The American Way ...

[plankmaker]

... as told by an Englishman.

Richmond Dispatch.
Wednesday morning...March 30, 1864

An Englishman in Yankeedom

A good Story.

The first time I breakfasted at Willard's I said, modestly, that I should like a cup of tea, some dry toast, an egg, and a little toasted bacon. It struck me that the waiter regarded me with a very contemptuous look, and that he retired from my presence in a very slow and superstitious manner. I waited, and waited, and waited, but no tea, no toast, no egg, no bacon came. There was sitting opposite to me a dapper little man with a large beard and embroidered shirt front, with diamond studs, cut velvet vest, and a pea jacket. "Here, you," he cried to the nearest Ethiop, "bring me some fried oysters, some stewed oysters, some tenderloin steak and onions, some scrambled eggs, pork cutlets, some fish balls, some dipped toast, some Graham bread, some mashed turnips, some cold ham, some buckwheat cakes, some hot coffee, and some plane mange. I've paid my money, and by — I mean to see the show!"

The only way to get on in America is, having once paid your money, to insist on seeing the show. If you don't the people will think you are mean spirited, and trample on you. See it; see the show; have the animals stirred up with the long pole; pinch the spotted girl to see if it is real flesh, or only tights she has on; pick the kangaroo's pouch, make the pelican bleed again for your gratification You have paid your money, don't be imposed upon, halloo with stringent voice; curse and swear in a land where execrations are rife; brag louder than the greatest braggadocios in the world. If need be lie — lie with face of brass and lungs of leather; crack up your own country, to the detriment of all others; vow that we won the battle of Fontenoy; swear that Peter Morrison was the greatest philanthropist of the age; declare that Mr. Roebuck is ninety feet high. If a man spits on your boot spit on his waistcoat, and then "guess that you did not aim low enough."

If you find his letters lying about, read them; if he tells you anything in confidence, publish it in a newspaper; keep on moving; go ahead; go into business; smash; recuperate; drink with everybody; talk dollars from sunrise to midnight. Do this, and the Americans will admire you, and you may admire them. They will say you are a "smart man," and at last you will be spoken of as a "remarkable" man. But if you pay your money and don't walk up to the booth; if you are nervous and not abashed, if rudeness pains and bestial manners disgust you if you strive to substitute temperate argument for frothy declamation, and national proof for impudent assertion; if you tell the truth and are modest and a gentleman — you can never hope for success in this young, adventurous and astonishing country. You had better "clear out" before you are "run out." You had better go home by the next Cunard steamer, for you are clearly not fitted for the institutions and people of the United States.

[28thNY]

I see things much more clearly now.

[sbl]

Maybe OT and 2 years later than the CW/WBTS, but written by someone alive then...Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad. You can download this audio book for FREE. (My daughter says that "FREE" is my favorite "Four Letter Word.") Librivox is a good way to catch up on period literature if you can multitask.

I listened to the audio book while painting. Might make a good listen while commuting as I think you can load it on an iPod.


http://librivox.org/the-innocents-abroad-by-mark-twain/


They have Lincoln at Cooper Union....


http://librivox.org/lincoln-at-cooper-union-by-abraham-lincoln/


BTW for our Southern Friends, Librivox has a speech by Jefferson Davis.

Be sure to scroll down...

"On Withdrawing from the Union by Jefferson Davis – 00:12:36 "

http://librivox.org/librivox-short-nonfiction-collection-vol-003/

[plankmaker]

We are here to help.

You should read what the English Press had to say about President Buchanon.

[sbl]

PUNCH had some comments and cartoons about "us" during the appropriate years....

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=punch


..too bad 1862, 1863, and 1865 are missing.

[plankmaker]

But then the English Press did bring up some very valid points that most 'nactors never even consider.

Richmond Dispatch.
Monday morning..........Dec. 10, 1860T
he English Press on the Breaking
Republic.
The mails by the Canadian bring us the comments of the English press on the election of Lincoln. We give the following extracts:

[from the London Review.]
If the Southern States once succeeded in constituting a separate Federation, it is surely clear that every question now pending between themselves and the North would become at once an international question.--Every point now at issue in the domestic forum of Congress would come under the cognizance of the general society of nations. What sort of division of the unsettled territory now belonging to the United States would ever be agreed upon between the Northern and Southern Federations, nobody can pretend even to conceive; and this is the very difficulty which seems to show that the severance could never be effected without bloodshed. It is plain, however, that every attempt of the Southern States to expand beyond the territory absolutely secured to them would be resisted, not simply by their Northern neighbors, but by the whole strength of European civilization. The more reckless spirits of the South are pushing on their quarrel in the belief that, if they were once disembarrassed of the Union, they could rend province after province from Mexico, and fill each successive acquisition with their slaves. But Europe would have a word in the matter. It is simply the incorporation of the North with the South which prevents European statesmen from treating the annexations of the United States as avowed extensions of the area of slavery. They cannot now upbraid a Confederacy, of which more than half the members have no slaves, with conquering and annexing merely in the interest of cotton and negroes, but there would be no scruple about taxing the Southern Federation with designs which it would be at no pains to conceal.

Nor is there, we take it, the slightest doubt that the free States would rather assist than impede the efforts of European diplomacy.--The Monroe doctrine would be destroyed by the very fact of a separation, and a Northern Union, once divided from the South, would not be long in making the discouragement of slavery the cardinal principle of its foreign policy. In short, the measure of the dangers of separation is the advantage now derived from disunion. Slavery is sufficiently unpopular in the world for a mere slaveholding Commonwealth to run no small risk of becoming the victim of a general crusade. But the actual connection of the Southern States with the North has the effect of masking their exclusive devotion to a hated system. The Constitution of the United States, as experience has abundantly shown, can often be so managed as to promote the objects of the slave owners, and whenever advantage is gained in this way; it is gained without incurring danger, and almost without attracting attention.



[from the London Post, Nov. 23]
To all appearance, American institutions are about to be tried by a severer test than has ever yet been applied to them, and we need hardly say that a civil war between the North and the South would at the present time prove highly injurious to the cause of political freedom throughout the world. We trust that American statesmen of all politics will use their utmost efforts to prevent so great a calamity. Much will depend upon the attitude assumed by the President elect; much will depend upon the policy and conduct of the present administration. The government of President Buchanan has been characterized throughout by moderation and good sense; it remains to be seen whether it is equal to the task of maintaining the national institutions and the majesty of the law against the dangers which now threaten them. It is easy to perceive that at a period of unexampled popular excitement a single false step might prove fatal to the public peace, if not to the very existence of the Union. But we have much faith in that love of political order which is inherent in the Anglo-Saxon race; and, calling to mind that this is not the first occasion on which the dissolution of the Union has been violently threatened, we trust that the new President, when the time for his entering office arrives, will be able to proceed to Washington without those four hundred thousand Wide Awakes at his back, who, it is said, are ready, if need be, to accompany him to the Capital.



[from the London Chronicle, Nov. 20.]
What will be the consequences of Mr. Lincoln's election to the Presidency of the United States? We may dismiss without much hesitation the exaggerations of Northern demagogues or Southern alarmists. A few fanatics at the North have expressed sympathy with John Brown, and speak flippantly of the servile war that would have ensued from even his temporary success. Others, more prominent men of the Republican party, speak vaguely of slavery being "doomed," and seem to anticipate that slaveholders will be coerced into surrender by the gradual closing in around them of free-soil States. These, however, are but the wicked or wanton dreams of men who know nothing of the South, and still less of the Constitution of the United States; who forget that there were States before there was a Union, and that each State, for all purposes of internal government, is a sovereign and independent State--as independent of its neighbors as Prussia or Bavaria is of the others in the German confederation. They also forget that neither the character nor speeches of Mr. Lincoln show anything like designs hostile to the rights of the Southern States, and that even Mr. Seward--the John Bright of the party, more eloquent and outspoken than statesmanlike or wise — has refrained from anything like threats of positive aggression, legislatorial or executive, on the rights of the South.



[from the London news, Nov. 20.]
The cry of secession has been useful for party purposes; but the course which it involves will not suit Southern interests. The great slaveholders know very well that it is no part of the policy of the Republican party to violate that part of the Constitution which forbids every State to interfere with the internal concerns of any other State. The present victory merely signifies that in the wide spreading "Territories" of the republic, not yet sufficiently peopled to be formed into States, slavery shall have no legal existence, and consequently that they shall not grow up into slave States. The South, notwithstanding, will acquiesce in this decision. They dare not go out of the Union with their slaves, for they have nowhere to go to. They are a great deal safer in the friendship and alliance of the North, whose bayonets would be as readily forthcoming to suppress a servile insurrection as to prevent a dissolution of the confederation. Long before next March, when Mr. Lincoln removes to the White House, we shall find that all parties have adjusted themselves to their new relations, and are preparing for a harmless campaign with the old wordy weapons.



[from the London Times, Nov. 19.]
We do not, as we have said, believe the catastrophe of Disunion to be imminent, and we are disposed to attribute to the institution of slavery a vitality which, as it seems, its warmest advocates do not believe it to possess; still we cannot conceal from ourselves that the recent vote of the American people is fraught with many momentous consequences. Heretofore, when a President has been elected he has been supported at least by a minority in every State of the Union. But in the present instance there is a considerable number of States in which not a single vote was cast for the successful candidate.



[from the London Herald, Nov. 20.]
The only cloud on this bright horizon is the threatened secession of the Southern States. Should this be attempted the struggle cannot last long, for the free North will to a man support the new President, and the army and navy of the Republic will be launched against the seceders. The South will be driven back into the Union, if need be, at the point of the bayonet. Such a conflict, however, would be most disastrous in its consequences to Great Britain, and, whether it take place or not, the ill feeling in the slave districts is now so great that the ordinary operations of agriculture and trade must suffer. May-be we shall shortly have to look to other sources for our cotton and other Southern produce, and it is to be hoped her Majesty's government, in view of the precarious condition of American affairs, will devote its immediate attention to our much neglected West Indian and other colonies, so as to enable our planters to supply the deficiency.

[kern]

PUNCH had some comments and cartoons about "us" during the appropriate years....

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=punch


..too bad 1862, 1863, and 1865 are missing.

There's a good collection of ACW-related 'Punch' cartoons here:

http://www.arthist.umn.edu/aict/Tennielweb/index.html

Enjoyed reading the original post, by the way.

Phil
--
Pvt, 18th Missouri

[plankmaker]

Punch was actually pretty prophetic:

Richmond Dispatch
Wednesday morning...Nov. 14 1860

The Prince in the United States.

The last number of the London Punch contains the following verses:

The next Dance.

Yes, dance with him, lady, and bright as they are,
Believe us he's worthy those sunshine smiles,
Wave o'er him the flag of the stripe and the star,
And gladden the heart of the Queen of the Isles.
We thank you for all that has welcomed him — most
For the sign of true love that you bear the Old Land;
Proud Heiress of all that his ancestor lost,
You restore it in giving that warm, loving hand.
And we'll claim, too. the omen. Fate's looking askance.
And fate only knows the next tune she will play. But if John and his Cousin Join hands for the dance.
Bad luck to the parties who get in their way.

[plankmaker]

Punch's account of the "Change of Base."
A copy of the London Punch, lately received, contains the following veritable account of McClellan's grand strategic movement:

Punch's Office, No. 85 Fleet st., July 26, 1862.

Latest American Dispatch — By Hersemarine Telegraph.

Camp Chickabiddy Chokee, Mondayafternoon--The Federal troops have won another splendid victory. Seeing that the rebels were approaching in great force at 6 A. M. this morning, I issued my directions for a general advance, an order which our brave fellows were prompt to carry out. The advance was made in the identical direction as that in which the rebel army were proceeding, and was achieved, I need not say, with the most complete success. Astonishing to say, the whole of our front line escaped without a hurt, and, with the exception of a few slight wounds and bruises in the rear, I really have no casualties worth mention to report. A good deal of our baggage and some few hundred stand of arms we left upon the field for a strategic purpose, and we like wise abandoned about a score of field pieces, which were found to impede the rapid movement of our troops.

My next dispatch will probably be dated from Richmond, which I intend to sack at half past 5 o'clock precisely on Saturdaymorning next.

Bunkum, Gen'l Com'g.


To the Secretary of War, Washington.

[sbl]

There's a good collection of ACW-related 'Punch' cartoons here:

http://www.arthist.umn.edu/aict/Tennielweb/index.html

Enjoyed reading the original post, by the way.

Phil
--
Pvt, 18th Missouri

" Don't get yer monkey up!" Haa! It sounds like 1860s for "Chimping Out."