From Boston, on the 27th of November, my wife returned to England, leaving me to prosecute my journey southward to Washington by myself. I shall never forget the political feeling which prevailed in Boston at that time, or the discussions on the subject of Slidell and Mason, in which I felt myself bound to take a part. Up to that period I confess that my sympathies had been strongly with the Northern side in the general question; and so they were still, as far as I could divest the matter of its English bearings. I have always thought, and do think, that a war for the suppression of the Southern rebellion could not have been avoided by the North without an absolute loss of its political prestige. Mr. Lincoln was elected President of the United States in the autumn of 1860, and any steps taken by him or his party toward a peaceable solution of the difficulties which broke out immediately on his election must have been taken before he entered upon his office. South Carolina threatened secession as soon as Mr. Lincoln’s election was known, while yet there were four months left of Mr. Buchanan’s government. That Mr. Buchanan might, during those four months, have prevented secession, few men, I think, will doubt when the history of the time shall be written. But instead of doing so he consummated secession. Mr. Buchanan is a Northern man, a Pennsylvanian; but he was opposed to the party which had brought in Mr. Lincoln, having thriven as a politician by his adherence to Southern principles. Now, when the struggle came, he could not forget his party in his duty as President. General Jackson’s position was much the same when Mr. Calhoun, on the question of the tariff, endeavored to produce secession in South Carolina thirty years ago, in 1832 — excepting in this, that Jackson was himself a Southern man. But Jackson had a strong conception of the position which he held as President of the United States. He put his foot on secession and crushed it, forcing Mr. Calhoun, as Senator from South Carolina, to vote for that compromise as to the tariff which the government of the day proposed. South Carolina was as eager in 1832 for secession as she was in 1859-60; but the government was in the hands of a strong man and an honest one. Mr. Calhoun would have been hung had he carried out his threats. But Mr. Buchanan had neither the power nor the honesty of General Jackson, and thus secession was in fact consummated during his Presidency.

But Mr. Lincoln’s party, it is said — and I believe truly said — might have prevented secession by making overtures to the South, or accepting overtures from the South, before Mr. Lincoln himself had been inaugurated. That is to say, if Mr. Lincoln and the band of politicians who with him had pushed their way to the top of their party, and were about to fill the offices of State, chose to throw overboard the political convictions which had bound them together and insured their success — if they could bring themselves to adopt on the subject of slavery the ideas of their opponents — then the war might have been avoided, and secession also avoided. I do believe that had Mr. Lincoln at that time submitted himself to a compromise in favor of the Democrats, promising the support of the government to certain acts which would in fact have been in favor of slavery, South Carolina would again have been foiled for the time. For it must be understood, that though South Carolina and the Gulf States might have accepted certain compromises, they would not have been satisfied in so accepting them. The desired secession, and nothing short of secession, would in truth have been acceptable to them. But in doing so Mr. Lincoln would have been the most dishonest politician even in America. The North would have been in arms against him; and any true spirit of agreement between the cotton-growing slave States and the manufacturing States of the North, or the agricultural States of the West, would have been as far off and as improbable as it is now. Mr. Crittenden, who proffered his compromise to the Senate in December, 1860, was at that time one of the two Senators from Kentucky, a slave State. He now sits in the Lower House of Congress as a member from the same State. Kentucky is one of those border States which has found it impossible to secede, and almost equally impossible to remain in the union. It is one of the States into which it was most probable that the war would be carried — Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri being the three States which have suffered the most in this way. Of Mr. Crittenden’s own family, some have gone with secession and some with the union. His name had been honorably connected with American politics for nearly forty years, and it is not surprising that he should have desired a compromise. His terms were in fact these — a return to the Missouri compromise, under which the union pledged itself that no slavery should exist north of 36.30 degrees N. lat., unless where it had so existed prior to the date of that compromise; a pledge that Congress would not interfere with slavery in the individual States — which under the Constitution it cannot do; and a pledge that the Fugitive Slave Law should be carried out by the Northern States. Such a compromise might seem to make very small demand on the forbearance of the Republican party, which was now dominant. The repeal of the Missouri compromise had been to them a loss, and it might be said that its re-enactment would be a gain. But since that compromise had been repealed, vast territories south of the line in question had been added to the union, and the re-enactment of that compromise would hand those vast regions over to absolute slavery, as had been done with Texas. This might be all very well for Mr. Crittenden in the slave State of Kentucky — for Mr. Crittenden, although a slave owner, desired to perpetuate the union; but it would not have been well for New England or for the West. As for the second proposition, it is well understood that under the Constitution Congress cannot interfere in any way in the question of slavery in the individual States. Congress has no more constitutional power to abolish slavery in Maryland than she has to introduce it into Massachusetts. No such pledge, therefore, was necessary on either side. But such a pledge given by the North and West would have acted as an additional tie upon them, binding them to the finality of a constitutional enactment to which, as was of course well known, they strongly object. There was no question of Congress interfering with slavery, with the purport of extending its area by special enactment, and therefore by such a pledge the North and West could gain nothing; but the South would in prestige have gained much.

But that third proposition as to the Fugitive Slave Law and the faithful execution of that law by the Northern and Western States would, if acceded to by Mr. Lincoln’s party, have amounted to an unconditional surrender of everything. What! Massachusetts and Connecticut carry out the Fugitive Slave Law? Ohio carry out the Fugitive Slave Law after the “Dred Scott” decision and all its consequences? Mr. Crittenden might as well have asked Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Ohio to introduce slavery within their own lands. The Fugitive Slave Law was then, as it is now, the law of the land; it was the law of the United States as voted by Congress, and passed by the President, and acted on by the supreme judge of the United States Court. But it was a law to which no free State had submitted itself, or would submit itself. “What!” the English reader will say, “sundry States in the union refuse to obey the laws of the union — refuse to submit to the constitutional action of their own Congress?” Yes. Such has been the position of this country! To such a dead lock has it been brought by the attempted but impossible amalgamation of North and South. Mr. Crittenden’s compromise was moonshine. It was utterly out of the question that the free States should bind themselves to the rendition of escaped slaves, or that Mr. Lincoln, who had just been brought in by their voices, should agree to any compromise which should attempt so to bind them. Lord Palmerston might as well attempt to reenact the Corn Laws.

Then comes the question whether Mr. Lincoln or his government could have prevented the war after he had entered upon his office in March, 1861? I do not suppose that any one thinks that he could have avoided secession and avoided the war also; that by any ordinary effort of government he could have secured the adhesion of the Gulf States to the union after the first shot had been fired at Fort Sumter. The general opinion in England is, I take it, this — that secession then was manifestly necessary, and that all the blood-shed and money-shed, and all this destruction of commerce and of agriculture might have been prevented by a graceful adhesion to an indisputable fact. But there are some facts, even some indisputable facts, to which a graceful adherence is not possible. Could King Bomba have welcomed Garibaldi to Naples? Can the Pope shake hands with Victor Emmanuel? Could the English have surrendered to their rebel colonists peaceable possession of the colonies? The indisputability of a fact is not very easily settled while the circumstances are in course of action by which the fact is to be decided. The men of the Northern States have not believed in the necessity of secession, but have believed it to be their duty to enforce the adherence of these States to the union. The American governments have been much given to compromises, but had Mr. Lincoln attempted any compromise by which any one Southern State could have been let out of the union, he would have been impeached. In all probability the whole Constitution would have gone to ruin, and the Presidency would have been at an end. At any rate, his Presidency would have been at an end. When secession, or in other words rebellion, was once commenced, he had no alternative but the use of coercive measures for putting it down — that is, he had no alternative but war. It is not to be supposed that he or his ministry contemplated such a war as has existed — with 600,000 men in arms on one side, each man with his whole belongings maintained at a cost of 150l. per annum, or ninety millions sterling per annum for the army. Nor did we when we resolved to put down the French revolution think of such a national debt as we now owe. These things grow by degrees, and the mind also grows in becoming used to them; but I cannot see that there was any moment at which Mr. Lincoln could have stayed his hand and cried peace. It is easy to say now that acquiescence in secession would have been better than war, but there has been no moment when he could have said so with any avail. It was incumbent on him to put down rebellion, or to be put down by it. So it was with us in America in 1776.

I do not think that we in England have quite sufficiently taken all this into consideration. We have been in the habit of exclaiming very loudly against the war, execrating its cruelty and anathematizing its results, as though the cruelty were all superfluous and the results unnecessary. But I do not remember to have seen any statement as to what the Northern States should have done — what they should have done, that is, as regards the South, or when they should have done it. It seems to me that we have decided as regards them that civil war is a very bad thing, and that therefore civil war should be avoided. But bad things cannot always be avoided. It is this feeling on our part that has produced so much irritation in them against us — reproducing, of course, irritation on our part against them. They cannot understand that we should not wish them to be successful in putting down a rebellion; nor can we understand why they should be outrageous against us for standing aloof, and keeping our hands, if it be only possible, out of the fire.

When Slidell and Mason were arrested, my opinions were not changed, but my feelings were altered. I seemed to acknowledge to myself that the treatment to which England had been subjected, and the manner in which that treatment was discussed, made it necessary that I should regard the question as it existed between England and the States, rather than in its reference to the North and South. I had always felt that as regarded the action of our government we had been sans reproche; that in arranging our conduct we had thought neither of money nor political influence, but simply of the justice of the case — promising to abstain from all interference and keeping that promise faithfully. It had been quite clear to me that the men of the North, and the women also, had failed to appreciate this, looking, as men in a quarrel always do look, for special favor on their side. Everything that England did was wrong. If a private merchant, at his own risk, took a cargo of rifles to some Southern port, that act to Northern eyes was an act of English interference — of favor shown to the South by England as a nation; but twenty shiploads of rifles sent from England to the North merely signified a brisk trade and a desire for profit. The “James Adger,” a Northern man-of-war, was refitted at Southampton as a matter of course. There was no blame to England for that. But the Nashville, belonging to the Confederates, should not have been allowed into English waters. It was useless to speak of neutrality. No Northerner would understand that a rebel could have any mutual right. The South had no claim in his eyes as a belligerent, though the North claimed all those rights which he could only enjoy by the fact of there being a recognized war between him and his enemy the South. The North was learning to hate England, and day by day the feeling grew upon me that, much as I wished to espouse the cause of the North, I should have to espouse the cause of my own country. Then Slidell and Mason were arrested, and I began to calculate how long I might remain in the country. “There is no danger. We are quite right,” the lawyers said. “There are Vattel, and Puffendorff, and Stowell, and Phillimore, and Wheaton,” said the ladies. “Ambassadors are contraband all the world over — more so than gunpowder; and if taken in a neutral bottom,” etc. I wonder why ships are always called bottoms when spoken of with legal technicality? But neither the lawyers nor the ladies convinced me. I know that there are matters which will be read not in accordance with any written law, but in accordance with the bias of the reader’s mind. Such laws are made to be strained any way. I knew how it would be. All the legal acumen of New England declared the seizure of Slidell and Mason to be right. The legal acumen of Old England has declared it to be wrong; and I have no doubt that the ladies of Old England can prove it to be wrong out of Yattel, Puffendorff, Stowell, Phillimore, and Wheaton.

“But there’s Grotius,” I said, to an elderly female at New York, who had quoted to me some half dozen writers on international law, thinking thereby that I should trump her last card. “I’ve looked into Grotius too,” said she, “and as far as I can see,” etc. etc. etc. So I had to fall back again on the convictions to which instinct and common sense had brought me. I never doubted for a moment that those convictions would be supported by English lawyers.

I left Boston with a sad feeling at my heart that a quarrel was imminent between England and the States, and that any such quarrel must be destructive to the cause of the North. I had never believed that the States of New England and the Gulf States would again become parts of one nation, but I had thought that the terms of separation would be dictated by the North, and not by the South. I had felt assured that South Carolina and the Gulf States, across from the Atlantic to Texas, would succeed in forming themselves into a separate confederation; but I had still hoped that Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri might be saved to the grander empire of the North, and that thus a great blow to slavery might be the consequence of this civil war. But such ascendency could only fall to the North by reason of their command of the sea. The Northern ports were all open, and the Southern ports were all closed. But if this should be reversed. If by England’s action the Southern ports should be opened, and the Northern ports closed, the North could have no fair expectation of success. The ascendency in that case would all be with the South. Up to that moment — the Christmas of 1861 — Maryland was kept in subjection by the guns which General Dix had planted over the City of Baltimore. Two-thirds of Virginia were in active rebellion, coerced originally into that position by her dependence for the sale of her slaves on the cotton States. Kentucky was doubtful, and divided. When the Federal troops prevailed, Kentucky was loyal; when the Confederate troops prevailed, Kentucky was rebellious. The condition in Missouri was much the same. These four States, by two of which the capital, with its District of Columbia, is surrounded, might be gained or might be lost. And these four States are susceptible of white labor — as much so as Ohio and Illinois — are rich in fertility, and rich also in all associations which must be dear to Americans. Without Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky, without the Potomac, the Chesapeake, and Mount Vernon, the North would indeed be shorn of its glory! But it seemed to be in the power of the North to say under what terms secession should take place, and where should be the line. A Senator from South Carolina could never again sit in the same chamber with one from Massachusetts; but there need be no such bar against the border States. So much might at any rate be gained, and might stand hereafter as the product of all that money spent on 600,000 soldiers. But if the Northerners should now elect to throw themselves into a quarrel with England, if in the gratification of a shameless braggadocio they should insist on doing what they liked, not only with their own, but with the property of all others also, it certainly did seem as though utter ruin must await their cause. With England, or one might say with Europe, against them, secession must be accomplished, not on Northern terms, but on terms dictated by the South. The choice was then for them to make; and just at that time it seemed as though they were resolved to throw away every good card out of their hand. Such had been the ministerial wisdom of Mr. Seward. I remember hearing the matter discussed in easy terms by one of the United States Senators. “Remember, Mr. Trollope,” he said to me, “we don’t want a war with England. If the choice is given to us, we had rather not fight England. Fighting is a bad thing. But remember this also, Mr. Trollope, that if the matter is pressed on us, we have no great objection. We had rather not, but we don’t care much one way or the other.” What one individual may say to another is not of much moment, but this Senator was expressing the feelings of his constituents, who were the legislature of the State from whence he came. He was expressing the general idea on the subject of a large body of Americans. It was not that he and his State had really no objection to the war. Such a war loomed terribly large before the minds of them all. They know it to be fraught with the saddest consequences. It was so regarded in the mind of that Senator. But the braggadocio could not be omitted. Had be omitted it, he would have been untrue to his constituency.

When I left Boston for Washington, nothing was as yet known of what the English government or the English lawyers might say. This was in the first week in December, and the expected voice from England could not be heard till the end of the second week. It was a period of great suspense, and of great sorrow also to the more sober-minded Americans. To me the idea of such a war was terrible. It seemed that in these days all the hopes of our youth were being shattered. That poetic turning of the sword into a sickle, which gladdened our hearts ten or twelve years since, had been clean banished from men’s minds. To belong to a peace party was to be either a fanatic, an idiot, or a driveler. The arts of war had become everything. Armstrong guns, themselves indestructible but capable of destroying everything within sight, and most things out of sight, were the only recognized results of man’s inventive faculties. To build bigger, stronger, and more ships than the French was England’s glory. To hit a speck with a rifle bullet at 800 yards distance was an Englishman’s first duty. The proper use for a young man’s leisure hours was the practice of drilling. All this had come upon us with very quick steps since the beginning of the Russian war. But if fighting must needs be done, one did not feel special grief at fighting a Russian. That the Indian mutiny should be put down was a matter of course. That those Chinese rascals should be forced into the harness of civilization was a good thing. That England should be as strong as France — or, perhaps, if possible a little stronger — recommended itself to an Englishman’s mind as a State necessity. But a war with the States of America! In thinking of it I began to believe that the world was going backward. Over sixty millions sterling of stock — railway stock and such like — are held in America by Englishmen, and the chances would be that before such a war could be finished the whole of that would be confiscated. Family connections between the States and the British isles are almost as close as between one of those islands and another. The commercial intercourse between the two countries has given bread to millions of Englishmen, and a break in it would rob millions of their bread. These people speak our language, use our prayers, read our books, are ruled by our laws, dress themselves in our image, are warm with our blood. They have all our virtues; and their vices are our own too, loudly as we call out against them. They are our sons and our daughters, the source of our greatest pride, and as we grow old they should be the staff of our age. Such a war as we should now wage with the States would be an unloosing of hell upon all that is best upon the world’s surface. If in such a war we beat the Americans, they with their proud stomachs would never forgive us. If they should be victors, we should never forgive ourselves. I certainly could not bring myself to speak of it with the equanimity of my friend the Senator.

I went through New York to Philadelphia, and made a short visit to the latter town. Philadelphia seems to me to have thrown off its Quaker garb, and to present itself to the world in the garments ordinarily assumed by large cities — by which I intend to express my opinion that the Philadelphians are not, in these latter days, any better than their neighbors. I am not sure whether in some respects they may not perhaps be worse. Quakers — Quakers absolutely in the very flesh of close bonnets and brown knee-breeches — are still to be seen there; but they are not numerous, and would not strike the eye if one did not specially look for a Quaker at Philadelphia. It is a large town, with a very large hotel — there are no doubt half a dozen large hotels, but one of them is specially great — with long, straight streets, good shops and markets, and decent, comfortable-looking houses. The houses of Philadelphia generally are not so large as those of other great cities in the States. They are more modest than those of New York, and less commodious than those of Boston. Their most striking appendage is the marble steps at the front doors. Two doors, as a rule, enjoy one set of steps, on the outer edges of which there is generally no parapet or raised curb-stone. This, to my eye, gave the houses an unfinished appearance — as though the marble ran short, and no further expenditure could be made. The frost came when I was there, and then all these steps were covered up in wooden cases.

The City of Philadelphia lies between the two rivers, the Delaware and the Schuylkill. Eight chief streets run from river to river, and twenty-four principal cross-streets bisect the eight at right angles. The cross-streets are all called by their numbers. In the long streets the numbers of the houses are not consecutive, but follow the numbers of the cross-streets; so that a person living on Chestnut Street between Tenth Street and Eleventh Street, and ten doors from Tenth Street, would live at No. 1010. The opposite house would be No. 1011. It thus follows that the number of the house indicates the exact block of houses in which it is situated. I do not like the right-angled building of these towns, nor do I like the sound of Twentieth Street and Thirtieth Street; but I must acknowledge that the arrangement in Philadelphia has its convenience. In New York I found it by no means an easy thing to arrive at the desired locality.

They boast in Philadelphia that they have half a million inhabitants. If this be taken as a true calculation, Philadelphia is in size the fourth city in the world — putting out of the question the cities of China, as to which we have heard so much and believe so little. But in making this calculation the citizens include the population of a district on some sides ten miles distant from Philadelphia. It takes in other towns, connected with it by railway but separated by large spaces of open country. American cities are very proud of their population; but if they all counted in this way, there would soon be no rural population left at all. There is a very fine bank at Philadelphia, and Philadelphia is a town somewhat celebrated in its banking history. My remarks here, however, apply simply to the external building, and not to its internal honesty and wisdom, or to its commercial credit.

In Philadelphia also stands the old house of Congress — the house in which the Congress of the United States was held previous to 1800, when the government and the Congress with it were moved to the new City of Washington. I believe, however, that the first Congress, properly so called, was assembled at New York in 1789, the date of the inauguration of the first President. It was, however, here in this building at Philadelphia that the independence of the union was declared in 1776, and that the Constitution of the United States was framed.

Pennsylvania, with Philadelphia for its capital, was once the leading State of the union, leading by a long distance. At the end of the last century it beat all the other States in population, but has since been surpassed by New York in all respects — in population, commerce, wealth, and general activity. Of course it is known that Pennsylvania was granted to William Penn, the Quaker, by Charles II. I cannot completely understand what was the meaning of such grants — how far they implied absolute possession in the territory, or how far they confirmed simply the power of settling and governing a colony. In this case a very considerable property was confirmed; as the claim made by Penn’s children, after Penn’s death, was bought up by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 130,000l., which, in those days, was a large price for almost any landed estate on the other side of the Atlantic.

Pennsylvania lies directly on the borders of slave land, being immediately north of Maryland. Mason and Dixon’s line, of which we hear so often, and which was first established as the division between slave soil and free soil, runs between Pennsylvania and Maryland. The little State of Delaware, which lies between Maryland and the Atlantic, is also tainted with slavery, but the stain is not heavy nor indelible. In a population of a hundred and twelve thousand, there are not two thousand slaves, and of these the owners generally would willingly rid themselves if they could. It is, however, a point of honor with these owners, as it is also in Maryland, not to sell their slaves; and a man who cannot sell his slaves must keep them. Were he to enfranchise them and send them about their business, they would come back upon his hands. Were he to enfranchise them and pay them wages for work, they would get the wages, but he would not get the work. They would get the wages; but at the end of three months they would still fall back upon his hands in debt and distress, looking to him for aid and comfort as a child looks for it. It is not easy to get rid of a slave in a slave State. That question of enfranchising slaves is not one to be very readily solved.

In Pennsylvania the right of voting is confined to free white men. In New York the colored free men have the right to vote, providing they have a certain small property qualification, and have been citizens for three years in the State, whereas a white man need have been a citizen but for ten days, and need have no property qualification — f............