The great glory of the town is the "levee," as it is called, or the long river beach up to which the steamers are brought with their bows to the shore. It is an esplanade looking on to the river, not built with quays or wharves, as would be the case with us, but with a sloping bank running down to the water. In the good days of peace a hundred vessels were to be seen here, each with its double funnels. The line of them seemed to be never ending even when I was there, but then a very large proportion of them were lying idle.
They resemble huge, wooden houses, apparently of frail architecture, floating upon the water. Each has its double row of balconies running round it, and the lower or ground floor is open throughout.
The upper stories are propped and supported on ugly sticks and rickety-looking beams; so that the first appearance does not convey any great idea of security to a stranger. They are always painted white, and the paint is always very dirty. When they begin to move, they moan and groan in melancholy tones which are subversive of all comfort; and as they continue on their courses they puff and bluster, and are forever threatening to burst and shatter themselves to pieces. There they lie, in a continuous line nearly a mile in length, along the levee of St. Louis, dirty, dingy, and now, alas!
mute. They have ceased to groan and puff, and, if this war be continued for six months longer, will become rotten and useless as they lie.
They boast at St. Louis that they command 46,000 miles of navigable river water, counting the great rivers up and down from that place.
These rivers are chiefly the Mississippi; the Missouri and Ohio, which fall into the Mississippi near St. Louis; the Platte and Kansas Rivers, tributaries of the Missouri; the Illinois, and the Wisconsin. All these are open to steamers, and all of them traverse regions rich in corn, in coal, in metals, or in timber. These ready-made highways of the world center, as it were, at St. Louis, and make it the depot of the carrying trade of all that vast country. Minnesota is 1500 miles above New Orleans, but the wheat of Minnesota can be brought down the whole distance without change of the vessel in which it is first deposited. It would seem to be impossible that a country so blessed should not become rich. It must be remembered that these rivers flow through lands that have never yet been surpassed in natural fertility. Of all countries in the world one would say that the States of America should have been the last to curse themselves with a war; but now the curse has fallen upon them with a double vengeance, it would seem that they could never be great in war: their very institutions forbid it;their enormous distances forbid it; the price of labor forbids it;and it is forbidden also by the career of industry and expansion which has been given to them. But the curse of fighting has come upon them, and they are showing themselves to be as eager in the works of war as they have shown themselves capable in the works of peace. Men and angels must weep as they behold the things that are being done, as they watch the ruin that has come and is still coming, as they look on commerce killed and agriculture suspended.
No sight so sad has come upon the earth in our days. They were a great people; feeding the world, adding daily to the mechanical appliances of mankind, increasing in population beyond all measures of such increase hitherto known, and extending education as fast as they extended their numbers. Poverty had as yet found no place among them, and hunger was an evil of which they had read but were themselves ignorant. Each man among their crowds had a right to be proud of his manhood. To read and write--I am speaking here of the North--was as common as to eat and drink. To work was no disgrace, and the wages of work were plentiful. To live without work was the lot of none. What blessing above these blessings was needed to make a people great and happy? And now a stranger visiting them would declare that they are wallowing in a very slough of despond. The only trade open is the trade of war. The axe of the woodsman is at rest; the plow is idle; the artificer has closed his shop. The roar of the foundery is still heard because cannon are needed, and the river of molten iron comes out as an implement of death. The stone-cutter's hammer and the mason's trowel are never heard. The gold of the country is hiding itself as though it had returned to its mother earth, and the infancy of a paper currency has been commenced. Sick soldiers, who have never seen a battle-field, are dying by hundreds in the squalid dirt of their unaccustomed camps. Men and women talk of war, and of war only. Newspapers full of the war are alone read.
A contract for war stores--too often a dishonest contract--is the one path open for commercial enterprise. The young man must go to the war or he is disgraced. The war swallows everything, and as yet has failed to produce even such bitter fruits as victory or glory.
Must it not be said that a curse has fallen upon the land?
And yet I still hope that it may ultimately be for good. Through water and fire must a nation be cleansed of its faults. It has been so with all nations, though the phases of their trials have been different. It did not seem to be well with us in Cromwell's early days; nor was it well with us afterward in those disgraceful years of the later Stuarts. We know how France was bathed in blood in her effort to rid herself of her painted sepulcher of an ancient throne;how Germany was made desolate, in order that Prussia might become a nation. Ireland was poor and wretched till her famine came. Men said it was a curse, but that curse has been her greatest blessing.