The Southern or Democratic party of the United States had, as all men know, been in power for many years.  Either Southern Presidents had been elected, or Northern Presidents with Southern politics.  The South for many years had had the disposition of military matters, and the power of distributing military appliances of all descriptions.  It is now alleged by the North that a conspiracy had long been hatching in the South with the view of giving to the Southern States the power of secession whenever they might think fit to secede; and it is further alleged that President after President, for years back, has unduly sent the military treasure of the nation away from the North down to the South, in order that the South might be prepared when the day should come.  That a President with Southern instincts should unduly favor the South, that he should strengthen the South, and feel that arms and ammunition were stored there with better effect than they could be stored in the North, is very probable.  We all understand what is the bias of a man’s mind, and how strong that bias may become when the man is not especially scrupulous.  But I do not believe that any President previous to Buchanan sent military materials to the South with the self-acknowledged purpose of using them against the Union.  That Buchanan did so, or knowingly allowed this to be done, I do believe, and I think that Buchanan was a traitor to the country whose servant he was and whose pay he received.

And now, having said so much in the way of introduction, I will begin my journey.

CHAPTER II.

NEWPORT—­RHODE ISLAND.

We—­the we consisting of my wife and myself—­left Liverpool for Boston on the 24th August, 1861, in the Arabia, one of Cunard’s North American mail packets.  We had determined that my wife should return alone at the beginning of winter, when I intended to go to a part of the country in which, under the existing circumstances of the war, a lady might not feel herself altogether comfortable.  I proposed staying in America over the winter, and returning in the spring; and this programme I have carried out with sufficient exactness.

The Arabia touched at Halifax; and as the touch extended from 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. we had an opportunity of seeing a good deal of that colony; not quite sufficient to justify me at this critical age in writing a chapter of travels in Nova Scotia, but enough perhaps to warrant a paragraph.  It chanced that a cousin of mine was then in command of the troops there, so that we saw the fort with all the honors.  A dinner on shore was, I think, a greater treat to us even than this.  We also inspected sundry specimens of the gold which is now being found for the first time in Nova Scotia, as to the glory and probable profits of which the Nova Scotians seemed to be fully alive.  But still, I think the dinner on shore took rank with us as the most memorable and meritorious of all that we did and saw at Halifax.  At seven o’clock on the morning but one after that we were landed at Boston.