. With the exception of
such cities as Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, settlers can
hardly be said to have chosen their own localities. These have been
chosen for them by the originators of the different lines of
railway. And there is nothing in Europe in any way like to these
Western railway settlements. In the first place, the line of the
rails runs through the main street of the town, and forms not
unfrequently the only road. At Seymour I could find no way of
getting away from the rails unless I went into the fields. At
Crestline, which is a larger place, I did find a street in which
there was no railroad, but it was deserted, and manifestly out of
favor with the inhabitants. As there were railway junctions at both
these posts, there were, of course, cross-streets, and the houses
extended themselves from the center thus made along the lines,
houses being added to houses at short intervals as new-corners
settled themselves down. The panting, and groaning, and whistling
of engines is continual; for at such places freight trains are
always kept waiting for passenger trains, and the slower freight
trains for those which are called fast. This is the life of the
town; and indeed as the whole place is dependent on the railway, so
is the railway held in favor and beloved. The noise of the engines
is not disliked, nor are its puffings and groanings held to be
unmusical. With us a locomotive steam-engine is still, as it were,
a beast of prey, against which one has to be on one's guard - in
respect to which one specially warns the children. But there, in
the Western States, it has been taken to the bosoms of them all as a
domestic animal; no one fears it, and the little children run about
almost among its wheels. It is petted and made much of on all
sides - and, as far as I know, it seldom bites or tears. I have not
heard of children being destroyed wholesale in the streets, or of
drunken men becoming frequent sacrifices.
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