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The Civil War in America

by Sir William Howard Russell · English · Gutenberg #40749 · 488,945 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Civil War in America

Author: Sir William Howard Russell


        
Release date: September 13, 2012 [eBook #40749]

Language: English

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PRICE, TWENTY-FIVE CENTS.

No. 1. SERIAL. August, 1861.

Fuller’s Modern Age.

DEVOTED TO

Sermons, Orations, Lectures, Popular Correspondence, &c.

THE

CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA;

BY

WM. H. RUSSELL, LL.D.,

Special Correspondent of the London Times.

BOSTON:

GARDNER A. FULLER, 112 WASHINGTON STREET.

LONDON: Trubner & Co., 60 Paternoster Row.

STEREOTYPE EDITION.

No. TWO WILL CONTAIN A SECOND SERIES OF MR. RUSSELL’S
LETTERS. A LIBERAL DISCOUNT TO THE TRADE.☜

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.:
MILES & DILLINGHAM,
Printers and Stereotypers.





THE

CIVIL WAR

IN

AMERICA:

BY

WM. H. RUSSELL, LL.D.,

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE

LONDON TIMES.

BOSTON:

GARDNER A. FULLER,

No. 112 Washington Street.




THE MODERN AGE.


In presenting the first number of the _Modern Age_ to the public, I have
selected the letters of Mr. Russell, deeming them the most appropriate
topic for the times, and worthy of an extensive circulation.

That these letters are written by the most interesting correspondent of
the largest, ablest, and most influential paper in the world, is
sufficient proof of their merits, and that they come to us “well
recommended and properly vouched for.”

The universal “desire for more light” in regard to affairs in the South,
will find abundant satisfaction in this brilliant and talented
correspondence of a writer, whose chirographical experience in the
Crimean war, has so eminently fitted him “to render a fair and impartial
account” of the Civil War in America.

Number two of the _Modern Age_ will contain another serial of Mr.
Russell’s letters, at the close of which I shall introduce popular
Orations and occasional Sermons from our most eminent Divines. The
principal design of this work is to preserve in the most convenient form
the best thoughts, fresh from the lips of our most gifted men: its
peculiar character will prevent a regular monthly publication; yet I
hope to be able from the many reports, to elect twelve in the course of
a year. No pains will be spared in my endeavors to make it the best and
most attractive work of its kind in the country, and I trust it will
meet with much favor at the hands of a generous public.

G. A. FULLER.




THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.




LETTER I.

WASHINGTON, March 29, 1861.


IF the intelligent foreigner, who is supposed to make so many
interesting and novel observations on the aspect of the countries he
visits, and on the manners of the people among whom he travels, were to
visit the United States at this juncture, he would fail to detect any
marked indication of the extraordinary crisis which agitates the members
of the Great Republic, either at the principal emporium of its commerce,
or at the city which claims to be the sole seat of its Government.
Accustomed to the manifestation of violent animosity and great
excitement among the nations of Europe during political convulsions, he
would be struck with astonishment, if not moved to doubt, when, casting
his eyes on the columns of the multitudinous journals which swarm from
every printing-press in the land, he read that the United States were in
such throes of mortal agony, that those who knew the constitution of the
patient best, were scarce able to prophesy any result except final
dissolution. It would require such special acquaintance as only those
well versed in the various signs and forms of the dangerous influences
which are at work can possess, to appreciate from anything to be seen at
New York or Washington, the fact that the vast body politic which sprang
forth with the thews and sinews of a giant from the womb of rebellion
and revolution; which claimed half the New World as its heritage, and
reserved the other as the certain reward of future victory; which
extended its commerce over every sea, and affronted the antiquity of
international law by bold innovations and defiant enumerations of new
principles; which seemed to revel in success of doctrines that the
experience of the Old World had proved to be untenable, or had rejected
as unsuited to the government of mankind; which had developed all the
resources of the physical agencies in manufactures, machinery,
electricity, and steam, that could give strength, and wealth, and vigor
to its frame;--that this mighty Confederation should suddenly be smitten
with a desire to tear its limbs asunder, and was only restrained by the
palsy that had smitten some of its members. Certainly no notion of the
kind could be formed from actual observation of the words and deeds of
men in the cities I have visited, or from any source of information,
except the casual conversations of fellow travellers, or the startling
headings in the newspapers, which have, however, reduced “sensation”
paragraphs and lines to such every-day routine, that the American is no
more affected by them than the workman in the proof-house is moved by
the constant explosion of cannon. We are accustomed to think the
Americans a very excitable people; their personal conflicts, their rapid
transitions of feeling, the accounts of their public demonstrations,
their energetic expressions, their love of popular assemblies, and the
cultivation of the arts, which excite their passions, are favorable to
that notion. But New York seems full of divine calm and human phlegm. A
panic in Wall Street would, doubtless, create greater external
disturbance than seemed to me to exist in its streets and pleasant
mansions. No doubt there is, and must be, very great agitation of
feeling, and much apprehension; but to the stranger they are not very
patent or visible. An elegant refinement, which almost assumes the airs
of pococuranteism, reigns in society, only broken by the vehement voices
of female patriotism, or the denunciations addressed against the
provisions of a tariff, which New York seems unanimous in regarding with
hostility and dismay. If Rome be burning, there are hundreds of noble
Romans fiddling away in the Fifth Avenue, and in its dependencies, quite
satisfied that they cannot join any of the fire companies, and that they
are not responsible for the deeds of the “Nero” or “anti-Nero” who
applied the torch. They marry, and are given in marriage; they attend
their favorite theatres, dramatic or devotional, as the case may be, in
the very best coats or bonnets; they eat the largest oysters, drink the
best wines, and enjoy the many goods the gods provide them, unmoved by
the daily announcement that Fort Sumter is evacuated, that the South is
arming, and the Morrill tariff is ruining the trade of the country. And,
as they say, “What can we do?” “We are,” they insinuate, “powerless to
avert the march of events. We think everybody is wrong. Things were
going on very pleasantly when these Abolitionists disturbed the course
of trade, and commerce, and speculation with their furious fantasies;
and now the South, availing themselves of the opportunity which the
blindness of their enemies has afforded them to do what they have wished
in their hearts for many a year, start in business for themselves, and
will not be readily brought back by the lure of any concession till they
find they are unable to get money to pay their way, and resort to
measures which may be ruinous to capital, or lead to reconstruction of
the Confederation on both sides.”

If, pursuing the researches which such remarks suggest, an investigation
is made in the same stratum of thought by careful exploration, it will
not be long before the miner comes upon matters which he never could
have expected to find in that particular gallery. What are the most
cherished institutions of the Great Republic? If the intelligent
foreigner were asked what were the fundamental principles which,
guaranteed by, and guaranteeing, their Constitution, the people of the
United States admired the most, he would probably reply, “Universal
suffrage (with its incidental exercise of vote by ballot), free
citizenship, a free press.” Probably he would answer correctly in the
main, for he would know more of the matter than I do; but if he visited
New York for a few days, what would be his amazement to see his best
friends shake their heads at the very mention of these grand
Shibboleths! How would his faith be disturbed when he learnt from some
merchant prince that universal suffrage, in its practical working in
that city, had handed over the municipal government to the most
ignorant, if not the most unprincipled men; that it flooded and
submerged the landmarks of respectability and station by a tide of
barbarous immigrant foreigners; that the press had substituted
licentiousness for liberty; and that the evils done in New York by these
agencies afflicted the whole State! Ingenious theorists might attempt to
convince him that the effect of these mischievous elements had been felt
at the very centre of the social system, and had led to the separation
which, be it temporary or permanent, all Northern Americans deplore.
Few, however, would admit that the failure of Republican institutions
is by any means involved in the disasters which have fallen on the
Commonwealth, even when they freely confess that they desire to modify
the Constitution, while they lament the impossibility of doing so in
consequence of the very condition of things it has created. It is my
firm conviction, forced on my mind by the words of many men of note with
whom I have spoken, that they would gladly, if they could, place some
limits to their own liberties as far as their fellow-men are concerned,
and that they begin to doubt whether a Constitution founded on abstract
principles of the equality of mankind can be worked out in huge
cities--veritable _cloacæ gentium_--however successful it was in the
earlier days of the Republic, and as it is in the sparsely inhabited
rural districts where every inhabitant represents property. These men
may be a small minority, but they certainly represent great wealth, much
ability, and high intelligence in the State of which I speak. They
assert there is no recuperative power in the Constitution. The sick
physician cannot heal himself, for he has caused his own illness, and a
Convention, the great nostrum of the fathers of the Republic, is only an
appeal from Philip drunk to Philip mad. “_Volumus leges Americæ
mutari_,” is their despairing aspiration, and they justify the wish by
contrasts between the state of things which existed when the
Constitution was prepared for the thirteen Confederated States and that
which prevails at the present time, when thirty-four States, some two or
three of which are equal to the original Republic, and many of which
declare they are absolute sovereignties; which have absorbed all the
nomads of the Old World, with a fair proportion of Genghis Khans,
Attilas, and Timours in embryo, present a spectacle which the most
sagacious of the framers of the original compact never could have
imagined. They are impatient of the ills they have, and are somewhat
indifferent to the wondrous and magnificent results in material
prosperity and intellectual development which the old system either
promoted or caused. New York, however, would do anything rather than
fight; her delight is to eat her bread and honey, and count her dollars,
in peace. The vigorous, determined hostility of the South to her
commercial eminence, is met by a sort of maudlin sympathy without any
action, or intention to act. The only matter in which the great
commercial aristocracy take any interest is the Morrill tariff, which
threatens to inflict on them the most serious losses and calamity.
There is a general expectation that an extra Session of Congress will be
called to amend the obnoxious measure; and it is asserted that the
necessity for such a Session is imperious; but, so far as I can judge,
all such hopes will be disappointed. There is no desire at Washington to
complicate matters by stormy debates, and the statesmen so recently
elevated to power are sufficiently well read in general and in national
history to know that extraordinary Parliaments are generally the
executioners of those who call them. The representatives of the great
protected interests at the capital deny that the tariff will have the
injurious effects attributed to it, or that it augments to any very
grievous extent the burdens of the New Yorkers or of the foreign
manufacturers. Even if it does, they declare that protection is
necessary. The ingenious proposals to evade the operation of the tariff
by a jugglery of cargoes between the Southern and Northern ports will,
they say, be frustrated by the more rigid application of the Revenue and
Customs’ system, out of which most serious complications must inevitably
arise at no distant period. While at New York all is calm doubtfulness
or indolent anticipation, at Washington there is excitement and
activity. The aristocracy of New York has yielded itself unresistingly
to a tyranny it hates; it cannot wield at will the fierce democracy, and
it abandons all efforts to control it, forgetting the abundant proofs in
every history of the power of genius, wealth, and superior intelligence
to control the heavier masses, however wild and difficult of approach.

At Washington there is at this moment such a ferment as no other part of
the world could exhibit--a spectacle which makes one wonder that any man
can be induced to seek for office, or that any Government can be
conducted under such a system. The storm which rolled over the capital
has, I am told, subsided; but the stranger, unaccustomed to such
tempestuous zones, thinks the gale is quite strong enough even in its
diminished intensity. All the hotels are full of keen gray-eyed men, who
fondly believe their destiny is to fill for four years some pet
appointment under Government. The streets are crowded with them; the
steamers and the railway carriages, the public departments, the steps of
the senators’ dwellings, the lobbies of houses, the President’s mansion,
are crowded with them. From all parts of the vast Union, not even
excepting the South, they have come fast as steam or wind and waves
could bear them to concentrate in one focus on the devoted head of the
President all the myriad influences which, by letter, testimonial,
personal application, unceasing canvass, and sleepless solicitation,
they can collect together.

Willard’s Hotel, a huge caravanserai, is a curious study of character
and institutions. Every form of speech and every accent under which the
English tongue can be recognized, rings through the long corridors in
tones of expostulation, anger, or gratification. Crowds of long-limbed,
nervous, eager-looking men, in loose black garments, undulating shirt
collars, vast conceptions in hatting and booting, angular with documents
and pregnant with demand, throng every avenue, in spite of the printed
notices directing them “to move on from front of the cigar-stand.” They
are “senator hunters,” and every senator has a _clientelle_ more
numerous than the most popular young Roman noble who ever sauntered down
the Via Sacra. If one of them ventures out of cover, the cry is raised,
and he is immediately run to earth. The printing-presses are busy with
endless copies of testimonials, which are hurled at everybody with
reckless profusion.

The writing-room of the hotel is full of people preparing statements or
writing for “more testimonials,” demanding more places, or submitting
“extra certificates.” The bar-room is full of people inspiring
themselves with fresh confidence, or engaged in plots to surprise some
place or find one out; and the ladies who are connected with members of
the party in power find themselves the centres of irresistible
attraction. “Sir,” said a gentleman to whom I had letters of
introduction, “I know you must be a stranger, because you did not stop
me to present these letters in the street.”

At the head of the list of persecuted men is the President himself.
Every one has a right to walk into the White House, which is the
President’s private as well as his official residence. Mr. Lincoln is
actuated by the highest motives in the distribution of office. All the
vast patronage of tens of thousands of places, from the highest to the
lowest, is his; and, instead of submitting the various claims to the
heads of departments, the President seeks to investigate them, and to
see all the candidates. Even his iron frame and robust constitution are
affected by the process, which lasts all day, and is not over in the
night or in the morning. The particular _formula_ which he has adopted
to show the impossibility of satisfying everybody is by no means
accepted by anybody who is disappointed. What is the use of telling a
man he can’t have a place because a hundred others are asking for it, if
that man thinks he is the only one who has a right to get it?

At the very moment when the President and his Cabinet should be left
undisturbed to deal with the tremendous questions which have arisen for
their action, the roar of office seekers dins every sense, and almost
annihilates them. The Senate, which is now sitting merely to confirm
appointments, relieving the monotony of executive reviews with odd
skirmishes between old political antagonists now and then, will, it is
said, rise this week. Around their chamber is the ever-recurring
question heard, “Who has got what?” and the answer is never satisfactory
to all. This hunting after office, which destroys self-respect when it
is the moving motive of any considerable section of a great party, is an
innovation which was introduced by General Jackson; but it is likely to
be as permanent as the Republic, inasmuch as no candidate dares declare
his intention of reverting to the old system. These “spoils,” as they
are called, are now being distributed by two Governments--the _de jure_
and _de facto_ Government of Washington, and the Government erected by
the Southern States at Montgomery.

It is difficult for one who has arrived so recently in this country, and
who has been subjected to such a variety of statements to come to any
very definite conclusion in reference to the great questions which
agitate it. But as far as I can I shall form my opinions from what I
see, and not from what I hear; and as I shall proceed South in a few
days, there is a probability of my being able to ascertain what is the
real state of affairs in that direction. As far as I can judge--my
conclusion, let it be understood, being drawn from the prevailing
opinions of others--“the South will never go back into the Union.” On
the same day I heard a gentleman of position among the Southern party
say, “No concession, no compromise, nothing that can be done or
suggested, shall induce us to join any Confederation of which the New
England States are members;” and by another gentleman, well known as one
of the ablest of the Abolitionists, I was told, “If I could bring back
the Southern States by holding up my little finger, I should consider it
criminal to do so.” The friends of the Union sometimes endeavor to
disguise their sorrow and their humiliation at the prospect presented
by the Great Republic under the garb of pride in the peculiar excellence
of institutions which have permitted such a revolution as Secession
without the loss of one drop of blood. But concession averts bloodshed.
If I give up my purse to the footpad who presents a pistol at my head I
satisfy all his demands, and he must be a sanguinary miscreant if he
pulls trigger afterwards. The policeman has, surely, no business to
boast of the peculiar excellence, in such a transaction, of the state of
things which allows the transfer to take place without bloodshed. A
government may be so elastic as, like an overstretched india-rubber
band, to have no compressive force whatever; and that very quality is
claimed for the Federal Government as excellence by some eminent men
whom I have met, and who maintained the thesis, that the United States
Government has no right whatever to assert its authority by force over
the people of any State whatever; that, based on the consent of all, it
ceases to exist whenever there is dissent,--a doctrine which no one need
analyze who understands what are the real uses and ends of Government.
The friends of the existing administration, on the whole, regard the
Secession as a temporary aberration, which a “masterly inactivity,” the
effects of time, inherent weakness, and a strong reaction, of which,
they flatter themselves, they see many proofs in the Southern States,
will correct. “Let us,” they say, “deal with this matter in our own way.
Do not interfere. A recognition of the Secession would be an
interference amounting to hostility. In good time the violent men down
South will come to their senses, and the treason will die out.” They
ignore the difficulties which European States may feel in refusing to
recognize the principles on which the United States were founded when
they find them embodied in a new Confederation, which, so far as we
know, may be to all intents and purposes constituted in an entire
independence, and present itself to the world with claims to recognition
to which England, at least, having regard to precedents of _de facto_
Governments, could only present an illogical refusal. The hopes of other
sections of the Northerners are founded on the want of capital in the
Slave States; on the pressure which will come upon them when they have
to guard their own frontiers against the wild tribes who have been
hitherto repelled at the expense of the whole Union by the Federal
troops; on the exigencies of trade, which will compel them to deal with
the North, and thereby to enter into friendly relations and ultimate
re-alliance. But most impartial people, at least in New York, are of
opinion that the South has shaken the dust off her feet, and will never
enter the portals of the Union again. She is confident in her own
destiny. She feels strong enough to stand alone. She believes her
mission is one of extension and conquest--her leaders are men of
singular political ability and undaunted resolution. She has but to
stretch forth her hand, as she believes, and the Gulf becomes an
American lake closed by Cuba. The reality of these visions the South is
ready to test, and she would not now forego the trial, which may,
indeed, be the work of years, but which she will certainly make. All the
considerations which can be urged against her resolves are as nothing in
the way of her passionate will, and the world may soon see under its
eyes the conflict of two republics founded on the same principles, but
subjected to influences that produce repulsion as great as exists in two
bodies charged with the same electricity. If ever the explosion come it
will be tremendous in its results, and distant Europe must feel the
shock.

The authorities seem resolved to make a stand at Fort Pickens,
notwithstanding the advice of Mr. Douglass to give it up. They regard it
as an important Federal fortress, as indisputably essential for national
purposes as Tortugas or Key West. Although United States property has
been “occupied,” the store vessels of the State seized, and the
sovereignty of the seceding States successfully asserted by the
appropriation of arsenals, and money, and war materials, on the part of
the local authorities, the Government of Washington are content by
non-recognition to reserve their own rights in face of the exercise of
_force majeure_.

The Chevalier Bertinnati, who has been Chargé d’Affaires for the
Government of King Victor Emmanuel, has been raised to the rank of
Minister, and in that capacity delivered his letters of credence to the
President on Wednesday. The letter addressed to the President by the
King of Piedmont was couched in terms of much friendliness and sympathy,
and Mr. Lincoln’s reply was equally warm. There is no display of
military preparation to meet the eye either at Washington or along the
road to it. General Scott, who was to have dined at the President’s
Cabinet dinner last night, and who was actually in the White House for
that purpose, was compelled to leave by indisposition. Any attempt to
relieve Fort Sumter would unquestionably be attended with great loss of
life; but most Americans readily admit that if they had a foreign force
to deal with, no consideration of that kind would stay the hands of the
Government. The fort stands on a sand-bank in shallow water, and
batteries have been cast up on both shores effectually commanding the
whole of the channels for several miles. The military activity and
enterprise--I hear the skill as well--of the South have been displayed
in the readiness and completeness of their preparations. In Galveston,
Texas, Governor Houston, who has resigned, or been deposed, protests, it
is said, against the acts of the new Government, and is likely to give
them trouble. The telegraph will, however, anticipate any news of this
sort which I can send you, though its intelligence should be received
with many grains of salt. Some people assert that “the telegraph has
caused the Secession,” and there is a strong feeling that some
restrictions should be placed upon the misuse of it in disseminating
false reports.




LETTER II.

WASHINGTON, April 1, 1861.


FROM all I have seen and heard, my belief is that the Southern States
have gone from the Union, if not forever, at least for such time as will
secure for their Government an absolute independence till it be
terminated by war, or, if their opponents be right, by the certain
processes of internal decay arising from inherent vices in their system,
faulty organization, and want of population, vigor, and wealth. That the
causes which have led to their secession now agitate the Border States
most powerfully with a tendency to follow them is not to be denied by
those who watch the course of events, and as these powerful neutrals
oscillate to and fro, under the pressure of contending parties and
passions, the Government at Washington and the authorities of the
revolting States regard every motion with anxiety; the former fearful
lest by word or deed they may repel them forever, the latter more
disposed by active demonstrations to determine the ultimate decision in
their own favor, and to attach them permanently to the Slave States by
resolute declarations of principle. Whatever the results of the Morrill
tariff may be, it is probable they must be endured on both sides of the
Atlantic, for there is no power in the Government or in the President,
as I understand, to modify its provisions, and there is a strong feeling
in Mr. Lincoln’s Cabinet against the extra session, so loudly demanded
in New York, and so confidently expected in some parts of the Union.
Nothing but some overwhelming State necessity will overcome that
opposition, and, as the magnitude of such an occasion will have to be
estimated by those who are vehemently opposed to an extra Congress, it
is not likely that anything can occur which will be considered of
sufficient gravity by the Government at Washington to induce them to
encounter the difficulties and dangers they anticipate in consequence of
the convocation of an extraordinary assemblage of both Houses. Until
next December, then, in all probability, the President and his Cabinet
will have such control of affairs as is possible in the system of this
Government, or in the circumstances, together with the far more than
coördinate responsibility attached to their position as a Federal
Government. It is scarcely possible for an Englishman, far less for the
native of any State possessing a powerful Executive, to comprehend the
limits which are assigned to the powers of the State in this country, or
to the extent to which resistance to its authority can be carried by the
action of the States supposed to be consenting parties to its
Constitution and supporters of its jurisdiction. Take, for instance,
what is occurring within a few miles of the seat of the Central
Government, across the Potomac. At a certain iron-foundery guns have
been cast for the United States Government, which are about to be
removed to Fort Monroe, in the State of Virginia, one of the fortresses
for the defence of the United States. The Legislature of Virginia sat
all night last Saturday, and authorized the Governor of that State to
call out the public guard in order to prevent by force, if necessary,
the removal of those guns, at the same time offering to the contractor
the price which he was to have received for them from the Federal
Government. Again, at Mobile, where a writ of _habeas corpus_ is sued
out on behalf of the master of a vessel, who was seized because he had a
cargo of small stores which he intended to sell to the United States
men-of-war on observation off Pensacola, the counsel for the State of
Florida resists the application on the ground that the prisoner was
carrying supplies to an enemy, and that a state of war exists in
consequence of the acts of the Federal Government; and the Court,
without deciding on the point, discharge the prisoner, in order that it
may be freed from responsibility. On the other hand, the Federal
Government remits the penalties of forfeiture and fines on the vessel
seized by the Custom House at New York for want of proper clearances
from Southern ports. The stereotype plates with the words “Evacuation of
Fort Sumter” have apparently been worn out, but it is believed on all
sides that it will be abandoned by Major Anderson this week, although I
heard a member of the Cabinet declare last week that no orders had been
issued to that officer to evacuate it. If the opinions of some of the
Northern people prevailed, the fort would be retained until it was taken
by assault. The Southern Confederation, secure of Fort Sumter, are now
preparing for active operations against Fort Pickens, which protects the
entrance to the quondam United States Navy Yard at Pensacola, now in the
possession of the troops of Florida; and certain organs of the extreme
party in the South have already demanded that the forts at Tortugas and
Key West, which are situated far out at sea from the coast, should be
surrendered.

The Cabinet of Mr. Lincoln is understood to contain the representatives
of three different courses of policy--that trinity of action which
generally produces torpid and uncertain motion or complete rest. First,
there are those who would, at any risk, vindicate the rights they claim
for the Federal Government, and use force, even though it could only, in
its most successful application, overrun the States of the South, and
compel a temporary submission, without leading to the reestablishment of
Federal authority, or the reincorporation of the States with the Union.
Secondly, there are those, men of intellect and capacity, who,
dissenting altogether from the doctrines propounded by the leaders of
the revolution, and convinced that the separation will not be permanent,
see the surest and safest mode of action in the total abstinence from
all aggressive assertion of rights, and in a policy of _laissez aller_
of indeterminate longitude and latitude. These statesmen believe that,
like most revolutions, the secession is the work of the minority, and
that a strong party of reaction exists, which will come to the front by
and by, “expel the traitors,” and return triumphantly with their
repentant States into the bosom of the Union. The gentlemen who hold
these views have either a more accurate knowledge than the public, are
better read in the signs of the times, or have more faith in the
efficacy of inaction on the love of Americans for the Union, than is
possessed by most of the outer world. The third party is formed of those
who are inclined to take the South at their word; to cut the cord at
once, believing that the loss would be a gain, and that the Southern
Confederation would inflict on itself a most signal retribution for what
they consider as the crime of breaking up the Union. Practically, so far
as I have gone, I have failed to meet many people who really exhibited
any passionate attachment to the Union for its own sake, or who
pretended to be animated by any strong feelings of regard or admiration
for the Government of the United States in itself. The word
“Constitution” is forever ringing in one’s ears, its “principles” and
its authority are continually appealed to, but the end is no nearer. The
other day I bought the whole Constitution of the United States, neatly
printed, for three halfpence. But the only conclusion I could draw was,
that it was better for States not to have Constitutions which could be
bought at such very moderate prices. It is rather an inopportune moment
for the Professor of the Harvard Law School to send forth his lecture on
the Constitution of the United States, and on the differences between it
and that of Great Britain. Just as the learned gentleman is glorying in
the supremacy of the Judicial body of the United States over Congress,
Presidents, and Legislatures, the course of events exhibits that Supreme
Court as a mere nullity in the body politic, unable to take cognizance,
or unwilling to act in regard to matters which are tearing the
Constitution into atoms. No one thinks of appealing to it, or invoking
its decision. And, after all, if the Court were to decide, what would be
the use of its judgment, if one or other of the two great parties
resisted it? The _ultima ratio_ would be the only means by which the
decision could be enforced. In the very midst of the hymns which are
offered up around the shrines of the Constitution, whether old or
mended, all celebrating the powers of the great priestess of the
mysteries, there are heretic voices to be heard, which, in addition to
other matters, deny that the Supreme Court was ever intended by the
Constitution to exercise the sole and signal right of interpreting the
Constitution, that it is competent to do so, or that it would be safe
to give it the power. Its powers are judicial, not political, and Mr.
Calhoun on that very point said:

     “Let it never be forgotten, that if we should absurdly attribute to
     the Supreme Court the exclusive right of construing the
     Constitution, there would be, in fact, between the sovereign and
     subject under such a Government no Constitution, or at least
     nothing deserving the name, or serving the legitimate object of so
     sacred an instrument.”

The argument revolves in a circle; it ends nowhere, and there seems no
solution except such as concession or a sword cut may give.

There are at present in Washington two of the three unrecognized
Ministers Plenipotentiary of the Southern Government, Mr. Roman and Mr.
Crawford. Judging from the tone of these gentlemen, all idea of
returning to the Union, under any circumstances whatever, has been
utterly abandoned. Mr. Forsyth, the third of the Commissioners, who is
at present engaged in adjusting certain business of a very important
character at New York, is expected back in a few days, and it will then
be seen whether the Commissioners consent to walk up and down in the
_salles des pas perdus_ any longer. They are armed with full powers on
all questions which can come up for settlement. The Government has
refused to receive them, or to take any official notice of them
whatever; but there is reason to believe that certain propositions and
negotiations have been laid before Mr. Seward in a private and
unofficial manner, to which no reply of a definite character has been
given. Before this letter reaches you, Mr. Yancey, Mr. Mann, and Mr.
Rort will have arrived in Europe to try the temper of the Governments of
England and France in reference to the recognition of the Southern
States. Both parties have been somewhat startled by the intelligence of
an active movement of Spain to gain political ascendancy in St. Domingo;
and the news that France and England are sending a combined fleet to
these shores, though coming in a very questionable shape, has excited
uneasy feeling and some recrimination.

If the Congress is reassembled, there is much reason to fear an open
rupture; if not, another solution may be arrived at. It is unfortunate
for the Government that General Scott is suffering at this moment from
the infirmities of age, and the effect of the great demands made upon
his strength. Mr. Lincoln gave a dinner to his Cabinet on Thursday last,
the first of the season, in honor principally of General Scott; but the
veteran General, who had entered the White House, was obliged to leave
before dinner was served. There has been a great emigration of
candidates and office-hunters from this since I last wrote, some
contented, many more grumbling. It is asserted that there never has been
such a clean sweep of office-holders since the practice was introduced
by General Jackson. If I am rightly informed, the President has the
patronage of one hundred and forty thousand places, great and
small--some very small.

NIGHT.--The influence of England and of France on the destinies of the
Republic is greater than any American patriot would like to admit. It
must not be expected, therefore, that there will be any proof of
excessive anxiety afforded by the leaders of either party in reference
to the course which may be taken by the European Governments in the
present crisis; but it is not the less to be apprehended, that an
immediate recognition of the confederated independence of the South, or
of the doctrine of absolute individual sovereignty on the part of those
States, may precipitate the hostile action which, in the event of
absolute final separation, seems to be inevitable. To the North it would
be a heavy blow and great discouragement, the consequences of which
could only be averted by some very violent remedies. Separation without
war is scarcely to be expected. The establishment of an independent
Republic in the South may, indeed, be effected peaceably; but it is not,
humanly speaking, within the limits of any probability that the diverse
questions which will arise out of conflicting interests in regard to
revenue and State and Federal rights can be settled without an appeal to
arms. At the present minute there is nothing to induce a stranger to
believe that an effectual resistance could be offered to a vigorous
aggressive movement from the South, supposing the means to make it
existed either in the adhesion or permission of the Border States. The
North, however, is strong in its population, in its wealth, and in its
calm. In the hands of the Border States are all the arbitraments of
revolution or union, of war or peace. By an unmeaning euphemism the
revolution of the South has been called Secession; but the confusion and
mischief caused by the euphemistic timidity of statesmen disappear, when
the acts of the South are tested by the standard applicable to
revolutionary crises; and by that standard alone are those acts
intelligible and coherent. Measured in that way, the seizure of
property, the deeds and the language of the leaders of the movement,
and the acts of the masses, can be properly estimated. Mr. Douglass,
whose mental capacity is a splendid justification of his enormous
political activity, and of a high political rank--unattached--is
understood to be engaged on a vast system for establishing duties all
over the North American continent in the nature of a Zollverein. It is
his opinion that the North, in case of separation, must fight the South
on the arena of free trade; that the tariff must be completely altered;
and that the duties must be lowered from point to point, in proportion
as the South bids against the North for the commerce of Europe, till the
reduction reaches such a point that the South, forced to raise revenue
for the actual expenses of Government, and unable to struggle against
the superior wealth of the North in such a contest, is obliged to come
to an understanding with its powerful competitor, and to submit to a
treaty of commerce which shall include all the States of the North
American continent, from the Isthmus of Panama to the ice of the Arctic
Seas. The Canadas are, of course, included in such a project; indeed, it
is difficult to say where the means of escaping from their present
embarrassment will not be sought by the leading statesmen of America.
But on one point all are agreed. Whatever may happen, the North will
insist on a Free Mississippi. It is the very current of life for the
trade of myriads of people hundreds of miles from New Orleans. If
Louisiana, either as sovereign State or representative agent of the
Southern Confederation, attempts to control the navigation of that
river, we shall see a most terrible and ruinous war. Let England look to
the contingencies.

APRIL, 5.--One month and one day have elapsed since Mr. Lincoln and his
Cabinet were installed at Washington. Long previous to their accession
to power or rather to office, the revolution of the South had assumed
the aspect of an independent Government. When the new Administration
tried to direct the horses’ heads, they found the reins were cut, and
all they could do was to sit on the State coach, and take their chance
of falling in a soft place, or of the fiery steeds coming to a
standstill from exhaustion. A month ago and the State Treasury was
nearly exhausted; only some £370,000 was forthcoming to meet demands and
requirements four times as large. The navy was scattered all over the
world at stations by no means readily accessible, the army posted along
frontier lines, between which and the Northern States was interposed the
expanse of the Southern Confederation; the officers disaffected to the
Government, or at all events so well affected to their individual
sovereign States as to feel indisposed to serve the United States; the
whole machinery of Government in the hands of the revolutionary leaders,
every trace of Federal existence erased in the South, wiped away by acts
which, unless justified by successful revolt, would be called
treasonable, or by force or stratagem, and only two forts held on the
seaboard, weekly garrisoned, and unhappily situated with reference to
operations of relief. In addition to these sources of weakness, came the
confusion and apprehension caused by divided counsels, want of cohesion,
the disorders of a violent national contest, mistrust of adequate
support, and above all the imperious necessities of the place-seekers,
whose importunate requisitions distracted the attention of the
Government from the more important business which presented itself for
adjustment. It was, of course, necessary to fill the posts which were
occupied by enemies with men devoted to the interests of a Government
which could little brook any indifference or treacherous tendencies on
the part of its subordinates. But had the Administration been as strong
in all respects as any United States Government ever could or can hope
to be, in reference to such emergencies as the present, it really could
have done little except precipitate a civil war, in which the Border
States would have arranged themselves by the side of the Cotton States.
A considerable portion of the North would have been hostile to coercion,
and the theories which have been propounded with much apparent
approbation respecting the actual uses of Government, its powers and
jurisdiction, show that European doctrines on such points are not at all
accepted by statesmen, politicians and jurists in North America. Without
the means of enforcing an authority which many of its own adherents, and
most of the neutral parties denied to it, Mr. Lincoln’s Administration
finds itself called upon to propound a policy and to proceed to vigorous
action. The demand is scarcely reasonable. The policy of such men
suddenly lifted to the head of affairs, which they cannot attempt to
guide, must be to wait and watch, and their action must be simply
tentative as they have no power to put forth with moderate hope of
success any aggressive force.

Be satisfied of this--the United States Government will give up no
power or possession which it has at present got. By its voluntary act it
will surrender nothing whatever. No matter what reports may appear in
the papers or in letters, distrust them if they would lead you to
believe that Mr. Lincoln is preparing either to abandon what he has now,
or to recover that which he has not.

The United States Government is in an attitude of protest; it cannot
strike an offensive blow. But, if any attack is made upon it, the
Government hopes that it will be strengthened by the indignation of the
North and West, to such an extent that it cannot only repel the
aggression, but possibly give a stimulus to a great reaction in its
favor.

On these principles Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens are held. They are
claimed as Federal fortresses. The Stars and Stripes still float over
them. Whatever may be said to the contrary, they will remain there till
they are removed by the action of the Confederate States. The
Commissioners of Mr. Jefferson Davis’s Government “have reason to say
that if any attempt be made to throw reënforcements into Fort Pickens,
unless they receive previous notice of it as promised, it will be a
breach of good faith.” From all I can learn, no intention of
strengthening the fort is at present entertained; but it may be doubted
if the attempt would not be made should any favorable opportunity of
doing so present itself. All “the movements of troops,” of which you
will see accounts, are preparations against--not for--aggression. At
most they amount to the march of a few companies and guns to various
forts, now all but undefended. Fort Washington, of which I shall have a
few words to say hereafter, was till lately held by a very inadequate
force. As a member of the Cabinet said to me, “I could have taken it
last week with a little whisky,” that potent artillery being applied to
the weak defences of the aged Irish artilleryman who constituted “the
garrison.” The “formidable military force concentrated in Washington,”
of which you may read in the American journals, consists of about 700
men of all arms, as far as I can see, and four brass field guns. There
is a good deal of drumming, fifing, marching, and music going on daily.
I look on and see a small band in gay uniforms, a small body of men in
sombre uniforms, varying from fifteen to thirty rank and file, armed,
however, with excellent rifles, and a very large standard, pass by; and
next day I read that such and such a company had a parade, and
“attracted much admiration by their efficient and soldierly appearance,
and the manner in which,” &c. But these military companies have no
intention of fighting for the Government. Their sympathies are quite
undetermined. Formidable as they would be in skirmishing in the open
country, they would be of comparatively little use against regular
troops at the outset of the contest, as they have never learnt to act
together, and do not aspire to form even battalions. But their existence
indicates the strong military tendencies of the people, and the danger
of doing anything which might turn them against the Government. Mr.
Lincoln has no power to make war against the South: the Congress alone
could give it to him; and that is not likely to be given, because
Congress will not be assembled before the usual time, unless under the
pressure of and imperious necessity.

Why, then, hold these forts at all? Why not give them up? Why not
withdraw the garrison, strike the flag, and cease to keep up a useless
source of irritation in the midst of the Southern Confederation? The
answer to these questions is: These forts are Federal property. The
Government does not acknowledge the existence of any right on the part
of the people of the States to seize them as appertaining to individual
States. The forts are protests against the acts of violence to which the
Federal authority has yielded elsewhere. They are, moreover, the _points
d’appui,_ small as they are, on which the Federal Government can rest
its resistance to the claims of the Southern Confederation to be
acknowledged as an independent republic. If they were surrendered
without attack, or without the existence of any pressure arising from
the refusal of the Southern authorities to permit them to get supplies,
which is an act of war, the case of the United States Government would
be, they consider, materially weakened. If it be observed that these
forts have no strategic value, it may readily be replied that their
political value is very great. But, serious as these considerations may
be, or may be thought to be, with respect to foreign relations, there
are in reference to domestic politics still more weighty inducements to
hold them. The effect produced in the North and Northwest by an attack
on the forts while the United States flag is floating over them, would
be as useful to the Government at Washington as the effect of abandoning
the forts or tamely surrendering them would be hurtful to them in the
estimation of the extreme Republicans. A desperate attack, a gallant
defense, the shedding of the blood of gallant men, whose duty it was to
defend that intrusted to their keeping, and who yielded only to
numbers--the outrage on the United States flag--would create an
excitement in the Union which the South, with all its determination and
courage, is unwilling to provoke, but which the Government would be
forced to use in its own service. Such an event must lead to war, a very
terrible and merciless war, and both parties pause before they resort to
that court of arms. Unless the Border States join the South, Mr.
Jefferson Davis could scarcely hope to carry out the grand projects
which are attributed to his military genius of marching northward, and
dictating terms on their own soil to the Republicans. He could scarcely
venture to leave the negro population unguarded in his rear, and his
flanks menaced by the sea-born northerners on the one side, and by such
operations as the water-sheds significantly indicate on the other. It is
idle to speculate on the incidents of that which may never occur, and
which, occurring, may assume the insignificant aspect of border
skirmishes, or the tremendous proportions of a war of races and creeds,
intensified by the worst elements of servile and civil conflict. The
Government of Mr. Lincoln hope and believe that the contest may be
averted. The Commissioners of the South are inclined to think, also,
there will be a peaceful solution, obtained, of course, by full
concession and recognition. But inaction cannot last on the part of the
South. Already they have begun the system of coercion. The supplies of
the garrison at Sumter will be cut off henceforth, if they are not
already forbidden. They do not fear the moral effect of this act, for
some of their leading men actually believe that nothing can stop the
progress of a movement which will, they fondly think, absorb all the
other States of the Union, and leave the New England States to form an
insignificant republic of its own, with a possible larger destiny in
Canada. Their opponents in the North are as fully satisfied that the
direst Nemesis will fall on the Montgomery Government in the utter ruin
of all their States the moment they are left to themselves.

The Government is elated at the success of the loan, and Mr. Chase has
taken high ground in refusing offers made to him yesterday, and in
resolving to issue Government securities for the balance of the amount
required to complete the amount. Mr. Forsyth, one of the Southern
Commissioners, who has just returned from New York here, is equally
satisfied with the temper of parties in that city, and seems to think
that the New Yorkers are preparing for a secession. But, though States
may be sovereign, it has never been ascertained that cities or portions
of States are so, and in the western and northern portions of the State
of New York there is a large agricultural population, which, with the
aid of Government, would speedily suppress any attempt to secede on the
part of the city, if men are to be believed who say they know the
circumstances of the case. Virginia is claimed by both sides, but
accounts this morning are to the effect that the Secessionists have been
defeated on a division by a vote of two to one in favor of the Union;
and although General Houston appears to be forced to accept the
situation for a time, there are many who think he will organize a strong
reaction against the dominant Secessionists.

Whatever may be these result of all the diverse actions, the Great
Republic is gone! The shape of the fragments is not yet determined any
more than their fate. They may reunite, but the cohesion can never be
perfect. The ship of the State was built of too many “platforms,” there
were too many officers on board, perhaps the principles of construction
were erroneous, the rigid cast-iron old constitution guns burst
violently when tried with new projectiles--any way, those who adhere
with most devotion to the vessel, admit that it is parted right
amidships, and that its _prestige_ has vanished. The more desperate of
these would gladly see an enemy, or go out of their way to find one, in
the hope of a common bond of union being discovered in a common
animosity and danger.

The naval preparations, of which you will hear a good deal, are intended
to make good existing deficiencies and to meet contingencies. At any
other time the action of Spain in St. Domingo would create a cry for
war. Now all the Federal Government can do is to demand and receive
explanations. In reply to Mr. Seward’s inquiries, the Spanish Minister
has possibly stated that the recent events in St. Domingo have been
caused by the acts and threats of Hayti, which forced the Dominicans to
call in the aid and claim the protection of Spain. There have been
several attempts from time to time to induce France to assume the
dominion of its former possession, and it is not unlikely that an
excellent understanding exists between the Court of Madrid and the
Emperor Napoleon in reference to the subject. The report that the
Mexicans have made, or contemplate making, an attack on Texas, is
scarcely worthy of credence.

As to the Morrill tariff, I can only repeat what I have already said. It
must be borne till results show that it cannot be persisted in. Then
only will it be repealed or modified. The theory of the Government is,
that the United States always takes far more from Europe than it can pay
for. “If the revenue is collected, there is no ground for complaint. The
English and French manufacturer will be satisfied, as well as the
northern population. If the revenue is not collected, then the tariff
must be repealed, and that will be done within the year, if the mischief
is serious.” Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Manchester must make the
best they can out of the doctrine.




LETTER III.

WASHINGTON, April 9, 1861.


THE critical position of the Federal Government has compelled its
members to preserve secrecy. Never before under any Administration was
so little of the councils of the Cabinet known to the public, or to
those who are supposed to be acquainted with the opinions of the
statesmen in office. Mr. Seward has issued the most stringent orders to
the officers and clerks in his department to observe the rules, which
heretofore have been much disregarded, in reference to the confidential
character of State papers in their charge. The sources of the fountain
of knowledge from which friendly journalists drew so freely are thus
stopped without fear, favor, or affection, toward any. The result has
been much irritation in quarters where such “interference” is regarded
as unwarrantable, or, at least, as very injurious. The newspapers which
enjoyed the privilege of free access to despatches are hatching
_canards_, which they let fly along the telegraph wires with amazing
productiveness and fertility of conception and incubation. Hence the
monstrous and ridiculous rumors which harden into type everyday--hence
the clamors for “a policy,” and hence the contending accusations that
the Government is doing nothing, and that it is also preparing to plunge
the country into civil war. Each member of the Cabinet has become a
Burleigh, every shake of whose head perplexes New York with a fear of
change; every Senator is watched by private reporters, who trace “the
day’s disasters in his morning’s face.” If a weak company of artillery
is marched on board a ship, its movements are chronicled in columns of
vivid description, and its footsteps are made to sound like the march of
a vast army. The telegraph from Washington has learnt its daily message
about Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens by heart, and the world has been
soothed daily by the assurance that General Braxton Bragg is ready, and
that the South Carolinians can no longer be restrained. But there is
always a secret understanding that Generals Bragg and Beauregard will be
more ready still the next day, and that the people will be more
unrestrainable by next telegram. When I landed in New York, the first
news I learnt was that Fort Sumter would be evacuated next day; and if
not, that the supplies would be cut off, and that the garrison would be
starved out. I have learnt how to distrust prophecy, and I am going
South in the hope that the end is not yet. The Southern Commissioners
state that the Government here has promised them that no efforts shall
be made to reënforce Fort Pickens without previous notice to them--a
very singular promise. The Government, however, denies that it has been
in communication with them. Fort Sumter must be considered as gone, for
there is no disposition, apparently, on the part of the Government to
hazard the loss of life and great risk which must inevitably attend any
attempt to relieve or carry off the garrison, now that the channels are
under the fire of numerous heavily armed batteries, which the people of
South Carolina were permitted to throw up without molestation. The
operations of a relieving force would have to be conducted on a very
large scale by troops disembarking on the shores and taking the
batteries in reverse, in conjunction with an attack from the sea; and,
after all, such an expedition would be futile, unless it were intended
to occupy Charleston, and try the fortune of war in South Carolina--an
intention quite opposed to the expressions and, I believe, the feelings
of the Cabinet of Washington, not to speak of the people of the Border
States and of large remnants of the Union. From your correspondent at
New York you will receive full particulars of the movements of troops,
and of the naval preparations which are reported in the papers, which
create more curiosity than excitement among the people I meet. My task
must be to describe what I see around me.

It may be as well to state in the most positive terms that the reports
which have appeared in the American papers of communications between the
English Minister and the American Government on the subject of a
blockade of the Southern ports, are totally and entirely destitute of
foundation. No communication of any kind has passed between Lord Lyons,
on the part of the English Government, and Mr. Seward, or any one else,
on behalf of the Government at Washington. It would be a most offensive
proceeding to volunteer any intimation of the course to be pursued by a
European Power respecting a contingency of action on the part of the
United States; nor would it be necessary, in case a blockade were
declared, to formulate a supererogatory notice that it must be such a
blockade as the law of nations recognizes. The importance of a distinct
understanding on that point is all the greater in connection with the
stories which are afloat that the naval preparations of the hour are
intended to afford the Federal Government the means of blockading the
mouths of the Mississippi and the Southern ports, with the object of
collecting the Federal revenue. If anything is clearer than another, in
the doubt and perplexity which prevail, it is that the Government will
do nothing whatever to precipitate a conflict. It would ill become me,
in such a crisis, to hazard any authoritative statements as to the
conduct of the Administration under the very great variety of
complications which may arise hereafter. Of this, however, be assured,
not a ship, or a gun, or a man will be directed to make any attack, or
to begin an offensive movement against the Confederate States. If any
promise was made by the Buchanan Administration to inform the members of
the Southern Government or its representatives of their course of
action, it will not be considered binding on the consciences of Mr.
Lincoln’s Cabinet, composed as it is of men who look on their
predecessors as guilty of treason to the State. An attempt may be made
to reënforce Fort Pickens, and neither that nor any position occupied by
the Federal authorities will be voluntarily abandoned.

Once for all, let it be impressed on the minds of the English people
that whatever reports they hear, and however they may come--no matter
whence, or in what guise--there is no truth in them if they indicate the
smallest intention on the part of Mr. Lincoln to depart from the policy
indicated in his Inaugural Address. As strongly as words can do it, I
repeat that the forces which have been assembled are only intended for
the reënforcement of the strong places at Tortugas and Key West, which
have been left short of every necessary of occupation and defence, and
for the establishment of posts of observation, which are essential in
case of hostility and to guard against surprise or treachery. I have
dwelt in previous letters on the obvious policy of the Government of the
United States, and I beg your readers to have firm faith that there will
be no departure from it. By concentrating forces at Key West and
Tortugas very valuable political results are obtained in face of the
present disputes, and material strategical advantages in case those
disputes should lead to a rupture, which will not be initiated by the
Cabinet at Washington. These places are within a few hours’ sail of the
coast; they are healthy, and can be easily supplied, as long as the
United States fleet can keep the sea and cover the movements of its
transports. Their occupation in force cannot be taken as an act of open
war, while it is undoubtedly an alarming menace, which will keep the
Confederates in a state of constant apprehension and preparation,
leading to much internal trouble and great expense. By a confusion of
metaphor which events may justify, the eye to watch may be turned into
an arm to strike.

The Southern Commissioners are still here, but they are still unable to
procure even a semi-official recognition of their existence, and all
their correspondence has been carried on through one of their clerks.

It is, perhaps, not necessary to add that Mr. Seward has no intention of
resigning, as has been stated, and that there is no dissention in the
Cabinet.




LETTER IV.

NORFOLK, VA., April, 15, 1861.


SUMTER has fallen at last. So much may be accepted. Before many hours I
hope to stand amid the ruins of a spot which will probably become
historic, and has already made more noise in the world than its guns,
gallant as the defence may have been. The news will produce an
extraordinary impression at New York--it will disconcert stock-jobbers,
and derange the most ingenious speculations. But, considerable as may be
its results in any part of the Union, I venture to say that nowhere will
the shock cause such painful convulsions as in the Cabinet at
Washington, where there appeared to exist the most perfect conviction
that the plan for the relief of Sumter could not fail to be successful,
either through the force of the expedition provided for that object, or
through the unwillingness of the leaders at Charleston to fire the first
shot, and to compel the surrender of the place by actual hostilities.
The confidence of Mr. Seward in the strength of the name and of the
resources of the United States Federal Government must have received a
rude blow; but his confidences are by no means of a weakly constitution,
and it will be long ere he can bring himself to think that all his
prophecies must be given up one after another before the inexorable
logic of facts, with which his vaticinations have been in “irrepressible
conflict.” It seems to me that Mr. Seward has all along undervalued the
spirit and the resolution of the Southern Slave States, or that he has
disguised from others the sense he entertains of their extent and vigor.
The days assigned for the life of Secession have been numbered over and
over again, and Secession has not yielded up the ghost. The “bravado” of
the South has been sustained by deeds which render retreat from its
advanced position impossible. Mr. Seward will probably find himself hard
pushed to maintain his views in the Cabinet in the face of recent
events, which will, no doubt, be used with effect and skill by Mr.
Chase, who is understood to be in favor of letting the South go as it
lists without any more trouble, convinced as he is that it is an element
of weakness in the body politic, while he would be prepared to treat as
treason any attempts in the remaining States of the Union to act on the
doctrine of secession. But the Union party must now prevail. As yet I do
not know whether the views I expressed relative to the destination of
the greater part of the troops and stores sent from the North were
correct, for it cannot be learned how many ships were off Sumter when it
surrendered; but, notwithstanding what has occurred, I reiterate the
assertion that the Washington Cabinet always said and say they had no
intention to provoke a conflict there, and that had the authorities at
Charleston continued their permission to the garrison to procure
supplies in their markets, there would have been no immediate action on
their part to precipitate the fight, though they were determined to hold
it and Fort Pickens, as well as Tortugas and Key West, and to victual
and strengthen the garrison of the former as soon as they were able.
Fate was against them. The decision and power of their opponents were
against them. But their defence will be that they could not do anything
till they got troops, and ships, and munitions of war together, and that
they did as much as they could in a month. Sumter, in fact, was a mouse
in the jaws of the cat, and the moment an attempt was made to release
the prey by external influence, the jaws were closed and the mouse
disposed of. The act will produce, I believe, in spite of what I see, a
very deep impression throughout all the States, and will tend to bring
about an immediate collision between the high-minded parties on both
sides. When Mr. Lincoln came into office it was discovered that a
promise had been made by outgoing members of the preceding government to
surrender the Southern forts. The promise was ignored by the incoming
ministry. The Southern Commissioners insist on it that, apart from the
compact of Mr. Buchanan’s Cabinet, a pledge had been given to the South
that no attempt would be made to reënforce the forts without notice to
the Government at Montgomery; and so far as can be ascertained the
authorities at Washington did cause to be conveyed to the Southern
Confederation the expression of their intention to victual Sumter: but
whether they do so in respect to their pledge, if it existed, or in
consequence of the decision at Charleston to prevent the issuing of
further supplies to the garrison, is uncertain. The withdrawal of the
permission to market was all but an act of war. If the United States
Government would act on the hypothesis that the Southern Confederation
was an independent power, it would surely have considered the proceeding
as a prelude to immediate hostility. But the course thus adopted arose
out of the preparations made by the United States Government in fitting
out expeditions, the object of which was scarcely dubious. The
Commissioners of the Southern States at Washington, never acknowledged,
at last met with a decisive rebuff just as Virginia saw her
representatives from the Convention on the way to ask Mr. Lincoln to
explain his intentions. The Commissioners were given to understand that
their presence was useless, and that the forts would be reënforced; and
on the intelligence thus furnished to the Government at Montgomery it
was resolved to act by summoning Major Anderson to surrender before
succor could arrive, and in event of refusal by compelling him to yield
in the sight of the would-be relieving squadron. As soon as the
Commissioners found that Mr. Lincoln had made his decision, they
departed in no very yielding temper, and washed their hands in a
valedictory paper of the results. It was my intention to have left
Washington early in the week, and to have reached Charleston before
these gentlemen had departed, but the heavy storms and floods which
washed away part of the railway between Washington and Richmond at the
other side of the Potomac prevented my departure, and not only arrested
the mails from the South and the journey of the Virginian delegates for
several days, but obliged the Commissioners to take the round-about
course by rail to Baltimore, thence by steamer to Norfolk, Virginia, and
then on by rail to Charleston, which I am now pursuing one day later.

Although the Ministers at the capital affected to discredit the
existence of any design to seize upon the city, their acts indicated an
apprehension of danger, or at least a desire to take all possible
precautions against treachery. The district militia were called out and
sworn for service, and the result showed that there were more citizens
in the ranks ready to stand by the Government than there were
Secessionists who would not defend it. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
last were very busy days. The companies forming the battalions of the
district militia were mustered and marched off from their various
quarters to the inclosure in front of the War Department, where they
took or refused the oath of service, as the humor moved them. It is
scarcely possible to imagine a more heterogeneous-looking body of men;
the variety of uniform, of clothing, and of accoutrements was as great
as if a specimen squad had been taken from the battalions of the Grand
Army of 1812. The general effect of the men and of their habiliments is
decidedly French, and there is even a small company of Zouaves, but I
cannot understand how these little independent bodies are to be brought
into line of battle, or depended on for united action. On the days above
mentioned the monotony of the wide, lifeless streets was broken at
intervals by the tap of the drum, beating a pas in the French fashion,
and then came the crowd of idlers who are fond of cheap martial display.
To a company of forty rank and file there are generally two drummers
and six or seven officers or more, and the glory of epaulettes shines
out bravely through the cloud of French gray, and light and dark blue
capotes. The musters are not, I am told, as they should be. There are
some pale faces, rounded shoulders, and weak frames in the ranks, but
the majority are very fair specimens of a fine race of men, and some
companies were composed of soldier-like, stout fellows, who only
required active service to set them up for any military duty. Not a
fourth of those bound to serve were ready, however, to come forward and
fight for the Government at Washington; and it is probable that nothing
short of a struggle for life or death would induce one-half to take the
field. Not one-half of the militia is properly armed. It is a great army
on paper; no army in the world is so magnificently officered, even in
proportion to its numbers. The strength of the militia of the whole of
the ex-United States is nearly 3,000,000 men of all ranks. Of those
there are no less than 3,833 generals of all sorts, 9,800 colonels and
field officers, 38,680 captains and subalterns. Kentucky boasts of 188
generals, New York has not less than 392, Michigan is rich in 383
generals, and so on. But, unless there were some popular passion to
excite the country, the actual force available for the field would be a
fractional part of these grand totals. The American Minerva which sprang
from the womb of the great Revolutionary War with panoply of proof,
believes that she is invincible, and there is unquestionably a strong
military spirit among the people, generated by the instances which
attended their national birth, and developed by the subsequent small
wars in which they have been engaged with rather impotent enemies.
Whether this spirit will be called forth in the North and West as
largely as it unquestionably has been in the South, remains to be seen.
The evidences of the near approach of a civil war are now beyond all
dispute, but the nature of the conflict will depend on the steps taken
by the belligerents. If the Southern States await invasion they fight
over a loaded mine. To avoid the horrors of a conflict on their own
soil, they will probably seek to make good their boast of marching upon
Washington; but whether they will reach it is quite another matter. The
present means of defending it are very contemptible; but vast
populations are close at hand which can furnish thousands of men for its
protection. The city contains no stragetical points, and in a military
sense its possession is not so important that it would be worth while
to risk all to gain it; but its political significance is enormous, and
it is likely enough that the Capital will become the object of military
demonstrations on both sides. With the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay
strongly held by the Federal Government, Virginia, in case she casts in
her lot with the South, will find herself menaced in the most formidable
manner. Southern men have complained to me in terms of the strongest
indignation, that Virginia Secessionists have applied to South Carolina
for five thousand men to enable them to seize the forts which command
the rivers and the sea-coast. It proves that little active aid can be
expected from that State if the Confederate party cannot do that little
piece of business on their own account.

From the date of this letter it will be seen that I am on my way to the
South; and, although I shall not arrive in time to give any account of
the recent operations against Fort Sumter, I hope to gain some insight
into the actual condition of the army of the Confederate States.

On Friday evening I bade good-by to Washington, and none of the
Ministers had any idea that Sumter had been attacked, nor had Lord Lyons
received any intelligence from Charleston.




LETTER V.

CHARLESTON, S. C., April 21, 1861.


I FIND some consolation for the disappointment of not arriving in time
to witness the attack upon Fort Sumter in describing the condition of
the work soon after Major Anderson surrendered it. Already I have upon
my table a pamphlet entitled “The Battle of Fort Sumter and First
Victory of the Southern Troops,” &c.; several “poems,” and a variety of
versicules, songs, and rhetorical exercitations upon this event, which,
however important as a political demonstration, is of small value in a
military sense, except in so far as the bloodless occupation of a
position commanding Charleston Harbor is concerned. It may tend to
prevent any false impressions founded on imperfect information to state
a few facts connected with the fire in the work, and its effects, which
will interest, at least, some military readers.

In the first place, it may be well to admit that the military
preparations and positions of the South Carolinians were more formidable
than one was prepared to expect on the part of a small State, without
any considerable internal organization or resources. This comparative
efficiency was due mainly to General Beauregard and his assistant
engineer, Major Whiting, who are both professional engineer officers of
the United States Army, and who had capacity and influence enough to
direct the energies of the undisciplined masses in the proper direction,
instead of allowing them to rush on their fate in the perilous essay of
an escalade, as they intended. The State of South Carolina had for a
long time past been accumulating arms and munitions of war, and it may
be said that ever since the nullification contest she had permitted
herself to dwell on the idea of ultimate secession, to be effected by
force, if necessary. When General Beauregard and Major Whiting came
here, the works intended to resist the fleet and to crush the fort were
in a very imperfect state. Major Anderson and his officers had a true
professional contempt for the batteries of the civilians and militiamen,
which was in some measure justifiable. One morning, however, as they
took their survey of the enemy’s labors for the previous night, they
perceived a change had come over the design of their works. That “some
one who knows his business is over there” was evident. Their strange
relationship with those who were preparing to destroy them if possible,
however, prevented their recourse to the obvious means which were then
in abundance in their hands to avert the coming danger. Had Major
Anderson maintained a well-regulated fire on the enemy the moment they
began to throw up their batteries and prepare Fort Moultrie against him,
he could have made their progress very slow and exceedingly laborious,
and have marked it at every step with blood. His command over the ground
was very decided, but he had, it is to be supposed, no authority to
defend himself in the only way in which it could be done. “Too
late”--that fatal phrase--was the echo to every order which came from
the seat of government at Washington. Meantime the South Carolinians
worked at their batteries, and were soon able to obtain cover on the
soft sandy plains on which they were planting their guns and mortars.
They practised their men at the guns, stacked shot and shell, and
furnished their magazines, and drilled their raw levies with impunity
within fourteen hundred yards of the fort. We all know what impunity is
worth in offensive demonstrations. It is a powerful agent sometimes in
creating enthusiasm. Every day more volunteers flocked to the various
companies, or created new associations of armed men, and the
heterogeneous and motley mass began to assume some resemblance to an
army, however irregular. At the present moment Charleston is like a
place in the neighborhood of a camp where military and volunteer tailors
are at work trying experiments in uniforms, and sending in their
animated models for inspection. There is an endless variety--often of
ugliness--in dress and equipment and nomenclature among these companies.
The head-dress is generally, however, a smart cap like the French kepi;
the tunic is of different cuts, colors, facings, and materials--green
with gray and yellow, gray with orange and black and white, blue with
white, and yellow facings, roan, brown, burnt sienna, and
olive--jackets, frocks, tunics, blouses, cloth, linen, tweed, flannel.
The officers are generally in blue frocks and brass buttons, with red
sashes, the rank being indicated by gold lace parallelograms on the
shoulder straps, which are like those in use in the Russian army. The
arms of the men seem tolerably well kept and in good order. Many,
however, still shoulder “White Bess”--the old smooth-bore musket with
unbrowned barrel. The following is an official return, which I am
enabled to present to you through the courtesy of the authorities,
showing the actual number of men under arms yesterday in and around
Charleston:--

MORRIS ISLAND.--17th Regiment, 700 men; 1st Regiment, 950
men; 2d Regiment, 975 men. Total, 2625.

SULLIVAN’S.--5th Regiment, 1,075 men; detachment of 8th
Regiment, 250 men; detachment of 6th Regiment, 200 men; cavalry
and others, 225 men. Total, 1,750.

Stone and other points, 750 men; Charleston, 1,900 men; Columbia,
1,950 men.
                                                          Men.
  Morris Island,                                          2,625
  Sullivan’s Island,                                      1,750
  Stone and other points,                                   750
                                                          -----
        Total,                                            5,125
  Columbia,                                               1,950
  Charleston,                                             1,900
                                                          -----
        Total,                                            8,975
  In field at the time of report,                         3,027
                                                          -----
        Total,                                            12,002



The regiments mentioned here are composed of the various companies
raised in different localities with different names, but the State
regulars are in expectation that they will soon be made portions of the
regular army of the Confederate States, which is in course of formation.
There are, I believe, only fifty-five thousand registered voters in
South Carolina. The number of men furnished by them is a fair indication
of the zeal for the cause which animates the population. The _physique_
of the troops is undeniably good. Now and then undersized, weakly men
may be met with, but the great majority of the companies consist of rank
and file exceeding the average stature of Europeans, and very well built
and muscular. The men run very large down here. Nothing, indeed, can be
more obvious when one looks at the full-grown, healthy, handsome race
which developes itself in the streets, in the bar-rooms, and in the
hotel halls, than the error of the argument, which is mainly used by the
Carolinians themselves, that white men cannot thrive in their State. In
limb, figure, height, weight, they are equal to any people I have ever
seen, and their features are very regular and pronounced. They are,
indeed, as unlike the ideal American of our caricaturists and our stage
as is the _“milor”_ of the Porte St. Martin to the English gentleman.
Some of this superiority is due to the fact that the bulk of the white
population here are in all but name aristocrats or rather oligarchs. The
State is but a gigantic Sparta, in which the helotry are marked by an
indelible difference of color and race from the masters. The white
population, which is not land and slaveholding and agricultural, is very
small and very insignificant. The masters enjoy every advantage which
can conduce to the physical excellence of a people, and to the
cultivation of the graces and accomplishments of life, even though they
are rather disposed to neglect purely intellectual enjoyments and
tastes. Many of those who serve in the ranks are men worth from £5,000
to £10,000 a year--at least, so I was told--and men were pointed out to
me who were said to be worth far more. One private feeds his company on
French pâtés and Madeira, another provides his comrades with unlimited
champagne, most grateful on the arid sand-hill; a third, with a more
soldierly view to their permanent rather than occasional efficiency,
purchases for the men of his “guard” a complete equipment of Enfield
rifles. How long the zeal and resources of these gentlemen will last it
may not be easy to say. At present they would prove formidable to any
enemy, except a regular army on the plain and in the open field, but
they are not provided with field artillery or with adequate cavalry, and
they are not accustomed to act in concert and in large bodies.

Yesterday morning I waited on General Beauregard, who is commanding the
forces of South Carolina. His aides-de-camp, Mr. Manning, Mr. Chesnut,
Mr. Porcher Miles, and Colonel Lucas, accompanied me. Of these, the
former has been Governor of this State, the next has been a Senator, the
third a member of Congress. They are all volunteers, and are gentlemen
of position in the State, and the fact that they are not only content
but gratified to act as _aides_ to the professional soldier, is the best
proof of the reality of the spirit which animates the class they
represent. Mr. Lucas is a gentleman of the State, who is acting as
aide-de-camp to Governor Pickens. Passing through the dense crowd which,
talking, smoking, and reading newspapers, fills the large hall on
Mills’s house, we emerge on the dirty streets, sufficiently broad, and
lined with trees protected by wooden sheathings at the base. The houses,
not very lofty, are clean and spacious, and provided with verandahs
facing the South as far as possible. The trees give the streets the air
of a boulevard, and the town has somehow or other a reminiscence of the
Hague about it, which I cannot explain or account for satisfactorily.
The headquarters are in a large, airy, public building, once devoted to
an insurance company’s operations, or to the accommodation of the public
fire companies. There was no guard at the door; officers and privates
were passing to and fro in the hall, part of which was cut off by
canvass screens, so as to form rooms for departments of the Horse Guards
of South Carolina. Into one of these we turned, and found the desks
occupied by officers in uniform, waiting despatches and copying
documents with all the _abandon_ which distinguishes the true soldier
when he can get at printed forms and Government stationery. In another
moment we were ushered into a smaller room, and were presented to the
General, who was also seated at his desk. Any one accustomed to soldiers
can readily detect the “real article” from the counterfeit, and when
General Beauregard stood up to welcome us, it was patent he was a man
capable of greater things than taking Sumter. He is a squarely-built,
lean man, of about forty years of age, with broad shoulders, and legs
“made to fit” a horse, of middle height, and his head is covered with
thick hair, cropped close, and showing the bumps, which are reflective
and combative, with a true Gallic air, at the back of the skull; the
forehead, broad and well-developed, projects somewhat over the keen,
eager, dark eyes; the face is very thin, with very high cheek-bones, a
well-shaped nose, slightly aquiline, and a large, rigid, sharply cut
mouth, set above a full fighting chin. In the event of any important
operations taking place, the name of this officer will, I feel assured,
be heard often enough to be my excuse for this little sketch of his
outward man. He was good enough to detail his chief engineer officer to
go with me over the works, and I found in Major Whiting a most able
guide and agreeable companion. It is scarcely worth while to waste time
in describing the position of Charleston. It lies as low as Venice, the
look of which it rather affects from a distance, with long, sandy
islands stretching out as arms to close up the approaches, and lagunes
cutting into the marshy shores. On a sandy island and spit on the left
hand shore stands Fort Moultrie. On the southern side, on another sandy
island, are the lines of the batteries which, probably, were most
dangerous, from their proximity and position, to the unprotected face of
Sumter. The fort itself is built in the tideway, on a rocky point, which
has been increased by artificial deposits of granite chips. Embarked,
with a few additions to our original party, on board a small steamer,
called the Lady Davis, we first proceeded to Morris Island, about 3¾
miles from Charleston. Our steamer was filled with commissariat stores
for the troops, of whom 4,000 were said to be encamped among the
sand-hills. Any one who has ever been at Southport, or has seen the
dunes about Dunkirk or Calais, will have a good idea of the place. Our
landing was opposed by a guard of stout volunteers, with crossed
firelocks; but they were satisfied by the General’s authority, and we
proceeded, ankle-deep in the soft, white sand, to visit the batteries
which played on the landward face of Sumter. They are made of sand-bags
for the most part, well placed in the sand-hills, with good traverses
and well-protected magazines, the embrasures being faced with palmetto
logs, which do not splinter when struck by shot. It did not, however,
require much investigation to show that these works would be greatly
injured by a fire of vertical and horizontal shell from the fort, and
that the distance of their armament would render it difficult to breach
the solid walls which were opposed to them at upward of 1,200 yards
away. However, there were two powerful mortar batteries, which could
have done great damage if they were well served, and have made the
terreplein and parade of the fort a complete “shell trap” unless the
mortars were injured. The civilians and militiamen set greater store on
the Iron Battery at Cummings’ Point, which is the part of the island
nearest to the fort, but the fire of heavy guns would have soon
destroyed their confidence. It consists of yellow pine logs placed as
vertical uprights. The roof, of the same material, slopes from the top
of the uprights to the sand facing the enemy; over it are dovetailed
bars of railroad iron, of the T pattern, from top to bottom, all riveted
down in the most secure manner. On the front the railroad iron roof and
incline present an angle of about thirty degrees. There are three
portholes with iron shutters. When opened by the action of a lever the
muzzles of the columbiads fill up the space completely. The columbiad
guns with which this battery is equipped bear on the south wall of
Sumter at an angle. The inclined side of the battery has been struck by
six shots, the effect of two of which is enough to demonstrate that the
fire of the guns _en barbette_ would have been destructive. The
columbiad is a kind of Dahlgren--that is, a piece of ordinance very
thick in the breech, and lightened off gradually from the trunnions to
the muzzle. The platforms were rather light, but the carriages were
solid and well made, and the elevating screws or hitches of the guns
were in good order. The mortars are of various calibres and
descriptions, mostly 8-inch and 10-inch; and it is said there were
seventeen of them in position and working against the fort, and that
thirty-five guns were from time to time directed against it. Shot and
shell appeared to be abundant enough. The works are all small detached
batteries, with sand-bag merlons, and open at the gorge, and they extend
for four miles along the shore of the island. The camps are pitched most
irregularly between the sand-hills--tents of all shapes and sizes, in
the fashion called higgledy-piggledy, here and there, in knots and
groups, in a way that would drive an Indian quartermaster-general mad.
Bones of beef and mutton, champagne and wine bottles, obstructed the
approaches, which were of a nature to afflict Dr. Sutherland and Sir
John M’Neill most bitterly, and to suggest the reflection that the army
which so utterly neglected sanitary regulations could not long exist as
soon as the sun gained full power. They say, however, the men are not
sickly, and that these sand-hills are the most healthy spots about
Charleston. The men were occupied as soldiers generally are when they
have nothing to do--lounging or lying on the straw and plank carpets,
smoking, reading, sleeping. The owners of the tents give them various
names, of which “The Lions’ Den,” “The Tigers’ Lair,” “The Eagles’
Nest,” “Mars’ Delight,” are fair specimens, and these are done in black
on the white calico. In one which we visited, the hospitable inmates
were busily engaged in brewing claret cup, and Bordeaux, lemons, sugar,
ice, and Champagne, and salads were in abundance, and at the end of the
tent was a Bar, where anything else in reason could be had for the
asking, though water was not so plentiful. At one of the batteries the
great object of attraction was a gun made on Captain Blakeley’s
principle, by Messrs. Fawcett, Preston & Co., of Liverpool, which was
only put in battery the day before the fire opened, and the effect of
which on the masonry is said to have been very powerful. It is a
12-pounder--the same which was tried last year, I think--and bears a
brass plate with the inscription, “Presented to South Carolina by one of
her citizens.” It is remarkable enough that the vessel which carried it
lay in the midst of the United States war vessels at the mouth of the
harbor.

Having satisfied our curiosity as well as time and a sand-storm
permitted, we got in a row-boat and proceeded to Sumter. At a distance,
the fort bears some resemblance to Fort Paul at Sevastopol. It is a
truncated pentagon, with three faces armed--that which is toward Morris
Island being considered safe from attack, as the work was only intended
to resist an approach from the sea. It is said to have cost altogether
more than £200,000 sterling. The walls are of solid brick and concrete
masonry, built close to the edge of the water, sixty feet high, and from
eight to twelve feet in thickness, and carry three tiers of guns on the
north, east, and west exterior sides. Its weakest point is on the south
side, where the masonry is not protected by any flank fire to sweep the
wharf. The work is designed for an armament of one hundred and forty
pieces of ordnance of all calibres. Two tiers are under bomb-proof
casemates, and the third or upper tier is _en barbette_; the lower tier
is intended for 42-pounders paixhan guns; the second tier for eight and
ten-inch columbiads, for throwing solid or hollow shot, and the upper
tier for mortars and guns. But only seventy-five are now mounted. Eleven
paixhan guns are among that number, nine of them commanding Fort
Moultrie. Some of the columbiads are not mounted. Four of the 32-pounder
_barbette_ guns are on pivot carriages, and others have a sweep of 180°.
The walls are pierced everywhere for musketry. The magazine contains
several hundred barrels of gunpowder, and a supply of shot, powder, and
shells. The garrison was amply supplied with water from artificial
wells. The war garrison of the fort ought to be at least six hundred
men, but only seventy-nine were within its walls, with the laborers--one
hundred and nine all told--at the time of the attack.

The walls of the fort are dented on all sides by shot marks, but in no
instance was any approach made to a breach, and the greatest damage, at
one of the angles on the south face, did not extend more than two feet
into the masonry, which is of very fine brick. The parapet is, of
course, damaged, but the casemate embrasures are uninjured. On landing
at the wharf we perceived that the granite copings had suffered more
than the brickwork, and that the stone had split up and splintered where
it was struck. The ingenuity of the defenders was evident even here.
They had no mortar with which to fasten up the stone slabs they had
adapted as blinds to the windows of the unprotected south side; but
Major Anderson, or his subordinate, Captain Foster, had closed the slabs
in with lead, which he procured from some water piping, and had rendered
them proof against escalade, which he was prepared also to resent by
extensive mines laid under the wharf and landing-place, to be fired by
friction tubes and lines laid inside the work. He had also prepared a
number of shells for the same purpose, to act as hand-grenades, with
friction tubes and lanyards, when hurled down from the parapet on his
assailants. The entrance to the fort was blocked up by masses of
masonry, which had been thrown down from the walls of the burnt barracks
and officers’ quarters, along the south side. A number of men were
engaged in digging up the mines at the wharf, and others were busied in
completing the ruin of the tottering walls, which were still so hot that
it was necessary to keep a hose of water playing on part of the
brickwork. To an uninitiated eye it would seem as if the fort was
untenable, but, in reality, in spite of the destruction done to it, a
stout garrison, properly supplied, would have been in no danger from
anything, except the explosion of the magazine, of which the copper door
was jammed by the heat at the time of the surrender. Exclusive of the
burning of the quarters and the intense heat, there was no reason for a
properly handled and sufficient force to surrender the place. It is
needless to say Major Anderson had neither one nor the other. He was in
all respects most miserably equipped. His guns were without screws,
scales, or tangents, so that his elevations were managed by rude wedges
of deal, and his scales marked in chalk on the breech of the guns, and
his distances and bearings scratched in the same way on the side of the
embrasures. He had not a single fuse for his shells, and he tried in
vain to improvise them by filling pieces of bored-out pine with caked
gunpowder. His cartridges were out, and he was compelled to detail some
few of his men to make them out of shirts, stockings, and jackets. He
had not a single mortar, and he was compelled to the desperate expedient
of planting long guns in the ground at an angle of 45 degrees, for which
he could find no shell, as he had no fuses which could be fired with
safety. He had no sheers to mount his guns, and chance alone enabled him
to do so by drifting some large logs down with the tide against Sumter.
Finally, he had not even one engine to put out a fire in quarters. I
walked carefully over the parade, and could detect the marks of only
seven shells in the ground; but Major Whiting told me the orders were to
burst the shells over the parapet, so as to frustrate any attempt to
work the barbette guns. Two of these were injured by shot, and one was
overturned, apparently by its own recoil; but there was no injury done
inside any of the casemates to the guns or works. The shell splinters
had all disappeared, carried off, I am told, as “trophies.” Had Major
Anderson been properly provided, so that he could have at once sent his
men to the guns, opened fire from those in barbette, thrown shell and
hot shot, kept relays to all his casemates, and put out fires as they
arose from red-hot shot or shell, he must, I have no earthly doubt, have
driven the troops off Morris Island, burnt out Fort Moultrie, and
silenced the enemy’s fire. His loss might have been considerable; that
of the Confederates must have been very great. As it was, not a life was
lost by actual fire on either side. A week hence and it will be
impossible for a fleet to do anything except cover the descent of an
army here, and they must lie off, at the least, four miles from the
nearest available beach.




LETTER VI.

THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA.

APRIL 30, 1861.


NOTHING I could say can be worth one fact which has forced itself upon
my mind in reference to the sentiments which prevail among the gentlemen
of this State. I have been among them several days. I have visited their
plantations, I have conversed with them freely and fully, and I have
enjoyed that frank, courteous, and graceful intercourse which
constitutes an irresistible charm of their society. From all quarters
have come to my ears the echoes of the same voice; it may be feigned,
but there is no discord in the note, and it sounds in wonderful strength
and monotony all over the country. Shades of George III., of North, of
Johnson, of all who contended against the great rebellion which tore
these colonies from England, can you hear the chorus which rings through
the State of Marion, Sumter, and Pinckney, and not clap your ghostly
hands in triumph? That voice says, “If we could only get one of the
Royal race of England to rule over us, we should be content.” Let there
be no misconception on this point. That sentiment, varied in a hundred
ways, has been repeated to me over and over again. There is a general
admission that the means to such an end are wanting, and that the desire
cannot be gratified. But the admiration for monarchical institutions on
the English model, for privileged classes, and for a landed aristocracy
and gentry, is undisguised and apparently genuine. With the pride of
having achieved their independence is mingled in the South Carolinians’
hearts a strange regret at the result and consequences, and many are
they who “would go back to-morrow if we could.” An intense affection for
the British connection, a love of British habits and customs, a respect
for British sentiment, law, authority, order, civilization, and
literature, preëminently distinguish the inhabitants of this State, who,
glorying in their descent from ancient families on the three islands,
whose fortunes they still follow, and with whose members they maintain
not unfrequently familiar relations, regard with an aversion of which it
is impossible to give an idea to one who has not seen its
manifestations, the people of New England and the populations of the
Northern States, whom they regard as tainted beyond cure by the venom of
“Puritanism.” Whatever may be the cause, this is the fact and the
effect. “The State of South Carolina was,” I am told, “founded by
gentlemen.” It was not established by witch-burning Puritans, by cruel
persecuting fanatics, who implanted in the North the standard of
Torquemada, and breathed into the nostrils of their newly-born colonies
all the ferocity of blood-thirstiness and rabid intolerance of the
Inquisition. It is absolutely astounding to a stranger, who aims at the
preservation of a decent neutrality, to mark the violence of these
opinions.

“If that confounded ship had sunk with those ---- Pilgrim Fathers on
board,” says one, “we never should have been driven to these
extremities!” “We could have got on with fanatics if they had been
either Christians or gentlemen,” says another; “for in the first case
they would have acted with common charity, and in the second they would
have fought when they insulted us; but there are neither Christians nor
gentlemen among them!” “Anything on the earth!” exclaims a third, “any
form of government, any tyranny or despotism you will; but”--and here is
an appeal more terrible than the adjuration of all the Gods--“nothing on
earth shall ever induce us to submit to any union with the brutal,
bigoted blackguards of the New England States, who neither comprehend
nor regard the feelings of gentlemen! Man, woman, and child, we’ll die
first.” Imagine these and an infinite variety of similar sentiments
uttered by courtly, well-educated men, who set great store on a nice
observance of the usages of society, and who are only moved to extreme
bitterness and anger when they speak of the North, and you will fail to
conceive the intensity of the dislike of the South Carolinians for the
Free States. There are national antipathies on our side of the Atlantic
which are tolerably strong, and have been unfortunately pertinacious and
long-lived. The hatred of the Italian for the Tedesco, of the Greek for
the Turk, of the Turk for the Russ, is warm and fierce enough to satisfy
the Prince of Darkness, not to speak of a few little pet aversions among
the allied Powers and the atoms of composite empires; but they are all
mere indifference and neutrality of feeling compared to the animosity
evinced by the “gentry” of South Carolina for the “rabble of the North.”

The contests of Cavalier and Roundhead, of Vendean and Republican, even
of Orangeman and Croppy, have been elegant joustings, regulated by the
finest rules of chivalry, compared with those which North and South will
carry on if their deeds support their words. “Immortal hate, the study
of revenge,” will actuate every blow, and never in the history of the
world, perhaps, will go forth such a dreadful _væ victis_ as that which
may be heard before the fight has begun. There is nothing in all the
dark caves of human passion so cruel and deadly as the hatred the South
Carolinians profess for the Yankees. That hatred has been swelling for
years, till it is the very life-blood of the State. It has set South
Carolina to work steadily to organize her resources for the struggle
which she intended to provoke, if it did not come in the course of time.
“Incompatibility of temper” would have been sufficient ground for the
divorce, and I am satisfied that there has been a deep-rooted design,
conceived in some men’s minds thirty years ago, and extended gradually
year after year to others, to break away from the Union at the very
first opportunity. The North is to South Carolina a corrupt and evil
thing, to which for long years she has been bound by burning chains,
while monopolists and manufacturers fed on her tender limbs. She has
been bound in a Maxentian union to the object she loathes. New England
is to her the incarnation of moral and political wickedness and social
corruption. It is the source of everything which South Carolina hates,
and of the torrents of free thought and taxed manufactures, of
Abolitionism and of fillibustering, which have flooded the land. Believe
a Southern man as he believes himself, and you must regard New England
and the kindred States as the birthplace of impurity of mind among men
and of unchastity in women--the home of Free Love, of Fourierism, of
Infidelity, of Abolitionism, of false teachings in political economy and
in social life; a land saturated with the drippings of rotten
philosophy, with the poisonous infections of a fanatic press; without
honor or modesty; whose wisdom is paltry cunning, whose valor and
manhood have been swallowed up in a corrupt, howling demagogy, and in
the marts of a dishonest commerce. It is the merchants of New York who
fit out ships for the slave-trade, and carry it on in Yankee ships. It
is the capital of the North which supports, and it is Northern men who
concoct and execute, the fillibustering expeditions which have brought
discredit on the Slave-holding States. In the large cities people are
corrupted by itinerant and ignorant lecturers--in the towns and in the
country by an unprincipled press. The populations, indeed, know how to
read and write, but they don’t know how to think, and they are the easy
victims of the wretched impostors on all the ’ologies and ’isms who
swarm over the region, and subsist by lecturing on subjects which the
innate vices of mankind induce them to accept with eagerness, while they
assume the garb of philosophical abstractions to cover their nastiness
in deference to a contemptible and universal hypocrisy.

    “Who fills the butchers’ shops with large blue flies?”

Assuredly the New England demon who has been persecuting the South until
its intolerable cruelty and insolence forced her, in a spasm of agony,
to rend her chains asunder. The New Englander must have something to
persecute, and as he has hunted down all his Indians, burnt all his
witches, and persecuted all his opponents to the death, he invented
Abolitionism as the sole resource left to him for the gratification of
his favorite passion. Next to this motive principle is his desire to
make money dishonestly, trickily, meanly, and shabbily. He has acted on
it in all his relations with the South, and has cheated and plundered
her in all his dealings by villainous tariffs. If one objects that the
South must have been a party to this, because her boast is that her
statesmen have ruled the Government of the country, you are told that
the South yielded out of pure good nature. Now, however, she will have
free trade, and will open the coasting trade to foreign nations, and
shut out from it the hated Yankees, who so long monopolized and made
their fortunes by it. Under all the varied burdens and miseries to which
she was subjected, the South held fast to her sheet anchor. South
Carolina was the mooring ground in which it found the surest hold. The
doctrine of State Rights was her salvation, and the fiercer the storm
raged against her--the more stoutly demagogy, immigrant preponderance,
and the blasts of universal suffrage bore down on her, threatening to
sweep away the vested interests of the South in her right to govern the
States--the greater was her confidence and the more resolutely she held
on her cable. The North attracted “hordes of ignorant Germans and
Irish,” and the scum of Europe, while the South repelled them. The
industry, the capital of the North increased with enormous rapidity,
under the influence of cheap labor and manufacturing ingenuity and
enterprise, in the villages which swelled into towns, and the towns
which became cities, under the unenvious eye of the South. She, on the
contrary, toiled on slowly, clearing forests and draining swamps to find
new cotton-grounds and rice-fields, for the employment of her only
industry and for the development of her only capital--“involuntary
labor.” The tide of immigration waxed stronger, and by degrees she saw
the districts into which she claimed the right to introduce that capital
closed against her, and occupied by free labor. The doctrine of squatter
“sovereignty,” and the force of hostile tariffs, which placed a heavy
duty on the very articles which the South most required, completed the
measure of injuries to which she was subjected, and the spirit of
discontent found vent in fiery debate, in personal insults, and in
acrimonious speaking and writing, which increased in intensity in
proportion as the Abolition movement, and the contest between the
Federal principle and State Rights, became more vehement. I am desirous
of showing in a few words, for the information of English readers, how
it is that the Confederacy which Europe knew simply as a political
entity has succeeded in dividing itself. The Slave States held the
doctrine, or say they did, that each State was independent as France or
as England, but that for certain purposes they chose a common agent to
deal with foreign nations, and to impose taxes for the purpose of paying
the expenses of the agency. We, it appears, talked of American citizens
when there were no such beings at all. There were, indeed, citizens of
the Sovereign State of South Carolina, or of Georgia or Florida, who
permitted themselves to pass under that designation, but it was merely
as a matter of personal convenience. It will be difficult for Europeans
to understand this doctrine, as nothing like it has been heard before,
and no such Confederation of Sovereign States has ever existed in any
country in the world. The Northern men deny that it existed here, and
claim for the Federal Government powers not compatible with such
assumptions. _They_ have lived for the Union, they served it, they
labored for and made money by it. A man as a New York man was
nothing--as an American citizen he was a great deal. A South Carolinian
objected to lose his identity in any description which included him and
a “Yankee clockmaker” in the same category. The Union was against him;
he remembered that he came from a race of English gentlemen who had been
persecuted by the representatives--for he will not call them the
ancestors--of the Puritans of New England, and he thought that they were
animated by the same hostility to himself. He was proud of old names,
and he felt pleasure in tracing his connection with old families in the
old country. His plantations were held by old charters, or had been in
the hands of his fathers for several generations; and he delighted to
remember that when the Stuarts were banished from their throne and their
country, the burgesses of South Carolina had solemnly elected the
wandering Charles king of their State, and had offered him an asylum and
a kingdom. The philosophical historian may exercise his ingenuity in
conjecturing what would have been the result if the fugitive had carried
his fortunes to Charleston.

South Carolina contains 34,000 square miles and a population of 720,000
inhabitants, of whom 385,000 are black slaves. In the old rebellion it
was distracted between revolutionary principles and the loyalist
predilections, and at least one half of the planters were faithful to
George III., nor did they yield till Washington sent an army to support
their antagonists, and drove them from the colony.

In my next letter I shall give a brief account of a visit to some of the
planters, as far as it can be made consistent with the obligations which
the rites and rights of hospitality impose on the guest as well as upon
the host. These gentlemen are well-bred, courteous, and hospitable. A
genuine aristocracy, they have time to cultivate their minds, to apply
themselves to politics and the guidance of public affairs. They travel
and read, love field sports, racing, shooting, hunting and fishing, are
bold horsemen, and good shots. But, after all, their State is a modern
Sparta--an aristocracy resting on a helotry, and with nothing else to
rest upon. Although they profess (and I believe, indeed, sincerely) to
hold opinions in opposition to the opening of the slave trade, it is
nevertheless true that the clause in the Constitution of the Confederate
States which prohibited the importation of negroes was especially and
energetically resisted by them, because, as they say, it seemed to be an
admission that slavery was in itself an evil and a wrong. Their whole
system rests on slavery, and as such they defend it. They entertain very
exaggerated ideas of the military strength of their little community,
although one may do full justice to its military spirit. Out of their
whole population they cannot reckon more than 60,000 adult men by any
arithmetic, and as there are nearly 30,000 plantations which must be,
according to law, superintended by white men, a considerable number of
these adults cannot be spared from the State for service in the open
field. The planters boast that they can raise their crops without any
inconvenience by the labor of their negroes, and they seem confident
that the negroes will work without superintendence. But the experiment
is rather dangerous, and it will only be tried in the last extremity.

SAVANNAH, GA., May 1, 1861.

It is said that “fools build houses for wise men to live in.” Be that
true or not, it is certain that “Uncle Sam” has built strong places for
his enemies to occupy. To-day I visited Fort Pulaski, which defends the
mouth of the Savannah River and the approaches to the city. It was left
to take care of itself, and the Georgians quietly stepped into it, and
have been busied in completing its defences, so that it is now capable
of stopping a fleet very effectually. Pulaski was a Pole who fell in the
defence of Savannah against the British, and whose memory is perpetuated
in the name of the fort, which is now under the Confederate flag, and
garrisoned by bitter foes of the United States. Among our party were
Commodore Tattnall, whose name will be familiar to English ears in
connection with the attack on the Peiho Forts, where the gallant
American showed the world that “blood was thicker than water,”
Brigadier-General Lawton, in command of the forces of Georgia, and a
number of naval and military officers, of whom many had belonged to the
United States regular service. It was strange to look at such a man as
the Commodore, who for forty-nine long years had served under the Stars
and Stripes, quietly preparing to meet his old comrades and friends, if
needs be, in the battle-field--his allegiance to the country and to the
flag renounced, his long service flung away, his old ties and
connections severed--and all this in defence of the sacred right of
rebellion on the part of “his State.” He is not now, nor has he been for
years, a slave-owner; all his family and familiar associations connect
him with the North. There are no naval stations on the Southern coasts
except one at Pensacola, and he knows almost no one in the South. He has
no fortune whatever, his fleet consists of two small river or coasting
steamers, without guns, and as he said, in talking over the resources of
the South, “My bones will be bleached many a long year before the
Confederate States can hope to have a navy.” “State Rights!” To us the
question is simply inexplicable or absurd. And yet thousands of
Americans sacrifice all for it. The river at Savannah is as broad as the
Thames at Gravesend, and resembles that stream very much in the color of
its waters and the level natures of its shores. Rice-fields bound it on
either side, as far down as the influence of the fresh water extends,
and the eye wanders over a flat expanse of mud and water and green
oziers and rushes, till its search is arrested on the horizon by the
unfailing line of forest. In the fields here and there are the
whitewashed, square, wooden huts in which the slaves dwell, looking very
like the beginnings of the camp in the Crimea. At one point a small
fort, covering a creek by which gunboats could get up behind Savannah,
displayed its “garrison” on the walls, and lowered its flag to salute
the small blue ensign at the fore, which proclaimed the presence of the
Commodore of the Naval Forces of Georgia on board our steamer. The guns
on the parapet were mostly field-pieces, mounted on frameworks of wood
instead of regular carriages. There is no mistake about the spirit of
these people. They seize upon every spot of ’vantage ground and prepare
it for defence. There were very few ships in the river; the yacht
Camilla, better known as the America, the property of Captain Deasy, and
several others of those few sailing under British colors, for most of
the cotton ships are gone. After steaming down the river about twelve
miles the sea opened out to the sight, and on a long, marshy, narrow
island near the bar, which was marked by the yellowish surf, Fort
Pulaski threw out the Confederate flag to the air of the Georgian 1st of
May. The water was too shallow to permit the steamer to go up to the
jetty, and the party landed at the wharf in boats. A guard was on duty
at the landing--tall, stout young fellows, in various uniforms, or in
rude mufti, in which the Garibaldian red shirt and felt slouched hats
predominated. They were armed with smooth-bore muskets (date 1851),
quite new, and their bayonets, barrels and locks were bright and clean.
The officer on duty was dressed in the blue frock-coat dear to the
British Linesman in days gone by, with brass buttons, emblazoned with
the arms of the State, a red silk sash, and glazed kepi, and
straw-colored gauntlets. Several wooden huts, with flower-gardens in
front, were occupied by the officers of the garrison; others were used
as hospitals, and were full of men suffering from measles of a mild
type. A few minutes’ walk led us to the fort, which is an irregular
pentagon, with the base line or curtain face inlands, and the other
faces casemated and bearing on the approaches. The curtain, which is
simply crenellated, is covered by a Redan surrounded by a deep ditch,
inside the parapet of which are granite platforms ready for the
reception of guns. The parapet is thick, and the scarp and counterscarp
are faced with solid masonry. A drawbridge affords access to the
interior of the Redan, whence the gate of the fort is approached across
a deep and broad moat, which is crossed by another drawbridge. As the
Commodore entered the Redan the guns of the fort broke out into a long
salute, and the band at the gate struck up almost as noisy a welcome.
Inside, the parade presented a scene of life and animation very unlike
the silence of the city we had left. Men were busy clearing out the
casemates, rolling away stores and casks of ammunition and provisions,
others were at work at the gin and shears, others building sand-bag
traverses to guard the magazine doors, as though expecting an immediate
attack. Many officers were strolling under the shade of an open gallery
at the side of the curtain which contained their quarters in the lofty
bomb-proof casemates. Some of them had seen service in Mexico or border
warfare; some had travelled over Italian and Crimean battle-fields;
others were West Point graduates of the regular army; others young
planters, clerks, or civilians, who rushed with ardor into the First
Georgian Regiment. The garrison of the fort is some six hundred and
fifty men, and fully that number were in and about the work, their tents
being pitched inside the Redan or on the terreplein of the parapets. The
walls are exceedingly solid and well built of gray brick, strong as
iron, and upward of six feet in thickness, the casemates and bomb-proofs
being lofty, airy, and capacious as any I have ever seen, though there
is not quite depth enough between the walls at the salient and the
gun-carriages. The work is intended for one hundred and twenty-eight
guns, of which about one fourth are mounted on the casemates. They are
long 32’s, with a few 42’s, and columbiads. The armaments will be
exceeding heavy when all the guns are mounted, and they are fast getting
the ten-inch columbiads into position _en barbette_. Everything which
could be required, except mortars, was in abundance--the platforms and
gun carriages are solid and well made, the embrasures of the casemates
are admirably constructed, and the ventilation of the bomb-proof
carefully provided for. There are three furnaces for heating red-hot
shot. Nor is discipline neglected, and the officers with whom I went
round the works were as sharp in tone and manner to their men as
volunteers well could be, though the latter often are enlisted for only
three years by the State of Georgia. An excellent lunch was spread in
the casemated bomb-proof, which served as the Colonel’s quarter, and
before sunset the party were steaming towards Savannah through a tideway
full of leaping sturgeon and porpoises, leaving the garrison intent on
the approach of a large ship, which had her sails aback off the bar and
hoisted the Stars and Stripes, but which turned out to be nothing more
formidable than a Liverpool cotton ship. It will take some hard blows
before Georgia is driven to let go her grip of Fort Pulaski. The channel
is very narrow, and passes close to the guns of the fort. The means of
completing the armament have been furnished by the stores of Norfolk
Navy Yard, where between seven hundred and eight hundred guns have
fallen into the hands of the Confederates; and, if there are no
columbiads among them, the Merrimac and other ships, which have been
raised, as we hear, with guns uninjured, will yield up their Dahlgrens
to turn their muzzles against their old masters.

       *       *       *       *       *

MAY 2.--May-day was so well kept yesterday that the exhausted editors
cannot “bring out” their papers, and consequently there is no news; but
there is, nevertheless, much to be said concerning “Our President’s”
Message, and there is a suddenness of admiration for pacific tendencies
which can with difficulty be accounted for, unless the news from the
North these last few days has something to do with it. Not a word now
about an instant march on Washington! No more threats to seize on
Faneuil Hall! The Georgians are by no means so keen as the Carolinians
on their border--nay, they are not so belligerent to-day as they were a
week ago. Mr. Jefferson Davis’s Message is praised for its “moderation,”
and for other qualities which were by no means in such favor while the
Sumter fever was at its height. Men look grave and talk about the
interference of England and France, which “cannot allow this thing to go
on.” But the change which has come over them is unmistakable, and the
best men begin to look grave. As for me, I must prepare to open my lines
of retreat--my communications are in danger.




LETTER VII.

FACTS AND OPINIONS IN REGARD TO NORTH AND SOUTH.

MONTGOMERY, May 16, 1861.


ALTHOUGH I have written two letters since my arrival at Charleston, I
have not been able to give an account of many things which have come
under my notice, and which appeared to be noteworthy; and now that I am
fairly on my travels once more, it seems only too probable that I shall
be obliged to pass them over altogether. The roaring fire of the
revolution is fast sweeping over the prairies, and one must fly before
it or burn. I am obliged to see all that can be seen of the South at
once, and then, armed with such safeguards as I can procure, to make an
effort to recover my communications. Bridges broken, rails torn up,
telegraphs pulled down--I am quite in the air, and air charged with
powder and fire.

One of the most extraordinary books in the world could be made out of
the cuttings and parings of the newspapers which have been published
within the last few days. The judgments, statements, asseverations of
the press, everywhere necessarily hasty, ill-sifted, and off-hand, do
not aspire to even an ephemeral existence here. They are of use if they
serve the purpose of the moment, and of the little boys who commence
their childhood in deceit, and continue to adolescence in iniquity, by
giving vocal utterance to the “sensation” headings in the journals they
retail so sharply and curtly. Talk of the superstition of the Middle
Ages, or of the credulity of the more advanced periods of rural life;
laugh at the Holy Coat of Treves, or groan over the Lady of Salette;
deplore the faith in winking pictures, or in a _communiquè_ of the
_Moniteur_; moralize on the superstition which discovers more in the
liquefaction of the ichor of St. Gennaro than a chemical trick; but if
you desire to understand how far faith can see and trust among the
people who consider themselves the most civilized and intelligent in the
world, you will study the American journals, and read the telegrams
which appear in them. One day the 7th New York regiment is destroyed for
the edification of the South, and is cut up into such small pieces that
none of it is ever seen afterward. The next day it marches into
Washington, or Annapolis, all the better for the process. Another, in
order to encourage the North, it is said that hecatombs of dead were
carried out of Fort Moultrie, packed up, for easy travelling, in boxes.
Again, to irritate both, it is credibly stated that Lord Lyons is going
to interfere, or that an Anglo-French fleet is coming to watch the
ports, and so on through a wild play of fancy, inexact in line as though
the batteries were charged with the aurora borealis or summer lightning,
instead of the respectable, steady, manageable offspring of acid and
metal, to whose staid deportment we are accustomed at a moderate price
for entrance. As is usual in such periods, the contending parties accuse
each other of inveterate falsehood, perfidy, oppression, and local
tyranny and persecution. “Madness rules the hour.”

It was only a day or two ago I took up a local journal of considerable
influence, in which were two paragraphs which struck me as being
inexpressibly absurd. In the first it was stated that a gentleman who
had expressed strong Southern sentiments in a New York hotel, had been
mobbed and thrown into the street, and the writer indulged in some
fitting reflections on the horrible persecution which prevailed in New
York, and on the atrocity of such tyrannical mob-lawlessness in a
civilized community. In another column there was a pleasant little
narrative how citizens of Opelika, in Georgia, had waited on a certain
person, who was “suspected” of entertaining Northern views, and had
deported him on a rustic conveyance, known as a rail, which was
considered by the journalist a very creditable exercise of public
spirit. Nay, more; in a _naive_ paragraph relative to an attempt to burn
the huge hotel of Willard, at Washington, in which some hundreds of
people were residing, the paper, to account satisfactorily for the
attempt, and to assign some intelligible and laudable motive for it,
adds, that he supposes it was intended to burn out the “Border ruffians”
who were lodged there--a reproduction of the excuse of our Anglo-Irish
lord, who apologized for setting fire to a cathedral, on the ground that
he imagined the Bishop was inside. The exultation of the South when the
flag of the United States was lowered at Sumter, has been answered by a
shout of indignation and a battle-cry from the North, and the excitement
at Charleston has produced a reflex action there, the energy of which
cannot be described. The apathy which struck me at New York, when I
landed, has been succeeded by violent popular enthusiasm, before which
all Laodicean policy has melted into fervent activity. The truth must
be, that the New York population did not believe in the strength and
unanimity of the South, and that they thought the Union safe, or did not
care about it. I can put down the names of gentlemen who expressed the
strongest opinions that the Government of the United States had no power
to coerce the South, and who have since put down their names and their
money to support the Government in the attempt to recover the forts
which have been taken. As to the change of opinion in other quarters,
which has been effected so rapidly and miraculously, that it has the
ludicrous air of a vulgar juggler’s trick at a fair, the public regard
it so little, that it would be unbecoming to waste a word about it.

I expressed a belief in my first letter, written a few days after my
arrival, that the South would never go back into the Union. The North
thinks that it can coerce the South, and I am not prepared to say they
are right or wrong; but I am convinced that the South can only be forced
back by such a conquest as that which laid Poland prostrate at the feet
of Russia. It may be that such a conquest can be made by the North, but
success must destroy the Union as it has been constituted in times past.
A strong Government must be the logical consequence of victory, and the
triumph of the South will be attended by a similar result, for which,
indeed, many Southerners are very well disposed. To the people of the
Confederate States there would be no terror in such an issue, for it
appears to me they are pining for a strong Government exceedingly. The
North must accept it, whether they like it or not. Neither party, if
such a term can be applied to the rest of the United States and to those
States which disdain the authority of the Federal Government, was
prepared for the aggressive or resisting power of the other. Already the
Confederate States perceive that they cannot carry all before them with
a rush, while the North have learnt that they must put forth all their
strength to make good a tithe of their lately uttered threats. But the
Montgomery Government are now, they say, anxious to gain time, and to
prepare a regular army. The North, distracted by apprehensions of vast
disturbances in its complicated relations, is clamoring for instant
action and speedy consummation. The counsels of the moderate men, as
they were called, have been utterly overruled.

I am now, however, dealing with South Carolina, which has been the _fons
et origo_ of the Secession doctrines, and their development into the
full life of the Confederate States. The whole foundation on which South
Carolina rests is cotton and a certain amount of rice, or rather she
bases her whole fabric on the necessity which exists in Europe for those
products of her soil, believing and asserting, as she does, that England
and France cannot and will not do without them. Cotton, without a
market, is so much flocculent matter encumbering the ground. Rice,
without demand for it, is unsalable grain in store and on the field.
Cotton at ten cents a pound is boundless prosperity, empire, and
superiority, and rice or grain need no longer be regarded. In the matter
of slave labor, South Carolina argues pretty much in this way: England
and France require our products. In order to meet their wants, we must
cultivate our soil. There is only one way of doing so. The white man
cannot live on our land at certain seasons of the year; he cannot work
in the manner required by the crops. We must, therefore, employ a race
suited to the labor, and that is a race which will only work when it is
obliged to do so. That race was imported from Africa, under the sanction
of the law, by our ancestors, when we were a British colony, and it has
been fostered by us, so that its increase here has been as that of the
most nourishing people in the world. In other places where its labor was
not productive, or imperatively essential, that race has been made free,
sometimes with disastrous consequences to itself and to industry. But we
will not make it free. We cannot do so. We hold that Slavery is
essential to our existence as producers of what Europe requires; nay,
more, we maintain it is in the abstract right in principle; and some of
us go so far as to maintain that the only proper form of society,
according to the law of God and the exigencies of man, is that which
has Slavery as its basis. As to the slave, he is happier far in his
state of servitude, more civilized and religious than he is or could be
if free or in his native Africa.

I have already endeavored to describe the portion of the State through
which I travelled, and the aspect of Charleston, and I will now proceed,
at the risk of making this letter longer than it should be, to make a
few observations on matters which struck me during my visit to one or
two of the planters of the many who were kind enough to give me
invitations to their residences in the State.

Early one fine morning I started in a coasting steamer to visit a
plantation in the Pedee and Maccamaw district, in the Island coast of
the State, north of Charleston. The only source of uneasiness in the
mind of the party arose from the report that the United States squadron
was coming to blockade the port, which would have cut off our line of
retreat, and compelled us to make a long detour and a somewhat difficult
journey by land, seeing that the roads are mere sand tracts, as the
immense number of rivers and creeks offers excuse for not improving the
means of land communication. Passing Sumter, on which men are busily
engaged, under the Confederate flag, in making good damages, and
mounting guns, we put out a few miles to sea, and with the low sandy
shore, dotted with soldiers, and guard-houses, and clumps of trees, on
our left, in a few hours pass the Santee River, and enter an estuary
into which the Pedee and Maccamaw Rivers run a few miles further to the
northwest. The arid, barren, pine-covered sand-hills, which form the
shores of this estuary, are guarded by rude batteries, mounted with
heavy guns, and manned by the State troops, some of whom we can see
strolling along the beach, or, with arms glancing in the sunlight,
pacing up and down on their posts. On the left hand side there are said
to be plantations, the sites of which are marked by belts of trees, and
after we had proceeded a few miles from the sea, the steamer ran
alongside a jetty and pier, which was crowded by men in uniform, waiting
for the news, and for supplies of creature comforts.

Ladies were cantering along the fine hard beach, and some gigs and
tax-carts, fully laden, rolled along very much as one sees them at
Scarborough. The soldiers on the pier were all gentlemen of the county.
Some, dressed in gray tunics and yellow facings, in high felt hats and
plumes, and jack-boots, would have done no discredit in face, figure,
and bearing, to the gayest cavaliers who ever thundered at the heels of
Prince Rupert. Their horses, full of Carolinian fire and metal, stood
picketed under the trees along the margin of the beach. Among these men,
who had been doing the duty of common troopers in patrolling the
sea-coast, were gentlemen possessed of large estates and princely
fortunes; and one who stood among them was pointed out to me as captain
of a company for whose uses his liberality provided unbounded daily
libations of champagne, and the best luxuries which French ingenuity can
safely imprison in those well-known caskets, with which Crimean warriors
were not unacquainted at the close of the campaign. They were eager for
news, which was shouted out to them by their friends in the steamer, and
one was struck by the intimate personal cordiality and familiar
acquaintance which existed among them. Three heavy guns, mounted in an
earthwork, defended by palisades, covered the beach and landing-place,
and the garrison was to have been reënforced by a regiment from
Charleston, which, however, had not got in readiness to go up on our
steamer, owing to some little difficulties between the Volunteers, their
officers, and the Quartermaster-general’s department.

I mention these particulars to give an idea of the state of defence in
which South Carolina holds itself, for, unless Georgetown, which lies at
the head of this inlet, could be considered an object of attack, one
seeks in vain for any reason to induce an enemy to make his appearance
in this direction. A march on Charleston by land would be an operation
of extreme difficulty, through a series of sand-hills, alternating with
marshes, water-course, rivers, and flooded rice-fields. As to
Georgetown, which we have now reached, nothing can be said by way of
description more descriptive than the remark of its inhabitants, that it
was a finished town a hundred years ago. It is a dosy, sleepy, sandy,
lifeless, straggling village, with wooden houses drawn up in right lines
on the margins of great, straight, grass-grown pathways, lined with
trees, and known to the natives as streets.

As the Nina approaches the tumble-down wharf, two or three citizens
advance from the shade of shaky sheds to welcome us, and a few country
vehicles and light phaetons are drawn forth from the same shelter to
receive the passengers, while the negro boys and girls, who have been
playing upon the bales of cotton and barrels of rice, which represent
the trade of the place on the wharf, take up commanding positions for
the better observation of our proceedings. One or two small yachts and
coasting schooners are moored by the banks of the broad, full stream,
the waters of which we had previously crossed in our journey from the
dismal swamp.

There is an air of quaint simplicity and old-fashioned quiet about
Georgetown, refreshingly antagonistic to the bustle and tumult of most
American cities, and one can, without much stretch of imagination, fancy
the old loyal burghers in cocked hats, small-swords, and long,
square-cut sober suits, stalking solemnly down its streets, rejoicing in
the progress of the city which recalled the name of the King and the old
country, or hastening down to the river’s side to hear the tidings
brought from home by the Bristol bark that has just anchored in the
stream. Instead thereof, however, there are the tall, square forms of
eager citizens bowed over their newspapers in the shade before the
bar-room, or the shuffling negro delighting in the sunshine, and kicking
up the dust in the centre of the road as he goes on his errand.

While waiting for our vehicle, we enjoyed the hospitality of one of our
friends, who took us into an old-fashioned angular wooden mansion, more
than a century old, still sound in every timber, and testifying, in its
quaint wainscotings and the rigid framework of door and window, to the
durability of its cypress timbers, and the preservative character of the
atmosphere. In early days it was the crack house of the old settlement,
and the residence of the founder of the female branch of the family of
our host, who now only makes it his halting-place when passing to and
fro between Charleston and his plantation, leaving it the year round in
charge of an old servant and her grandchild. Rose trees and flowering
shrubs clustered before the porch, and filled the garden in front, and
the establishment gave one a good idea of a London merchant’s retreat
about Chelsea a hundred and fifty years ago.

At length we were ready for our journey, and, mounted in two light
covered vehicles, proceeded along the sandy track which, after a while,
led us to a cut, deep in the bosom of the woods, where silence was only
broken by the cry of a woodpecker, the boom of a crane, or the sharp
challenge of the jay. For miles we passed through the shades of this
forest, meeting only two or three vehicles containing female planterdom
on little excursions of pleasure or business, who smiled their welcome
as we passed. Not more than twice in a drive of two hours did we come
upon any settlement or get a view of any white man’s plantation, and
then it was only when we had emerged from the wood and got out upon the
broad, brown plains, where bunds, and water-dykes, and machinery for
regulating the flooding of the lake indicated the scenes of labor. These
settlements consisted of rows of some ten or twelve quadrangular wooden
sheds, supported upon bricks, so as to allow the air, the children, and
the chickens to play beneath; sometimes with brickwork chimneys at the
side, occasionally with ruder contrivances of mud and woodwork to serve
the same purpose.

Arrived at a deep chocolate-colored stream, called Black River, full of
fish and alligators, we find a flat large enough to accommodate vehicles
and passengers, and propelled by two negroes pulling upon a stretched
rope, in the manner usual in the ferryboats of Switzerland, ready for
our reception. Another drive through a more open country, and we reach a
fine grove of pine and live oak, which melts away into a shrubbery,
guarded by a rustic gateway, passing through which we are brought by a
sudden turn into the planter’s house, buried in trees, which dispute
with the green sward, and with wild flower beds, every yard of the space
which lies between the hall-door and the waters of the Pedee; and in a
few minutes, as we gaze over the expanse of fields, just tinged with
green by the first life of the early rice crops, marked by the deep
water-cuts, and bounded by a fringe of unceasing forest, the chimneys of
the steamer we had left at Georgetown gliding, as it were, through the
fields, indicate the existence of another navigable river still beyond.

Leaving with regret the veranda which commanded so enchanting a
foreground of flowers, rare shrubbery, and bearded live oaks, with each
graceful sylvan outline distinctly penciled upon the waters of the
river, we enter the house, and are reminded by its low-browed,
old-fashioned rooms, of the country houses yet to be found in parts of
Ireland or the Scottish border, with additions made by the luxury and
love of foreign travel of more than one generation of educated Southern
planters. Paintings from Italy illustrate the walls in juxtaposition
with interesting portraits of early Colonial Governors and their lovely
womankind, limned with no uncertain hand, and full of the vigor of
touch and naturalness of drapery, of which Copley has left us too few
exemplars, and one portrait of Benjamin West claims for itself such
honor as his own pencil can give. An excellent library, filled with
collections of French and English classics, and with those ponderous
editions of Voltaire, Rousseau, the Memoires pour Servir, books of
travel and history, such as delighted our forefathers in the last
century, and many works of American and general history, afford ample
occupation for a rainy day. But alas! these, and all good things which
the house affords, can be enjoyed but for a brief season. Just as nature
has expanded every charm, developed every grace, and clothed the scene
with all the beauty of opened flower, of ripening grain, and of mature
vegetation, on the wings of the wind the poisoned breath comes borne to
the home of the white man, and he must fly before it or perish. The
books lie unopened on their shelves, the flower blooms and dies
unheeded, and, pity ’tis ’tis true, the old Madeira, garnered ’neath the
roof, settles down for a fresh lease of life, and sets about its
solitary task of acquiring a finer flavor for the infrequent lips of its
banished master and his welcome visitors. This is the story, at least,
that we hear on all sides, and such is the tale repeated to us beneath
the porch, when the full moon enhances, while softening, the loveliness
of the scene, and the rich melody of hundreds of mocking-birds fills the
grove.

Within these hospitable doors Horace might banquet better than he did
with Nasidienus, and drink such wine as can be only found among the
descendants of an ancestry who, improvident enough in all else, learned
the wisdom of bottling up choice old Bual and Sercial ere the demon of
odium had dried up their generous sources for ever. To these must be
added excellent bread, ingenious varieties of the gallette, compounded
now of rice and now of Indian meal, delicious butter and fruits, all
good of their kind. What more is needed for one who agrees with Mr.
Disraeli in thinking bread and wine man’s two first luxuries and his
best? And is there anything bitter rising up from the bottom of the
social bowl? My black friends who attend on me are grave as Mussulman
Khitmutgars. They are attired in liveries, and wear white cravats and
Berlin gloves. At night, when we retire, off they go to their outer
darkness in the small settlement of negrohood, which is separated from
our house by a wooden palisade. Their fidelity is undoubted. The house
breathes an air of security. The doors and windows are unlocked. There
is but one gun, a fowling-piece, on the premises. No planter hereabouts
has any dread of his slaves.

But I have seen within the short time that I have been here in this part
of the world several dreadful accounts of the murder and violence in
which masters suffered at the hands of their slaves. There is something
suspicious in the constant, never-ending statement, that “We are not
afraid of our slaves.” The curfew and the night patrol in the streets,
the prisons and watch-houses, and the police regulations prove that
strict supervision, at all events, is needed and necessary. My host is a
kind man and a good master. If slaves are happy anywhere, they should be
so with him.

These people are fed by their master. They have upward of half a pound
per diem of fat pork, and corn in abundance. They rear poultry, and sell
their chickens and eggs to the house. They are clothed by their master.
He keeps them in sickness as in health. Now and then there are gifts of
tobacco and molasses for the deserving. There was little labor going on
in the fields, for the rice has been just exerting itself to get its
head above water. These fields yield plentifully, for the waters of the
river are fat, and they are let in, whenever the planters require it, by
means of floodgates and small canals, through which the flats can carry
their loads of grain to the river for loading the steamers.




LETTER VIII.

FACTS AND OPINIONS AT THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL.

MONTGOMERY, CAPITAL OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES }
OF AMERICA, May 8, 1861. }


IN my last letter I gave an account of such matters as passed under my
notice on my way to this city, which I reached, as you are aware, on the
night of Saturday, May 4. I am on difficult ground, the land is on fire,
the earth is shaking with the tramp of armed men, and the very air is
hot with passion. My communications are cut off, or are at best
accidental, and in order to re-open them I must get further away from
them, paradoxical as the statement may appear to be. It is impossible to
know what is going on in the North, and it is almost the same to learn
what is doing in the South out of eyeshot; it is useless to inquire what
news is sent to you to England. Events hurry on with tremendous
rapidity, and even the lightning lags behind them. The people of the
South at last are aware that the “Yankees” are preparing to support the
Government of the United States, and that the Secession can only be
maintained by victory in the field. There has been a change in their war
policy. They now aver that “they only want to be let alone,” and they
declare that they do not intend to take Washington, and that it was
merely as a feint they spoke about it. The fact is, there are even in
the compact and united South men of moderate and men of extreme views,
and the general tone of the whole is regulated by the preponderance of
one or other at the moment. I have no doubt on my mind that the
Government here intended to attack and occupy Washington--not the least
that they had it much at heart to reduce Fort Pickens as soon as
possible. Now some of their friends say that it will be a mere matter of
convenience whether they attack Washington or not, and that, as for Fort
Pickens, they will certainly let it alone, at all events for the
present, inasmuch as the menacing attitude of General Bragg obliges the
enemy to keep a squadron of their best ships there, and to retain a
force of regulars they can ill spare, in a position where they must lose
enormously from diseases incidental to the climate. They have
discovered, too, that the position is of little value so long as the
United States hold Tortugas and Key West. But the Confederates are
preparing for the conflict, and when they have organized their forces,
they will make, I am satisfied, a very resolute advance all along the
line. They are at present strong enough, they suppose, in their domestic
resources, and in the difficulties presented to a hostile force by the
nature of the country, to bid defiance to invasion, or, at all events,
to inflict a very severe chastisement on the invaders, and their excited
manner of speech so acts upon the minds that they begin to think they
can defy, not merely the United States, but the world. Thus it is that
they declare they never can be conquered, that they will die to a man,
woman, and child first, and that if fifty thousand, or any number of
thousands of Black Republicans get one hundred miles into Virginia, not
one man of them shall ever get out alive. Behind all this talk, however,
there is immense energy, great resolution, and fixed principles of
action. Their strategy consists in keeping quiet till they have their
troops well in hand, in such numbers and discipline as shall give them
fair grounds for expecting success in any campaign with the United
States troops. They are preparing with vigor to render the descent of
the Mississippi impossible, by erecting batteries on the commanding
levees or embankments which hem in its waters for upward of eight
hundred miles of bank, and they are occupying, as far as they can, all
the strategical points of attack or defence within their borders. When
everything is ready, it is not improbable that Mr. Jefferson Davis will
take command of the army, for he is reported to have a high ambition to
acquire reputation as a general, and in virtue of his office he is
Generalissimo of the Armies of the Confederate States. It will be
remarked that this plan rests on the assumption that the United States
cannot or will not wage an offensive war, or obtain any success in their
attempts to recover the forts and other property of the Federal
Government. They firmly believe the war will not last a year, and that
1862 will behold a victorious, compact, slave-holding Confederate power
of fifteen States under a strong government, prepared to hold its own
against the world, or that portion of it which may attack it. I now but
repeat the sentiments and expectations of those around me. They believe
in the irresistible power of cotton, in the natural alliance between
manufacturing England and France and the cotton producing Slave States,
in the force of their simple tariff, and in the interest which arise out
of a system of free-trade, which, however, by a rigorous legislation
they will interdict to their neighbors in the Free States, and only open
for the benefit of their foreign customers. Commercially, and
politically, and militarily, they have made up their minds, and never
was there such confidence exhibited by any people in the future as they
have, or pretended to have, in their destiny. Listen to their programme.

It is intended to buy up all the cotton crop which can be brought into
the market at an average price, and to give bonds of the Confederate
States for the amount, these bonds being, as we know, secured by the
export duty on cotton. The Government, with this cotton crop in its own
hands, will use it as a formidable machine of war, for cotton can do
anything, from the establishment of an empire to the securing of a shirt
button. It is at once king and subject, master and servant, captain and
soldier, artilleryman and gun. Not one bale of cotton will be permitted
to enter the Northern States. It will be made an offence punishable with
tremendous penalties, among which confiscation of property, enormous
fines, and even the penalty of death, are enumerated, to send cotton
into the Free States. Thus Lowell and its kindred factories will be
reduced to ruin, it is said, and the North to the direst distress. If
Manchester can get cotton and Lowell cannot, there are good times coming
for the mill-owners.

The planters have agreed among themselves to hold over one-half of their
cotton crop for their own purposes and for the culture of their fields,
and to sell the other to the Government. For each bale of cotton, as I
hear, a bond will be issued on the fair average price of cotton in the
market, and this bond must be taken at par as a circulating medium
within the limits of the Slave States. This forced circulation will be
secured by the act of the Legislature. The bonds will bear interest at
10 per cent., and they will be issued on the faith and security of the
proceeds of the duty of one-eighth of a cent on every pound of cotton
exported. All vessels loading with cotton will be obliged to enter into
bonds, or give security that they will not carry their cargoes to
Northern ports, or let it reach Northern markets to their knowledge. The
Government will sell the cotton for cash to foreign buyers, and will
thus raise funds amply sufficient, they contend, for all purposes. I
make these bare statements, and I leave to political economists the
discussion of the question which may and will arise out of the acts of
the Confederate States. The Southerners argue that by breaking from
their unnatural alliance with the North they will save upward of
$47,000,000, or nearly £10,000,000 sterling annually. The estimated
value of the annual cotton crop is $200,000,000. On this the North
formerly made at least $10,000,000, by advance, interest and exchanges,
which in all came to fully 5 per cent. on the whole of the crop. Again,
the tariff to raise revenue sufficient for the maintenance of the
Government of the Southern Confederacy is far less than that which is
required by the Government of the United States. The Confederate States
propose to have a tariff which will be about 12½ per cent. on imports,
which will yield $25,000,000. The Northern tariff is 30 per cent., and
as the South took from the North $70,000,000 worth of manufactured goods
and produce, they contribute, they assert, to the maintenance of the
North to the extent of the difference between the tax sufficient for the
support of their Government, and that which is required for the support
of the Federal Government. Now they will save the difference between 30
per cent, and 12½ per cent. (17½ per cent), which amounts to
$37,000,000, which, added to the saving on commissions, exchanges,
advances, &c., makes up the good round sum which I have put down higher
up. The Southerners are firmly convinced that they have “kept the North
going” by the prices they have paid for the protected articles of their
manufacture, and they hold out to Sheffield, to Manchester, to Leeds, to
Wolverhampton, to Dudley, to Paris, to Lyons, to Bordeaux, to all the
centres of English manufacturing life, as of French taste and luxury,
the tempting baits of new and eager and hungry markets. If their facts
and statistics are accurate, there can be no doubt of the justice of
their deductions on many points; but they can scarcely be correct in
assuming that they will bring the United States to destruction by
cutting off from Lowell the 600,000 bales of cotton which she usually
consumes. One great fact, however, is unquestionable--the Government has
in its hands the souls, the wealth, and the hearts of the people. They
will give anything--money, labor, life itself--to carry out their
theories. “Sir,” said an ex-Governor of this State to me to-day, “sooner
than submit to the North, we will all become subject to Great Britain
again.” The same gentleman is one of the many who have given to the
Government a large portion of their cotton crop every year as a
free-will offering. In his instance his gift is one of 500 bales of
cotton, or £5,000 per annum, and the papers teem with accounts of
similar “patriotism” and devotion. The ladies are all making sand-bags,
cartridges, and uniforms, and, if possible, they are more fierce than
the men. The time for mediation is past, if it ever were at hand or
present at all; and it is scarcely possible now to prevent the processes
of phlebotomization which are supposed to secure peace and repose.

There was no intelligence of much interest on Sunday, but there is a
general belief that Arkansas and Missouri will send in their adhesion to
the Confederacy this week, and the Commissioners from Virginia are
hourly expected. The attitude of that State, however, gives rise to
apprehensions lest there may be a division of her strength; and any
aggression on her territories by the Federal Government, such as that
contemplated in taking possession of Alexandria, would be hailed by the
Montgomery Government with sincere joy, as it would, they think, move
the State to more rapid action and decision.

Montgomery is on an undulating plain, and covers ground large enough for
a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, but its population is only
twelve thousand. Indeed, the politicians here appear to dislike large
cities, but the city designers certainly prepare to take them if they
come. There is a large negro population, and a considerable number of a
color which forces me to doubt the evidences of my senses rather than
the statements made to me by some of my friends, that the planters
affect the character of parent in their moral relations merely with the
negro race. A waiter at the hotel--a tall, handsome young fellow, with
the least tinge of color in his cheek, not as dark as the majority of
Spaniards or Italians--astonished me in my ignorance to-day when, in
reply to a question asked by one of our party, in consequence of a
discussion on the point, he informed me he “was a slave.” The man, as he
said so, looked confused; his manner altered. He had been talking
familiarly to us, but the moment he replied, “I am a slave, Sir,” his
loquacity disappeared, and he walked hurriedly and in silence out of the
room. The river Alabama, on which the city rests, is a wide, deep
stream, now a quarter of a mile in breadth, with a current of four miles
an hour. It is navigable to Mobile, upward of four hundred miles, and
steamers ascend its waters for many miles beyond this into the interior.
The country around is well wooded, and is richly cultivated in broad
fields of cotton and Indian corn, but the neighborhood is not healthy,
and deadly fevers are said to prevail at certain seasons of the year.
There is not much animation in the streets, except when “there is a
difficulty among the citizens,” or in the eternal noise of the hotel
steps and bars. I was told this morning by the hotel keeper that I was
probably the only person in the house, or about it, who had not loaded
revolvers in his pockets, and one is aware occasionally of an unnatural
rigidity scarcely attributable to the osseous structure in the persons
of those who pass one in the crowded passages.

MONDAY, May 6.--To-day I visited the Capitol, where the Provisional
Congress is sitting. On leaving the hotel, which is like a small
Willard’s, so far as the crowd in the hall is concerned, my attention
was attracted to a group of people to whom a man was holding forth in
energetic sentences. The day was hot, but I pushed near to the spot, for
I like to hear a stump speech, or to pick up a stray morsel of divinity
in the _via sacra_ of strange cities, and it appeared as though the
speaker was delivering an oration or a sermon. The crowd was small.
Three or four idle men in rough, homespun, makeshift uniforms, leaned
against the iron rails inclosing a small pond of foul, green-looking
water, surrounded by brick-work, which decorates the space in front of
the Exchange Hotel. The speaker stood on an empty deal packing case. A
man in a cart was listening with a lack-lustre eye to the address. Some
three or four others, in a sort of vehicle, which might either be a
hearse or a piano-van, had also drawn up for the benefit of the address.
Five or six other men, in long black coats and high hats, some whittling
sticks, and chewing tobacco, and discharging streams of discolored
saliva, completed the group. “Nine h’hun’nerd and fifty dollars! Only
nine h-hun’nerd and fifty dollars offered for him,” exclaimed the man,
in the tone of injured dignity, remonstrance, and surprise, which can be
insinuated by all true auctioneers into the dryest numerical statements.
“Will _no one_ make any advance on nine hundred and fifty dollars?” A
man near me opened his mouth, spat, and said, “Twenty-five.” “Only nine
hundred and seventy-five dollars offered for him. Why, at’s
radaklous--only nine hundred and seventy-five dollars! Will no one,” &c.
Beside the orator auctioneer stood a stout young man of five-and-twenty
years of age, with a bundle in his hand. He was a muscular fellow,
broad-shouldered, narrow-flanked, but rather small in stature; he had on
a broad, greasy, old wide-awake, a blue jacket, a coarse cotton shirt,
loose and rather ragged trowsers, and broken shoes. The expression of
his face was heavy and sad, but it was by no means disagreeable, in
spite of his thick lips, broad nostrils, and high cheek-bones. On his
head was wool instead of hair. I am neither sentimentalist, nor Black
Republican, nor negro-worshiper, but I confess the sight caused a
strange thrill through my heart. I tried in vain to make myself familiar
with the fact that I could, for the sum of nine hundred and seventy-five
dollars, become as absolutely the owner of that mass of blood, bones,
sinew, flesh, and brains, as of the horse which stood by my side. There
was no sophistry which could persuade me the man was not a man--he was,
indeed, by no means my brother, but assuredly he was a fellow creature.
I have seen slave markets in the East, but somehow or other the
Orientalism of the scene cast a coloring over the nature of the sales
there which deprived them of the disagreeable harshness and
matter-of-fact character of the transaction before me. For Turk, or
Smyrniote, or Egyptian, to buy and sell slaves, seemed rather suited to
the eternal fitness of things than otherwise. The turbaned, shawled,
loose-trowsered, pipe-smoking merchants, speaking an unknown tongue,
looked as if they were engaged in a legitimate business. One knew that
their slaves would not be condemned to any very hard labor, and that
they would be in some sort the inmates of the family and members of it.
Here it grated on my ear to listen to the familiar tones of the English
tongue as the medium by which the transfer was effected, and it was
painful to see decent-looking men in European garb engaged in the work
before me. Perchance these impressions may wear off, for I meet many
English people who are the most strenuous advocates of the slave system,
although it is true that their perceptions may be quickened to recognize
its beauties by their participation in the profits. The negro was sold
to one of the bystanders, and walked off with his bundle, God knows
where. “Niggers is cheap,” was the only remark of the bystanders. I
continued my walk up a long, wide, straight street, or, more properly,
an unpaved sandy road, lined with wooden houses on each side, and with
trees by the side of the footpath. The lower of the two stories is
generally used as a shop, mostly of the miscellaneous store kind, in
which all sorts of articles are to be had, if there is any money to pay
for them; and, in the present case, if any faith is to be attached to
the conspicuous notices in the windows, credit is of no credit, and the
only thing that can be accepted in exchange for the goods is “cash.” At
the end of this long street, on a moderate eminence, stands a
whitewashed or painted edifice, with a gaunt, lean portico, supported on
lofty, lanky pillars, and surmounted by a subdued and dejected-looking
little cupola. Passing an unkempt lawn, through a very shabby little
gateway in a brick frame, and we ascend a flight of steps into a hall,
from which a double staircase conducts us to the vestibule of the
Chamber. Anything much more offensive to the eye cannot well be imagined
than the floor and stairs. They are stained deeply by tobacco juice,
which have left its marks on the white stone steps, and on the base of
the pillars outside. In the hall which we have entered there are two
tables, covered with hams, oranges, bread and fruits, for the
refreshment of members and visitors, over which two sable goddesses, in
portentous crinoline, preside. The door of the chamber is open, and we
are introduced into a lofty, well-lighted and commodious apartment, in
which the Congress of the Confederate States hold its deliberations. A
gallery runs half round the room, and is half filled with
visitors--country cousins, and farmers of cotton and maize, and, haply,
seekers of places, great or small. A light and low semi-circular screen
separates the body of the house, where the members sit, from the space
under the gallery, which is appropriated to ladies and visitors. The
clerk sits at a desk above this table, and on a platform behind him are
the desk and chair of the presiding officer or Speaker of the Congress.
Over his head hangs the unfailing portrait of Washington, and a small
engraving, in a black frame, of a gentleman unknown to me. Seated in the
midst of them, at a Senator’s desk, I was permitted to “assist,” in the
French sense, at the deliberations of the Congress. Mr. Howell Cobb took
the chair, and a white-headed clergyman was called upon to say prayers,
which he did, upstanding, with outstretched hands and closed eyes, by
the side of the Speaker. The prayer was long and sulphureous. One more
pregnant with gunpowder I never heard, nor could aught like it have been
heard since

    “Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,
     Was beat with fist instead of a stick.”

The Rev. gentleman prayed that the Almighty might be pleased to inflict
on the arms of the United States such a defeat, that it might be the
example of signal punishment forever; that this President might be
blessed, and that the other President might be the other thing; that the
gallant, devoted young soldiers, who were fighting for their country,
might not suffer from exposure to the weather or from the bullets of
their enemies; and that the base mercenaries who were fighting on the
other side might come to sure and swift destruction; and so on.

Are right and wrong mere geographical expressions? The prayer was over
at last, and the House proceeded to business. Although each State has
several delegates in Congress, it is only entitled to one vote on a
strict division. In this way some curious decisions may be arrived at,
as the smallest State is equal to the largest, and a majority of the
Florida representatives may neutralize a vote of all the Georgia
representatives. For example, Georgia has ten delegates; Florida has
only three. The vote of Florida, however, is determined by the action of
any two of its three representatives, and these two may, on a division,
throw the one State vote into the scale against that of Georgia, for
which ten members are agreed. The Congress transacts all its business in
secret session, and finds it a very agreeable and commendable way of
doing it. Thus, to-day, for example, after the presentation of a few
unimportant motions and papers, the Speaker rapped his desk, and
announced that the House would go into secret session, and that all who
were not members should leave.

As I was returning to the hotel there was another small crowd at the
fountain. Another auctioneer, a fat, flabby, perspiring, puffy man, was
trying to sell a negro girl who stood on the deal-box beside him. She
was dressed pretty much like a London servant girl of the lower order
out of place, except that her shoes were mere shreds of leather patches,
and her bonnet would have scarce passed muster in the New Cut. She, too,
had a little bundle in her hand, and looked out at the buyers from a
pair of large sad eyes. “Niggers were cheap;” still here was this young
woman going for an upset price of $610, but no one would bid, and the
auctioneer, after vain attempts to raise the price and excite
competition, said, “Not sold to-day, Sally; you may get down.”


TUESDAY, May 7.--The newspapers contain the text of the declaration of
the state of war on the part of President Davis, and of the issue of
letters of marque and reprisal, &c. But it may be asked, who will take
these letters of marque? Where is the Government of Montgomery to find
ships? The answer is to be found in the fact that already numerous
applications have been received from the shipowners of New England, from
the whalers of New Bedford, and from others in the Northern States, for
these very letters of marque, accompanied by the highest securities and
guaranties! This statement I make on the very highest authority. I leave
it to you to deal with the facts.

To-day I proceeded to the Montgomery Downing Street and Whitehall to
present myself to the members of the Cabinet, and to be introduced to
the President of the Confederate States of America. There is no sentry
at the doors, and access is free to all, but there are notices on the
doors warning visitors that they can only be received during certain
hours. The President was engaged with some gentlemen when I was
presented to him, but he received me with much kindliness of manner, and
when they had left entered into conversation with me for some time on
general matters. Mr. Davis is a man of slight, sinewy figure, rather
over the middle height, and of erect, soldier-like bearing. He is about
fifty-five years of age; his features are regular and well-defined, but
the face is thin and marked on cheek and brow with many wrinkles, and is
rather careworn and haggard. One eye is apparently blind, the other is
dark, piercing, and intelligent. He was dressed very plainly in a light
gray summer suit. In the course of conversation he gave an order for the
Secretary of War to furnish me with a letter as a kind of passport in
case of my falling in with the soldiers of any military posts who might
be indisposed to let me pass freely, merely observing that I had been
enough within the lines of camps to know what was my duty on such
occasions. I subsequently was presented to Mr. Walker, the Secretary of
War, who promised to furnish me with the needful documents before I left
Montgomery. In his room were General Beauregard and several officers,
engaged over plans and maps, apparently in a little council of war,
which was, perhaps, not without reference to the intelligence that the
United States troops were marching on Norfolk Navy Yard, and had
actually occupied Alexandria. On leaving the Secretary I proceeded to
the room of the Attorney General, Mr. Benjamin, a very intelligent and
able man, whom I found busied in preparations connected with the issue
of letters of marque. Everything in the offices looked like earnest work
and business.

On my way back from the State Department I saw a very fine company of
infantry and three field pieces, with about one hundred and twenty
artillerymen, on their march to the railway station for Virginia. The
men were all well equipped, but there were no ammunition wagons for the
guns, and the transport consisted solely of a few country carts drawn by
poor horses, out of condition. There is no lack of muscle and will among
the men. The troops which I see here are quite fit to march and fight as
far as their _personnel_ is concerned, and there is no people in the
world so crazy with military madness. The very children in the streets
ape the air of soldiers, carry little flags, and wear cockades as they
strut in the highways; and mothers and fathers feed the fever by
dressing them up as Zouaves or Chasseurs.

Mrs. Davis had a small levee to-day in right of her position as wife of
the President. Several ladies there probably looked forward to the time
when their States might secede from the new Confederation, and afford
them the pleasure of holding a reception. Why not Presidents of the
State of Georgia, or Alabama? Why not King of South Carolina, or Emperor
of Florida? Soldiers of fortune, make your game! Gentlemen politicians,
the ball is rolling. There is, to be sure, a storm gathering at the
North, but it cannot hurt you, and already there are _condottieri_ from
all parts of the world flocking to your aid, who will eat your Southern
beeves the last of all.

One word more as to a fleet. The English owners of several large
steamers are already in correspondence with the Government here for the
purchase of their vessels. The intelligence which had reached the
Government that their Commissioners have gone on to Paris is regarded as
unfavorable to their claims, and as a proof that as yet England is not
disposed to recognize them. It is amusing to hear the tone used on both
sides toward Great Britain. Both are most anxious for her countenance
and support, although the North blusters rather more about its
independence than the South, which professes a warm regard for the
mother country. “But,” says the North, “if Great Britain recognizes the
South, we shall certainly look on it as a declaration of war.” “And,”
says the South, “if Great Britain does not recognize our privateers’
flag, we shall regard it as proof of hostility and of alliance with the
enemy.” The Government at Washington seeks to obtain promises from Lord
Lyons that our Government will not recognize the Southern Confederacy,
but at the same time refuses any guaranties in reference to the rights
of neutrals. The blockade of the Southern ports would not occasion us
any great inconvenience at present, because the cotton-loading season is
over; but if it be enforced in October, there is a prospect of very
serious and embarrassing questions arising in reference to the rights of
neutrals, treaty obligations with the United States Government, the
trade and commerce of England, and the law of blockade in reference to
the distinctions to be drawn between measures of war and means of
annoyance.

As I write the guns in front of the State Department are firing a
salute, and each report marks a State of the Confederacy. They are now
ten, as Arkansas and Tennessee are now out of the Union.




LETTER IX.

FROM MONTGOMERY TO MOBILE.

MOBILE, Alabama, May 11.


THE wayfarer who confides in the maps of a strange country, or who
should rely upon even the guide-books of the United States, which still
lack a Murray or a Bradshaw, may be at times embarrassed by insuperable
hills and unnavigable rivers. When, however, I saw the three towering
stories of the high-pressure steamer Southern Republic, on board of
which we tumbled down the steep bank of the Alabama river at Montgomery,
any such misgivings vanish from my mind. So colossal an ark could have
ascended no mythical stream, and the existence and capabilities of the
Alabama were demonstrated by its presence.

Punctuality is reputed a rare virtue in the river steamers of the West
and South, which seldom leave their wharves until they have bagged a
fair complement of passengers, although steaming up and ringing gongs
and bells every afternoon for a week or more before their departure, as
if travellers were to be swarmed like bees. Whether stimulated by the
infectious activity of these “war times,” or convinced that the
“politeness of kings” is the best steamboat policy, the grandson of Erin
who owns and commands the Southern Republic casts off his fastenings but
half an hour after his promised start, and the short puff of the engine
is enlivened by the wild strains of a steam-organ called a “calliope,”
which gladdens us with the assurance that we are in the incomparable
“land of Dixie.”

Reserving for a cooler hour the attractions of the lower floor--a Hades
consecrated to machinery, freight, and negroes--we betake ourselves to
the second landing, where we find a long dining-hall surrounded by two
tiers of state rooms, the upper one accessible by a stairway leading to
a gallery, which divides the “saloon” between floor and roof. We are
shown to our quarters, which leave much to be desired and nothing to
spare, and rush from their suffocating atmosphere to the outer balcony,
where a faint breeze stirs the air. There is a roofed balcony above us
that corresponds to the second tier of state rooms, from which a party
of excited Secessionists are discharging revolvers at the dippers on the
surface and the cranes on the banks of the river.

After we have dropped down five or six miles from Montgomery, the steam
whistle announces our approach to a landing, and, as there is no wharf
in view, we watch curiously the process by which our top-heavy craft,
under the sway of a four-knot current, is to swing round in her
invisible moorings. As we draw nigh to a wagon-worn indenture in the
bank, the “scream” softens into the dulcet pipes of the “calliope,” and
the steamer doubles upon her track, like an elephant turning at bay, her
two engines being as independent of each other as Seceding States, and,
slowly stemming the stream, lays her nose upon the bank, and holds it
there, with the judicious aid of her paddles, until a long plank is run
ashore from her bow, over which three passengers, with valises, make way
for a planter and his family, who come on board. The gang-plank is
hauled in, the steamer turns her head down stream with the expertness of
a whale in a canal, and we resume our voyage. We renew these stoppages
at various times before dark, landing here a barrel and there a box, and
occasionally picking up a passenger.

After supper, which is served on a series of parallel tables running
athwart the saloon, we return to enjoy from the balcony the cool
obscurity of the evening in this climate, where light means heat. As we
cleave the glass surface of the black water, the timber-clad banks seem
to hem us in more closely and to shut up in the vista before us, and
while we glide down with a rapidity which would need but the roar of
rapids to prefigure a cataract beyond, we yield to the caprice of fancy,
instituting comparisons between the dark perspective ahead and the
mystery of the future.

Again a scream, and a ruddy light flashes from our prow and deepens the
shades around us. This proceeds from the burning of “light wood”--a
highly resinous pine--in a wire basket hung on gimbals and held like a
landing-net below the bow of the steamer, so as to guide without
blinding the pilot, who is ensconced like a Hansom cabman upon its roof.
The torch-bearer raises his cresset as we steam up to the bank, and
plants it in a socket, when a hawser is seized round a tree, and the
crew turned ashore to “wood up.” There is a steep high bank above us,
and while dusky forms are flitting to and fro with food for our
furnaces, we survey a long stairway ascending the bank at a sharp angle
in a cut, which is lost in the sheds that crown the eminence over head.
This stair is flanked on either side by the bars of an iron tramway, up
which freight is hauled when landed, and parallel to it is a wooden
slide, down which bales of cotton and sacks of corn are shot upon the
steamer. One or two passengers slowly ascend, and a voice in the air
notifies us that a team is at hand with a load of ladies, who shortly
after are seen picking their way down the flight of steps. The cresset
is constantly replenished with fresh light wood, and the shadows cast by
its flickering flame make us regret that we have not with us a Turner to
preserve this scene, which would have been a study for Rembrandt or
Salvator Rosa.

At midnight we halt for a couple of hours at Selma, a “rising town,”
which has taken a start of late, owing to the arrival of a branch
railway, that connects it with Tennessee and the Mississippi River. Here
a huge _embarcadere_, several stories high, seems fastened to the side
of the bank, and affords us an opportunity of stepping out from either
story of the Southern Republic upon a corresponding landing. Upon one of
these floors there are hackmen and hotel runners, competing for those
who land, and indicating the proximity of a town, if not a city. Our
captain had resolved upon making but a short stay, in lieu of tying up
until morning--his usual practice--when an acquaintance comes on board
and begs him to wait an hour for a couple of ladies and some children,
whom he will hunt up a mile or so out of town. Times are hard, and the
captain very cheerfully consents, not insensible to the flattering
insinuation: “You know our folks never go with any one but you, if they
can help it.”

The next day and evening are a repetition of the foregoing scenes, with
more plantations in view and a general air of tillage and prosperity. We
are struck by the uniformity of the soil, which everywhere seems of
inexhaustible fertility, and by the unvarying breadth of the stream,
which, but for its constantly recurring sinuosities, might pass for a
broad ship canal. We also remark that the bluffs rarely sink into
bottoms susceptible of overflow, and admire the verdure of the primitive
forest, a tangle of magnolias in full flower, of laurel, and of various
oaks peculiar to this region, and which, though never rising to the
dignity of that noble tree in higher latitudes, are many of them
extremely graceful. All this sylva of moderate stature is intertwined
with creepers, and at intervals we see the Spanish moss, indicating the
malarious exhalations of the soil beneath. The Indian corn, upon which
the Southerners rely principally for food, has attained a height of two
feet, and we were told that, in consequence of the war, it is sown in
greater breadth than usual. The cotton plant has but just peeped above
the earth, and, alluding to its tenderness, those around us express
anxieties about that crop, which, it seems, are never allayed until it
has been picked, bagged and pressed, shipped and sold.

As I am not engaged upon an itinerary, let these sketches suffice to
convey an idea of the four hundred and seventeen miles of winding river
which connect Montgomery with Mobile, to which place the Southern
Republic conveyed us in thirty-four hours, stoppings included.

One of the Egyptian pyramids owes its origin to the strange caprice of a
princess, and the Southern Republic is said to have been built with the
proceeds of an accidental “haul” of Gold Coast natives, who fell into
the net of her enterprising proprietor. This worthy, born of Irish
parents in Milk street, is too striking a type of what the late Mr.
Webster was wont to call a “Northern man with Southern principles,” not
to deserve something more than a passing notice.

For out-and-out Southern notions there is nothing in Dixie’s Land like
the successful emigrant from the North and East. Captain Meagher had at
his fingers’ ends all the politico-economical facts and figures of the
Southern side of the question, and rested his reasoning solely upon the
more sordid and material calculations of the Secessionists. It was a
question of tariffs. The North had, no doubt, provided the protection of
a navy, the facilities of mails, the construction of forts, Custom
Houses, and Post Offices, in the South, and placed countless well-paid
offices at the disposal of gentlemen fond of elegant leisure; but for
all these the South had been paying more than their value, and when
Abolitionists were allowed to elect a Sectional President, and the
system of forced labor, which is the basis of Southern prosperity, was
threatened, the South were too happy to take a “snap judgment,” as in a
_pie poudre_ Court, and declare the Federal compact forfeited and
annulled forever.

During the long second day of our voyage, we examined the faces of the
proletarians, whose color and constitutions so well adapted them for the
Cyclopian realms of the main deck. Among them we detect several
physiognomies which strike us as resembling seedlings from the Gold
Coast rather than the second or third fruits of ancient transplantation.
A fellow traveller gratifies at the same time our curiosity and our
penetration. There are several native Africans, or, as they are called
in Cuba, _bozales_, on board. They are the property of the argumentative
captain, and were acquired by a coup de main, at which I have already
hinted in this letter. It seems that a club of planters in this State
and one or two others resolved, little more than a year ago, to import a
cargo of Africans. They were influenced partly by cupidity and partly by
fancy to set the United States laws at defiance, and to evince their
contempt for New England philanthropy. The job was accepted by an
Eastern house, which engaged to deliver the cargo at a certain point on
the coast within certain limits of time.

Whether the shipment arrived earlier than anticipated, or whether
Captain Meagher was originally designed as the person to whom the bold
and delicate manoeuvre of landing them should be intrusted, it is
certain that on a certain Sunday in last July he took a little coasting
trip in his steamer Czar, and appeared at Mobile on the following
morning in season to make his regular voyage up river. It is no less
certain that he ran the dusky strangers in at night by an unfrequented
pass, and landed them among the cane-brakes of his own plantation with
sufficient celerity to be back at the moorings of the Czar without his
absence having been noticed. The vessel from which the _bozales_ were
delivered was scuttled and sunk, and her master and crew found their way
North by rail.

But the parties in interest soon claimed to divide the spoils, when, to
their infinite disgust, the enterprising Captain very coolly professed
to ignore the whole business, and defied them to seek to recover by suit
at law property the importation of which was regarded and would be
punished as felony, if not as piracy, by the judicial tribunals. A case
was made and issue joined, when the Captain proved a circumstantial
_alibi_, and, having cast the claimants, doled them out a few _bonzes_,
perhaps to escape assassination, as shells, while he kept the oyster in
the shape of the pick of the importation, which he still holds,
reconciling his conscience to the transaction by interpreting it as
_salvage_.

All this is told us by our interlocutor, who was one of the losers by
the affair, and who stigmatized the conduct of its hero as having been
treacherous. The latter, after repeated jocular inquiries, suffers his
vanity to subdue his reticence, and finishes by “acknowledging the
corn.”

In the forenoon of the second day we meet two steamers ascending the
river, with heavy cargoes, and are told that they are the Keyes and the
Lewis, recently warned off, and _not seized_ by the blockading squadron
off Pensacola. They are deep with provisions for the forces of the
Confederate States Army before Pickens, which must now be dispatched
from Montgomery by rail.

In Mobile, for the first time since leaving Washington, “we realize” the
entire stagnation of business. There are but five vessels in port,
chiefly English, which will suffice to carry away the _dêbris_ of the
cotton crop. Exchange on the North is unsalable, owing to the
impossibility of importing coin through the unsettled country, and bills
on London are of slow sale at par, which would leave a profit of seven
per cent. upon the importation of gold from your side.

       *       *       *       *       *

MOBILE, Sunday, May 11.

The heat of the city rendered an excursion to which I was invited, for
the purpose of visiting the forts at the entrance of the bay,
exceedingly agreeable, and I was glad to get out from the smell of warm
bricks to the breezy waters of the sea. The party comprised many of the
leading merchants and politicians of this city, which is the third in
importance as a port of exportation in the United States of America.
There was not a man among them who did not express, with more or less
determination, the resolve never to submit to the rule of the accursed
North. Let there be no mistake whatever as to the unanimity which exists
at present in the South to fight for what it calls its independence, and
to carry on a war to the knife with the Government of the United States.
I have frequently had occasion to remark the curious operation of the
doctrine of State Rights on the minds of the people: but an examination
of the institutions of the country as they actually exist leads to the
inference that, where the tyranny of the majority is at once
irresponsible and cruel, it is impossible for any man, where the
doctrine prevails, to resist it with safety or success. It is the
inevitable result of the action of this majority, as it operates in
America, first to demoralize and finally to absorb the minority; and
even those who have maintained what are called “Union doctrines,” and
who are opposed to secession or revolution, have bowed their heads
before the majesty of the mass, and have hastened to signify their
acquiescence in the decisions which they have hitherto opposed. The
minority, cowardly in consequence of the arbitrary and vindictive
character of the overwhelming power against which it has struggled, and
disheartened by defeat, of which the penalties are tremendous in such
conflicts as these, hastens to lick the feet of the conqueror, and
rushes with frantic cheers after the chariot in the triumph which
celebrates its own humiliation. If there be a minority at all on this
great question of Secession in the Southern States, it hides in holes
and corners, inaccessible to the light of day, and sits there in
darkness and sorrow, silent and fearful, if not dumb and hopeless. There
were officers who had served with distinction under the flag of the
United States, now anxious to declare that it was not their flag, and
that they had no affection for it, although they were ready to admit
they would have continued to serve under it if the States had not gone
out. A man’s State, in fact, under the operation of these majority
doctrines to which I have adverted, holds hostages for his fidelity to
the majority, not only in such land or fortune as he may possess within
her bounds, but in his family, his relatives, and kin, and if the State
revolts, the officer who remains faithful to the flag of the United
States is considered by the authorities of the revolting State a
traitor, and, what is worse, he is treated in the persons of those he
leave behind him as the worst kind of political renegade. General Scott,
but a few months ago the most honored of men in a Republic which sets
such store on military success, is now reviled and abused because, being
a Virginian by birth, he did not immediately violate his oath, abandon
his post, and turn to fight against the flag which he has illustrated by
repeated successes, during a career of half a century, the moment his
State passes an ordinance of Secession.

An intelligent and accomplished officer, who accompanied me to-day
around the forts under his command, told me that he had all along
resisted Secession, but that when his State went out he felt it was
necessary to resign his commission in the United States army, and to
take service with the Confederates. Among the most determined opponents
of the North, and the most vehement friends of what are called here
“domestic institutions,” are the British residents, English, Irish, and
Scotch, who have settled here for trading purposes, and who are
frequently slave-holders. These men have no State rights to uphold, but
they are convinced of the excellence of things as they are, or find it
their interest to be so.

The waters of two rivers fall into the head of the Bay of Mobile, which
is, in fact, a narrow sea creek between low, sandy banks, covered with
pine and forest trees, broken here and there into islands, and extending
some thirty miles inland, with a breadth varying from three to seven
miles. No attempt has been made apparently to improve the waters or to
provide docks or wharfage for the numerous cotton ships which lie out at
the mouth of the bay, more than twenty-five miles from Mobile. All the
cotton has to be sent down to them in lighters, and the number of men
thus employed in the cotton season in loading the barges, navigating and
transferring the cargoes to the ships, is very considerable, and their
rate of wages is high.

The horror entertained by a merchant captain of the shore is well known,
and skippers are delighted at an anchorage so far from land, which at
the same time detains the crews in the ships and prevents absenteeism
and “running.” At present there are but seven ships at the anchorage,
nearly all British, and one of the latter appears in the distance hard
and fast ashore, though whether she got there in consequence of the
light not being burning or from neglect, it is impossible to say. Fort
Gaines, on the right bank of the channel, near the entrance, is an
unfinished shell of a fort, which was commenced by the United States
engineers some time ago, and which it would not be easy to finish
without a large outlay of money and labor. It is not well placed to
resist either a land attack or an assault by boats. A high sand-bank in
front of one of the faces screens the fire, and a wood on another side,
if occupied by riflemen, would render it difficult to work the barbette
guns. It is not likely, however, that the fort will be attacked. The
channel it commands is only fit for light vessels. From this fort to
the other side of the channel, where Fort Morgan stands, the distance
is over three miles, and the deep water channel is close to the latter
fort. The position at Gaines is held by a strong body of Alabama
troops--stout, sturdy men, who have volunteered from farm, field, or
desk. They are armed with ordinary muskets of the old pattern, and their
uniform is by no means uniform; but the men look fit for service. The
fort would take a garrison of five hundred men if fully mounted, but the
parapets are mere partition walls of brickwork crenelled; the
bomb-proofs are unfinished, and but for a few guns mounted on the
sand-hills, the place is a defenceless shell-trap. There are no guns in
the casemates, and there is no position ready to bear the weight of a
gun in barbette. The guns which are on the beach are protected by
sand-bags traversed, and are more formidable than the whole fortress.
The steamer proceeded across the channel to Fort Morgan, which is a work
of considerable importance, and is assuming a formidable character under
the superintendence of Colonel Hardee, formerly of the United States
army. It has a regular trace, bastion, and curtain, with a dry ditch and
drawbridge, well-made casemates and bomb-proofs, and a tolerable
armament of columbiads, 42 and 32-pounders, a few 10-inch mortars, and
light guns in the external works at the salients. The store of
ammunition seems ample. Some of the fuses are antiquated, and the
gun-carriages are old-fashioned. The open parade and the unprotected
gorges of the casemates would render the work extremely unpleasant under
a shell fire, and the buildings and barracks inside are at present open
to the influence of heat. The magazines are badly traversed and
inadequately protected. A very simple and apparently effective
contrivance for dispensing with the use of the sabot in shells was shown
to me by Colonel Maury, the inventor. It consists of two circular
grummets of rope, one at the base and the other at the upper
circumference of the shell, made by a simple machinery to fit tightly to
the sphere, and bound together by thin copper wire. The grummets fit the
bore of the gun exactly, and act as wads, allowing the base of the shell
to rest in close contact with the charge, and breaking into oakum on
leaving the muzzle. Those who know what mischief can be done by the
fragments of the sabot when fired over the heads of troops will
appreciate this simple invention, which is said to give increased range
to the horizontal shell. There must be about sixty guns in this work;
it is over-garrisoned, and, indeed, it seems to be the difficulty here
to know what to do with the home volunteers. Rope mantlets are used on
the breeches of some of the barbette guns. At night the harbor is in
perfect darkness. Notwithstanding the defences I have indicated, it
would be quite possible to take Fort Morgan with a moderate force well
supplied with the means of vertical fire.

“Are there any mosquitoes here?” inquired I of the waiter, on the day of
my arrival. “Well, there’s a few, I guess; but I wish there were ten
times as many.” “In the name of goodness why do you say so?” asked I,
with some surprise and indignation. “Because we’d get rid of the ----
Black Republicans out of Fort Pickens all the sooner,” replied he. There
is a strange unilateral tendency in the minds of men in judging of the
operation of causes and results in such a contest as that which now
prevails between the North and the South. The waiter reasoned and spoke
like many of his betters. The mosquitoes, for whose aid he was so
anxious, were regarded by him as true Southerners, who would only
torture his enemies. The idea of these persecuting little fiends being
so unpatriotic as to vex the Confederates in their sandy camp never
entered into his mind for a moment. In the same way a gentleman of
intelligence, who was speaking to me of the terrible sufferings which
would be inflicted on the troops at Tortugas and at Pickens by fever,
dysentery, and summer heats, looked quite surprised when I asked him
“whether these agencies would not prove equally terrible to the troops
of the Confederates?”



LETTER X.

FORT PICKENS AND PENSACOLA--A VISIT TO BOTH CAMPS.

MOBILE, May 16, 1861.


OUR little schooner lay quietly at the wharf all night, but no one was
allowed to come on board without a pass, for these wild-looking sentries
are excellent men of business, and look after the practical part of
soldiering with all the keenness which their direct personal interest
imparts to their notions of duty. The enemy is to them the incarnation
of all evil, and they hunt his spies and servants very much as a terrier
chases a rat--with intense traditional and race animosity. The silence
of the nig

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