Part 23 (1/2)
A portion of the cadets are instructed every day in fencing and riding.
When well advanced in the latter, they are taught spearing rings or stuffed heads at the gallop, and the same with the sword. The riding-school is perfectly abominable, being dark, full of pillars, and most completely out of harmony with all the rest of the establishment, which is excellent in every detail. On Sundays all the cadets attend church, unless excused on conscientious motives, and with the approval of their parents. The minister is selected by the President, and may be of any denomination. I was told that an Episcopalian had been most frequently chosen. The present minister is, I believe, a Presbyterian.
During the months of July and August the cadets all turn out of their barracks, pitch their tents, and live regular camp life--only going to the barracks to eat their meals. During the time they are tented, the education is exclusively military practice; the same hours are kept as in the barracks; the tents are boarded, and two cadets sleep in each.
They are all pitched with scrupulous accuracy, and they are obliged to keep their camp as clean as a new pin--performing among themselves every duty of a complete regiment--cleaning their own shoes, fetching their own water, &c. They were all in tents at the time of my visit, and I fear not particularly comfortable, for there had been two days and nights' hard rain, and the wet mattresses were courting the warm rays of the afternoon sun. Whatever jobbery is attempted in the selection of candidates for admission to the Academy, is soon corrected by the Academy itself; for, though the entrance examination is simple to a degree, the subsequent examinations are very severe, and those who cannot come up to the mark get notice to quit; and the unerring tell-tale column of demerit soon obliges the turbulent to ”clear out.”
The result of this system is, that when I saw them under arms, their soldierlike appearance struck me very much; and the effect produced upon them by discipline was very marked. You might almost guess the time they had been there by their gentlemanly bearing, a quality which they do not readily lose; for the officers of the American army who have been educated at West Point, enjoy a universal reputation for intelligence and gentlemanly bearing wherever they are to be met with.
The discipline here is no fiction; they do not play at soldiers; they all work their way up from the ranks, performing every duty of each rank, and the most rigid obedience is exacted. In the calculations for demerit, while idleness in the Academy obtains a mark of three, disobedience to a superior officer is marked eight. There is no bullying thought of here; the captain of his company would as soon think of bullying the cadet private as a captain of a regiment of the line would of bullying any private under his command. An officer who had been for many years connected with West Point, told me that among all the duels which unfortunately are so prevalent in the United States, he had never either known or heard of one between any two gentlemen who had received their education at this Academy--tricks, of course, are sometimes played, but nothing oppressive is ever thought of.
I did hear a story of a cadet, who, by way of a joke, came and tried to take away the musket of a wiry young Kentuckian, who was planted sentry for the first time; but he found a military ardour he had little antic.i.p.ated; for the novice sentry gave him a crack on the side of the head that turned him round, and before he could recover himself, he felt a couple of inches of cold steel running into the bank situated at the juncture of the hips and the back-bone; and thus not only did he suffer total defeat and an ignominious wound, but he earned a large figure on the demerit roll. From the way the story was told to me, I imagine it is a solitary instance of such an outrage being attempted; for one of the first things they seek to inculcate is a military spirit, and the young Kentuckian at all events proved that he had caught the spirit; nor can it be denied that the method he took to impress it upon his a.s.sailant, as a fundamental principle of action, was equally sharp and striking.
Happening to be on the ground at the hour of dinner, I saw them all marched off to their great dining-ball, where the table was well supplied with meat, vegetables, and pudding; it was all substantial and good, but the _tout-ensemble_ was decidedly very rough. If the intention is to complete the soldier life by making them live like well-fed privates of the line, the object is attained; but I should be disposed to think, they might dispense with a good deal of the roughness of the style with great advantage; though doubtless, where the general arrangements are so good, they have their own reasons for keeping it as it is. I paid a visit in the course of the afternoon to the fencing-room; but being the hour of recreation, I found about thirty l.u.s.ty cadets, votaries to Terpsich.o.r.e, all waltzing and polking merrily to a fiddle, ably wielded by their instructor: as their capabilities were various, the confusion was great, and the master bewildered; but they all seemed heartily enjoying themselves.
The professors and military instructors, &c., have each a small comfortable house with garden attached, and in the immediate vicinity of the Academy. There is a comfortable hotel, which in the summer months is constantly filled with the friends and relatives of the cadets; and occasionally they get permission to give a little _soiree dansante_ in the fencing-room. The hotel is prohibited from selling any spirituous liquors, wines, &c.
The Government property at West Point consists of about three thousand acres: the Academy, professors' houses, hotel, &c., are built upon a large plateau, commanding a magnificent view of the Hudson both ways.
The day I was there, the scene was quite lovely; the n.o.ble stream was as smooth as a mirror; a fleet of rakish schooners lay helpless, their snow-white sails hanging listlessly in the calm; and, as the clear waters reflected everything with unerring truthfulness, another fleet appeared beneath, lying keel to keel with those that floated on the surface. With such beautiful scenery, and so far removed from the bustle and strife of cities, I cannot conceive any situation better adapted for health and study, pleasure and exercise.
The great day of the year is that of the annual review of the cadets by a board of gentlemen belonging to the different States of the Union, and appointed by the Secretary of War; it takes place early in June, I believe, and consequently before the cadets take the tented field. The examination goes on in the library hall, which is a very fine room, and hung with portraits of some of their leading men; the library is a very fair one, and the cadets have always easy access to it, to a.s.sist them in their studies. I could have spent many more hours here with much pleasure, but the setting sun warned us no time was to be lost if we wished to save the train; so, bidding adieu, to the friends who had so kindly afforded me every a.s.sistance in accomplis.h.i.+ng the object of my visit, I returned to the great Babylon, after one of the most interesting and gratifying days I had spent in America.[AW]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote AV: By the published cla.s.s-list the numbers at present are 224.]
[Footnote AW: An account of a visit to this Academy, from the pen of Sir J. Alexander, is published in Golburn's _United Service Magazine,_ September, 1854.]
CHAPTER XXIII.
_Watery Highways and Metallic Intercourse._
There is perhaps scarcely any feature in which the United States differ more from the nations of the Old World, than in the unlimited extent of their navigable waters, the value of which has been incalculably increased by the introduction of steam. By ma.s.sing these waters together, we shall be the better able to appreciate their importance; but in endeavouring to do this, I can only offer an approximation as to the size of the lakes, from the want of any official information, in the absence of which I am forced to take my data from authorities that sometimes differ widely. I trust the following statement will be found sufficiently accurate to convey a tolerably correct idea.
The seaboard on each ocean may be estimated at 1500 miles; the Mississippi and its tributaries, at 17,000 miles; Lake Ontario, at 190 miles by 50; Lake Erie, at 260 miles by 60; Lake Huron, at 200 miles by 70; the Georgian Bay, at 160 miles, one half whereof is about 50 broad; Lake Michigan, at 350 miles by 60; and Lake Superior, at 400 miles by 160, containing 32,000 square miles, and almost capable of floating England, if its soil were as buoyant as its credit. All the lakes combined contain about 100,000 square miles. The rate at which the tonnage upon them is increasing, appears quite fabulous. In 1840 it amounted to 75,000 tons, from which it had risen in 1850 to 216,000 tons. Besides the foregoing, there are the eastern rivers, and the deep bays on the ocean board. Leaving, however, these latter out of the question, let us endeavour to realize in one sum the extent of soil benefited by this bountiful provision of Providence; to do which it is necessary to calculate both sides of the rivers and the sh.o.r.es of the lakes, which, of course, must be of greater extent than double the length of the lakes: nevertheless, if we estimate them at only double, we shall find that there are 40,120 miles washed by their navigable waters; and by the const.i.tution of the Union these waters are declared to be ”common property, for ever free, without any tax, duty, or impost whatever.”
The Americans are not free from the infirmities of human nature; and having got a ”good thing” among them, in process of time it became a bone of contention, which it still remains: the Whigs contending that the navigable waters having been declared by the const.i.tution ”for ever free,” are national waters, and as such, ent.i.tled to have all necessary improvements made at the expense of the Union; their opponents a.s.serting, that rivers and harbours are not national, but local, and that their improvements should be exclusively committed to the respective States. This latter opinion sounds strange indeed, when it is remembered that the Mississippi and its tributaries bathe the sh.o.r.es of some thirteen States, carrying on their bosoms produce annually valued at 55,000,000l. sterling, of which 500,000l. is utterly destroyed from the want of any sufficient steps to remove the dangers of navigation.[AX]
Mr. Ruggles has always been a bold and able advocate of the Whig doctrine of nationality; and, in a lecture delivered by him upon the subject, he states that during the recent struggle to pa.s.s the River and Harbour Bill through the Senate, Mr. Douglas, a popular democrat from Illinois, offered as a subst.i.tute an amendment giving the consent of Congress ”to the levy of local tonnage dues, not only by each of the separate States, but even by the authorities of any city or town.” One can hardly conceive any man of the most ordinary intellect deliberately proposing to inflict upon his country the curse of an unlimited legion of custom-houses, arresting commerce in every bend of the river and in every bay of the sea; yet such was the case, though happily the proposition was not carried. How inferior does the narrow mind which made the above proposition in 1848 appear, when placed beside the prescient mind which in 1787 proposed and carried, ”That navigable waters should be for ever free from any tax or impost whatever!”
One of the most extraordinary instances of routine folly which I ever read or heard of, and which, among so practical and unroutiney a people as the Americans, appears all but incredible, is the following:--Congress having resisted the Harbour Improvement Bill, but acknowledged its duties as to certain lights and beacons, ”Ordered, that a beacon should be placed on a rock in the harbour of New Haven. The engineer reported, that the cost of removing the rock would be less than the cost of erecting the beacon; but the President was firm--a great party doctrine was involved, and the rock remains to uphold the beacon--a naked pole, with an empty barrel at its head--a suitable type of the whole cla.s.s of const.i.tutional obstructions.”[AY]
The State of New York may fairly claim the credit of having executed one of the most--if not the most--valuable public works in the Union--the Erie Ca.n.a.l. At the time of its first proposal, it received the most stubborn opposition, especially from that portion of the democratic party known by the appellation of ”Barn-burners,” whose creed is thus described in a pamphlet before me:--”All acc.u.mulations of wealth or power, whether in a.s.sociations, corporate bodies, public works, or in the state itself, are anti-democratic and dangerous.... The construction of public works tends to engender a race of demagogues, who are sure to lead the people into debt and difficulty,” &c. The origin of their name I have not ascertained.
Another party, possessing the equally euphonical name of ”Old Hunkers,”
are thus described:--”Standing midway between this wing of the Democracy and the Whig party, is that portion who have taken upon themselves the comfortable t.i.tle of 'Old Hunkers.' The etymological origin of this epithet is already lost in obscurity. They embrace a considerable portion of our citizens who are engaged in banking and other active business, but at the same time decided lovers of political place and power. At heart they believe in progress, and are in favour of a liberal prosecution of works of improvement, but most generally disguise it, in order to win the Barn-burners' votes. They are by no means deficient in intelligence or private worth, but are deeply skilled in political tactics; and their creed, if it is rightly understood, is that public works ought to be 'judiciously' prosecuted, provided they themselves can fill all the offices of profit or honour connected with their administration.”[AZ]
Such is the description given of these two parties by the pen of a political opponent, who found in them the greatest obstacles to the enlargement of the ca.n.a.l.
The name of De Witt Clinton will ever be a.s.sociated with this great and useful work, by which the whole commerce of the ocean lakes is poured into the Hudson, and thence to the Atlantic. After eight years' hard struggle, and the insane but undivided opposition of the city of New York, the law for the construction of the ca.n.a.l was pa.s.sed in the year 1817. One opponent to the undertaking, when the difficulty of supplying water was started as an objection, a.s.sisted his friend by the observation, ”Give yourself no trouble--the tears of our const.i.tuents will fill it.” Many others opposed the act on the ground that, by bringing the produce of the States on the lake sh.o.r.es so easily to New York, the property of the State would be depreciated; which appears to me, in other words, to be--they opposed it on the ground of its utility.