North America-2 [47]
bring down rounds of applause by tales of the wrongs of bondage. But to men in office abolition was too stern a reality. It signified servile insurrection, absolute ruin to all Southern slaveowners, and the absolute enmity of every slave State. But that task of steering between the two has been very difficult. I fear that the task of so steering with success is almost impossible. In England it is thought that Mr. Lincoln might have maintained the Union by compromising matters with the South--or, if not so, that he might have maintained peace by yielding to the South. But no such power was in his hands. While we were blaming him for opposition to all Southern terms, his own friends in the North were saying that all principle and truth was abandoned for the sake of such States as Kentucky and Missouri. "Virginia is gone; Maryland cannot go. And slavery is endured, and the new virtue of Washington is made to tamper with the evil one, in order that a show of loyalty may be preserved in one or two States which, after all, are not truly loyal!" That is the accusation made against the government by the abolitionists; and that made by us, on the other side, is the reverse. I believe that Mr. Lincoln had no alternative but to fight, and that he was right also not to fight with abolition as his battle-cry. That he may be forced by his own friends into that cry, is, I fear, still possible. Kentucky, at any rate, did not secede in bulk. She still sent her Senators to Congress. and allowed herself to be reckoned among the stars in the American firmament. But she could not escape the presence of the war. Did she remain loyal, or did she secede, that was equally her fate. The day before I entered Kentucky a battle was fought in that State, which gave to the Northern arms their first actual victory. It was at a place called Mill Spring, near Somerset, toward the south of the State. General Zollicoffer, with a Confederate army numbering, it was supposed, some eight thousand men, had advanced upon a smaller Federal force, commanded by General Thomas, and had been himself killed, while his army was cut to pieces and dispersed; the cannon of the Confederates were taken, and their camp seized and destroyed. Their rout was complete; but in this instance again the advancing party had been beaten, as had, I believe, been the case in all the actions hitherto fought throughout the war. Here, however, had been an actual victory, and, it was not surprising that in Kentucky loyal men should rejoice greatly, and begin to hope that the Confederates would be beaten out of the State. Unfortunately, however, General Zollicoffer's army had only been an offshoot from the main rebel army in Kentucky. Buell, commanding the Federal troops at Louisville, and Sydney Johnston, the Confederate general, at Bowling Green, as yet remained opposite to each other, and the work was still to be done. I visited the little towns of Lexington and Frankfort, in Kentucky. At the former I found in the hotel to which I went seventy-five teamsters belonging to the army. They were hanging about the great hall when I entered, and clustering round the stove in the middle of the chamber; a dirty, rough, quaint set of men, clothed in a wonderful variety of garbs, but not disorderly or loud. The landlord apologized for their presence, alleging that other accommodation could not be found for them in the town. He received, he said, a dollar a day for feeding them, and for supplying them with a place in which they could lie down. It did not pay him, but what could he do? Such an apology from an American landlord was in itself a surprising fact. Such high functionaries are, as a rule, men inclined to tell a traveler that if he does not like the guests among whom he finds himself, he may go elsewhere. But this landlord had as yet filled the place for not more than two or three weeks, and was unused to the dignity of his position. While I was at supper, the seventy-five teamsters were summoned into the common eating-room by a loud gong, and sat down to their meal