At The Hotels In The New
Hampshire Mountains It Is Customary To Find Black Bears Chained To
Poles.
These bears are caught among the hills, and are thus
imprisoned for the amusement of the hotel guests.
"Them
Southerners," said my friend, "are jist as one as that 'ere bear.
We feeds him and gives him a house, and his belly is ollers full.
But then, jist becase he's a black bear, we're ollers a poking him
with sticks, and a' course the beast is a kinder riled. He wants
to be back to the mountains. He wouldn't have his belly filled,
but he'd have his own way. It's jist so with them Southerners."
It is of no use proving to any man or to any nation that they have
got all they should want, if they have not got all that they do
want. If a servant desires to go, it is of no avail to show him
that he has all he can desire in his present place. The
Northerners say that they have given no offense to the Southerners,
and that therefore the South is wrong to raise a revolution. The
very fact that the North is the North, is an offence to the South.
As long as Mr. and Mrs. Jones were one in heart and one in feeling,
having the same hopes and the same joys, it was well that they
should remain together. But when it is proved that they cannot so
live without tearing out each other's eyes, Sir Cresswell
Cresswell, the revolutionary institution of domestic life,
interferes and separates them. This is the age of such
separations. I do not wonder that the North should use its logic
to show that it has received cause of offense but given none; but I
do think that such logic is thrown away. The matter is not one for
argument. The South has thought that it can do better without the
North than with it; and if it has the power to separate itself, it
must be conceded that it has the right.
And then as to that question of honesty. Whatever men do they
certainly should do honestly. Speaking broadly, one may say that
the rule applies to nations as strongly as to individuals, and
should be observed in politics as accurately as in other matters.
We must, however, confess that men who are scrupulous in their
private dealings do too constantly drop those scruples when they
handle public affairs, and especially when they handle them at
stirring moments of great national changes. The name of Napoleon
III. stands fair now before Europe, and yet he filched the French
empire with a falsehood. The union of England and Ireland is a
successful fact, but nevertheless it can hardly be said that it was
honestly achieved. I heartily believe that the whole of Texas is
improved in every sense by having been taken from Mexico and added
to the Southern States, but I much doubt whether that annexation
was accomplished with absolute honesty. We all reverence the name
of Cavour, but Cavour did not consent to abandon Nice to France
with clean hands. When men have political ends to gain they regard
their opponents as adversaries, and then that old rule of war is
brought to bear, deceit or valor - either may be used against a foe.
Would it were not so! The rascally rule - rascally in reference to
all political contests - is becoming less universal than it was.
But it still exists with sufficient force to be urged as an excuse;
and while it does exist it seems almost needless to show that a
certain amount of fraud has been used by a certain party in a
revolution. If the South be ultimately successful, the fraud of
which it may have been guilty will be condoned by the world.
The Southern or Democratic party of the United States had, as all
men know, been in power for many years. Either Southern Presidents
had been elected, or Northern Presidents with Southern politics.
The South for many years had had the disposition of military
matters, and the power of distributing military appliances of all
descriptions. It is now alleged by the North that a conspiracy had
long been hatching in the South with the view of giving to the
Southern States the power of secession whenever they might think
fit to secede; and it is further alleged that President after
President, for years back, has unduly sent the military treasure of
the nation away from the North down to the South, in order that the
South might be prepared when the day should come. That a President
with Southern instincts should unduly favor the South, that he
should strengthen the South, and feel that arms and ammunition were
stored there with better effect than they could be stored in the
North, is very probable. We all understand what is the bias of a
man's mind, and how strong that bias may become when the man is not
especially scrupulous. But I do not believe that any President
previous to Buchanan sent military materials to the South with the
self-acknowledged purpose of using them against the Union. That
Buchanan did so, or knowingly allowed this to be done, I do
believe, and I think that Buchanan was a traitor to the country
whose servant he was and whose pay he received.
And now, having said so much in the way of introduction, I will
begin my journey.
CHAPTER II.
NEWPORT - RHODE ISLAND.
We - the we consisting of my wife and myself - left Liverpool for
Boston on the 24th August, 1861, in the Arabia, one of Cunard's
North American mail packets. We had determined that my wife should
return alone at the beginning of winter, when I intended to go to a
part of the country in which, under the existing circumstances of
the war, a lady might not feel herself altogether comfortable. I
proposed staying in America over the winter, and returning in the
spring; and this programme I have carried out with sufficient
exactness.
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