Volume 4 — WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

[The Continental, drawing its very life from its desire of upholding, strengthening, and sustaining our sacred Union, welcomes the article from 'west of the Mississippi,' the object of which is to encourage, through a common literature, the fraternal relations between East and West, and cherish the great bond of national unity by proclaiming kindred ties.

We of the East stretch forth loving hands to our brothers of the West, and, feeling true and loyal hearts beating through the dim spaces dividing us, bid them God speed, as bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, whose prosperity is our life, whose ruin would be our own desolation.

'As from the East the lovely exile goes, Fair on the West a young Aurora glows; And all the flowers Ionian shores could yield Blush forth, reblooming in the Hesperian field.' Eds. Continental.]

From our quiet homes, on the western bank of the Mississippi, very nearly in Boston latitude, we send daily thoughts of business, friendly interest, and political sympathy unto you who dwell upon our Atlantic shore. Some of us look back unto you as the prodigal son is said to have regarded his father's house. All of us have intimate ties binding us unto you. From you, as the fountain head of literature and intelligence, through your magazines and journals, we are constantly supplied with the living current of thought and mental activity. Is it anything but fair that we should occasionally seek to respond and acknowledge the debt and the fellowship? For what shall more tend to strengthen the bonds of our broad Union than these common sympathies of a widespread and national fraternity of literary tastes and gratifications? Assimilation of mind, community of thought produced by free interchange of opinion, in the way of social intercourse, these will open our hearts to each other and strengthen the links of our national brotherhood. That we may love each other, let us know each other; that we may know each other, let us not fail to look each other fairly in the face.

West of the deep and gently flowing northern Mississippi, I know, is a long way off from the surging waters of your eastern coasts. When you have come this distance, you are, in so far as distance only is concerned, pretty well on your way toward the Rocky Mountains, and the new land of El Dorado, the young and golden Nevada. But yet we are in fact much nearer to your golden markets than to the hidden ore of our new Territories. Time and space, whose natural demands have been so rudely disregarded by the iron progress of science and skill between you and us, still to a great degree maintain their ancient rule over the lands west of us. That vast, thrifty vine of speedy transportation, which has wound itself about the trunk of our national tree, strikes here and there one of its tendrils out upon the branches beyond us, over the region of a few counties. In one instance, in the State immediately south of us, a single energetic scion has crept even to the banks of the rapid Missouri, and others are pushing steadily on in determined emulation. But in most cases, we must be content to ride to the westward, only on the back of the laggard and unambitious coach, that tortoise of travel, crawling on through prairie and swamp. And it is still within the recollection of almost the youngest inhabitant, how the daily trains, drawn by horse, mule, or ox, dragged themselves through our streets, proclaiming from their cotton coverings their distant destination, illustrating on their march the Western 'Excelsior'—

'The wheels in mud were sticking fast, As through a boundless prairie passed A youth, who drove a two-mule team, While on his wagon top was seen. Pike's Peak.'

Thus eastward we are within forty-eight hours of your press, while westward we are nearly as many days distant by private conveyance from the land of fabled wealth. But time and space must eventually give in. They are not equal to the task; and already the shadow of the great Pacific road makes them tremble for their natural tenure of the free West. It might have done for Æsop to talk about the tortoise and the hare, when they had not steam in those days to course their streams and stalk across their plains with giant tread, eclipsing the old seven-league boots of their fancy; but the tortoise is a used-up individual, is short of breath, and it is the passenger that sleeps, while the hare leaps onward to his covert.

Being thus brought near to you by the swift convoys of science, it will be evident that we are not so far away as we seem. We do not perpetrate an Irish bull when we say that the distance to a place is often greater than the distance in returning. It is, on the contrary, a well authenticated natural fact—a phenomenon, if you please. And by way of illustration we may aver that it is a great deal farther from your metropolis to west of the Mississippi, than from west of the Mississippi to the metropolis.

You sit in your cosy parlors and offices and think of some friend or relative, perhaps a son or daughter, in the 'far West.' It seems as if a sea spread out between you, or at least the better part of a continent. You think of India and China, perchance, or of England or France, and you feel as if they were all nearly equidistant with the home of your beloved ones. It is so far away out to the Father of Waters, and you can never make up your mind, without great and frequent resolution, to undertake such a journey as this.

But, my friends, it is not half so far as that, from us to the Atlantic coast. It is not so far from us to you, as it is to some tardy customer, whose bills are yet to collect, a hundred miles down the country by a two-days' stage adventure. Not nearly so far. Why, when we want to go to New York or Boston, we don't pack our trunks and take a cargo of luggage on board for a two-months' voyage. We just tumble hurriedly a few things into a valise or carpet sack before we go to bed, and the next morning off we start, and after two days of sight-seeing and newspaper reading along the way, and two nights' comfortable sleeping-car rest, we wake up at the dawn of the third day to bid you good morning and inquire after the markets; and that is the end of it.

It isn't so very far, after all. We put off in the morning, bid good evening to Chicago, good morning to Toledo, a ten-o'clock good night to Buffalo, and we sit down to a late breakfast with you the following day.

But then if you have never been out here, it's a long, long distance, and we advise you not to try it all of a sudden, nor to come without a trunk. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Then, in the next place, being out here, what sort of a people are we? This is a very important query. In the eyes of many we are Western semi-barbarians, without an overplus of manners, means, comforts, knowledge, or many, if any, of the means of Eastern and refined enjoyment. We have come hither to make our fortunes, or to care for those who have, and we are the fit objects of spiritual and temporal commiseration and missionary operations. That is the idea somewhat candidly expressed, isn't it? Oh, no! you don't think so poorly of us as that; but then we are a great ways off, in fact, in a new country, among strangers for the most part, and of course we cannot expect to find everything at hand which we enjoyed in our former comfortable homes.

Well, we are, many of us, from the 'far' East, and most of us from eastward. But we have tried to bring whatever of refinement, manners, knowledge, proprieties, and comforts we before possessed, such as they were, with us, and we haven't lost many of them. We do not believe that contact with the Indians has very much barbarized us. We still read and write and live in houses which we have built, and conduct mercantile and other transactions on former equitable principles; and our communications and intercourse with each other may still be said to be civilized, at least in great measure. We eat and drink what we formerly did, not excepting occasional shad and frequent oysters; and you do not seem to be averse to trying our deer and grouse once in a while—while we even share with you our wheat, cattle, and pork. We don't wear moccasons as yet, nor buckskin with Indian trimmings, instead of doeskin with the latest cut. We try, for the sake of appearances, to wear cotton and woollen and silk; and beads and trinkets are in no extraordinary demand. Beavers and furs are seen upon our streets; and the sound of the piano heard in the land, is not a very unusual disturbance. Our boys, as of old, smoke cigars in secret, fearful of ancient birch, and gum drops still adhere to the pockets of our girls in school. We don't see a very remarkable difference between the children about us and those we knew at a somewhat early age. Brick and stone rise with us into comfortable and even aspiring buildings, and the price of board is not less than we have paid before, nor so very much more. We neither travel nor live on half fare. And men still drive the horse before the cart, and carry the wheat in both ends of the bag as they go to mill.

In fact, we don't see that civilization has lost much flesh in its arduous journey to the far West; nor that, being human before, we have become less human now, or discarded our manners when we shut the doors of our birthplace behind us. We know indeed that Colenso went to convert the heathen, and that the heathen succeeded in converting him, thus putting the boot on the other leg; but the Indians have not yet won us to their dusky faith, although we must confess that assimilation to their copper-colored principles seems to have made some Copperheads among us.

As to works of art, they are not very plentiful hereabouts, excepting in the way of monuments perhaps. We have a generous number of those, erected to the large-heartedness and wisdom of persons who engaged in great improvement schemes, in the line of speculation, when there was but a fictitious basis of wealth in this land, before the bubble burst. These monuments, however, are not generally esteemed ornamental, and the wealth so lavishly expended upon them came not from the bosom of our communities, neither was it imported from north of us, nor west of us, but from whence I will not say. Perhaps some one who reads can help to account for part of it. These monuments, however, such as they are, have, by the liberal contributions made for their erection, exceeded in cost that of Bunker Hill, or the half-finished shot tower in Washington. Our only statues do not represent either the Father of his Country, nor the late old public defunctionary who sat in his chair—but they are principally devoted to 'the poor Indian,' in native costume. These statues, frequently wooden, exhibit the wonted hospitality of this race, and maintain the attitude of proffering a cigar to the friendly passer by.

Of paintings there is not a superfluity; still we have a small collection, comprising several which have for some years been on public exhibition, illustrating 'The Good Samaritan;' 'Prodigious;' 'Washington's Blacksmith shoeing Washington's Horse,' and others of less note, while ——'s panorama of the war has lately departed from us.

Still we have our public and private schools, seminaries, and churches, as others have in fully civilized countries; our newspapers, white and bronze; our leading men, and officeholders; natives of all climes and kindreds, Jew and Gentile, German and French, Bohemian and Scotch, English and Irish; our generals and our corporals; our learned and our unlearned; debtors and creditors—comprising mostly all of us; but believe me, friend, not a solitary living Indian.

I think we are a generous, hospitable, liberal people, up to the full limit of our means and capabilities. Being all away from home, as it were, and all strangers together, we have learned the blessedness of sympathy, and how a little lift is often a great boost, and a friend in need a friend indeed. It was formerly said that when a stranger appeared, the inhabitants emulously set to work to take him in, not however in the flattering and hospitable sense of the words. But as almost without exception any man in a new place or position is a verdant man, so we honestly maintain that they took themselves in, and found it rather difficult to take themselves out again. I believe that we are as quiet, honest, genteel, and mind-your-own-business a set of folks as you may find in most other and more favored communities. With the constant and increasing accessions to our society from more enlightened regions, it would be a wonder did we not attain in time to a level with many other and older-settled countries, who are apt to look abroad with serene complacency gathering motes in open eyes, We have had our castles in the air, and some of them are now underground; but we have read of South Sea bubbles, rise and fall in stocks, 'On to Richmonds,' McClellans, and Congress; and we don't think the beams are all in our own eyes and the motes too.

In fact we are not heathen nor barbarian, Goth nor Vandal, Hottentot nor Fire Eater—but bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh—one with you in all the customs, proprieties, civilization, and hopes of the great American people; bound to save the republic of our fathers, if we go to the death in defence of our mutual rights, principles, and homes.

Do you ask then, 'What is the need of saying all this, since we know it all?' I reply, there is need of saying it, and of repeating it again. There may not be need of it for you, my friend; there is need of it for many others. Talk not of making us of one flesh twain. It cannot be. It is not a question of mere interest that shall bind us as a people inseparably in one. God will not solder a chain. It is a higher bond, a holier bond. We are essentially and intrinsically one; one by nature; one by mutual sympathies, by blood relations, by dearest ties; one in all that constitutes the unity of a family relation; one in heart, one in aim, one in mind, purpose, education, and will. None can make us two. Lines may be drawn by ambitious schemers, divisions discussed, but these do not constitute separation or alienation. The heart of the people beats in profound and resolute unison. What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.

Rise, then, as thou art already rising, great heart of the troubled nation, throb from one confine to the other, bid faction's agitation hush, crush down opposition, scorn the unholy threat, dash the traitorous scheme, and declare the resolute and solemn purpose of all the members to live and govern together, as parts of the same living unity, till the whole body politic becomes a prostrate, lifeless corpse. And from the western border of the States, even from among the youngest and least of the children of the Union of Seventy-six, the union of oaths and the union of hearts, the union of instincts and the union of hopes, do we, in the name of her daughters and sons, bid you, upon the eastern confines, and the States between, you the mothers, and you the elder daughters, all hail, and God speed you in the work of forging anew, even in the fierce fires, the links that bind us into one; 'so making peace.'

For we are of you and with you, and will be ever, while our setting sun is your rising sun—ever, until we become two distinct and divergent races—till you cease to be Joseph and we cease to be Benjamin—till you become Edom and we become Moab—till long centuries shall have erased all kindred ties and bonds of consanguinity, and all men, forgetful of history, shall sink together into vassalage and ancient barbarism. But until then we are one in heart, one in life, and must abide one in fact, or sink together to common shameful desolation.