The Homes of the New World/Letter XXXVII.
LETTER XXXVII.
LETTER TO HER MAJESTY, CAROLINA AMELIA,
QUEEN DOWAGER OF DENMARK.
Cuba, West Indies, April.
Your Majesty.—“Write to me from America!” were your Majesty's last kind words to me at parting, when I had the pleasure of seeing your Majesty at Sorgenfri. And these words have accompanied me on my long journey, as one of the beautiful and precious memories for which I have to thank good Denmark; because they remind me of the great kindness which the Queen of Denmark showed to me. I have wished to obey them by presenting to your Majesty, from the soil of the New World, some very beautiful spiritual flowers, not unworthy of those roses which your Majesty's own beautiful hand gave me, at the moment of parting, from your Majesty's garden. But it was long before I found sufficient freedom of mind, or tranquillity to be able to put together, from the rich Flora of America, anything resembling a bouquet or a garland which it seemed to me could give pleasure to your Majesty, and with less I would not be satisfied.
I now write, beautiful and good Queen of Denmark, from the Queen of the Antilles, from the beautiful tropical Isla de Cuba. And whilst a glowing sun ascends over groves of coffee and bananas, on Caffatal la Concordia, my present home, whilst rose-coloured flamingoes stretch out their wings to cool them in the morning wind; and little negro children, naked as God created them, leap and tumble about the green meadow, where smaragdus-green humming birds flutter gaily around the hybiscus flowers; I wing my way, in spirit, to “the green islands,” to the cool, shadowy dwelling where I heard the nightingales sing in the beech-woods around your Majesty, and convey thither, in these lines, my tribute of respect and devotion.
I can from Cuba, better than from any other point on this side the globe, speak of the New World, because Cuba lies between North and South America: the Anglo-Norman and the Spanish races here meet, for good and for evil, secretly and openly combating for dominion; and in the midst of this wonderously beautiful scenery, which belongs to the tropics (beneath which the greater part of South America is situated), beneath the tropical sun, among palm-trees and coffee plantations, one sees already the homes of the North American, railroads, and shops. The Anglo-American “go-a-head” here comes in contact with the motto of the Spanish Creole, poco-a-poco; and—will run it down sooner or later, that is not difficult to foresee.
While the impression of the scenery of North America, its people, and states, was still clear in the soul, it was a great refreshment to receive in this beautiful island, so strongly contrasting a picture as that of the scenery of South America, its people, and its states. For both belong essentially to the picture of the New World; and North America presents in scenery, culture, and manners, merely one half thereof. That Southern half, with its yet unorganised states, its chaotic popular life, its rich, grand scenery, its river Amazon, and its Andes, its palms, and its eternal summer, will still, in contact with the Northern portion, develope a glorious life,—not so strong, perhaps, but more gentle and beautiful. And both will become one in that great human kingdom which is growing up between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, between the North Sea and the South. For although South America does not as yet show either a people or character, which demands esteem or admiration; although it as yet appears subject to nature instead of elevating itself above her, is enervated by the sun instead of being inspired by its glowing and pure light, yet we still know that it was in this climate, beneath this sun, these palms, that the worshippers of the sun, the Peruvians, and those noble Aztecs lived; that it was in this climate, beneath this sun, and these palms in the East, that the most ancient wisdom, the most ancient poetry, was born on the earth; the Vedas of the Hindoos, their temples, the ruins of which still excite our admiration, their songs and poems Sakuntala Urvasi and Vikrama, and many more, graceful and noble, such as only could be composed beneath palm-trees and in an atmosphere such as this; those intellectual legends, the game of chess, the airy dance of the Bayadere, and many another art and science for the beautifying of life, which could only have birth where the life of nature holds its holiday. And that which has once flourished, may under similar circumstances, again come forth in new, or still more elevated forms. The Oriental tropical zone has produced its bloom; that of the West will bring forth hers in the light of Christianity. As yet we can merely surmise what it will one day become, surmise that from the glorious natural life which now is its most beautiful production.
But it was about the people and the states of North America that your Majesty wished to hear, and of these I will proceed to speak; for, however much your Majesty loves the beautiful in nature, I know that your Majesty loves still more that which gives to human weal and human happiness a still higher significance. Is not your Majesty one of the mothers of humanity, one of the noble and the tender, who embrace the young generation in order to elevate them, and bring them nearer to the father of love and perfection? Was it not surrounded by fatherless and motherless children, who looked up to your Majesty as to a mother, that I first saw your Majesty, that Christmas-eve, when the Christmas candles burned in the northern pine, for the joy of the children, and in honour of the heavenly friend of childhood! And have not I, more than once, heard your Majesty express the wish and the hope for “a community on earth in which all the members should have equal opportunity for the attainment of virtue, knowledge, a life of activity and prosperity: a community in which goodness and capacity should constitute the highest aristocracy, and in which the highest rank should depend upon the highest human worth?”
And, however far the United States of America may be from having attained to this ideal of social life, still it cannot be denied that it is at this that they are aiming, towards this to which they are daily more and more advancing, more perhaps than any other nation on the earth. This refers especially to the Northern and the Free States of the Union, which are peopled principally by descendants of the oldest Pilgrims, and whence the Quaker State has everywhere sent abroad its messengers of “the inward light,” of freedom, peace, and universal brotherhood. These Northern States are founded on enthusiasm for religion and human rights. And upon this foundation have they grown great and powerful, and still grow day by day, extending their dominion more and more.
The Southern States acknowledge, it is true, the same principles of freedom, human rights, and human well-being as their aim also; but they bear a fetter which impedes their progress on the path of human and social development, and which they in part will not, and in part cannot, now throw off, namely, the institution of slavery. They have bound the negro as a slave, and the negro-slave binds them; prevents them from developing education, industry, and every good social institution which gives strength and greatness to a nation.
It is a pure and noble joy to behold the development of the life of freedom in the Northern States; and in spite of various pernicious off-shoots, which as yet run wild and produce disorder, the whole presents a glorious spectacle. For the whole movement of the social system tends upwards; it is a growth of cultivation and improvement which embraces all classes, every branch of activity, and which extends to the most remote points, and includes the most humble individual. It corresponds with the glorious image of our mythological Ygdrasil, of which every single leaf derives vital aliment from the common root, and is watered by the Norna's hand from the renovating fountain of Urda.
Besides, the community has come clearly to feel within itself, and has clearly and forcibly expressed the same in word and deed, that it is the duty of the State so to provide for every individual member that he may become a perfected human being.
Hence the comprehensive and excellent system of popular education which commenced in the “pilgrim” State of Massachusetts, and which has since been adopted, and is being adopted, with modifications and improvements, in all the Free States of the Union. On all hands have arisen free public schools, where children, boys and girls, in separate schools, receive free education, to fifteen or sixteen years of age, when they may, from these schools enter the high-schools and academies, unless they prefer to enter practical life with that amount of knowledge which the public schools have given them, and which does not appear to be so insignificant, as many of the “best men,” and the first statesmen have not studied in any other schools than in these and—in that of life.
I would, before everything else, present to the womanly and maternal mind of your Majesty these great and increasingly developing institutions for the education of the rising generation, which are open to the younger members of the entire community, and which are advantageous to the children of the indigent still more than to the children of the wealthy, and, together with this picture, that of the increasing importance of the young woman in society as the teacher, and that not alone in families and homes. I would present to your Majesty's view those large, cheerful school-rooms which are now to be met with in the public schools from Massachusetts to Wisconsin and Illinois, from New Hampshire to Ohio, where light and air obtain free access,—school-rooms full of lovely children with bright, animated glances, and where the young teachers, the daughters of New England, and the honour of New England, refined and graceful in manners and appearance, stand at the same time firmer to their principles than the earth's Alps and Andes on their foundations, and govern their troops of young republicans easier and better than any stern M.A. with thundering voice and ferule.
The youthful daughters of America in the Free States of the Union are not kept in ignorance and inactivity, as are still the greater number of the young girls of Europe. They are early taught that they must rely upon God and themselves, if they would win esteem and independent worth; they leave home early to enter the schools, where opportunity is afforded them to advance as far as young men in study and the sciences, and where they prove that the sciences which have hitherto been considered as too difficult for them, are as easy for them to acquire as that superficial knowledge and accomplishment to which hitherto their education has been restricted. They distinguish themselves in mathematics, algebra, the physical sciences, the ancient languages, at least in Latin, and many other hitherto interdicted branches of learning; and their written compositions, in verse and prose, show an unusual purity of style, considering their age, clearness of thought, and expansion of mental horizon. It is evident that the spirit of the New World has unbound their intellectual wings and permitted them a free flight over the fields of earth. The American woman is being formed for a citizen of the world; she is teaching herself to embrace the whole of humanity. Such is evidently the intention of her school education, even if an adequate system be yet wanting. Girls may from these schools also advance into the high schools and ladies' academies, in which they can graduate and take diplomas, and, provided with these, go out as teachers over the whole Union.
Such are, in particular, the daughters of New England, who seem to have a peculiar vocation for the office of teacher, which they adopt most frequently from love, rather than necessity. Everywhere throughout the United States, in the west as well as in the north and south of the Union, wherever schools are in operation, you meet with young teachers from the States of New England, that is to say, from those States which are peopled by the descendants of the Pilgrim fathers. And the value of women as teachers of the young increases more and more in America.
But it is not merely as teachers that the spirit of the New World seeks to prepare for woman a freer development of her being, and a wider sphere of activity; it seeks to open for her free paths in arts and manufactures.
“If I must choose between giving education to the men or the women of a country, I would leave the men and begin with the women,” said one of the legislators of this country to me one day.
And I believe that I do not say too much, when I maintain that this mode of thinking is participated by the greater number of men in the United States; so strong is the conviction of the power of woman's influence on the rising generation.
The advancement of the higher development of woman, and her importance in society, is one of the most remarkable features of the New World's cultivation, its greatest merit and its principal labour for the future. All that is now wanting is merely that it does not stop half-way. I do not believe that the right-mindedness and chivalry of the men will fail, if the women will, with discretion and noble earnestness, take the place which society here is willing to assign to them.
It is with justice that we are accustomed to estimate the measure of a nation's cultivation by the estimation in which woman is held, and the place which she occupies in society, because it requires no small degree of spiritual culture to value a being whose highest power is of a spiritual character. The people of America have shown themselves to be possessed of this, and it will increase in the same proportion as the women of the country make themselves deserving of it.
I mentioned a growth of cultivation and improvement which in the Free States embraces the entire community, and spoke of popular education as its most essential power. This, and many institutions favourable to human development, belong to these States; but, besides these, there is a movement, a free development in popular life, which may be compared to the circulation of the sap in a vigorous, growing tree. Free associations now take the place of the old guilds and corporations, as regulators and promoters of all the various interests and functions of the social system. Thus have religious, moral, and industrial corporations arisen within the great community, and in faithful adherence to it, at the same time that the goodwill and the divers powers and talents of each individual are made available to its highest interests. The United States represent, at the same time, the highest development of the individual and the public at large. This internal, social movement of humanity is assisted from without, by the free circulation and communication which is afforded by the numerous navigable rivers of North America, upon which thousands of steam-boats go and come; and in still later years by the railroads and telegraphic lines which extend over all parts of America, from State to State, and from city to city. The great diffusion of newspapers within the country, of every book which wins the love of the popular heart, of that religious popular literature which, in millions of small works, “tracts,” or tales, is poured forth over the nation like morning dew or a shower of manna; these all belong essentially to this life-giving circulation, and wherever the Anglo-American advances, the same cultivation, the same vitality arises. He accomplishes with astonishing certainty his mission as cultivator of the New World, and the framer of free, self-governing communities; and not even the institution of slavery is able to withstand the power of cultivation which advances with him over the earth.
Wherever the sons and daughters of the pilgrims find their way, there are established homes, schools, and churches, shops, and legislative assemblies; the free press, hotels for strangers, and asylums for the unfortunate or the orphan; there is the prison converted into the reformatory institution, into a new school for the ignorant and depraved children of the earth. Wherever they come, they acknowledge aloud the name and doctrines of the Master who is “the way, the truth, and the life.” The right of the Anglo-American people to become a great people consists in its Christianity. It is the spirit of the World's Redeemer which makes it the World's Conqueror.
When we leave the North-eastern States, where first the standards of religion and freedom were planted, and proceed westward to the limits of the wilderness beyond the Mississippi, where the Indian still hunts the deer, erects his wigwam, and kindles his nocturnal fires, then it is that we are first aware of the advance and mode of this new cultivation.
Your majesty has certainly often read descriptions of the wonderful waterfall, Niagara; of the almost miraculous prairies of the West, where the sun mirrors his image in an ocean of sunflowers waving in the wind; of the rapid growth of states and cities in the great West; of the great river Mississippi, and the gold mines of California, and many other lions of the great West.
But less known are the first steps of cultivation, its first impress on the wilderness; and this it was together with the great spectacle of nature, which most attracted my earliest attention. For it is amusing to observe the first steps of the child, and how he advances and grows to man's estate. It is an image worthy the regards of a motherly queen.
The trees fall before the axe along the banks of the river—and rivers everywhere abound in North America—a little log-house is erected on the skirts of the forest and the banks of the river; a woman stands in the door-way with a little chubby child in her arms. The husband has dug up the earth around the house, and planted maize; beyond, graze a couple of fat cows and some sheep in the free, unenclosed meadow-land. The husband tills the land and milks the cows, and performs the whole out-of-doors labour. The wife remains in the house, and takes care of child and home; nor can any woman do it better. The cleanliness and order of her person are reflected by everything within the house. No neater nor more excellent home can be found on the face of the earth than that of the American woman, even of the poorest. No wonder that the husband is happy within it; that the American knows few other pleasures than those which he finds in his home, no other goal of bliss on earth than that of possessing a good wife—a good home!
The log-house has been erected in the forest, and not far from it are erected, in the same way, two or three other log-houses; they all are furnished with excellent beds, and there always lies on the shelf a Bible, a hymn-book, and some other religious books. A little further off stands a somewhat larger log-house, where a dozen or two children—the half-wild offspring of the wilderness—are assembled. This is the school. The room is poor, and without furniture; but the walls are covered with maps of all parts of the globe, and in the hands of the children are books which present them with views over the whole world, and reading-books which contain the noblest pearls of literature, in paragraphs, short essays, narratives, poems, &c. Anon other houses spring up; some of framed timber, some of stone; they become more and more ornamental; they surround themselves with fruit-trees and flowers; you see a chapel of wood arising at the same time with the wooden houses; but when the stone houses come, there come also a stone church and a states-house. The fields around are covered with harvests; flocks and herds increase, and before long you behold one or two steam-boats advancing up the river; they lie-to at the new buildings; they purchase wares and cattle, and leave newspapers behind them. In two or three years there is here a little city of two thousand souls; motherly women institute Sunday schools in the church, and assemble the little children to instruct them in Christianity, and establish an asylum for orphaned little ones. Shops spring up at the same time with the school and the church, and they constitute, together with the printing-press and the states-house, the ensign of the Anglo-American; and wherever he plants this, thence retreats the Red Man, now almost without resistance, with his wigwam and his subjected women, and goes to light his fires farther off in the wilderness. He knows, by experience, that the new erections which he beholds will, within a quarter of a century, become a great city with its fifty thousand inhabitants or more, and that the whole region round about will be full of a people alike potent in war as in peaceful civilisation.
I have spoken of the progress of the new man in the West; but I must, for the sake of justice, also say a few words about the old man, for ah! the old progresses equally with the new, and he is here also, on the new earth, the same old sinner, and drinks, and quarrels, and gambles, and steals, and makes a fool of himself, and is puffed up with pride, tout comme chez nous; and in the great West, on the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, perhaps a little more so, because many unconscientious adventurers are collected there, and the counteracting powers have not yet gained an ascendancy. Freedom is still sowing its wild oats here. One great difficulty in the cultivation of the West is the great emigration thither of a large portion of the most rude and indigent population of Europe, as well as the unfortunate children of the Eastern American States. By degrees, however, this population becomes orderly under the influence of the New World's cultivation, and with every passing year the new Adam gains a greater ascendancy over the old, in proportion as the better emigration from the Pilgrim States gains a firmer footing, and with this, schools, churches, and the better periodical press, take their place.
The valley of the Mississippi has room for about two hundred millions of inhabitants, and the American Union has a heart large enough, and sufficient power to take under her charge all strangers, all neglected or unfortunate children of the earth, and to give them a portion of her earth and of her spiritual life.
This Mississippi valley—the central region of North America—presents in its entire extent all the principal features which distinguish the great realm of North America, in which I also, as far as people and scenery are concerned, include the English colonies in the North. It includes, from the springs of the Mississippi, in the northern Minnesota, to the South, where the great river empties itself into the Mexican Gulf, every climate, with the exception of the most northerly, all productions which this hemisphere brings forth, all people who inhabit her soil. The Indian is still found in prosperity in Minnesota; pine-forests are native there, and winter is vigorous as with us. There are glorious springs of water, rivers and lakes abounding in fish, rich hunting-ground, and good arable land, though as yet untilled. The Norwegian and the Dane have begun to turn it up; but the Colonies proper of these nations and the Swedes are to the south of Minnesota, in the States of Wisconsin and Illinois, where the natural scenery is that of a grand and cheerful pastoral. A new Scandinavia is here growing up by degrees; and it is a joy to me to be able to testify that our countrymen are universally regarded as a valuable, industrious, and good people. They are obliged to work hard and to dispense with many comforts at the commencement; but the more the number of labourers increases, the lighter becomes labour, the richer the harvests, which the universally productive soil yields to them. The Norwegians constitute the agricultural core of the Scandinavian population; the Danes, in comparison with these, are few in number, and I have found here that the Danes more generally devote themselves to trade than agriculture.
The great corn-region proper of North America begins in Wisconsin and Illinois; and that immense corn-district, which is continued on both sides of the Mississippi to the States of Kentucky and Missouri, is said to be capable of producing bread-stuffs for all the States of the Union, that is to say, when it becomes fully cultivated. One sees there indeed, at the present time, vast plains waving with golden maize, but still vaster upon which as yet, only tall grass and wild flowers grow. Germans and the Irish flock to this region. Half the population of the larger cities consists of Germans; they have their concerts, their shooting-grounds, their dances, and they drink beer as in the old world, whilst they participate in the legislative and commercial life of the new.
Lower down, in Kentucky and Missouri, commences the region of cotton. There cotton plantations and slave-villages are to be seen. To this succeeds the region of the sugar-cane, with warm summer winds and the sun in the middle of winter, beautiful plantations, and groves of orange and magnolia trees. Here is Louisiana, the most southern of the Mississippi States.
Here we meet with the French and Spaniards, as well as people from all the countries of the world, all submitting to the laws and government of the Anglo-American.
These southern States present, in their institution and scenery, a peculiar feature in the life of the United States. The traveller in these southern States is not edified; no ideal of social life elevates here his mind and his glance: no public endeavour is made here, as in the individual and governmental life of the Free States. But he is amused by the many novel and unusual objects which present themselves to his gaze; he meets many unusually cultivated and agreeable people, shining out like diamonds in the sand. A new world of nature full of treasures is opened to him—the enchantment of the peculiar scenery of the south, the delicious character of the atmosphere during the greater part of the year, the primeval forests along the banks of the Red rivers, with their thousand varieties of trees, flowers, and creeping vegetation; the song of the hundred-tongued bird, the nightingale of America (Turdus polyglottus), and the pleasant but monotonous whistling “Whip-poor-will;” the many glorious trees, live-oaks, with their long waving mosses, the magnolia, with its large snow-white flowers, cypresses, tulip and amber-trees, and fan-palms; the richness of sunshine, flower odours, birds' songs, and delicious fruits; and, in the midst of this beautiful natural scenery, the negro people, with their peculiar life, which slavery cannot obliterate; their religious festivals, hymns, and cheerful songs;—the traveller is not edified and animated, as in the North of the Union, by noble and magnificent efforts and institutions, but he rests and enjoys, when he is not disturbed by any new, bitter experience of that injustice which the laws here give rise to, or provoked by persons who, contrary to truth and sound reason, justify it as a good and allowable thing.
The contest respecting slavery is the great contested question of America, and will continue to be so, unless slavery ceases to exist there; because this institution is too evident a lie against the American social principle, too crying an outrage against justice and humanity.
Still it must be conceded that the social spirit of America has of late years tended greatly to ameliorate the condition of the slaves, and it may with truth be stated that this improves year by year. The nobler popular feeling in the Southern States is doing, at this moment, a great deal towards raising the condition of the black population, spiritually as well as temporally. The gospel is preached more and more generally to the slaves—especially in those States where the religious life was strong of old, Georgia and Carolina—and wherever it is preached, there is the slave elevated; there he forms religious communities, and there he himself preaches the Saviour and redemption with joy and with power, and sings in honour of the Saviour hymns, of the beauty and the harmony of which no idea can be formed by those who merely judge of the musical talent of the African from the songs and screeches of his wild condition. Yes, if the legislation of the Southern States would follow in the steps of the gospel, a great work would then be accomplished and they would prepare for themselves a great future.
If we contemplate the present condition of the slaves from its best side in the American States, we shall find it to be, under a good master, a tranquil life without a future, but not without its enjoyment. The slave on the plantation has his own neat little house, his own garden, and besides this his pig and his poultry. His labour is moderate, and he can make his days somewhat cheerful; his children are well-fed, and he does not trouble himself about the morrow. The house-slaves, in good families, are still better off, still better cared for, as regards their dwelling and their old age, than free servants even, are sometimes with us.
But it is not right to give one human being an irresponsible right over another. No human circumstances can be more horrible and more hopeless than those of the slave under a bad master, and proof enough of this is found in the every-day history of slavery in the United States. Besides this, the institution carries along with it unhappy and degrading results, both as regards the white and the black population, which not even the best master can obviate. Even the best master may die, or may fall into pecuniary difficulties, and his servants be sold to any who will purchase them. Slavery, to the really good and noble slave-owners, in these States, is the source of anxiety and sorrow, and they regard it as a misfortune of which they would gladly be rid. And many of them are labouring silently for this purpose in their own immediate spheres.
In this rapid sketch of some of the principal features in the great community of the United States, I must of necessity pass over some of the lesser ones, which, nevertheless, like genre-pictures in a gallery of paintings, serve to give the whole a varied and more lively interest. I must, however, mention among these, some small communities which exist independently in the great community, although they are separated from it by their modes and customs; as for instance, the Quakers, with their simple costume, their thee and thou to all the world, their silent divine worship, their women, who are allowed to preach and participate in church and social government; the Shakers, with their dancing divine-worship; and those small Socialist communities which seek in a spirit of love to make all true workers participate alike in the good gifts of the earth.
Among the peculiar, picturesque scenes of the American soil, must be mentioned public baptisms on the banks of rivers and lakes, where both white and black neophytes are initiated into a life of holiness; and the religious festivals, called “camp-meetings,” where in the depth of night and the forest, by the flames of fire-altars, thousands of voices uniting in harmonious hymns, and souls trembling in religious ecstasy, are alternated with abundance both in eating and drinking. These festivals are the saturnalia of the negro-slaves, and their prayers and songs are as ardent and living as the sun of the south.
When we leave the United States and betake ourselves to the southern hemisphere of America, we find that in three days' time we have removed into a new world. And this first meets us as in Cuba. Heaven and earth, the people, language, laws, manners, style of building, everything is new, and the refreshment produced by this rapid change of scene is indescribable, although at the time everything in it is not good.
The scenery of South America, its dominant people and language, meet us in Cuba; we are in the region of the palm, of the tropical sun, of the language and rule of the Spaniard. One-half of America belongs to the Germanic and Anglo-Norman race; the other half to the Roman. In the former Protestantism prevails, in the latter Catholicism. But in Cuba, that glorious island, situated between the two hemispheres, in the midst of the salt sea of the world, both races seem to have met—whether for war, or for peaceful union, it is not yet possible to say.
Cuba is also at the present moment a field of combat for the powers of light and of darkness, and seldom, indeed, are they seen on earth to stand so close to each other, or in stronger contrast.
On the dark side stand the church and the state; the state with its rule of violence and despotism—(Spain blindly governing her distant colonies by deputies, over whom the mother-country can have no control, and who deny to the creoles all right of self-government); the church, which exists merely in pompous ceremonial, and is deficient in all spiritual life. On the night side lies prominently slavery, which exists in Cuba in its worst form; and the slave-trade with Africa, which is said to be of daily occurrence, although not openly. The government of the island receives bribes from the slave-traders, and shuts its eyes to the thousands of slaves who are annually landed on the island. Nay, it is asserted that it is privately not unwilling to see the island filled with wild Africans, because the dread of the unrestrained power of these, if they should one day emancipate themselves, restrains the creoles from rebellion against a government which they cannot do other than hate. Government oppresses the slave-owner, the slave-owner oppresses the slave, and knows no other means of subjecting him but the whip and the chain. The sugar-planters not unfrequently work their slaves harder than beasts of burden, and require from them a greater amount of labour than human nature can sustain. In the prison-walls of the bohea the slaves live like brute beasts; no Saviour is preached to them, and the only pleasures which are allowed to them—and that often in the scantiest measure, are those of the animal. Wild tumults have been sometimes the evidence of the cruelty of oppression, and of the savage spirit and power of the negroes; more frequently, however, they die without venturing to utter a cry or to lift a hand in remonstrance or complaint; frequently, during the earlier period of their captivity, they themselves put an end to their days of misery, in the belief (which is current among them) that they will immediately after death rise again in their native land.
The government and condition of Cuba, from the governor's palace down to the bohea of the slave, is a government of violence and despotism. Justice and nobility of mind are, it is true, met with in individuals, but are not of general prevalence; and in the laws also, there is some evidence of a magnanimous spirit, but it is nullified as much as possible.
Opposed to this dark side of life in Cuba stands the bright side in the most striking contrast. There is the tropical sky, as mild as an angel's glance, its sun as pure and clear as the purest tones of music; there is the wind, a spirit as gentle, as pure, as full of vitalising life, as if it came forth fresh from the fountain of life and love; there is the peculiar natural world of the tropics, full of marvellous plants and scenes; those palm-groves, where immortals might wander; those gardens, beautiful as that of Eden, where coffee-shrubs and bananas grow in beautiful plantations, one perpetual blossoming, one perpetual succession of fruit; those magnificent guadarajahs of king-palms, which seem planted as if for a triumphal procession of kings and queens; a beauty in atmosphere and life, in form and colour, which involuntarily charms the senses, but which cannot be described by words, or by colour, only by music. And Cuba, the Queen of the Antilles, is a Calypso, beautiful in her sins, who can so seduce the traveller that he, like Telemachus of old, would need, in order to resist her, a wise Mentor who should pitch him head-foremost into the sea. Thus did I feel, as week after week I delayed my parting from the enchantress, captivated also by the amiable hospitality of the creoles, and by the acquaintance of some of those noble beings who are the ornament of the earth, and who are able also to lift its curse even from slavery—at least for the moment. I must mention among these two ladies in particular—one of them born of Danish parents, whom I would introduce to the motherly Queen of Denmark, because they are mothers in the highest sense of the word, mothers of the motherless, of the stranger, of the slave, of all who are in need!
I have spoken of the night-side of the negroes' life in Cuba. Let me also speak of the bright side, because this belongs essentially to the day-side of Cuban life.
Cuba is at the same time the hell and the paradise of the slave. Spanish laws, as regard the slave, originating under the influence of men as mild and noble as Las Casas, are favourable also to their emancipation; and if they were adhered to, there would not be found under the Spanish dominion any wholly unfortunate slave, because there would be none without hope: but wherever the institution of slavery prevails, the law is unable to make itself availing. There are, however, in the meantime some points in which the Spanish laws of manumission for the slave are really availing, and that because the Spaniard has established courts of justice, and judges who watch over them, and to whom the slaves can appeal.
According to these Spanish laws, a slave can purchase his freedom for the sum of five hundred dollars, which is the specified legal price; and no slave-owner has a right to refuse freedom to a slave who can pay down that sum. And it must be confessed that many slave-owners are kind and just enough to allow their slaves to purchase their freedom for considerably less. If a slave-owner should refuse freedom to his slave on those terms, he can appeal to the syndic of the city or district, who then selects one of three persons nominated by the slave and his master, and he decides the question.
According to the Spanish laws of freedom a mother has a right to purchase the freedom of the child before its birth for fifteen dollars, and afterwards for double that sum. This law, however, it is said, is not acted upon, excepting with the consent of kind-hearted masters.
The Spanish law of freedom allows the slave many opportunities of earning money, so that the moment of freedom can always shine like a star of Bethlehem upon his desert path. This, however, has reference more particularly to slaves in the cities. On the plantations and within the walls of the bohea, it is not an easy thing to hear of the star of freedom, still less to attain to it. Yet that happens sometimes even there.
These laws of emancipation have caused the negro population of Cuba to amount to nearly five hundred thousand souls; about one half of the whole population of the island, and near one-third free negroes. And the free negro of Cuba is the happiest of all created beings. He is protected by the laws of the country from that violence, and those hostile attacks which continually threaten him in his own country from hostile tribes. He can for a small impost become the possessor of a couple of acres of land, on which he builds his hut of palm bark and palm leaves. Around this he plants the trees and edible roots of his native land, and the golden maize. The earth produces at small expense of labour all that he requires. He needs not to labour, and he can enjoy much, and rest the while. The sun gives him fire, and frees him from the necessity of clothing, for the greater part of his body. The cocoa-palm gives him milk; the plantain-tree bread; the king-palm feeds his swine and his poultry; the field gives him sugar-cane, and the wild trees of the forest drop for him their manifold fruits. The African drum with its cheerful life, the African dances and songs are free to him here. He lives here a real life of Canaan, and will not on any account emigrate to Africa. He is happy, although his happiness is not of an elevated character.
I confess to your Majesty, that it has been astonishing to me, and distressing at the same time, to see the United States stand so far behind Spain in justice and sense of freedom in their legislation for the slave population, and it is difficult for me to explain how the noble-mindedness and national pride of a people can bear and allow themselves to be outdone in their laws regarding freedom, by a nation which they consider far below themselves in humanity, and which is so, too, in many respects. The Spaniards of Cuba are not altogether wrong when they, on this subject, look down on the Americans, and call them, as I myself heard, “barbarians!”
There are in Cuba probably, at this time, more happy black than white people. The slave-owner is not happy. For him wave no palm-trees; the delicious winds do not caress him; for him the mild, bright heavens, shine not; between him and all the glory of nature stands the bohea and the sugar-mill, with their negro-slaves, who dread him, and of whom he stands in dread. The mild heaven of Cuba gives him no peace; he sees the sword of Damocles hanging over his head, and the future is dark to him. Therefore his end and aim is merely to make as much money as he can, and then to—leave Cuba for ever.
When I think of this beautiful island, of its glorious scenery, its rich resources, I cannot avoid my imagination transforming it to what it ought to be, to what it seems intended to be by the mind of the Creator; yes, and not merely it, but all those beautiful islands which God has scattered with an affluent hand in the southern sea, like jewels upon its billowy mantle.
Amongst these may be named as representatives of all, three in particular, pre-eminent in beauty, grandeur and wealth; Cuba, St. Domingo, and Jamaica. But I will now speak of Cuba, the beautiful queen of the Antilles.
I behold her then, freed from her fetters, and free from slaves; behold her crowned by her palms and her lofty mountain peaks, born again from the ocean waves, caressed by them and by immortal zephyrs, a new Eden, a home of perpetual spring, a golden chalice of health to which all the sons and daughters of earth might make pilgrimages, and take draughts of new life, and receive new revelations of the Creator's wealth, and a foretaste of the abodes of the blessed in the great Father's house. There might they wander in banana and orange groves, enjoying the delicious fruits of paradise, or sit in rocking chairs on the hills where the palm-trees wave, and the breezes from the sea, full of renovating life, dance around them; sit thus and breathe, and behold, and think how beautiful is existence! The sun descends in mild glory; brilliant cuculios dart like stars through space, and cover the tree-tops with glittering jewels; the air is filled with the music of the Cuban contre-dances, and the Spanish seguidillas; the cheerful measure of the African drums is heard in the background, and the southern Cross rises slowly above the horizon in the growing darkness of night. It is night: but no one need dread the night here; it is not cold; it has no dew. The night of paradise could not be more innocuous than that of Cuba. The weak and the suffering in body should come here and inhale invigorating life. The aged should come to be reminded of an eternal youth; the dejected and the sorrowing to gain new hope. The philosopher should come hither that his glance might be extended over the infinite realm of man and his Creator; the poet and the artist to study here new forms of beauty, new groupings of the noble and the lovely in colouring and in form. The statesman should come to strengthen his faith in the ideal of life, and the possibility of its realisation. And this new realm of beauty and goodness on earth should be governed by a queen, a ruler of the heart as well as of the state, to whom all hearts and all people, black, and white, and red, and olive-complexioned, and yellow, should pay voluntary homage—a queen good and beautiful as your Majesty!
Charleston, South Carolina, May 1st.
I conclude this letter to your Majesty, which I commenced beneath the southern heavens, in the United States of North America. I no longer behold the infinitely mild skies of the south, and its waving palms, but I see before me a large and increasing popular life; a guadarajah of states growing aloft like palms. In the southern portion of Northern America nature is a great poet, in the northern a great human being.
It is still in this southern portion that I am now writing, and in one of the Slave States of North America.
It is the month of May, and the luxuriant, but feeble, and almost diseased beauty of South Carolina, is now in its fullest bloom. They are, however, glorious, these live-oaks, with their long depending trails of moss, which convert the forest into a natural gothic temple, these magnolia-trees, with their large, snow-white blossoms, and odours which fill the warm, soft air.
The songs of the negro slaves, from the river, as they row home after having sold their wares in the city, reach me at this moment in the beautiful, homelike home from which I have now the happiness of writing to your Majesty, and where I feel myself, as it were, nearer good Denmark, because its mistress, Mrs. William Howland, is a Dane, of the Danish line of Monefeldt, and well worthy to be introduced to the Queen of Denmark, both from the love which she bears to her mother-country, and for the beautiful, maternal feeling, towards both blacks and whites which distinguish this noble Danish woman.
I have already spoken of slavery as the misfortune of the Southern States. I should at this moment be ready to call it their good fortune, that is to say, if at this moment they would take hold upon the misfortune, the curse, and convert it into a blessing. And there is no doubt but that they might do so. Charcoal, it is said, is the mother of the diamond. The states of the south possess in slavery the charcoal of a jewel; what do I say? of a diadem of jewels worthy of a new Queen of the South, more beautiful than she who came to Solomon!
Since I have seen in Cuba the negroes in their savage, original state, seen their dances, heard their songs, and am able to compare them with what they are at the best in the United States, there remains no longer a doubt in my mind as to the beneficial influence of Anglo-American culture on the negro, or of the great mission which America is called upon to accomplish with regard to the African race, precisely through the people who, having enslaved, they ought now, in a two-fold sense, to emancipate. The sour crab is not more unlike our noble, bright, Astrachan apple, than is the song of the wild African to the song of the Christian negro in the United States, whether it be hymns that he sings or gay negro songs that he has himself composed. And this comparison holds good through his whole being and world. There is a vast, vast difference, between the screeching improvisation of the negroes in Cuba, and the inspired and inspiring preaching of the Saviour, and his affluence of light and joy, which I have heard extemporised in South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, and Louisiana. And low and sensual is that lawless life, and intoxication of the senses in those wild negro-dances, and those noisy festivities to the beat of the drum, compared with that life, and that spiritual intoxication in song and prayer, and religious joy, which is seen and heard at the religious festivals of the negro people here. Hard, and wild, and empty, is the expression in the glances of the former, compared with that which I have seen beaming in those of the latter, when the light-life of Christianity was preached to them with clearness and naïveté. And this is going on through wider and still wider circles, especially in the Slave States of North America, in the east, from Virginia to South Carolina and Georgia, and this last-mentioned State, in particular, seemed to me to be animated by a noble, youthfully vigorous, spirit of freedom. And it is becoming more and more general for the negroes themselves to stand forth as religious leaders of their people, and churches are erected for them. In the south-western Slave States, on the contrary, the religious life is but very little awakened, and the condition of the negroes on the plantations is, most frequently, alike gloomy with regard to the life both of soul and body. There is, however, no doubt, but that light is breaking through; noble-minded Christians are opening a path for its rays, and the gospel will soon be preached to the slaves, even among the swampy wildernesses of the Mississippi, and on the banks of the distant Red-River, in Texas and Arkansas.
The gospel advances, the Church of Christ unfolds its arms, and the gates of the slave prison-house burst open before it, throughout the Slave States of America! All that we have a right to demand from them as a Christian community is, that the gospel should advance unimpeded and that law should follow in the steps of the gospel; that the slave legislation of the United States should adopt that law of emancipation which the Spanish legal-code now possesses.
If the law of the Southern States, like that of the Spaniard, allowed the slaves, male or female, to purchase their own and their children's freedom by labour; if it would open to them a prospect of liberating themselves and their children for a reasonable and legally-fixed sum; and would appoint judges to watch over the rights of the black population; if it would, in addition to this, extend the system of popular education to the children of the blacks—even if they were in separate schools—and would fearlessly concede other consecutive means of moral and intellectual development, we might then confidently predict for the Southern States of America a great future. It would have accomplished a work which would entitle it to the gratitude of two hemispheres, and demand the admiration of the whole world,—a work which evidently seems to lie in the plan of God's schemes, and which already the best and noblest citizens of the Slave States speak of as American concession.
The Colonisation and Christianisation of Africa by means of the liberated negro slaves of America is this work, already commenced in the infant colony of Liberia, on the coast of Africa, and which annually increases by means of emigrants sent out by the Southern, as well as the Northern Free States, and through the generosity of private citizens.
Some of the Slave States, and foremost among them the oldest, Virginia and Maryland, have appropriated a considerable amount of revenue to the colonisation of the negroes in Africa, and two steamers annually proceed from Baltimore in Maryland, and from Savannah in Georgia, with black emigrants to Liberia, provided, both from public and private sources, with all that is requisite for their establishment in old-new-country, each religious community providing separately for the members of their own body.
In the proposition and extension of this colony, the Northern and the Southern States have shown themselves to be a noble Union, with one heart and one soul. In this they extend their hands to each other, for reconciliation in the great quarrel between them on the subject of slavery.
I must, however, confess that this work seems to me merely as a part of that which the Southern States ought to accomplish. These States would, without the negro population, lose much of their most picturesque, most peculiar life; besides which, they could not dispense with negro labour. It is declared that rice, cotton, and sugar could not be cultivated without the negro, who is habituated to the heat of the sun, and to whom it is a delight. The white man dies of the heat and the miasmas which are produced by the soil; the black man, on the contrary, flourishes there, increases and multiplies, or merely suffers slightly from climatic fevers. When the circumstances are favourable between the white and the black, it is evident that there exists no inimical relationship between them; they love each other and are attracted to each other; equally unlike, their respective deficiencies perfect nature. The good-tempered, cheerful negro loves the grave, sensible white man, and allows himself to be guided by him, and he, in his turn, loves the good-hearted black man, and allows himself to be tended by him.
I say nothing, but what noble and thinking men in the Slave States consider to be possible, when I state to your Majesty the conviction that the noblest, because the most difficult, future endeavour of the Slave States ought to be the converting of one portion of its slave population into free labourers. I say one portion, because it is clear that merely one portion thereof would be capable of remaining, as free men, under American dominion. The portion of the slave population which longs to go to Africa should go there; and that portion which is attached to the soil and the people of America, and which is capable of acquiring its cultivation and its active laborious spirit, should remain in its Southern States, where it has been brought up, to which it belongs, by nature, habitude, and affections, and where the colouring and the romantic life of these lands, beloved by the sun, would be greatly increased by their life of labour on the plantations and in the cities, by their religious festivities, and their songs and dances.
From what I have seen of the good understanding between the white man and the negro, I believe that many of the best heads and the ablest hands among the negro-people would prefer remaining in America, to emigrating from it.
The traveller may then visit these States with an admiration free from any depressing reservation, for they will then advance in moral beauty and political power, and the American Union will then, without an exception, become what it has already declared itself willing to become, a great asylum, diffusing the blessings of liberty to all the nations of the earth, by both precept and example.
It is evident that such an emancipation cannot take place at once, nay, perhaps not for several tens of years. It may be delayed for a century, if we can only see that it is approaching, if we can only see the commencement of its dawn, so that we may know that it will advance into the perfect day.
And it cannot be otherwise; the streaks of dawn are already, even at this moment, piercing the nocturnal shadows which the late political contests between the Free States and the Slave States, called forth over the Union.
I have already mentioned to your Majesty the labours of the Colonisation Society, both in the Northern and the Southern States, as advancing the work of enfranchisement in Africa. I place among the movements, the aim of which is an emancipation of the black slave population of America, the scheme of a law, by that noble, patriotic statesman, Henry Clay, which should declare free all the children of the negro slave born after a certain year, 1856 I believe, a scheme which, however, did not meet with the support of the less noble statesmen; and the endeavours of various noble private individuals for the education and liberation of their slaves.
There is, however, one among these efforts to which I desire pre-eminently to direct your Majesty's eye, both because it proceeds from the womanly and maternal element in the community, and because it is the grain of mustard-seed, which although a small seed, may yet grow into a large tree and spread its shadow far around.
I know in the Slave States some young girls, the daughters and sisters of planters who are not ashamed of keeping schools themselves for the children of the slaves on the plantation, and of teaching them to pray, to think, and work. They speak highly of the powers of mind, and the willingness to learn, of the negro children, especially when knowledge is presented to them in a living and pleasing form by means of narratives and pictures.
If the young daughters of the Southern States would generally imitate this good example, they would do more than any legislation to prepare the way for a happy emancipation; for emancipation might take place without any detriment either to the black or the white population, if the slave had been educated from his youth upwards by love, and habituated to the fear of God, to order and labour: and I participate fully in the views of an elderly man of the South, that the possibility of an approaching emancipation from slavery is much more in the hands of the women than of the men, at the present moment.
I have spoken of the young teachers from the States of New England, the daughters of the Pilgrims, as “the young mothers of humanity.” The young women of the Southern States have assigned to themselves a similar office, and that nearer home, yes, so near and so natural, that it seems to me assigned to them by God the Father Himself.
It is an universal custom on the plantations of the South, that while the slaves, men and women, are out at labour, the children should all be collected at one place, under the care of one or two old women. I have sometimes seen as many as sixty or seventy, or even more together, and their guardians were a couple of old negro-witches, who with a rod of reeds kept rule over these poor little black lambs, who with an unmistakeable expression of fear and horror, shrunk back in crowds whenever the threatening witches came forth, nourishing their rods. On smaller plantations, where the number of children is smaller, and the female guardians gentle, the scene of course is not so repulsive; nevertheless, it always reminded me of a flock of sheep or swine, which were fed merely to make them ready for eating. And yet these were human beings, capable of the noblest human development as regards sentiment and virtue; human beings with immortal souls!
Here are the subjects of Sunday-schools ready to hand. But where are the teachers, men—and women? The children are driven hither in the morning, are called over morning, noon, and night, and receive in the meantime threats and castigation, and then are driven back to their cottages in the evening; and thus it continues till they are old enough for labour, and can be brought under the law of the whip.
Would it be too much to demand from the wives, daughters, and sisters of the planters, too much to demand from Christian women, that they should once or twice in the week go down to this neglected crowd of children, and talk to them of their Father in heaven, and teach them to pray to “Our Father in heaven.”
How right and how beautiful it is to see a young, white girl, an angel of light she appears, and really is in such cases, standing amid the black little ones teaching them to utter with knowledge this holy, universal prayer, “Our Father which art in heaven.”
First let this prayer be common to black and white, then will all the rest come in its time, and as the good and great Father wills it!
Good and beautiful would it also be if the young white woman would exercise the black children in singing and dancing as they are practised in their native land; those songs, for instance, with the chorus, which seems to be the heart of all songs among the natives of Africa, and which should contain some sensible meaning.
There is one song which might serve as a model for all such songs. It was sung by African women to a white traveller, to whom they gave shelter one stormy night in their hut, and its words are these:—
| The storm roared, and the rain fell; | |
| The poor white man, | |
| Worn and weary in the dark night, | |
| Sate alone beneath our tree. | |
| He has no mother who can give him milk, | |
| No wife who can grind his corn! | |
| Chorus.— | Have pity on the white man, |
| He has no mother, &c. | |
This song from the mother-heart of Africa might show to America the best mode for the cultivation of the negro people. A popular mind which can produce such a song ought to be treated with respect. Such an occupation would be more beautiful and more worthy of the young daughters of the South, than wasting their days in levity, or in paying visits, or in empty pastime, as most of them do now.
Yet I know some who have chosen the better part; many there ought to be. Blessings be upon them! May they become many! And the great work of emancipation will proceed in silence and in beauty, as if of itself.
It is very common in Europe to lay the blame of the institution of slavery on the United States of America, as a sin against the Holy Ghost, which takes away all truth and all value from their free estate. But people forget that it is only a part of these States which have slaves, and that it was Europe who first compelled them to have them! Many of the young colonies, in particular Virginia and Georgia, protested in the commencement, and that in the most strong and earnest manner, against the introduction of slavery. In vain. England was then the mother-country, and carrying on the slave-trade, required a market for her cargoes of slaves, and commanded the young American colonies to become this market. The selfishness of the planters, the climate, and the productions of Southern North America, all assisted. Thus was slavery introduced into the United States. Climate, productions, and many other causes continue to maintain it there, until—something further.
England, during a period of newly-awakened national conscientiousness, and influenced by such men as Wilberforce, shook herself free from slavery, and liberated her slaves at the enormous sacrifice of twenty millions sterling. It is said that the whole thing might have been done more judiciously; it could scarcely have been done with more magnanimity. We yet look for the Wilberforce of America.
The people of the Southern States are greatly exasperated by Europe, and by the Northern States wishing to mix themselves up, as they say, in their own private affairs, and talking of and interfering with the institution of slavery and their established right to it, as if it was anything to them.
Their excuse is that the American Union, and the great purpose which it declares itself called upon to accomplish, is of such vast importance, of such infinite significance in the eyes of all the Free States, for the whole of humanity, and for all the nations of the world, that they could not allow themselves to be other than interested in its full accomplishment as in an affair that concerned themselves. And does it not in reality concern them?
The United States of America have declared the freedom and the rights of humanity. Every human being feels himself participant in this great charter of liberty.
“The May-flower” was the name of the first ship which conveyed the first colony of free men and women from the Old to the New World, and who founded a new community on the soil of North America. “The May-flower” was the symbol of the Old World's youngest anticipations. The community of the United States became the May-flower of the human race. It will not tolerate that any worm should feed in its dewy chalice, that any Nidhögg should gnaw at its root. And it is right.
But I have too long detained the attention of your Majesty by this side of the history of the United States, and I fear that in so doing my letter has extended itself to an undue length. I cannot, however, close this account to your Majesty of the life in the New World without saying a few words respecting the homes there.
During the whole period of my residence in this hemisphere, I have lived and been entertained in American homes, and it is in these homes and by familiar intercourse with their members that I have contemplated and reflected upon the social life of the New World; it is in them that I have loved and thought, reposed and enjoyed myself; it is the home of America which I have to thank pre-eminently for what I have here learned and experienced; it is the home of America which has conferred more upon me than the whole treasure of California—a new life both for heart and soul.
The home on the soil of the New World is that which the home was for our old North, and still is to this day—a sacred room. The American home, however, will be also a beautiful room. It loves to surround itself with green plots, with lovely trees and flowers. It is the same in the cities. More beautifully adorned homes are not to be met with in the world. Within the home, the fear of God, morality and domestic love are met with. It is the American home which strengthens the American States and makes them steadfast in the fear of God, and a moral life. The best and the noblest men of America have every one of them, with Washington at their head, been brought up by pious mothers, in noble and moral homes.
Probably that which most distinguishes the home of the New World from that of the Old, is the dominant sway which is assigned in it to woman. The rule of the American man is to allow the wife to establish the laws of home. He bows himself willingly to her sceptre, partly from affection, partly from the conviction that it is best and most just that it should be so, and from chivalric politeness to the sex; for the American believes that a something divine, a something of a higher and more refined nature, abides in woman. He loves to listen to it and to yield to it in all the questions of the inner life. He loves to place his partner in life higher than himself.
She is left to the free development of her world and her own being within the home, seldom contradicted, never compelled, is generally true to her nobler nature, and stands forth gentle, domestic, affectionate, and god-fearing. One of the most striking features in American women is their religious strength. Many American women during the earliest periods of their wars with the Indians, like the mother of the Maccabees, strengthened their children under their martyrdom, admonishing them to hold fast by their God; many do the same at the present day during severe trials of sickness or misfortune. And from the Eastern sea to the Mississippi, from the Northern Minnesota to the tropics, throughout the Western country; have I seen nothing more worthy of love, nothing more near to perfection, than the motherly woman.
Neither have I ever seen anywhere on the earth a being of more dew-like freshness, more beautiful, primevally vital life than the young girl of America.
But beyond this group of beautiful womanhood, I am obliged to confess that there are in the West many women who in no respects correspond to the ideal which the cultivation of the New World requires them to attain to, women whose thoughtlessness, insipidity, vanity, and pretension, make the spectator pause and ask himself, how far that great freedom, which is early permitted to young women, is in accordance with the higher development of her being.
The better class see this misdirection in a portion of their sex, and deplore it deeply. I would not on their account have this freedom circumscribed in the least degree, I would give merely a higher object and consciousness. That which woman requires is not a less, but on the contrary, a higher esteem for home and her vocation; a higher comprehension of the human work and worth to which she is called. It is only a higher consciousness which can save her from her egotistical littleness.
As a general rule it may be said that the citizeness is not as yet fully awakened within the community of the New World; as in the Old World, she still slumbers lulled by the old cradle-song, and by the little voice which prevents her listening to the great voice, and by the liking which men have for the merely agreeable and outwardly attractive in the sex.
It is from this defective consciousness of a higher vocation, that the influence of woman within the home, and on the education of the child is still, in general, far from what it might be, and what it needs to be in this country where the power of conscience and of the inner law ought to be strengthened tenfold, in the same degree as the outward are less restrictive upon the wishes and the whims of the individual. The American woman is married young, and when she is scarcely past the years of childhood; she soon has children of her own, and shows her maternal love principally by spoiling them, by indulging all their whims and wishes, as she herself was indulged and spoiled in her paternal home. She leaves discipline and severity to the school, to which the child is sent early. And the school does what it can; gives style and grace to the outward being, but leaves the inward very much, probably, as it found it.
Hence, especially in the Slave States, that unrestrained temper and mode of action; that want of a stricter moral law, of a keener conscientious perception with which, and not without reason, the young men of America are reproached, and those disorderly occurrences in private life and in the community at large, which are the consequent results.[1]
Strong, stern women, who would bring up republicans by severity and love—such women as Lycurgus would form to make his republic strong and great—are not to be met with here.
Neither is that Spartan type of physical strength the only necessary. The New World requires another. And if it should become more universal, if woman in the United States of America became that which she ought to be, and exercised that influence which it lies in her power to exercise, on the soul of the child and the man, on social life, on the great interests of the community, then would the United States become also the ideal states of the earth!
Many distinguished and amiable women in North America—Quaker women among these—have presented noble examples to their sex; and many movements in the States have, latterly, shown the dawn of public spirit among women. May it increase and strengthen, and I will venture to say, that the American woman will then stand forward as the earth's most beautiful and most perfect woman.
If I were able to present to your Majesty those American women who appear to me to be the purest representative type of the Eve of the New World, your Majesty's glance would rest upon them with an expression of satisfaction, both as regards the sense of beauty and of moral feeling.
I see your Majesty's own gentle being thrilled by the recognition of a kindred being, and seem to hear from your Majesty's lips this judgment.
“They resemble the most beloved women of our hemisphere; their grace of person is not less than their steadfastness in principle. But they have something more than the women of Europe. Their glance seems to me to embrace a larger world; their intelligence, a larger activity; and their heart seems to me large enough to embrace and elevate the human community in all its spheres.”
Probably it is only just to say that the human being of the New World is not better than he of the old; but he stands on more advantageous ground, under more favourable circumstances as regards free and true development. Human nature, both in the individual and in the community at large, may become more perfected; because here every private advantage may become that of all; the circle of society is more complete.
But it is time for me to conclude, and I must already, I fear, have wearied your Majesty by the length of my letter. The interest of the subjects, and the interest which your Majesty expressed in them, must be my excuse.
I shall now very shortly leave the South. Its witchery is great, but my bias is now towards the North. The tree of freedom grows more vigorous amid its granite hills. And as it grows in the Northern States of America, grows it also in our Scandinavian North. But what this North possesses, and which America possesses not, is an antiquity full of song and saga, of glorious prophecy and symbolism, of gods and heroes who gave to Scandinavia so large, so peculiar, so romantic a life. It is this antiquity, its significance for the present time, its life in our scenery, and our every-day life which attracts me once more to my native land, as powerfully as my mother's voice.
A visit to my beloved Copenhagen stands before me, like a point of light on my return to Sweden, and I hope that this coming autumn will enable me to greet the cheerful capital of Denmark. I shall esteem myself fortunate if I see there once more the good and beautiful Queen of Denmark, and receive her bright image into the sanctuary of my heart, there to be preserved as one of its most precious treasures.
Your Majesty's kindness makes me bold enough to hope it; and it is also in reliance upon that, that I venture to solicit a place in your Majesty's memory among the many who love your Majesty, as does
Your Majesty's humble and devoted servant,
Fredrika Bremer.
- ↑ I must, however, remark that although such occurrences make a great noise here, they did not appear to me worse than such as take place, more silently—and more numerously—in European countries.