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March-May 1849 After having been ferried across to Jersey City we mustered in a railway car & were soon speeding on our way to Philadelphia. 3 Cheers at parting, for the girls we leave behind us & for divers other causes kept us roaring until we were quite hoarse. The time flew swiftly by we spending it pleasantly in singing & merriment until our arrival in Philadelphia 96 miles from New York, here we formed in military order & made a widely different entrance into this beautiful City to what some months ago I anticipated. After dinner I had again the pleasure of shaking hands with Mr Robbins & his Brother he being there on business, & then we left immedi- ately for Baltimore, IT before our arrival at this place a telegraphic Communication was made engaging beds at the U. S. Hotel & after the long & fatiguing journey the admirable supper & clean soft beds were very grateful. l2 Mar/lb. We left at 6. AM. for Hudson remembered the captain for the maxim quoted, he is known more famously for his saying, "when found, make a note of." As the exploring company left New York with "a Light Heart," headed for the mines of gold, the New York Herald of March 18, 1849, saluted their start: "The Colony Guard, a company organized in this city, under the command of John McNulty, M.D., took their departure on Friday morning, in the seven o'clock train, for Philadelphia, on their route to California, via St. Louis, Independence, and South Pass. This company is composed of twenty-five picked men, well armed and provisioned, dressed in the United States Army uniform. The principle on which they are organized is perfect equality, the captain no better than the private, except in his official capacity. They are high principled and moral men. They hold sacred individual rights, and will recognize the Sabbath and the rites belonging to it." Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1907); Alexander J. Philip, A Dickens Dictionary (London: George Routledge and Sons Limited, 19O9), p. 95. I1 They embarked by the main line for Baltimore which was the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad and could have left at either 9:00 A.M. or 3:00 P.M. on the six-hour trip, at a cost of three dollars. Baltimore was quite a bit larger than Phila- delphia (110,640 white and 10,736 "free colored") boasting a population of 140,666 whites, 25,442 "free colored" and 2,946 slaves, all situated in twenty different wards. Although the city was southern in its culture and outlook, it was also a thriving and bustling commercial mart, the port to which thousands of immigrants came and the center for commerce to Latin American nations. Seventh Census; Seymour Dunbar, A History of Travel in America (New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 19X'), p. 1114; William J. Evitts, A Matter of Allegiances: Maryland from 2850 to 2861 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Uni- versity Press, 1974), p. 12. I2 In Baltimore Hudson was not able to follow the precedent set by his famous countryman, Charles Dickens, who stayed in Barnum's City Hotel, "the most comfortable of all the hotels of which I had the experience in the United States." Nevertheless, the United States Hotel, owned by a family named Guy, offered fine accommodations. According to one historian of the city, the Guy hotels had a reputation as houses "where gentlemen are treated as though they were at their own homes. . . . The Guys were eminently a set of men who knew how to keep a hotel." Francis F. Beirne, The Amiable 49 |
