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The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Escape

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Title: The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Escape

Author: Albert D. Richardson


        
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                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET SERVICE, THE FIELD, THE DUNGEON, AND THE ESCAPE ***

[A Transcribers' Note follows the text.]

[Illustration: _Photo by Brady._ _Eng^d by Geo E Perine N.Y._
Albert D. Richardson]




 THE
 SECRET SERVICE,
 THE FIELD, THE DUNGEON,
 AND
 THE ESCAPE.

 "Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,
 Of moving accidents, by flood and field;
 Of hairbreadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach;
 Of being taken by the insolent foe,
 And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence."
 OTHELLO.

 BY
 ALBERT D. RICHARDSON,
 TRIBUNE CORRESPONDENT.

 Hartford, Conn.,
 AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY.
 JONES BROS. & CO., PHILADELPHIA, PA., AND CINCINNATI, OHIO.
 R. C. TREAT, CHICAGO, ILL.
 1865.

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865,
 BY ALBERT D. RICHARDSON,
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
 the District of Connecticut.

 TO
 Her Memory
 WHO WAS NEAREST AND DEAREST,
 WHOSE LIFE WAS FULL OF BEAUTY AND OF PROMISE,
 THIS VOLUME
 IS TENDERLY INSCRIBED.




List of Illustrations.


 I.--PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR                         Facing Title-page.
 II.--A GROUP OF ARMY CORRESPONDENTS:                   Facing page 17
     Portraits of Messrs.
     Charles C. Coffin, Boston _Journal_;
     Junius H. Browne, New York _Tribune_;
     Thomas W. Knox, New York _Herald_;
     Richard T. Colburn, New York _World_;
     L. L. Crounse, New York _Times_;
     William E. Davis, Cincinnati _Gazette_, and
     William D. Bickham, Cincinnati _Commercial_
 III.--THE MISSISSIPPI CONVENTION VIEWED BY A         Opposite page 83
     TRIBUNE CORRESPONDENT
 IV.--OPENING OF THE BATTLE OF ANTIETAM.--GENERAL    Opposite page 281
     HOOKER
 V.--FACSIMILE OF AN AUTOGRAPH LETTER OF PRESIDENT            page 321
     LINCOLN
 VI.--THE CAPTURE, WHILE RUNNING THE REBEL BATTERIES Opposite page 343
     AT VICKSBURG
 VII.--INTERIOR VIEW OF A HOSPITAL IN THE SALISBURY  Opposite page 415
     PRISON
 VIII.--THE MASSACRE OF UNION PRISONERS ATTEMPTING   Opposite page 419
     TO ESCAPE FROM SALISBURY, NORTH CAROLINA
 IX.--ESCAPING PRISONERS FED BY NEGROES IN THEIR     Opposite page 441
     MASTER'S BARN
 X.--FORDING A STREAM                                Opposite page 471
 XI.--"THE NAMELESS HEROINE" PILOTING THE ESCAPING   Opposite page 501
     PRISONERS OUT OF A REBEL AMBUSH




CONTENTS.


 I.--THE SECRET SERVICE.
 CHAPTER I.                                                          17
     Going South in the Secret Service.--Instructions from
     the Managing Editor.--A Visit to the Mammoth Cave of
     Kentucky.--Nashville, Tennessee.--Alabama Unionists.--How
     the State was Precipitated into the Rebellion.--Reaching
     Memphis.--Abolitionists Mobbed and Hanged.--Brutalities of
     Slavery.
 CHAPTER II.                                                         31
    In Memphis.--How the Secessionists Carried the Day.--Aims
    of the Leading Rebels.--On the Railroad.--A Northerner
    Warned.--An Amusing Dialogue.--Talk about Assassinating
    President Lincoln.--Arrival in New Orleans.--Hospitality
    from a Stranger.--An Ovation to General Twiggs.--Braxton
    Bragg.--The Rebels Anxious for War.--A Glance at the
    Louisiana Convention.
 CHAPTER III.                                                        43
     Association with Leading Secessionists.--Their Hatred of
     New England.--Admission to the Democratic Club.--Abuse of
     President Lincoln.--Sinking Buildings, Cellars and Walls
     Impossible.--Cemeteries above Ground.--Monument of a
     Pirate.--Canal Street.--The Great French Markets.--Dedication
     of a Secession Flag in the Catholic Church.--The Cotton
     Presses.--Visit to the Jackson Battle-ground.--The
     Creoles.--Jackson's Head-Quarters.--A Fire in the
     Rear.--A Life Saved by a Cigar.--A Black Republican
     Flag.--Vice-President Hamlin a Mulatto.--Northerners leaving
     the South.
 CHAPTER IV.                                                         57
     How Letters were Written and Transmitted.--A System of
     Cipher.--A Philadelphian among the Rebels.--Probable fate
     of a _Tribune_ Correspondent, if Discovered.--Southern
     Manufactures.--A Visit to a Southern Shoe Factory.--Where
     the Machinery and Workmen came from.--How Southern Shoes
     were Made.--Study of Southern Society.--Report of a
     Slave Auction.--Sale of a White Woman.--Girls on the
     Block.--Husbands and Wives Separated.--A most Revolting
     Spectacle.--The Delights of a Tropical Climate.
 CHAPTER V.                                                          71
     A Northerner among the Minute Men.--Louisiana Convention.--A
     Lively Discussion.--Boldness of the Union Members.--Another
     Exciting Discussion.--Secessionists Repudiate their Own
     Doctrines.--Despotic Rebel Theories.--The Northwest
     to Join the Rebels.--The Great Swamp.--A Trip through
     Louisiana.--_The Tribune_ Correspondent Invited to a Seat in
     the Mississippi Convention.
 CHAPTER VI.                                                         81
     The Mississippi State-House.--View of the Rebel
     Hall.--Its General Air of Dilapidation.--A Free-and-Easy
     Convention.--Southern Orators.--The Anglo-African
     Delegate.--A Speech Worth Preserving.--Familiar Conversation
     of Members.--New Orleans Again.--Reviewing Troops.--New
     Orleans Again.--Hatred of Southern Unionists.--Three
     Obnoxious Northerners.--The Attack on Sumter.--Rebel Bravado.
 CHAPTER VII.                                                        91
     Abolition Tendencies of Kentuckians.--Fundamental
     Grievances of the Rebels.--Sudden Departure from New
     Orleans.--Mobile.--The War Spirit High.--An Awkward
     Encounter.--"Massa, Fort Sumter has gone Up."--Bells
     Ringing.--Cannon Booming.--Up the Alabama River.--A
     Dancing Little Darkey.--How to Escape Suspicion.--Southern
     Characteristics and Provincialism.--Visit to the Confederate
     Capital.--At Montgomery, Alabama.--Copperas Breeches _vs._
     Black Breeches.--A Correspondent under Arrest.
 CHAPTER VIII.                                                      105
     A Journey Through Georgia.--Excitement of the
     People.--Washington to be Captured.--Apprehensions about
     Arming the Negroes.--A Fatal Question.--Charleston.--Looking
     at Fort Sumter.--A Short Stay in the City.--North
     Carolina.--The Country on Fire.--Submitting to Rebel
     Scrutiny.--The North Heard From.--Richmond, Virginia.--The
     Frenzy of the People.--Up the Potomac.--The Old Flag Once
     More.--An Hour with President Lincoln.--Washington in
     Panic.--A Regiment which Came Out to Fight.--Baltimore
     under Rebel Rule.--Pennsylvania.--The North fully
     Aroused.--Uprising of the whole People.--A _Tribune_
     Correspondent on Trial in Charleston.--He is Warned to
     Leave.--His Fortunate Escape
 II.--THE FIELD.
 CHAPTER IX.                                                        125
     Sunday at Niagara Falls.--View from the Suspension
     Bridge.--The Palace of the Frost King.--Chicago, a
     City Rising from the Earth.--Mysteries of Western
     Currency.--A Horrible Spectacle in Arkansas.--Patriotism
     of the Northwest.--Missouri.--The Rebels bent on
     Revolution.--Nathaniel Lyon.--Camp Jackson.--Sterling Price
     Joins the Rebels.--His Quarrel with Frank Blair.--His
     Personal Character.--St. Louis in a Convulsion.--A Nashville
     Experience.--Bitterness of Old Neighbors.--Good Soldiers for
     Scaling Walls.--Wholesome Advice to Missouri Slaveholders
 CHAPTER X.                                                         141
     Cairo, Illinois.--A Visit from General McClellan.--A little
     Speech-making.--Penalty of Writing for _The Tribune_.--A
     Unionist Aided to Escape from Memphis by a Loyal Girl.--The
     Fascinations of Cairo.--The Death of Douglas.--A Clear-headed
     Contraband.--A Review of the Troops.--"Not a Fighting Nigger,
     but a Running Nigger."--Capture of a Rebel Flag
 CHAPTER XI.                                                        151
     Missouri Again.--The Retributions of Time.--A Railroad
     Reminiscence.--Jefferson City.--A Fugitive Governor.--"Black
     Republicanism."--Belligerent Chaplain.--A Rebel Newspaper
     Converted by the Iowa Soldiers.--Two Camp Stories of the
     Marvelous
 CHAPTER XII.                                                       157
     Chicago.--Corn, not Cotton, is King.--Curious Reminiscences
     of the City.--A Visit to the Grave of Douglas.--Patriotism of
     the Northwestern Germans.--Their Social Habits.--Cincinnati
     in the Early Days.--A City Founded by a Woman.--The
     Aspirations of the Cincinnatian.--Kentucky.--Treason and
     Loyalty in Louisville.--A Visit to George D. Prentice.--The
     first Union Troops of Kentucky.--Struggle in the Kentucky
     Legislature.--What the Rebel Leaders Want.--Rousseau's
     Visit to Washington.--His Interview with President
     Lincoln.--Timidity of the Kentucky Unionists.--Loyalty of
     Judge Lusk.
 CHAPTER XIII.                                                      173
     Western Virginia.--Campaigning in the Kanawha Valley.--A
     Bloodthirsty Female Rebel.--A Soldier Proves to be a Woman
     in Disguise.--Extravagant Joy of the Negroes.--How the
     Soldiers Foraged.--The Falls of the Kanawha.--A Tragedy of
     Slavery.--St. Louis.--The Future of the City.--A disgusted
     Rebel Editor.
 CHAPTER XIV.                                                       181
     The Battle of Wilson Creek.--Daring Exploit of a
     Kansas Officer.--Death of Lyon.--His Courage and
     Patriotism.--Arrival of General Fremont.--Union Families
     Driven Out.--An Involuntary Sojourn in Rebel Camps.--A
     Startling Confederate Atrocity.
 CHAPTER XV.                                                        189
     Jefferson City, Missouri.--Fremont's Army.--Organization
     of the Bohemian Brigade.--An Amusing Inquiry.--Diversions
     of the Correspondents.--A Polite Army Chaplain.--Sights
     in Jefferson City.--"Fights mit Sigel."--Fremont's
     Head-Quarters.--Appearance of the General.--Mrs.
     Fremont.--Sigel, Hunter, Pope, Asboth, McKinstry.--Sigel's
     Transportation Train.--A Countryman's Estimate of Troops.
 CHAPTER XVI.                                                       199
     A Kid-gloved Corps.--Charge of Fremont's Body-guard.--Major
     White.--Turning the Tables.--Welcome from the Union Residents
     of Springfield.--Freaks of the Kansas Brigade.--A Visit to
     the Wilson-Creek Battle-Ground.--"Missing."--Graves Opened
     by Wolves.--Capture of a Female Spy.--Fremont's Farewell to
     His Army.--Dissatisfaction Among the Soldiers.--Spurious
     Missouri Unionists.--The Conduct of Secretary Cameron and
     Adjutant-General Thomas.
 CHAPTER XVII.                                                      213
     Rebel Guerrillas Outwitted.--Expedition to Fort
     Henry.--Scenes in the Captured Fort.--Commodore Foote in
     the Pulpit.--Capture of Fort Donelson.--Scenes in Columbus,
     Kentucky.--A Curious Anti-Climax.--Hospital Scenes.
 CHAPTER XVIII.                                                     225
     Down the Mississippi.--Bombardment of Island Number
     Ten.--Sensations under Fire.--Flanking the Island.--Daily
     Life on a Gunboat.--Triumph of Engineering Skill.--The
     Surrender.
 CHAPTER XIX.                                                       235
     The Battle of Shiloh.--With the Sanitary Commission.--A
     Union Orator in Rebel Hands.--Grant and Sherman in
     Battle.--Hair-breadth 'Scapes.--General Sweeney.--Arrival of
     Buell's Army.--The Final Struggle.--Losses of the Two Armies.
 CHAPTER XX.                                                        243
     Grant under a Cloud.--He Smokes and Waits.--Military
     Jealousies.--The Union and Rebel Wounded.
 CHAPTER XXI.                                                       247
     An Interview with General Sherman.--His Complaints about
     the Press.--Sherman's Personal Appearance.--Humors of the
     Telegraph.--Our Advance upon Corinth.--Weaknesses of Sundry
     Generals.--"Ten Thousand Prisoners Taken."--Halleck's
     Faux Pas at Corinth.--Out on the Front.--Among the
     Sharp-shooters.--Halleck and the War Correspondents.
 CHAPTER XXII.                                                      259
     Bloodthirstiness of Rebel Women.--The Battle of
     Memphis.--Gallant Exploit of the Rams.--A Sailor
     on a Lark.--Appearance of the Captured City.--The
     Jews in Memphis.--A Rebel Paper Supervised.--"A Dam
     Black-harted Ablichiness."--Challenge from a Southern
     Woman.--Valuable Currency.--A Rebel Trick.--One of Sherman's
     Jokes.--Fictitious Battle Reports.--Curtis's March through
     Arkansas.--The Siege of Cincinnati.
 CHAPTER XXIII.                                                     275
     With the Army of the Potomac.--On the War-Path.--A Duel in
     Arizona.--How Correspondents Avoided Expulsion.--Shameful
     Surrender of Harper's Ferry.--General Hooker at
     Antietam.--"Stormed at with Shot and Shell."--A Night Among
     the Pickets.--The Battlefield.
 CHAPTER XXIV.                                                      287
     The Day after the Battle.--Among the Dead.--Lee Permitted
     to Escape.--The John Brown Engine-House.--President Lincoln
     Reviewing the Army.--Dodging Cannon Balls.--"An Intelligent
     Contraband."--Harper's Ferry.--Curiosities of the Signal
     Corps.--View from Maryland Hights.
 CHAPTER XXV.                                                       299
     Marching Southward.--Rebel Girl with Sharp Tongue.--A Slight
     Mistake.--Removal of General McClellan.--Familiarity of the
     Pickets.--The Life of an Army Correspondent.--A Negro's Idea
     of Freedom.--The Battle of Fredericksburg.--A Telegraphic
     Blunder.--The Batteries at Fredericksburg.--A Disappointed
     Virginian.--The Spirit of the Army under Defeat.
 CHAPTER XXVI.                                                      311
     Reminiscences of President Lincoln.--His Great Canvass
     with Douglas.--His Visit to Kansas.--His Manner of Public
     Speaking.--High Praise from an Opponent.--A Deed without
     a Name.--Sherman's Quarrel with the Press.--An Army
     Correspondent Court-Martialed.--A Visit to President
     Lincoln.--Two of his "Little Stories."--His familiar
     Conversation.--Opinions about McClellan and Vicksburg.--Our
     best Contribution to History.
 CHAPTER XXVII.                                                     327
     Reminiscences of General Sumner.--His Conduct in Kansas.--A
     Thrilling Scene in Battle.--How Sumner Fought.--Ordered Back
     by McClellan.--Love for his Old Comrades.--Traveling Through
     the Northwest.--A Visit to Rosecrans's Army.--Rosecrans in a
     Great Battle.--A Scene in Memphis.
 III.--THE DUNGEON.
 CHAPTER XXVIII.                                                    337
     Running the Vicksburg Batteries.--Expedition Badly
     Fitted Out.--"Into the Jaws of Death."--A Moment of
     Suspense.--Disabled and Drifting Helplessly.--Bombarding,
     Scalding, Burning, Drowning.--Taking to a Hay
     Bale.--Overturned.--Rescued from the River.--The Killed,
     Wounded, and Missing.
 CHAPTER XXIX.                                                      347
     Standing by Our Colors.--Confinement in the Vicksburg
     Jail.--Sympathizing Sambo.--Parolled to Return Home.--Turning
     the Tables.--Visit from Many Rebels.--Interview with Jacob
     Thompson.--Arrival in Jackson, Mississippi.--Kindness of
     Southern Rebels.--A Project for Escape.
 CHAPTER XXX.                                                       357
     A Word with a Union Woman.--Grierson's Great Raid.--Stumping
     the State.--An Enraged Texan Officer.--Waggery of a Captured
     Journalist.--The Alabama River.--Atlanta Editors Advocate
     Hanging the Prisoners.--Renegade Vermonters.
 CHAPTER XXXI.                                                      365
     Arrival in Richmond.--Lodged in Libby Prison.--Sufferings
     from Vermin.--Prisoners Denounced as Blasphemous.--Thieving
     of a Virginia Gentleman.--Brutality of Captain
     Turner.--Prisoners Murdered by the Guards.--Fourth of July
     Celebration.--The Horrors of Belle Isle.
 CHAPTER XXXII.                                                     373
     The Captains Ordered Below.--Two Selected for Execution.--The
     Gloomiest Night in Prison.--Glorious Revulsion of
     Feeling.--Exciting Discussion in Prison.--Stealing Money
     from the Captives.--Horrible Treatment of Northern
     Citizens.--Extravagant Rumors among the Prisoners.
 CHAPTER XXXIII.                                                    381
     Transferred to Castle Thunder.--Better than the
     Libby.--Determined Not to Die.--A Negro Cruelly Whipped.--The
     Execution of Spencer Kellogg.--Steadfastness of Southern
     Unionists.
 CHAPTER XXXIV.                                                     387
     A Waggish Journalist.--Proceedings of a Mock Court.--Escape
     by Killing a Guard.--Escape by Playing Negro.--Escape by
     Forging a Release.--Escaped Prisoner at Jeff Davis's Levee.
 CHAPTER XXXV.                                                      393
     Assistance from a Negro Boy.--The Prison Officers
     Enraged.--Visit from a Friendly Woman.--Shut up in a
     Cell.--Stealing from Flag-of-Truce Letters.--Parols
     Repudiated by the Rebels.--Sentenced to the Salisbury
     Prison.--Abolitionists before the War.
 CHAPTER XXXVI.                                                     401
     The Open Air and Pure Water.--The Crushing Weight of
     Imprisonment.--Bad News from Home.--The Great Libby
     Tunnel.--Escape of Colonel Streight.--Horrible Sufferings
     of Union Officers.--A Cool Method of Escape.--Captured
     through the Obstinacy of a Mule.--Concealing Money when
     Searched.--Attempts to Escape Frustrated.--Yankee Deserters
     Whipped and Hanged.
 CHAPTER XXXVII.                                                    411
     Great Influx of Prisoners.--Starving in the Midst of
     Food.--Freezing in the Midst of Fuel.--Rebel Surgeons
     Generally Humane.--Terrible Scenes in the Hospitals.--The
     Rattling Dead-Cart.--Cruelty of our Government.--General
     Butler's Example of Retaliation.
 CHAPTER XXXVIII.                                                   419
     Attempted Outbreak and Massacre.--Cold-blooded Murders
     Frequent.--Hostility to _The Tribune_ Correspondents.--A
     Cruel Injustice.--Rebel Expectations of Peace.--The Prison
     Like the Tomb.--Something about Tunneling.--The Tunnelers
     Ingeniously Baffled.
 IV.--THE ESCAPE.
 CHAPTER XXXIX.                                                     427
     Fifteen Months of Fruitless Endeavor.--A Fearful Journey
     in Prospect.--A Friendly Confederate Officer.--Effects
     of Hunger and Cold.--Another Plan in Reserve.--Passing
     the Sentinel.--"Beg Pardon, Sir."--Encountering Rebel
     Acquaintances.
 CHAPTER XL.                                                        435
     "Out of the Jaws of Death."--Concealed in Sight of the
     Prison.--Certain to be Brought Back.--Commencing the Long
     Journey.--Too Weak for Traveling.--Severe March in the Rain.
 CHAPTER XLI.                                                       441
     A Cabin of Friendly Negroes.--Southerners Unacquainted
     with Tea.--Walking Twelve Miles for Nothing.--Every Negro
     a Friend.--Touching Fidelity of the Slaves.--Pursued by a
     Home-Guard.--Help in the Last Extremity.--Carried Fifteen
     Miles by Friends
 CHAPTER XLII.                                                      449
     A Curious Dilemma.--Food, Shelter, and Friends.--Loyalty of
     the Mountaineers.--A Levee in a Barn.--Visited by an Old
     Friend.--A Day of Alarms.--A Woman's Ready Wit.--Danger
     of Detection from Snoring.--Promises to Aid Suffering
     Comrades.--A Repentant Rebel
 CHAPTER XLIII.                                                     461
     Flanking a Rebel Camp.--Secreted among the Husks.--Wandering
     from the Road.--Crossing the Yadkin River.--Union
     Bushwhackers.--Union Soldiers "Lying Out."--An Energetic
     Invalid
 CHAPTER XLIV.                                                      469
     Money Concealed in Clothing.--Peril of Union
     Citizens.--Fording Creeks at Midnight.--Climbing the Blue
     Ridge.--Crossing the New River at Midnight
 CHAPTER XLV.                                                       477
     Over Mountains and Through Ravines.--Mistaken for Confederate
     Guards.--A Rebel Guerrilla Killed.--Meeting a Former
     Fellow-Prisoner.--Alarm about Rebel Cavalry.--A Stanch old
     Unionist.--The Greatest Danger.--A Well Fortified Refuge
 CHAPTER XLVI.                                                      487
     Dan Ellis, the Union Guide.--In Good Hands at Last.--Ellis's
     Bravery.--Lost! A Perilous Blunder.--A most Fortunate
     Encounter.--Rejoining Dan and His Party.--A Terrible March
 CHAPTER XLVII.                                                     495
     Fording Creeks in the Darkness.--Prospect of a Dreary
     Night.--Sleeping among the Husks.--Turning Back in
     Discouragement.--An Alarm at Midnight.--A Young Lady for a
     Guide.--The Nameless Heroine.
 CHAPTER XLVIII.                                                    503
     Among the Delectable Mountains.--Separation from
     Friends.--Union Women Scrutinizing the Yankee.--"Slide
     Down off that Horse."--Friendly Words, but Hostile
     Eyes.--Hospitalities of a Loyal Patriarch.--"Out of the Mouth
     of Hell."

[Illustration: RICHARD T. COLBURN, "NEW YORK WORLD". CHARLES C. COFFIN,
"CARLETON" - "BOSTON JOURNAL". WILLIAM E. DAVIS, "CINCINNATI GAZETTE".
JUNIUS H. BROWNE, "NEW YORK TRIBUNE". L. L. CROUNSE, "NEW YORK TIMES".
W. D. BICKHAM, "CINCINNATI COMMERCIAL". THOMAS W. KNOX, "NEW YORK
HERALD". A GROUP OF ARMY CORRESPONDENTS. Eng^d. by Geo. E. Perine,
N.Y.]




THE FIELD, THE DUNGEON, AND THE ESCAPE.

I.

THE SECRET SERVICE.




CHAPTER I.

     I will go on the slightest errand now to the antipodes that
     you can desire to send me on.--MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Early in 1861, I felt a strong desire to look at the Secession movement
for myself; to learn, by personal observation, whether it sprang from
the people or not; what the Revolutionists wanted, what they hoped, and
what they feared.

But the southern climate, never propitious to the longevity of
Abolitionists, was now unfavorable to the health of every northerner,
no matter how strong his political constitution. I felt the danger of
being recognized; for several years of roving journalism, and a good
deal of political speaking on the frontier, had made my face familiar
to persons whom I did not remember at all, and given me that large and
motley acquaintance which every half-public life necessitates.

Moreover, I had passed through the Kansas struggle; and many former
shining lights of Border Ruffianism were now, with perfect fitness,
lurid torches in the early bonfires of Secession. I did not care
to meet their eyes, for I could not remember a single man of them
all who would be likely to love me, either wisely or too well. But
the newspaper instinct was strong within me, and the journalist who
deliberates is lost. My hesitancy resulted in writing for a roving
commission to represent THE TRIBUNE in the Southwest.

[Sidenote: THE MANAGING EDITOR.]

A few days after, I found the Managing Editor in his office, going
through the great pile of letters the morning mail had brought him,
with the wonderful rapidity which quick intuition, long experience, and
natural fitness for that most delicate and onerous position alone can
give. For the modern newspaper is a sort of intellectual iron-clad,
upon which, while the Editorial Captain makes out the reports to his
chief, the public, and entertains the guests in his elegant cabin, the
leading column, and receives the credit for every broadside of type
and every paper bullet of the brain poured into the enemy,--back out
of sight is an Executive Officer, with little popular fame, who keeps
the ship all right from hold to maintop, looks to every detail with
sleepless vigilance, and whose life is a daily miracle of hard work.

The Manager went through his mail, I think, at the rate of one letter
per minute. He made final disposition of each when it came into his
hand; acting upon the great truth, that if he laid one aside for future
consideration, there would soon be a series of strata upon his groaning
desk, which no mental geologist could fathom or classify. Some were
ruthlessly thrown into the waste-basket. Others, with a lightning
pencil-stroke, to indicate the type and style of printing, were placed
on the pile for the composing-room. A few great packages of manuscript
were re-enclosed in envelopes for the mail, with a three-line note,
which, while I did not read, I knew must run like this:--

     "MY DEAR SIR--Your article has unquestionable merit; but by
     the imperative pressure of important news upon our columns,
     we are very reluctantly compelled," etc.

[Sidenote: PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTIONS.]

There was that quick, educated instinct, which reads the whole from
a very small part, taking in a line here and a key-word there. Two
or three glances appeared to decide the fate of each; yet the reader
was not wholly absorbed, for all the while he kept up a running
conversation:

"I received your letter. Are you going to New Orleans?"

"Not unless you send me."

"I suppose you know it is rather precarious business?"

"O, yes."

"Two of our correspondents have come home within the last week, after
narrow escapes. We have six still in the South; and it would not
surprise me, this very hour, to receive a telegram announcing the
imprisonment or death of any one of them."

"I have thought about all that, and decided."

"Then we shall be very glad to have you go."

"When may I start?"

"To-day, if you like."

"What field shall I occupy?"

"As large a one as you please. Go and remain just where you think best."

"How long shall I stay?"

"While the excitement lasts, if possible. Do you know how long you
_will_ stay? You will be back here some fine morning in just about two
weeks."

"Wait and see."

Pondering upon the line of conduct best for the journey, I remembered
the injunction of the immortal Pickwick: "It is always best on these
occasions to do what the mob do!" "But," suggested Mr. Snodgrass,
"suppose there are two mobs?" "_Shout with the largest_," replied Mr.
Pickwick. Volumes could not say more. Upon this plan I determined to
act--concealing my occupation, political views, and place of residence.
It is not pleasant to wear a padlock upon one's tongue, for weeks, nor
to adopt a course of systematic duplicity; but personal convenience and
safety rendered it an inexorable necessity.

[Sidenote: A RIDE THROUGH KENTUCKY.]

On Tuesday, February 26th, I left Louisville, Kentucky, by the
Nashville train. Public affairs were the only topic of conversation
among the passengers. They were about equally divided into enthusiastic
Secessionists, urging in favor of the new movement that negroes
already commanded higher prices than ever before; and quasi Loyalists,
reiterating, "We only want Kentucky to remain in the Union as long
as she can do so honorably." Not a single man declared himself
unqualifiedly for the Government.

A ride of five hours among blue, dreamy hills, feathered with timber;
dense forests, with their drooping foliage and log dwellings, in the
doors of which women and little girls were complacently smoking their
pipes; great, hospitable farm-houses, in the midst of superb natural
parks; tobacco plantations, upon which negroes of both sexes--the women
in cowhide brogans, and faded frocks, with gaudy kerchiefs wrapped like
turbans about their heads--were hoeing, and following the plow, brought
us to Cave City.

I left the train for a stage-ride of ten miles to the Mammoth Cave
Hotel. In the midst of a smooth lawn, shaded by stately oaks and
slender pines, it looms up huge and white, with a long, low, one-story
offshoot fronted by a deep portico, and known as "the Cottages."

[Sidenote: THE CURIOSITIES OF WHITE'S CAVE.]

Several evening hours were spent pleasantly in White's Cave, where
the formations, at first dull and leaden, turn to spotless white
after one grows accustomed to the dim light of the torches. There are
little lakes so utterly transparent that your eye fails to detect
the presence of water; stone drapery, hanging in graceful folds, and
forming an exquisitely beautiful chamber; petrified fountains, where
the water still trickles down and hardens into stone; a honey-combed
roof, which is a very perfect counterfeit of art; long rows of
stalactites, symmetrically ribbed and fluted, which stretch off in a
pleasing colonnade, and other rare specimens of Nature's handiwork
in her fantastic moods. Many of them are vast in dimension, though
the geologists declare that it requires _thirty_ years to deposit a
formation no thicker than a wafer! Well says the German proverb "God is
patient because he is eternal."

With another visitor I passed the next day in the Mammoth Cave.
"Mat," our sable cicerone, had been acting in the capacity of guide
for twenty-five years, and it was estimated that he had walked more
than fifty thousand miles under ground. The story is not so improbable
when one remembers that the passages of the great cavern are, in the
aggregate, upwards of one hundred and fifty miles in length, and that
it has two hundred and twenty-six known chambers. The outfit consisted
of two lamps for himself and one for each of us. Cans of oil are kept
at several interior points; for it is of the last importance that
visitors to this labyrinth of darkness should keep their lamps trimmed
and burning.

[Sidenote: THE MAMMOTH CAVE.--LUNG COMPLAINTS.]

The thermometer within stands constantly at fifty-nine Fahrenheit; and
the cave "breathes just once a year." Through the winter it takes one
long inspiration, and in summer the air rushes steadily outward. Its
vast chambers are the lungs of the universe.

In 1845, a number of wood and stone cottages were erected in the
cavern, and inhabited by consumptive patients, who believed that the
dry atmosphere and equable temperature would prove beneficial. After
three or four months their faces were bloodless; the pupils of their
sunken eyes dilated until the iris became invisible and the organs
appeared black, no matter what their original color. Three patients
died in the cave; the others expired soon after leaving it.

Mat gave a vivid description of these invalids flitting about like
ghosts--their hollow coughs echoing and reechoing through the cavernous
chambers. It must have looked horrible--as if the tomb had oped its
ponderous and marble jaws, that its victims might wander about in this
subterranean Purgatory. A cemetery would seem cheerful in comparison
with such a living entombment. Volunteer medical advice, like a motion
to adjourn, is always in order. My own panacea for lung-complaints
would be exactly the opposite. Mount a horse or take a carriage, and
ride, by easy stages at first, across the great plains to the Rocky
Mountains or California, eating and sleeping in the open air. Nature is
very kind, if you will trust her fully; and in the atmosphere, which is
so dry and pure that fresh meat, cut in strips and hung up, will cure
without salting or smoking, and may be carried all over the world, her
healing power seems almost boundless.

The walls and roof of the cave were darkened and often hidden by
myriads of screeching bats, at this season of the year all hanging
torpid by the claws, with heads downward, and unable to fly away, even
when subjected to the cruel experiment of being touched by the torches.

[Sidenote: METHODIST CHURCH.--FAT MAN'S MISERY.]

The Methodist Church is a semi-circular chamber, in which a ledge forms
the natural pulpit; and logs, brought in when religious service was
first performed, fifty years ago, in perfect preservation, yet serve
for seats. Methodist itinerants and other clergymen still preach at
long intervals. Worship, conducted by the "dim religious light" of
tapers, and accompanied by the effect which music always produces in
subterranean halls, must be peculiarly impressive. It suggests those
early days in the Christian Church, when the hunted followers of Jesus
met at midnight in mountain caverns, to blend in song their reverent
voices; to hear anew the strange, sweet story of his teachings, his
death, and his all-embracing love.

Upon one of the walls beyond, a figure of gypsum, in bass-relief, is
called the American Eagle. The venerable bird, in consonance with
the evil times upon which he had fallen, was in a sadly ragged and
dilapidated condition. One leg and other portions of his body had
seceded, leaving him in seeming doubt as to his own identity; but the
beak was still perfect, as if he could send forth upon occasion his
ancient notes of self-gratulation.

Minerva's Dome has fluted walls, and a concave roof, beautifully
honey-combed; but no statue of its mistress. The oft-invoked goddess,
wearied by the merciless orators who are always compelling her to leap
anew from the brain of Jove, has doubtless, in some hidden nook, found
seclusion and repose.

We toiled along the narrow, tortuous passage, chiseled through the
rock by some ancient stream of water, and appropriately named the Fat
Man's Misery; wiped away the perspiration in the ample passage beyond,
known as the Great Relief; glanced inside the Bacon Chamber, where the
little masses of lime-rock pendent from the roof do look marvelously
like esculent hams; peeped down into the cylindrical Bottomless Pit,
which the reader shall be told, confidentially, _has_ a bottom just one
hundred and sixty feet below the surface; laughed at the roof-figures
of the Giant, his Wife, and Child, which resemble a caricature from
Punch; admired the delicate, exquisite flowers of white, fibrous
gypsum, along the walls of Pensacola Avenue; stood beside the Dead Sea,
a dark, gloomy body of water; crossed the Styx by the natural bridge
which spans it, and halted upon the shore of Lethe.

[Sidenote: A RIDE DOWN THE LETHE.]

Then, embarking in a little flat-boat, we slowly glided along the
river of Oblivion. It was a strange, weird spectacle. The flickering
torches dimly revealed the dark inclosing walls, which rise abruptly a
hundred feet to the black roof. Our sable guide looked, in the ghastly
light, like a recent importation from Pluto's domain; and stood in the
bows, steering the little craft, which moved slowly down the winding,
sluggish river. The deep silence was only broken by drops of water,
which fell from the roof, striking the stream like the tick of a clock,
and the sharp _ylp_ of the paddle, as it was thrust into the wave to
guide us. When my companion evoked from his flute strains of slow
music, which resounded in hollow echoes through the long vault, it grew
so demoniac, that I almost expected the walls to open and reveal a
party of fiends, dancing to infernal music around a lurid fire. I never
saw any stage effect or work of art that could compare with it. If one
would enjoy the most vivid sensations of the grand and gloomy, let him
float down Lethe to the sound of a dirge.

[Sidenote: THE STAR CHAMBER.--MAGNIFICENT DISTANCES.]

We first saw the Star Chamber with the lights withdrawn. It revealed
to us the meaning of "darkness visible." We seemed to _feel_ the dense
blackness against our eye-balls. An object within half an inch of them
was not in the faintest degree perceptible. If one were left alone
here, reason could not long sustain itself. Even a few hours, in the
absence of light, would probably shake it. In numberless little spots,
the dark gypsum has scaled off, laying bare minute sections of the
white limestone roof, resembling stars. When the chamber was lighted
the illusion became perfect. We seemed in a deep, rock-walled pit,
gazing up at the starry firmament. The torch, slowly moved to throw a
shadow along the roof, produced the effect of a cloud sailing over the
sky; but the scene required no such aid to render it one of marvelous
beauty. The Star Chamber is the most striking picture in all this great
gallery of Nature.

My companion had spent his whole life within a few miles of the cave,
but now visited it for the first time. Thus it is always; objects which
pilgrims come half across the world to see, we regard with indifference
at our own doors. Persons have passed all their days in sight of Mount
Washington, and yet never looked upon the grand panorama from its
brow. Men have lived from childhood almost within sound of the roar of
Niagara, without ever gazing on the vast fountain, where mother Earth,
like Rachel, weeps for her children, and will not be comforted. We
appreciate no enjoyment justly, until we see it through the charmed
medium of magnificent distances.

[Sidenote: POLITICAL FEELING IN KENTUCKY.]

Throughout Kentucky the pending troubles were uppermost in every heart
and on every tongue. One gentleman, in conversation, thus epitomized
the feeling of the State:--

"We have more wrongs to complain of than any other slave community, for
Kentucky loses more negroes than all the cotton States combined. But
Secession is no remedy. It would be jumping out of the frying-pan into
the fire."

Another, whose head was silvered with age, said to me:--

"When I was a boy here in this county, some of our neighbors started
for New Orleans on a flat-boat. As we bade them good-by, we never
expected to see them again; we thought they were going out of the
world. But, after several months, they returned, having come on foot
all the way, through the Indian country, packing[1] their blankets and
provisions. Now we come from New Orleans in five days. I thank God to
have lived in this age--the age of the Railroad, the Telegraph, and the
Printing Press. Ours was the greatest nation and the greatest era in
history. But that is all past now. The Government is broken to pieces;
the slave States can not obtain their rights; and those which have
seceded will never come back."

[1] Vernacular for carrying a load upon the back of a man or animal.

An old farmer "reckoned," as I traveled a good deal, that I might know
better than he whether there was any hope of a peaceable settlement.
If the North, as he believed, was willing to be just, an overwhelming
majority of Kentuckians would stand by the Union. "It is a great pity,"
he said, very earnestly, in a broken voice, "that we Americans could
not live harmoniously, like brethren, instead of always quarreling
about a few niggers."

My recollections of Nashville, Tennessee, include only an unpalatable
breakfast in one of its abominable hotels; a glimpse at some of its
pleasant shaded streets and marble capitol, which, with the exception
of that in Columbus, Ohio, is considered the finest State-house on the
continent.

Continuing southward, I found the country already "appareled in the
sweet livery of spring." The elm and gum trees wore their leafy
glory; the grass and wheat carpeted the ground with swelling verdure,
and field and forest glowed with the glossy green of the holly. The
railway led through large cotton-fields, where many negroes, of both
sexes, were plowing and hoeing, while overseers sat upon the high,
zig-zag fences, armed with rifles or shot-guns. On the withered stalks
snowy tufts of cotton were still protruding from the dull brown
bolls--portions of the last year's crop, which had never been picked,
and were disappearing under the plow.

[Sidenote: COTTON-FIELDS.--AN INDIGNANT ALABAMIAN.]

A native Kentuckian, now a young merchant in Alabama, was one of
my fellow-passengers. He pronounced the people aristocratic. They
looked down upon every man who worked for his living--indeed, upon
every one who did not own negroes. The ladies were pretty, and often
accomplished, but, he mildly added, he would like them better if they
did not "dip." He insisted that Alabama had been precipitated into the
revolution.

"We were _swindled_ out of our rights. In my own town, Jere
Clemens--an ex-United States senator, and one of the ablest men in the
State--was elected to the convention on the strongest public pledges
of Unionism. When the convention met, he went completely over to the
enemy. The leaders--a few heavy slaveholders, aided by political
demagogues--dared not submit the Secession ordinance to a popular vote;
they knew the people would defeat them. They are determined on war;
they will exasperate the ignorant masses to the last degree before they
allow them to vote on any test question. I trust the Government will
put them down by force of arms, no matter what the cost!"

The same evening, crossing the Alabama line, I was in the "Confederate
States of America." At the little town of Athens, the Stars and Stripes
were still floating; as the train left, I cast a longing look at the
old flag, wondering when I should see it again.

[Sidenote: "OUR CORRESPONDENT" AS A NEW MEXICAN.]

The next person who took a seat beside me went through the formula
of questions, usual between strangers in the South and the Far West,
asking my name, residence, business, and destination. He was informed,
in reply, that I lived in the Territory of New Mexico, and was now
traveling leisurely to New Orleans, designing to visit Vera Cruz and
the City of Mexico before returning home. This hypothesis, to which
I afterward adhered, was rendered plausible by my knowledge of New
Mexico, and gave me the advantage of not being deemed a partisan.
Secessionists and Unionists alike, regarding me as a stranger with no
particular sympathies, conversed freely. Aaron Burr asserts that "a lie
well stuck to is good as the truth;" in my own case, it was decidedly
better than the truth.

My querist was a cattle-drover, who spent most of his time in traveling
through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. He declared emphatically
that the people of those States had been placed in a false position;
that their hearts were loyal to the Union, in spite of all the arts
which had been used to deceive and exasperate them.

At Memphis was an old friend, whom I had not met for many years, and
who was now commercial editor of the leading Secession journal. I knew
him to be perfectly trustworthy, and, at heart, a bitter opponent of
Slavery. On the morning of my arrival, he called upon me at the Gayoso
House. After his first cordial greeting, he asked, abruptly:

[Sidenote: A HOT CLIMATE FOR ABOLITIONISTS.]

"What are you doing down here?"

"Corresponding for _The Tribune_."

"How far are you going?"

"Through all the Gulf States, if possible."

"My friend," said he, in his deep bass tones, "do you know that you are
on very perilous business?"

"Possibly; but I shall be extremely prudent when I get into a hot
climate."

"I do not know" (with a shrug of the shoulders) "what you call a
hot climate. Last week, two northerners, who had been mobbed as
Abolitionists, passed through here, with their heads shaved, going
home, in charge of the Adams' Express. A few days before, a man was
hung on that cottonwood tree which you see just across the river, upon
the charge of tampering with slaves. Another person has just been
driven out of the city, on suspicion of writing a letter for _The
Tribune_. If the people in this house, and out on the street in front,
knew you to be one of its correspondents, they would not leave you many
minutes for saying your prayers."

After a long, minute conversation, in which my friend learned my plans
and gave me some valuable hints, he remarked:

[Sidenote: AIMS AND ANIMUS OF SECESSIONISTS.]

"My first impulse was to go down on my knees, and beg you, for God's
sake, to turn back; but I rather think you may go on with comparative
safety. You are the first man to whom I have opened my heart for years.
I wish some of my old northern friends, who think Slavery a good thing,
could witness the scenes in the slave auctions, which have so often
made my blood run cold. I knew two runaway negroes absolutely starve
themselves to death in their hiding-places in this city, rather than
make themselves known, and be sent back to their masters. I disliked
Slavery before; now I hate it, down to the very bottom of my heart."
His compressed lips and clinched fingers, driving their nails into his
palms, attested the depth of his feeling.




CHAPTER II.

     Thus far into the bowels of the land Have we marched on
     without impediment.--RICHARD III.


While I remained in Memphis, my friend, who was brought into familiar
contact with leading Secessionists, gave me much valuable information.
He insisted that they were in the minority, but carried the day because
they were noisy and aggressive, overawing the Loyalists, who staid
quietly at home. Before the recent city election, every one believed
the Secessionists in a large majority; but, when a Union meeting was
called, the people turned out surprisingly, and, as they saw the old
flag, gave cheer after cheer, "with tears in their voices." Many,
intimidated, staid away from the polls. The newspapers of the city,
with a single exception, were disloyal, but the Union ticket was
elected by a majority of more than three hundred.

[Sidenote: SECESSION AIMS AND GRIEVANCES.]

"Tell me exactly what the 'wrongs' and 'grievances' are, of which I
hear so much on every side."

"It is difficult to answer. The masses have been stirred into a vague,
bitter, 'soreheaded' feeling that the South is wronged; but the leaders
seldom descend to particulars. When they do, it is very ludicrous.
They urge the marvelous growth of the North; the abrogation of the
Missouri Compromise (done by southern votes!), and that Freedom has
always distanced Slavery in the territories. Secession is no new or
spontaneous uprising; every one of its leaders here has talked of it
and planned it for years. Individual ambition, and wild dreams of a
great southern empire, which shall include Mexico, Central America,
and Cuba, seem to be their leading incentives. But there is another,
stronger still. You can hardly imagine how bitterly they hate the
Democratic Idea--how they loathe the thought that the vote of any
laboring man, with a rusty coat and soiled hands, may neutralize that
of a wealthy, educated, slave-owning gentleman."

    "Wonder why they gave it such a name of old renown,
    This dreary, dingy, muddy, melancholy town."

[Sidenote: SPRING-TIME IN MEMPHIS.]

Thus Charles Mackay describes Memphis; but it impressed me as the
pleasantest city of the South. Though its population was only thirty
thousand, it had the air and promise of a great metropolis. The long
steamboat landing was so completely covered with cotton that drays and
carriages could hardly thread the few tortuous passages leading down
to the water's edge. Bales of the same great staple were piled up to
the ceiling in the roomy stores of the cotton factors; the hotels were
crowded, and spacious and elegant blocks were being erected.

A few days earlier, in Cleveland, I had seen the ground covered with
snow; but here I was in the midst of early summer. During the first
week of March, the heat was so oppressive that umbrellas and fans were
in general use upon the streets. The broad, shining leaves of the
magnolia, and the delicate foliage of the weeping willow, were nodding
adieu to winter; the air was sweet with cherry blossoms; with

                  ----"Daffodils
    That come before the swallow dares, and take
    The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
    But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
    Or Cytherea's breath."

[Sidenote: CAPTAIN MCINTIRE, LATE OF THE ARMY.]

On the evening of March 3d I left Memphis. A thin-visaged,
sandy-haired, angular gentleman in spectacles, who occupied a car-seat
near me, though of northern birth, had resided in the Gulf States
for several years, as agent for an Albany manufactory of cotton-gins
and agricultural implements. A broad-shouldered, roughly dressed,
sun-browned young man, whose chin was hidden by a small forest of
beard, accepted the proffer of a cigar, took a seat beside us, and
introduced himself as Captain McIntire, of the United States Army, who
had just resigned his commission, on account of the pending troubles,
and was returning from the Texian frontier to his plantation in
Mississippi. He was the first bitter Secessionist I had met, and I
listened with attent ear to his complaints of northern aggression.

The Albanian was an advocate of Slavery and declared that, in the
event of separation, his lot was with the South, for better or for
worse; but he mildly urged that the Secession movement was hasty and
ill advised; hoped the difficulty might be settled by compromise,
and declared that, traveling through all the cotton States since Mr.
Lincoln's election, he had found, everywhere outside the great cities,
a strong love for the Union and a universal hope that the Republic
might continue indivisible. He was very "conservative;" had always
voted the Democratic ticket; was confident the northern people would
not willingly wrong their southern brethren; and insisted that not more
than twenty or thirty thousand persons in the State of New-York were,
in any just sense, Abolitionists.

Captain McIntire silently heard him through, and then remarked:

"You seem to be a gentleman; you may be sincere in your opinions;
but it won't do for you to express such sentiments in the State of
Mississippi. They will involve you in trouble and in danger!"

[Sidenote: AN AMUSING COLLOQUY.]

The New-Yorker was swift to explain that he was very "sound," favoring
no compromise which would not give the slaveholders all they asked.
Meanwhile, a taciturn but edified listener, I pondered upon the German
proverb, that "speech is silver, while silence is golden." Something
gave me a dim suspicion that our violent fire-eater was not of southern
birth; and, after being plied industriously with indirect questions, he
was reluctantly forced to acknowledge himself a native of the State of
New Jersey. Soon after, at a little station, Captain McIntire, late of
the Army of the United States, bade us adieu.

At Grand Junction, after I had assumed a recumbent position in
the sleeping-car, two young women in a neighboring seat fell into
conversation with a gentleman near them, when a droll colloquy ensued.
Learning that he was a New Orleans merchant, one of them asked:--

"Do you know Mr. Powers, of New Orleans?"

"Powers--Powers," said the merchant; "what does he do?"

"Gambles," was the cool response.

"Bless me, no! What do you know about a gambler?"

"He is my husband," replied the woman, with ingenuous promptness.

"Your husband a gambler!" ejaculated the gentleman, with horror in
every tone.

"Yes, sir," reiterated the undaunted female; "and gamblers are the best
men in the world."

"I didn't know they ever married. I should like to see a gambler's
wife."

"Well, sir, take a mighty good look, and you can see one now."

The merchant opened the curtains into their compartment, and
scrutinized the speaker--a young, rosy, and rather comely woman, with
blue eyes and brown hair, quietly and tastefully dressed.

"I should like to know your husband, madam."

"Well, sir; if you've got plenty of money, he will be glad to make
_your_ acquaintance."

"Does he ever go home?"

"Lord bless you, yes! He always comes home at one o'clock in the
morning, after he gets through dealing faro. He has not missed a single
night since we were married--going on five years. We own a farm in this
vicinity, and if business continues good with him next year we shall
retire to it, and never live in the city again."

All the following day I journeyed through deep forests of heavy
drooping foliage, with pendent tufts of gray Spanish moss. The
beautiful Cherokee rose everywhere trailed its long arms of vivid
green; all the woods were decked with the yellow flowers of the
sassafras and the white blossoms of the dogwood and the wild plum.
Our road stretched out in long perspective through great Louisiana
everglades, where the grass was four feet in hight and the water ten or
twelve inches deep.

[Sidenote: FEELING TOWARD PRESIDENT LINCOLN.]

It was the day of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. One of our passengers
remarked:

"I hope to God he will be killed before he has time to take the oath!"

Another said:

"I have wagered a new hat that neither he nor Hamlin will ever live to
be inaugurated."

[Sidenote: WHAT A MISSISSIPPI SLAVEHOLDER THOUGHT.]

An old Mississippian, a working man, though the owner of a dozen
slaves, assured me earnestly that the people did not desire war; but
the North had cheated them in every compromise, and they were bound to
regain their rights, even if they had to fight for them.

"We of the South," said he, "are the most independent people in the
universe. We raise every thing we need; but the world can not do
without cotton. If we have war, it will cause terrible suffering in the
North. I pity the ignorant people of the manufacturing districts there,
who have been deluded by the politicians; for they will be forced to
endure many hardships, and perhaps starvation. After Southern trade is
withdrawn, manufactures stopped, operatives starving, grass growing in
the streets of New York, and crowds marching up Broadway crying 'Bread
or Blood!' northern fanatics will see, too late, the results of their
folly."

This was the uniform talk of Secessionists. That Cotton was not
merely King, but absolute despot; that they could coerce the North
by refusing to buy goods, and coerce the whole world by refusing to
sell cotton, was their profound belief. This was always a favorite
southern theory. Bancroft relates that as early as 1661, the colony of
Virginia, suffering under commercial oppression, urged North Carolina
and Maryland to join her for a year in refusing to raise tobacco, that
they might compel Great Britain to grant certain desired privileges.
Now the Rebels had no suspicion whatever that there was reciprocity
in trade; that they needed to sell their great staple just as much as
the world needed to buy it; that the South bought goods in New York
simply because it was the cheapest and best market; that, were all the
cotton-producing States instantly sunk in the ocean, in less than five
years the world would obtain their staple, or some adequate substitute,
from other sources, and forget they ever existed.

[Sidenote: WISCONSIN FREEMEN VS. SOUTHERN SLAVES.]

"I spent six weeks last summer," said another planter, "in Wisconsin.
It is a hot-bed of Abolitionism. The working-classes are astonishingly
ignorant. They are honest and industrious, but they are not so
intelligent as the nig-roes of the South. They suppose, if war comes,
we shall have trouble with our slaves. That is utterly absurd. All my
nig-roes would fight for me."

A Mississippian, whom his companions addressed as "Judge," denounced
the Secession movement as a dream of noisy demagogues:

"Their whole policy has been one of precipitation. They declared: 'Let
us rush the State out of the Union while Buchanan is President, and
there will be no war.' From the outset, they have acted in defiance
of the sober will of the masses; they have not dared to submit one of
their acts to a popular vote!"

Another passenger, who concurred in these views, and intimated that he
was a Union man, still imputed the troubles mainly to agitation of the
Slavery question.

"The northern people," said he, "have been grossly deceived by their
politicians, newspapers, and books like 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' whose very
first chapter describes a slave imprisoned and nearly starved to death
in a cellar in New Orleans, when there is not a single cellar in the
whole city!"

Midnight found us at the St. Charles Hotel, a five-story edifice, with
granite basement and walls of stucco--that be-all and end-all of New
Orleans architecture. The house has an imposing Corinthian portico,
and in the hot season its stone floors and tall columns are cool and
inviting to the eye.

[Sidenote: HOSPITALITY OF A STRANGER.]

"You can not fail to like New Orleans," said a friend, before I left
the North. "Its people are much more genial and cordial to strangers
than ours." I took no letters of introduction, for introduction was
just the thing I did not want. But on the cars, before reaching the
city, I met a gentleman with whom I had a little conversation, and
exchanged the ordinary civilities of traveling. When we parted, he
handed me his card, saying:

     "You are a stranger in New Orleans, and may desire some
     information or assistance. Call and see me, and command me,
     if I can be of service to you."

He proved to be the senior member of one of the heaviest wholesale
houses in the city. Accepting the invitation, I found him in his
counting-room, deeply engrossed in business; but he received me with
great kindness, and gave me information about the leading features of
the city which I wished to see. As I left, he promised to call on me,
adding: "Come in often. By the way, to-morrow is Sunday; why can't you
go home and take a quiet family dinner with me?"

I was curious to learn the social position of one who would invite
a stranger, totally without indorsement, into his home-circle. The
next day he called, and we took a two-story car of the Baronne street
railway. It leads through the Fourth or Lafayette District--more like
a garden than a city--containing the most delightful metropolitan
residences in America. Far back from the street, they are deeply
imbosomed in dense shrubbery and flowers. The tropical profusion of the
foliage retains dampness and is unwholesome, but very delicious to the
senses.

The houses are low--this latitude is unfavorable to climbing--and
constructed of stucco, cooler than wood, and less damp than stone. They
abound in verandas, balconies, and galleries, which give to New Orleans
a peculiarly mellow and elastic look, much more alluring than the cold,
naked architecture of northern cities.

[Sidenote: AN AGREEABLE FAMILY CIRCLE.]

My new friend lived in this district, as befits a merchant prince.
His spacious grounds were rich in hawthorns, magnolias, arbor-vitæs,
orange, olive, and fig trees, and sweet with the breath of
multitudinous flowers. Though it was only the tenth of March, myriads
of pinks and trailing roses were in full bloom; Japan plums hung ripe,
while brilliant oranges of the previous year still glowed upon the
trees. His ample residence, with its choice works of art, was quietly,
unostentatiously elegant. There was no mistaking it for one of those
gilt and gaudy palaces which seem to say: "Look at the state in which
Cr[oe]sus, my master, lives. Lo, the pictures and statues, the Brussels
and rosewood which his money has bought! Behold him clothed in purple
and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day!"

Three other guests were present, including a young officer of the
Louisiana troops stationed at Fort Pickens, and a lady whose husband
and brother held each a high commission in the Rebel forces of Texas.
All assumed to be Secessionists--as did nearly every person I met in
New Orleans upon first acquaintance--but displayed none of the usual
rancor and violence. In that well-poised, agreeable circle the evening
passed quickly, and at parting, the host begged me to frequent his
house. This was not distinctively southern hospitality, for he was born
and bred at the North. But in our eastern cities, from a business man
in his social position, it would appear a little surprising. Had he
been a Philadelphian or Bostonian, would not his friends have deemed
him a candidate for a lunatic asylum?

  NEW ORLEANS, _March 6, 1861_.

Taking my customary stroll last evening, I sauntered into Canal
street, and suddenly found myself in a dense and expectant crowd.
Several cheers being given upon my arrival, I naturally inferred that
it was an ovation to _The Tribune_ correspondent; but native modesty,
and a desire to blush unseen, restrained me from any oral public
acknowledgment.

[Sidenote: TRIBUNE LETTERS.--GENERAL TWIGGS.]

Just then, an obliging by-stander corrected my misapprehension by
assuring me that the demonstration was to welcome home General Daniel
E. Twiggs--the gallant hero, you know, who, stationed in Texas to
protect the Government property, recently betrayed it all into the
hands of the Rebels, to "prevent bloodshed." His friends wince at the
order striking his name from the army rolls as a coward and a traitor,
and the universal execration heaped upon his treachery even in the
border slave States.

They did their best to give him a flattering reception. The great
thoroughfare was decked in its holiday attire. Flags were flying, and
up and down, as far as the eye could reach, the balconies were crowded
with spectators, and the arms of long files of soldiers glittered in
the evening sunlight. One company bore a tattered and stained banner,
which went through the Mexican war. Another carried richly ornamented
colors, presented by the ladies of this city. There were Pelican flags,
and Lone Star flags, and devices unlike any thing in the heavens above,
the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth; but nowhere could I
see the old National banner. It was well; on such occasion the Stars
and Stripes would be sadly out of place.

[Sidenote: BRAXTON BRAGG.--MR. LINCOLN'S INAUGURAL.]

After a welcoming speech, pronouncing him "not only the soldier of
courage, but the patriot of fidelity and honor," and his own response,
declaring that _here_, at least, he would "never be branded as a
coward and traitor," the ex-general rode through some of the principal
streets in an open barouche, bareheaded, bowing to the spectators. He
is a venerable-looking man, apparently of seventy. His large head is
bald upon the top; but from the sides a few thin snow-white locks,
utterly oblivious of the virtues of "the Twiggs Hair Dye,"[2] streamed
in the breeze. He was accompanied in the carriage by General Braxton
Bragg--the "Little-more-grape-Captain-Bragg" of Mexican war memory. By
the way, persons who ought to know declare that General Taylor never
used the expression, his actual language being: "Captain Bragg, give
them----!"

[2] In Mexico, General Twiggs, while applying some preparation to a
wound in his head, found it restoring his hair to its natural color.
An enterprising nostrum-vender at once placed in market and advertised
largely something which he styled the "Twiggs Hair Dye." Dr. Holmes
makes the incident a target for one of his Parthian arrows:--

    "How many a youthful head we've seen put on its silver crown!
    What sudden changes back again, to youth's empurpled brown!
    But how to tell what's old or young--the tap-root from the sprigs,
    Since Florida revealed her fount to Ponce de Leon Twiggs?"


President Lincoln's Inaugural, looked for with intense interest, has
just arrived. All the papers denounce it bitterly. _The Delta_, which
has advocated Secession these ten years, makes it a signal for the
war-whoop:--

     "War is a great calamity; but, with all its horrors, it is
     a blessing to the deep, dark, and damning infamy of such
     a submission, such surrenders, as the southern people are
     now called upon to make to a foreign invader. He who would
     counsel such--he who would seek to dampen, discourage, or
     restrain the ardor and determination of the people to resist
     all such pretensions, is a traitor, who should be driven
     beyond our borders."

"Foreign invader," is supposed to mean the President of our common
country! The "submission" denounced so terribly would be simply the
giving up of the Government property lately stolen by the Rebels, and
the paying of the usual duties on imports!

  _March 8._

[Sidenote: LOUISIANA CONVENTION.]

The State convention which lately voted Louisiana out of the Union,
sits daily in Lyceum Hall. The building fronts Lafayette Square--one
of the admirable little parks which are the pride of New Orleans. Upon
the first floor is the largest public library in the city, though it
contains less than ten thousand volumes.

In the large hall above are the assembled delegates. Ex-Governor
Mouton, their president, a portly old gentleman, of the heavy-father
order, sits upon the platform. Below him, at a long desk, Mr. Wheat,
the florid clerk, is reading a report in a voice like a cracked bugle.
Behind the president is a life-size portrait of Washington; at his
right, a likeness of Jefferson Davis, with thin, beardless face, and
sad, hollow eyes. There is also a painting of the members, and a copy
of the Secession ordinance, with lithographed _fac similes_ of their
signatures. The delegates, you perceive, have made all the preliminary
arrangements for being immortalized. Physically, they are fine-looking
men, with broad shoulders, deep chests, well-proportioned limbs, and
stature decidedly above the northern standard.




CHAPTER III.

     I will be _correspondent_ to command, And do my spiriting
     gently.--TEMPEST.

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION TO REBEL CIRCLES.]


The good fortune which in Memphis enabled me to learn so directly
the plans and aims of the Secession leaders, did not desert me in
New Orleans. For several years I had been personally acquainted with
the editor of the leading daily journal--an accomplished writer, and
an original Secessionist. Uncertain whether he knew positively my
political views, and fearing to arouse suspicion by seeming to avoid
him, I called on him the day after reaching the city.

He received me kindly, never surmising my errand; invited me into
the State convention, of which he was a member; asked me to frequent
his editorial rooms; and introduced me at the "Louisiana Democratic
Club," which had now ripened into a Secession club. Among prominent
Rebels belonging to it were John Slidell and Judah P. Benjamin, of
Jewish descent, whom Senator Wade of Ohio characterized so aptly as "an
Israelite with Egyptian principles."

Admission to that club was a final voucher for political soundness. The
plans of the conspirators could hardly have been discussed with more
freedom in the parlor of Jefferson Davis. Another friend introduced
me at the Merchants' Reading-room, where were the same sentiments and
the same frankness. The newspaper office also was a standing Secession
caucus.

[Sidenote: INTENSITY OF THE SECESSION FEELING.]

These associations gave me rare facilities for studying the aims
and animus of the leading Revolutionists. I was not compelled to ask
questions, so constantly was information poured into my ears. I used
no further deceit than to acquiesce quietly in the opinions everywhere
heard. While I talked New Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, my companions
talked Secession; and told me more, every day, of its secret workings,
than as a mere stranger I could have learned in a month. Socially,
they were genial and agreeable. Their hatred of New England, which
they seemed to consider "the cruel cause of all our woes," was very
intense. They were also wont to denounce _The Tribune_, and sometimes
its unknown Southern correspondents, with peculiar bitterness. At first
their maledictions fell with startling and unpleasant force upon my
ears, though I always concurred. But in time I learned to hear them
not only with serenity, but with a certain quiet enjoyment of the
ludicrousness of the situation.

I had not a single acquaintance in the city, whom I knew to be a Union
man, or to whom I could talk without reserve. This was very irksome--at
times almost unbearable. How I longed to open my heart to somebody!
Recently as I had left the North, and strongly as I was anchored in
my own convictions, the pressure on every hand was so great, all
intelligence came so distorted through Rebel mediums, that at times I
was nearly swept from my moorings. I could fully understand how many
strong Union men had at last been drawn into the almost irresistible
tide. It was an inexpressible relief to read the northern newspapers at
the Democratic Club. There, even _The Tribune_ was on file. The club
was so far above suspicion that it might have patronized with impunity
the organ of William Lloyd Garrison or Frederick Douglass.

[Sidenote: REBEL NEWSPAPERS AND PRESIDENT LINCOLN.]

The vituperation which the southern journals heaped upon Abraham
Lincoln was something marvelous. The speeches of the newly elected
President on his way to Washington, were somewhat rugged and uncouth;
not equal to the reputation he won in the great senatorial canvass with
Douglas, where debate and opposition developed his peculiar powers and
stimulated his unrivaled logic. The Rebel papers drew daily contrasts
between the two Presidents, pronouncing Mr. Davis a gentleman, scholar,
statesman; and Mr. Lincoln a vulgarian, buffoon, demagogue. One of
their favorite epithets was "idiot;" another, "baboon;" just as the
Roman satirists, fifteen hundred years ago, were wont to ridicule the
great Julian as an ape and a hairy savage.

The times have changed. While I write some of the same journals, not
yet extinguished by the fortunes of war, denounce Jefferson Davis
with equal coarseness and bitterness, as an elegant, vacillating
sentimentalist; and mourn that he does not possess the rugged common
sense and indomitable perseverance displayed by Abraham Lincoln!

While keeping up appearances on the Mexican question, by frequent
inquiries about the semi-monthly steamers for Vera Cruz, I devoted
myself ostensibly to the curious features of the city. Odd enough it
sounded to hear persons say, "Let us go _up_ to the river;" but the
phrase is accurate. New Orleans is two feet lower than the Mississippi,
and protected against overflow by a dike or levee. The city is quite
narrow, and is drained into a great swamp in the rear. In front, new
deposits of soil are constantly and rapidly made. Four of the leading
business streets, nearest the levee, traverse what, a few years ago,
was the bed of the river. Anywhere, by digging two feet below the
surface, one comes to water.

The earth is peculiarly spongy and yielding. The unfinished Custom
House, built of granite from Quincy, Massachusetts, has sunk about
two feet since its commencement, in 1846. The same is true of other
heavy buildings. Cellars and wells being impossible in the watery
soil, refrigerators serve for the one, and cylindrical upright wooden
cisterns, standing aboveground, like towers, for the other.

[Sidenote: CEMETERIES ABOVE THE GROUND.]

In the cemeteries the tombs are called "ovens." They are all built
aboveground, of brick, stone, or stucco, closed up with mortar and
cement. Sometimes the walls crack open, revealing the secrets of the
charnel-house. Decaying coffins are visible within; and once I saw a
human skull protruding from the fissure of a tomb. Here, indeed,

    "Imperial Cæsar, dead, and turned to clay,
    Might stop a hole to keep the wind away."

Despite this revolting feature, the Catholic cemeteries are especially
interesting. About the humblest of the monuments, artificial wreaths,
well-tended rose-beds, garlands of fresh flowers, changed daily, and
vases inserted in the walls, to catch water and attract the birds,
evince a tender, unforgetful attention to the resting-place of departed
friends. More than half the inscriptions are French or Spanish. Very
few make any allusion to a future life. One imposing column marks the
grave of Dominique You, the pirate, whose single virtue of patriotism,
exhibited under Jackson during the war of 1815, hardly justifies, upon
his monument, the magnificent eulogy of Bayard: "The hero of a hundred
battles,--a chevalier without fear and without reproach."

In New Orleans, grass growing upon the streets is no sign of
decadence. Stimulated by the rich, moist soil, it springs up in
profusion, not only in the smaller thoroughfares, but among the bricks
and paving-stones of the leading business avenues.

[Sidenote: THE FRENCH QUARTER OF NEW ORLEANS.]

Canal street is perhaps the finest promenade on the continent. It is
twice the width of Broadway, and in the middle has two lines of trees,
with a narrow lawn between them, extending its entire length. At night,
as the long parallel rows of gas-lights glimmer through the quivering
foliage, growing narrower and narrower in perspective till they unite
and blend into one, it is a striking spectacle--a gorgeous feast of
the lanterns. On the lower side of it is the "French Quarter," more
un-American even than the famous German portion of Cincinnati known
as "Over the Rhine." Here you may stroll for hours, "a straggler from
another civilization," hearing no word in your native tongue, seeing
no object to remove the impression of an ancient French city. The
dingy houses, "familiar with forgotten years," call up memories of old
Mexican towns. They are grim, dusky relics of antiquity, usually but
one story high, with steep projecting roofs, tiled or slated, wooden
shutters over the doors, and multitudinous eruptions of queer old
gables and dormer windows.

New Orleans is the most Parisian of American cities. Opera-houses,
theaters, and all other places of amusement are open on Sunday nights.
The great French market wears its crowning glory only on Sunday
mornings. Then the venders occupy not only several spacious buildings,
but adjacent streets and squares. Their wares seem boundless in
variety. Any thing you please--edible, drinkable, wearable, ornamental,
or serviceable--from Wenham ice to vernal flowers and tropical
fruits--from Indian moccasins to a silk dress-pattern--from ancient
Chinese books to the freshest morning papers--ask, and it shall be
given unto you.

[Sidenote: FRENCH MARKET ON SUNDAY MORNING.]

Sit down in a stall, over your tiny cup of excellent coffee, and you
are hobnobbing with the antipodes--your next neighbor may be from
Greenland's icy mountains, or India's coral strand. Get up to resume
your promenade, and you hear a dozen languages in as many steps; while
every nation, and tribe, and people--French, English, Irish, German,
Spanish, Creole, Chinese, African, Quadroon, Mulatto, American--jostles
you in good-humored confusion.

Some gigantic negresses, with gaudy kerchiefs, like turbans, about
their heads, are selling fruits, and sit erect as palm-trees. They look
like African or Indian princesses, a little annoyed at being separated
from their thrones and retinues, but none the less regal "for a' that."
At every turn little girls, with rich Creole complexions and brilliant
eyes, offer you aromatic bouquets of pinks, roses, verbenas, orange
and olive blossoms, and other flowers to you unknown, unless, being a
woman, you are a botanist by "gift of fortune," or, a man, that science
has "come by nature."

Upon Jackson Square, a delicious bit of verdure fronting the river,
gloom antique public buildings, which were the seat of government in
the days of the old Spanish _régime_. Near them stands the equally
ancient cathedral, richly decorated within, where devout Catholics
still worship. Its great congregations are mosaics of all hues and
nationalities, mingling for the moment in the democratic equality of
the Roman Church.

Attending service in the cathedral one Sunday morning, I found the
aisles crowded with volunteers who, on the eve of departure for
the debatable ground of Fort Pickens, had assembled to witness the
consecration of their Secession flag, a ceremonial conducted with great
pomp and solemnity by the French priests.

In the First Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Dr. Palmer, a divine of
talent and local reputation, might be heard advocating the extremest
Rebel views. The southerners had formerly been very bitter in their
denunciation of political preaching; but now the pulpit, as usual, made
obeisance to the pews, and the pews beamed encouragement on the pulpit.

[Sidenote: PRESSING COTTON BY MACHINERY.]

If I may go abruptly from church to cotton--and they were not far apart
in New Orleans--a visit to one of the great cotton-presses was worthy
of note. It is a low building, occupying an entire square, with a
hollow court in the center. It was filled with heaped-up cotton-bales,
which overran their limits and covered the adjacent sidewalks. Negroes
stood all day at the doors receiving and discharging cotton. The bales
are compressed by heavy machinery, driven by steam, that they may
occupy the least space in shipping. They are first condensed on the
plantations by screw-presses; the cotton is compact upon arrival here;
but this great iron machine, which embraces the bales in a hug of two
hundred tons, diminishes them one-third more. The laborers are negroes
and Frenchmen, who chant a strange, mournful refrain in time with their
movements.

The ropes of a bale are cut; it is thrown under the press; the great
iron jaws of the monster close convulsively, rolling it under the
tongue as a sweet morsel. The ropes are tightened and again tied,
the cover stitched up, and the bale rolled out to make room for
another--all in about fifty seconds. It weighs five hundred pounds, but
the workmen seize it on all sides with their iron hooks, and toss it
about like a schoolboy's ball. The superintendent informed me that they
pressed, during the previous winter, more than forty thousand bales.

[Sidenote: THE BARRACKS.--THE NEW ORLEANS LEVEE.]

The Rebels, with their early _penchant_ for capturing empty forts and
full treasuries, had seized the United States Branch Mint, containing
three hundred thousand dollars, and the National barracks, garrisoned
at the time by a single sergeant. Visiting, with a party of gentlemen,
the historic Jackson battle-ground, four miles below the city, I
obtained a glimpse of the tall, gloomy Mint, and spent an hour in the
long, low, white, deep-balconied barracks beside the river.

The Lone Star flag of Louisiana was flying from the staff. A hundred
and twenty freshly enlisted men of the State troops composed the
garrison. Three of the officers, recent seceders from the Federal army,
invited us into their quarters, to discuss political affairs over
their Bourbon and cigars. As all present assumed to be sanguine and
uncompromising Rebels, the conversation was one-sided and uninteresting.

We drove down the river-bank along the almost endless rows of ships
and steamboats. The commerce of New Orleans, was more imposing than
that of any other American city except New York. It seemed to warrant
the picture painted by the unrivaled orator, Prentiss, of the future
years, "when this Crescent City shall have filled her golden horn." The
long landing was now covered with western produce, cotton, and sugar,
and fenced with the masts of hundreds of vessels. Some displayed the
three-striped and seven-starred flag of the "Southern Confederacy,"
many the ensigns of foreign nations, and a few the Stars and Stripes.

We were soon among the old houses of the Creoles.[3]

[3] Creole means "native;" but its New Orleans application is only to
persons of French or Spanish descent.

These anomalous people--a very large element of the
population--properly belong to a past age or another land, and find
themselves sadly at variance with America in the nineteenth century.
They seldom improve or sell their property; permit the old fences and
palings to remain around their antique houses; are content to live
upon small incomes, and rarely enter the modern districts. It is even
asserted that old men among them have spent their whole lives in New
Orleans without ever going above Canal street! Many have visited Paris,
but are profoundly ignorant of Washington, New York, Philadelphia, and
other northern cities. They are devout Catholics, sudden and quick in
quarrel, and duelling continues one of their favorite recreations.

[Sidenote: VISIT TO THE JACKSON BATTLE-GROUND.]

We stopped at the old Spanish house--deeply embowered in
trees--occupied as head-quarters by General Jackson, and saw the upper
window from which, glass in hand, he witnessed the approach of the
enemy. The dwelling is inhabited, and bears marks of the cannon-balls
fired to dislodge him. Like his city quarters--a plain brick edifice,
at one hundred and six, Royal-street, New Orleans--it is unchanged in
appearance since that historic Eighth of January.

A few hundred yards from the river, we reached the battle-ground
where, in 1815, four thousand motley, undisciplined, half-armed
recruits defeated twelve thousand veterans--the Americans losing
but five men, the British seven hundred. This enormous disparity is
explained by the sheltered position of one party behind a breastwork,
and the terrible exposure of the other in its march, by solid columns,
of half a mile over an open field, without protection of hillock or
tree. A horrible field, whence the Great Reaper gathered a bloody
harvest!

[Sidenote: INCIDENTS OF THE BATTLE.]

The swamp here is a mile from the river. Jackson dug a canal between
them, throwing up the earth on one side for a breastwork, and turning
a stream of water from the Mississippi through the trench. The British
had an extravagant fear of the swamp, and believed that, attempting
to penetrate it, they would be ingulfed in treacherous depths. So
they marched up, with unflinching Saxon courage, in the teeth of
that terrible fire from the Americans, ranged four deep, behind the
fortification; and the affair became a massacre rather than a battle.

The spongy soil of the breastwork (the tradition that bales of cotton
were used is a fiction) absorbed the balls without any damage. It first
proved what has since been abundantly demonstrated in the Crimean
war, and the American Rebellion--the superiority of earthworks over
brick and stone. The most solid masonry will be broken and battered
down sooner or later, but shells and solid shot can do little harm to
earthworks.

Jackson's army was a reproduction of Falstaff's ragamuffins. It was
made up of Kentucky backwoodsmen, New Orleans clergymen, lawyers,
merchants and clerks; pirates and ruffians just released from the
calaboose to aid in the defense; many negroes, free and slave, with
a liberal infusion of nondescript city vagabonds, noticeable chiefly
for their tatters, and seeming, from their "looped and windowed
raggedness," to hang out perpetual flags of truce to the enemy.

Judah Trouro, a leading merchant, while carrying ammunition, was
struck in the rear by a cannon-ball, which cut and bore away a large
slice of his body; but, in spite of the awkward loss, he lived many
years, to leave an enviable memory for philanthropy and public spirit.
Parton tells of a young American who, during the battle, stooped
forward to light a cigar; and when he recovered his position saw that
a man exactly behind him was blown to pieces, and his brains scattered
over the parapet, by an exploding shell.

[Sidenote: A PECULIAR FREE NEGRO POPULATION.]

More than half of Jackson's command was composed of negroes, who were
principally employed with the spade, but several battalions of them
were armed, and in the presence of the whole army received the thanks
of General Jackson for their gallantry. On each anniversary the negro
survivors of the battle always turned out in large numbers--so large,
indeed, as to excite the suspicion that they were not genuine.

The free colored population, at the time of my visit, was a very
peculiar feature of New Orleans. Its members were chiefly of San
Domingo origin; held themselves altogether aloof from the other
blacks, owned numerous slaves, and were the most rigorous of masters.
Frequently their daughters were educated in Paris, married whites, and
in some cases the traces of their negro origin were almost entirely
obliterated. This, however, is not peculiar to that class. It is very
unusual anywhere in the South to find persons of pure African lineage.
A tinge of white blood is almost always detected.

Our company had an invaluable cicerone in the person of Judge
Alexander Walker, author of "Jackson and New Orleans," the most clear
and entertaining work upon the battle, its causes and results, yet
contributed to American history. He had toiled unweariedly through
all the official records, and often visited the ground with men who
participated in the engagement. He pointed out positions, indicated
the spot where Packenham fell, and drew largely upon his rich fund of
anecdote, tradition, and biography.

A plain, unfinished shaft of Missouri limestone, upon a rough brick
foundation, now marks the battle-field. It was commenced by a
legislative appropriation; but the fund became exhausted and the work
ceased. The level cotton plantation, ditched for draining, now shows
no evidence of the conflict, except the still traceable line of the
old canal, with detached pools of stagnant water in a fringe of reeds,
willows, and live oaks.

A negro patriarch, with silvery hair, and legs infirm of purpose,
hobbled up, to exhibit some balls collected on the ground. The bullets,
which were flattened, he assured us, had "hit somebody." No doubt they
were spurious; but we purchased a few buckshots and fragments of shell
from the ancient Ethiop, and rode back to the city along avenues lined
with flowers and shrubbery. Here grew the palm--the characteristic tree
of the South. It is neither graceful nor beautiful; but looks like an
inverted umbrella upon a long, slender staff. Ordinary pictures very
faithfully represent it.

[Sidenote: ALL ABOUT A "BLACK REPUBLICAN FLAG."]

  NEW ORLEANS, _March 11, 1861_.

We are a good deal exercised, just now, about a new grievance. The
papers charged, a day or two since, that the ship Adelaide Bell, from
New Hampshire, had flung defiant to the breeze a Black Republican flag,
and that her captain vowed he would shoot anybody attempting to cut it
down. As one of the journals remarked, "his audacity was outrageous."
_En passant_, do you know what a Black Republican flag is? I have never
encountered that mythical entity in my travels; but 'tis a fearful
thing to think of--is it not?

The reporter of _The Crescent_, with charming ingenuousness, describes
it as "so much like the flag of the late United States, that few would
notice the difference." In fact, he adds, it _is_ the old Stars and
Stripes, with a red stripe instead of a white one immediately below
the union. Of course, we are greatly incensed. It is flat burglary,
you know, to love the Star Spangled Banner itself; and as for a Black
Republican flag--why, that is most tolerable and not to be endured.

Captain Robertson, the "audacious," has been compelled, publicly,
to deny the imputation. He asserts that, in the simplicity of his
heart, he has been using it for years as a United States flag. But the
newspapers adhere stoutly to the charge; so the presumption is that the
captain is playing some infernal Yankee trick. Who shall deliver us
from the body of this Black Republican flag?

If it were possible, I would like to see the "Southern Confederacy"
work out its own destiny; to see how Slavery would flourish, isolated
from free States; how the securities of a government, founded on the
right of any of its members to break it up at pleasure, would stand
in the markets of the world; how the principle of Democracy would
sustain itself in a confederation whose corner-stones are aristocracy,
oligarchy, despotism. This is the government which, in the language of
one of its admirers, shall be "stronger than the bonds of Orion, and
benigner than the sweet influences of the Pleiades."

[Sidenote: VICE-PRESIDENT HAMLIN A MULATTO.]

A few days since, I was in a circle of southern ladies, when one of
them remarked:

"I am glad Lincoln has not been killed."

"Why so?" asked another.

"Because, if he had been, Hamlin would become President, and it would
be a shame to have a mulatto at the head of the Government."

A little discussion which followed developed that every lady present,
except one, believed Mr. Hamlin a mulatto. Yet the company was
comparatively intelligent, and all its members live in a flourishing
commercial metropolis. You may infer something of the knowledge of
the North in rural districts, enlightened only by weekly visits from
Secession newspapers!

We are enjoying that soft air "which comes caressingly to the brow, and
produces in the lungs a luxurious delight." I notice, on the streets,
more than one premonition of summer, in the form of linen coats. The
yards and cemeteries, smiling with myriads of roses and pinks, are
carpeted with velvet grass; the morning air is redolent of orange and
clover blossoms, and nosegays abound, sweet with the breath of the
tropics.

[Sidenote: NORTHERNERS LIVING IN THE SOUTH.]

  _March 15._

Men of northern nativity are numerous throughout the Gulf States.
Many are leading merchants of the cities, and a few, planters in the
interior. Some have gone north to stay until the storm is over. A
part of those who remain out-Herod the native fire-eaters in zeal for
Secession. Their violence is suspicious; it oversteps the modesty
of nature. I was recently in a mixed company, where one person was
conspicuously bitter upon the border slave States, denouncing them as
"playing second fiddle to the Abolitionists," and "traitors to southern
rights."

"Who is he?" I asked of a southern gentleman beside me.

"He?" was the indignant reply; "why, he is a northerner, ---- him!
He is talking all this for effect. What does he care about our
rights? He don't own slaves, and wasn't raised in the South; if it
were fashionable, he would be an Abolitionist. I'd as soon trust a
nigger-stealer as such a man!"




CHAPTER IV.

     'Tis my vocation, Hal; 'tis no sin for a man to labor in his
     vocation.--KING HENRY IV.


The city was measurably quiet, but arrests, and examinations of
suspected Abolitionists, were frequent. In general, I felt little
personal disquietude, except the fear of encountering some one who knew
my antecedents; but about once a week something transpired to make me
thoroughly uncomfortable for the moment.

[Sidenote: PREPARING AND TRANSMITTING CORRESPONDENCE.]

I attended daily the Louisiana Convention, sitting among the
spectators. I could take no notes, but relied altogether upon memory.
In corresponding, I endeavored to cover my tracks as far as possible.
Before leaving Cincinnati, I had encountered a friend just from New
Orleans, and induced him to write for me one or two letters, dated in
the latter city. They were copied, with some changes of style, and
published. Hence investigation would have shown that _The Tribune_
writer began two or three weeks before I reached the city, and thrown a
serious obstacle in the way of identifying him.

My dispatches, transmitted sometimes by mail, sometimes by express,
were addressed alternately to half a dozen banking and commercial firms
in New York, who at once forwarded them to _The Tribune_ editorial
rooms. They were written like ordinary business letters, treating of
trade and monetary affairs, and containing drafts upon supposititious
persons, quite princely in amount. I never learned, however, that they
appreciably enlarged the exchequer of their recipients. Indeed, they
were a good deal like the voluminous epistles which Mr. Toots, in his
school-boy days, was in the habit of writing to himself.

[Sidenote: GUARDING LETTERS AGAINST SCRUTINY.]

I used a system of cipher, by which all phrases between certain private
marks were to be exactly reversed in printing. Thus, if I characterized
any one as "patriot and an honest man," inclosing the sentence in
brackets, it was to be rendered a "demagogue and a scoundrel." All
matter between certain other marks was to be omitted. If a paragraph
commenced at the very edge of a sheet, it was to be printed precisely
as it stood. But beginning it half across the page indicated that it
contained something to be translated by the cipher.

The letters, therefore, even if examined, would hardly be comprehended.
Whether tampered with or not, they always reached the office. I never
kept any papers on my person, or in my room, which could excite
suspicion, if read.

In writing, I assumed the tone of an old citizen, sometimes remarking
that during a residence of fourteen years in New Orleans, I had never
before seen such a whirlwind of passion, etc. In recording incidents I
was often compelled to change names, places, and dates, though always
faithful to the fact. Toward the close of my stay, the correspondence
appearing to pass unopened, I gave minute and exact details, designing
to be in the North before the letters could return in print.

[Sidenote: A PHILADELPHIAN AMONG THE REBELS.]

Two incidents will illustrate the condition of affairs better than any
general description. Soon after Mr. Lincoln's election, a Philadelphian
reached New Orleans, on a collecting tour. One evening he was standing
in the counting-room of a merchant, who asked him:--

"Well, now you Black Republicans have elected your President, what are
you going to do next?"

"We will show you," was the laughing response.

Both spoke in jest; but the bookkeeper of the house, standing by, with
his back turned, belonged to the Minute Men, who, that very evening,
by a delegation of fifty, waited on the Philadelphian at the St. James
Hotel. They began by demanding whether he was a Black Republican.
He at once surmised that he was obtaining a glimpse of the hydra
of Secession, beside which the armed rhinoceros were an agreeable
companion, and the rugged Russian bear a pleasant household pet. His
face grew pallid, but he replied, with dignity and firmness:

"I deny your right to ask me any such questions."

The inquisitors, who were of good social position and gentlemanly
manners, claimed that the public emergency was so great as to justify
them in examining all strangers who excited suspicion; and that he
left them only the alternative of concluding him an Abolitionist and
an incendiary. At last he informed them truthfully that he had never
sympathized with the Anti-Slavery party, and had always voted the
Democratic ticket. They next inquired if the house which employed him
was Black Republican.

"Gentlemen," he replied, "it is a _business_ firm, not a political one.
I never heard politics mentioned by either of the partners. I don't
know whether they are Republicans or Democrats."

He cheerfully permitted his baggage to be searched by the Minute
Men, who, finding nothing objectionable, bade him good-evening. But,
just after they left, a mob of Roughs, attracted by the report that
an Abolitionist was stopping there, entered the hotel. They were very
noisy and profane, crying--"Let us see him; bring out the scoundrel!"

His friend, the merchant, spirited him out of the house through a back
door, and drove him to the railway station, whence a midnight train
was starting for the North. His pursuers, finding the room of their
victim empty, followed in hot haste to the dépôt. The merchant saw them
coming, and again conveyed him away to a private room. He was kept
concealed for three days, until the excitement subsided, and then went
north by a night train.

[Sidenote: SECESSION VS. SINCERITY.]

One of the clerks at the hotel where I was boarding had been an
acquaintance of mine in the North ten years before. Though I now saw
him several times a day, politics were seldom broached between us. But,
whenever they came up, we both talked mild Secession. I did not believe
him altogether sincere, and I presume he did me equal justice; but
instinct is a great matter, and we were cowards on instinct.

During the next summer, I chanced to meet him unexpectedly in Chicago.
After we exchanged greetings, his first question was--

"What did you honestly think of Secession while in New Orleans?"

"Do you know what I was doing there?"

"On your way to Mexico, were you not?"

"No; corresponding for _The Tribune_."

His eyes expanded visibly at this information, and he inquired, with
some earnestness--

"Do you know what would have been done with you if you had been
detected?"

"I have my suspicions, but, of course, do not know. Do you?"

"Yes; you would have been hung!"

"Do you think so?"

"I am sure of it. You would not have had a shadow of chance for your
life!"

My friend knew the Secessionists thoroughly, and his evidence was
doubtless trustworthy. I felt no inclination to test it by repeating
the experiment.

[Sidenote: A MANIA FOR SOUTHERN MANUFACTURING.]

The establishment of domestic manufactures was always a favorite theme
throughout the South; but the manufactures themselves continued very
rudimentary. The furniture dealers, for example, made a pretense of
making their own wares. They invariably showed customers through their
workshops, and laid great stress upon their encouragement of southern
industry; but they really received seven-eighths of their furniture
from the North, having it delivered at back-doors, under cover of the
night.

Secession gave a new impetus to all sorts of manufacturing projects.
The daily newspapers constantly advocated them, but were quite
oblivious of the vital truth that skilled labor will have opinions, and
opinions can not be tolerated in a slave community.

One sign on Canal-street read, "Sewing Machines manufactured on
Southern Soil"--a statement whose truth was more than doubtful. The
agent of a rival machine advertised that his patent was _owned_ in New
Orleans, and, therefore, pre-eminently worthy of patronage. Little
pasteboard boxes were labeled "Superior Southern Matches," and the
newspapers announced exultingly that a candy factory was about to be
established.

But the greatest stress was laid upon the Southern Shoe Factory, on
St. Ferdinand-street--a joint stock concern, with a capital of one
hundred thousand dollars. It was only two months old, and, therefore,
experimental; but its work was in great demand, and it was the favorite
illustration of the feasibility of southern manufactures.

[Sidenote: VISIT TO THE SOUTHERN SHOE FACTORY.]

Sauntering in, one evening, I introduced myself as a stranger, drawn
thither by curiosity. The superintendent courteously invited me to go
through the establishment with him.

His physiognomy and manners impressed me as unmistakably northern; but,
to make assurance doubly sure, I ventured some remark which inferred
that he was a native of New Orleans. He at once informed me that he was
from St. Louis. When I pursued the matter further, by speaking of some
recent improvements in that city, he replied:

"I was born in St. Louis, but left there when I was twelve months old.
Philadelphia has been my home since, until I came here to take charge
of this establishment."

The work was nearly all done with machinery run by steam. As we walked
through the basement, and he pointed out the implements for cutting
and pressing sole-leather, I could not fail to notice that every one
bore the label of its manufacturer, followed by these incendiary words:
"Boston, Massachusetts!"

Then we ascended to the second story, where sewing and pegging
were going on. All the stitching was done as in the large northern
manufactories, with sewing-machines run by steam--a combination of
two of the greatest mechanical inventions. Add a third, and in the
printing-press, the steam-engine, and the sewing-machine, you have the
most potent material agencies of civilization.

[Sidenote: WHERE ITS FACILITIES CAME FROM.]

Here was the greatest curiosity of all--the patent pegging-machine,
which cuts out the pegs from a thin strip of wood, inserts the awl,
and pegs two rows around the sole of a large shoe, more regularly and
durably than it can be done by hand--all in less than twenty-five
seconds. Need I add that it is a Yankee invention? One machine for
finishing, smoothing, and polishing the soles came from Paris; but
all the others bore that ominous label, "Boston, Massachusetts!" In
the third story, devoted to fitting the soles and other finishing
processes, the same fact was apparent--every machine was from New
England.

The work was confined exclusively to coarse plantation brogans,
which were sold at from thirteen to nineteen dollars per case of
twelve pairs. Shoes of the same quality, at the great factories in
Milford, Haverhill, and Lynn, Massachusetts, were then selling by the
manufacturers at prices ranging from six to thirteen dollars per case.
In one apartment we found three men making boxes for packing the shoes,
from boards already sawed and dressed.

"Where do you get your lumber?" I asked.

"It comes from Illinois," replied my cicerone. "We have it planed and
cut out in St. Louis--labor is so high here."

"Your workmen, I presume, are from this city?"

"No, sir. The leading men in all departments are from the North,
mainly from Massachusetts and Philadelphia. We are compelled to pay
them high salaries--from sixty to three hundred dollars per month. The
subordinate workmen, whom we hope soon to put in their places, we found
here. We employ forty-seven persons, and turn out two hundred and fifty
pairs of brogans daily. We find it impossible to supply the demand, and
are introducing more machinery, which will soon enable us to make six
hundred pairs per day."

[Sidenote: HOW "SOUTHERN" SHOES WERE MADE.]

"Where do you procure the birch for pegs?"

"From Massachusetts. It comes to us cut in strips and rolled, ready for
use."

"Where do you get your leather?"

"Well, sir" (with a searching look, as if a little suspicious of being
quizzed), "_it_ also comes from the North, at present; but we shall
soon have tanneries established. The South, especially Texas, produces
the finest hides in the country; but they are nearly all sent north, to
be tanned and curried, and then brought back in the form of leather."

Thanking the superintendent for his courtesy, and wishing him a very
good evening, I strolled homeward, reflecting upon the _Southern_ Shoe
Factory. It was admirably calculated to appeal to local patriotism, and
demonstrate the feasibility of southern manufacturing. Its northern
machinery, run by northern workmen, under a northern superintendent,
turned out brogans of northern leather, fastened with northern pegs,
and packed in cases of northern pine, at an advance of only about one
hundred per cent. upon northern prices!

New Orleans afforded to the stranger few illustrations of the
"Peculiar Institution." Along the streets, you saw the sign, "Slave
Dépôt--Negroes bought and sold," upon buildings which were filled
with blacks of every age and of both sexes, waiting for purchasers.
The newspapers, although recognizing slavery in general as the
distinguishing cause which made southern gentlemen gallant and
"high-toned," and southern ladies fair and accomplished, were yet
reticent of details. They would sometimes record briefly the killing
of a master by his negroes; the arrest of A., charged with being an
Abolitionist; of B., for harboring or tampering with slaves; of C.--f.
m. c. (free man of color)--for violating one of the many laws that
hedged him in; and, very rarely, of D., for cruelty to his slaves.
But their advertising columns were filled with announcements of slave
auctions, and long descriptions of the negroes to be sold. Said _The
Crescent_:

[Sidenote: STUDYING SOUTHERN SOCIETY.]

     "We have for a long time thought that no man ought to be
     allowed to write for the northern Press, unless he has passed
     at least two years of his existence in the Slave States of
     the South, doing nothing but studying southern institutions,
     southern society, and the character and sentiments of the
     southern people."

There was much truth in this, though not in the sense intended by the
writer. Strangers spending but a short time in the South _were_ liable
to very erroneous views. They saw only the exterior of a system, which
looked pleasant and patriarchal. They had no opportunity of learning
that, within, it was full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.
Northern men were so often deceived as to make one skeptical of
the traditional acuteness of the Yankee. The genial and hospitable
southerners would draw the long bow fearfully. A Memphis gentleman
assured a northern friend of mine that, on Sundays, it was impossible
for a white man to hire a carriage in that city, as the negroes
monopolized them all for pleasure excursions!

One of my New Orleans companions, who was frank and candid upon
other subjects, used to tell me the most egregious stories respecting
the slaves. As, for instance, that their marriage-vows were almost
universally held sacred by the masters; the virtue of negro women
respected, and families rarely separated. I preserved my gravity,
never disputing him; but he must have known that a visit to any of the
half-dozen slave auctions, within three minutes' walk of his office,
would disprove all these statements.

[Sidenote: REPORTING A SLAVE AUCTION.]

These slave auctions were the only public places where the primary
social formation of the South cropped out sharply. I attended them
frequently, as the best school for "studying southern institutions,
southern society, and the character and sentiments of the southern
people."

I remember one in which eighty slaves were sold, one after another. A
second, at which twenty-one negroes were disposed of, I reported, _in
extenso_, from notes written upon blank cards in my pocket during its
progress. Of course, it was not safe to make any memoranda openly.

The auction was in the great bar-room of the St. Charles Hotel, a
spacious, airy octagonal apartment, with a circular range of Ionic
columns. The marble bar, covering three sides of the room, was doing a
brisk business. Three perturbed tapsters were bustling about to supply
with fluids the bibulous crowd, which by no means did its spiriting
gently.

The negroes stood in a row, in front of the auctioneer's platform, with
numbered tickets pinned upon their coats and frocks. Thus, a young
woman with a baby in her arms, who rolled his great white eyes in
astonishment, was ticketed "No. 7." Referring to the printed list, I
found this description:

     "7. Betty, aged 15 years, and child 4 months, No. 1
     field-hand and house-servant, very likely. Fully guaranteed."

In due time, Betty and her boy were bid off for $1,165.

[Sidenote: SALE OF A WHITE GIRL.]

Those already sold were in a group at the other end of the platform.
One young woman, in a faded frock and sun-bonnet, and wearing gold
ear-rings, had straight brown hair, hazel eyes, pure European features,
and a very light complexion. I was unable to detect in her face the
slightest trace of negro lineage. Her color, features, and movements
were those of an ordinary country girl of the white working class in
the South. A by-stander assured me that she was sold under the hammer,
just before I entered. She associated familiarly with the negroes, and
left the room with them when the sale was concluded; but no one would
suspect, under other circumstances, that she was tinged with African
blood.

The spectators, about two hundred in number, were not more than
one-tenth bidders. There were planters from the interior, with broad
shoulders and not unpleasing faces; city merchants, and cotton factors;
fast young men in pursuit of excitement, and strangers attracted by
curiosity.

Among the latter was a spruce young man in the glossiest of broadcloth,
and the whitest of linen, with an unmistakable Boston air. He lounged
carelessly about, and endeavored to look quite at ease, but made a very
brilliant failure. His restless eye and tell-tale countenance indicated
clearly that he was among the Philistines for the first time, and held
them in great terror.

There were some professional slave-dealers, and many nondescripts who
would represent the various shades between loafers and blacklegs, in
any free community. They were men of thick lips, sensual mouths, full
chins, large necks, and bleared eyes, suggesting recent dissipation.
They were a "hard-looking" company. I would not envy a known
Abolitionist who should fall into their unrestrained clutches. No
prudent life-insurance company would take a risk in him.

The auctioneer descanted eloquently upon the merits of each of his
chattels, seldom dwelling upon one more than five minutes. An herculean
fellow, with an immense chest, was dressed in rusty black, and wore a
superannuated silk hat. He looked the decayed gentleman to a charm, and
was bid off for $840. A plump yellow boy, also in black, silk hat and
all, seemed to think being sold rather a good joke, grinning broadly
the while, and, at some jocular remark, showing two rows of white
teeth almost from ear to ear. He brought $1,195, and appeared proud of
commanding so high a figure.

[Sidenote: WOMEN ON THE BLOCK.]

Several light quadroon girls brought large prices. One was surrounded
by a group of coarse-looking men, who addressed her in gross language,
shouting with laughter as she turned away to hide her face, and rudely
manipulating her arms, shoulders, and breasts. Her age was not given.
"That's the trouble with niggers," remarked a planter to me; "you never
can tell how old they are, and so you get swindled." One mother and her
infant sold for $1,415.

Strolling into the St. Charles, a few days later, I found two sales
in full career. On one platform the auctioneer was recommending
a well-proportioned, full-blooded negro, as "a very likely and
intelligent young man, gentlemen, who would have sold readily, a year
ago, for thirteen hundred dollars. And now I am offered only eight
hundred--eight hundred--eight hundred--eight hundred; _are_ you all
done?"

On the opposite side of the room another auctioneer, in stentorian
tones, proclaimed the merits of a pretty quadroon girl, tastefully
dressed, and wearing gold finger and ear rings. "The girl, gentlemen,
is only fifteen years old; warranted sound in every particular, an
excellent seamstress, which would make her worth a thousand dollars,
if she had _no other qualifications_. She is sold for no fault, but
simply because her owner must have money. No married man had better buy
her; she is too handsome." The girl was bid off at $1,100, and stepped
down to make way for a field-hand. Ascending the steps, he stumbled and
fell, at which the auctioneer saluted him with "Come along, G-d d--n
you!"

[Sidenote: MOTHERS AND CHILDREN.--"DEFECTS."]

Mothers and their very young children were not often separated; but I
frequently saw husbands and wives sold apart; no pretense being made
of keeping them together. Negroes were often offered with what was
decorously described as a "defect" in the arm, or shoulder. Sometimes
it appeared to be the result of accident, sometimes of punishment. I
saw one sold who had lost two toes from each foot. No public inquiries
were made, and no explanation given. He replied to questions that his
feet "hurt him sometimes," and was bid off at $625--about two-thirds of
his value had it not been for the "defect."

Some slaves upon the block--especially the mothers--looked sad and
anxious; but three out of four appeared careless and unconcerned,
laughing and jesting with each other, both before and after the sale.
The young people, especially, often seemed in the best of spirits.

[Sidenote: A MOST REVOLTING SPECTACLE.]

And yet, though familiarity partially deadened the feeling produced
by the first one I witnessed, a slave auction is the most utterly
revolting spectacle that I ever looked upon. Its odiousness does not
lie in the lustful glances and expressions which a young and comely
woman on the block always elicits; nor in the indelicate conversation
and handling to which she is subjected; nor in the universal infusion
of white blood, which tells its own story about the morality of the
institution; nor in the separation of families; nor in the sale of
women--as white as our own mothers and sisters--made pariahs by an
imperceptible African taint; nor in the scars and "defects," suggestive
of cruelty, which are sometimes seen.

All these features are bad enough, but many sales exhibit few of them,
and are conducted decorously. The great revolting characteristic lies
in the essence of the system itself--that claim of absolute ownership
in a human being with an immortal soul--of the right to buy and sell
him like a horse or a bale of cotton--which insults Democracy, belies
Civilization, and blasphemes Christianity.

In March, there was a heavy snow-storm in New York. Telegraphic
intelligence of it reached me in an apartment fragrant with orange
blossoms, where persons in linen clothing were discussing strawberries
and ice-cream. It made one shiver in that delicious, luxurious climate.
Blind old Milton was right. Where should he place the Garden of Eden
but in the tropics? How should he paint the mother of mankind but in

            ----"The flowing gold
    Of her loose tresses,"

as a blonde--the distinctive type of northern beauty?




CHAPTER V.

     There's villany abroad; this letter shall tell you
     more.--LOVE'S LABOR LOST.

[Sidenote: NORTHERNERS AND THE MINUTE MEN.]


Nearly every northerner whom I heard of in the South, as suffering
from the suspicion of Abolitionism, was really a pro-slavery man,
who had been opposing the Abolitionists all his life. I recollect an
amusing instance of a man, originally from a radical little town in
Massachusetts, who had been domiciled for several years in Mississippi.
While in New England, during the campaign after which Mr. Lincoln was
elected, he expressed pro-slavery sentiments so odious that he was with
difficulty protected from personal violence.

He was fully persuaded in his heart of hearts of the divinity of
Slavery; and, I doubt not, willing to fight for it. But his northern
birth made him an object of suspicion; and, immediately after the
outbreak of Secession, the inexorable Minute Men waited upon him,
inviting him, if he wished to save his life, to prepare to quit the
State in one hour. He was compelled to leave behind property to the
amount of twenty thousand dollars. His case was one of many.

Even from a Rebel standpoint, there was an unpleasant injustice about
this. Perhaps Democrats were almost the only northerners now in the
South--Republicans and Abolitionists staying away, in the exercise of
that discretion which is the better part of valor.

I well remember thinking, as I strolled down to the post-office one
evening, with a long letter in my pocket, which gave a minute and
bitterly truthful description of the slave auctions:

[Sidenote: A LIVELY DISCUSSION.]

"If the Minute Men were to pounce upon me now, and find this dispatch,
no amount of plausible talking could save me. There would be a vacancy
on _The Tribune_ staff within the next hour."

But when the message was safely deposited in the letter-box, I
experienced a sort of relief in the feeling that if the Rebels were
now to mob or imprison me, I should at least have the satisfaction of
knowing they were not mistaking souls; and that, if I were forced to
emulate Saint Paul in "labors more abundant, in stripes above measure,
in pains more frequent, in deaths oft," I should, in their code, most
richly have earned martyrdom.

  NEW ORLEANS, _March 17, 1861_.

Yesterday was a lively day in the Convention. Mr. Bienvenu threw a hot
shot into the Secession camp, in the shape of an ordinance demanding
a report of the official vote in each parish (county) by which the
delegates were elected. This would prove that the popular vote of the
State was against immediate Secession by a majority of several hundred.
The Convention would not permit such exposure of its defiance of the
popular will; and, by seventy-three to twenty-two, refused to consider
the question.

A warm discussion ensued, on the ordinance for submitting the
"Constitution of the Confederate States of America" to the popular
vote, for ratification or rejection. The ablest argument against it
was by Thomas J. Semmes, of New Orleans, formerly attorney-general of
Louisiana. He is a keen, wiry-looking, spectacled gentleman, who, in
a terse, incisive speech, made the best of a bad cause. The pith of
his argument was, that Republican Governments are not based upon pure
Democracy, but upon what Mr. Calhoun termed "concurring majorities."
The voters had delegated full powers to the Convention, which was
the "sublimated, concentrated quintessence of the sovereignty of the
people."

[Sidenote: BOLDNESS OF UNION MEMBERS.]

The speaker's lip curled with ineffable scorn as he rang the changes
upon the words "mere numerical majorities." Just now, this is a
favorite phrase with the Rebels throughout the South. Yet they all
admit that a majority, even of one vote, in Mississippi or Virginia,
justly controls the action of the State, and binds the minority. I wish
they would explain why a "mere numerical majority" is more oppressive
in a collection of States than in a single commonwealth.

Mr. Add Rozier, of New Orleans, in a bold speech, advocated submitting
the constitution to the people. On being asked by a member--"Did you
vote for the Secession ordinance several weeks ago?" he replied,
emphatically:--

"No; and, so help me God, I never will!"

A spontaneous outburst of applause from the lobby gave an index of the
stifled public sentiment. Mr. Rozier charged that the Secessionists
knew they were acting against the popular will, and dared not appeal to
the people. Until the Montgomery constitution should become the law of
the land, he utterly spurned it, spat upon it, trampled it under his
feet.

Mr. Christian Roselius, also of this city, advocated the ordinance
with equal boldness and fervor. He insisted that it was based on
the fundamental principle of Republicanism--that this Convention
was no Long Parliament to rule Louisiana without check or limit;
and he ridiculed with merciless sarcasm Mr. Semmes's theory of the
"sublimated, concentrated quintessence of the sovereignty of the
people."

The inexorable majority here cut off debate, calling the previous
question, and defeated the ordinance by a vote of seventy-three to
twenty-six.

This body is a good specimen of the Secession Oligarchy. It appointed,
from its own members, the Louisiana delegates to the Convention of all
the seceded States which framed the Montgomery Constitution, and now it
proposes to pass finally upon their action, leaving the people quite
out of sight.

[Sidenote: ANOTHER EXCITING DISCUSSION.]

  _March 21._

Another exciting day in the Convention. Subject: "The adoption of the
Montgomery Constitution." Five or six Union members fought it very
gallantly, and denounced unsparingly the plan of a Cotton Confederacy,
and the South Carolina policy of trampling upon the rights of the
people. The majority made little attempt to refute these arguments,
but some of the angry members glared fiercely upon Messrs. Roselius,
Rozier, and Bienvenu, who certainly displayed high moral and physical
courage. It is easy for you in the North to denounce Secession; but to
oppose it here, as those gentlemen did, requires more nerve than most
men possess.

The speech of Mr. Roselius was able and bitter. This was not a
constitution; it was merely a league--a treaty of alliance. It sprung
from an audacious, unmitigated oligarchy. It was a retrogression of
six hundred years in the science of government. We were told (here
the speaker's sarcasm of manner was ludicrous and inimitable, drawing
shouts of laughter even from the leading Secessionists) that this
body represented the "sublimated, concentrated quintessence of the
sovereignty of the people!"

He supposed that Cæsar, when he crossed the Rubicon--Augustus, when
he overthrew the Roman Republic--Cromwell, when he broke up the Long
Parliament--Bonaparte, when he suppressed the Council of Five Hundred
at the point of the bayonet--Louis Napoleon, when he violated his
oath to the republic, and ascended the imperial throne--were each
the "sublimated, concentrated quintessence of the sovereignty of the
people."

[Sidenote: SECESSION IN A NUTSHELL.]

Like the most odious tyrannies of history, it preserved the forms of
liberty; but its spirit was crushed out. The Convention from which
this creature crept into light had imitated the odious government of
Spain--the only one in the world taxing exports--by levying an export
duty upon cotton. He was surprised that the Montgomery legislators
failed to introduce a second Spanish feature--the Inquisition. One was
as detestable as the other.

Mr. Roselius concluded in a broken voice and with great feeling. His
heart grew sad at this overthrow of free institutions. The Secession
leaders had dug the grave of republican liberty, and we were called
upon to assist at the funeral! He would have no part in any such
unhallowed business.

Mr. Rozier, firm to the last, now offered an amendment:

     That in adopting the Montgomery Constitution, "the sovereign
     State of Louisiana _does expressly reserve the right to
     withdraw from the Union created by that Constitution,
     whenever, in the judgment of her citizens, her paramount
     interests may require it_."

This, of course, is Secession in a nutshell--the fundamental principle
of the whole movement. But the leaders refused to take their own
medicine, and tabled the proposition without discussion.

Mr. Bienvenu caused to be entered upon the journal his protest
against the action of the Convention, denouncing it as an ordinance
which "strips the people of their sovereignty, reduces them to a
state of vassalage, and places the destinies of the State, and of the
new Republic, at the mercy of an uncommissioned and irresponsible
oligarchy."

The final vote was then taken, and resulted in one hundred and one yeas
to seven nays; so "the Confederate Constitution" is declared ratified
by the State of Louisiana.

[Sidenote: DESPOTIC THEORIES OF THE REBELS.]

  _March 25._

The Revolutionists can not be charged with any lack of frankness. _The
Delta_, lamenting that the Virginia Convention will not take that State
out of the Union, predicts approvingly that "some Cromwellian influence
will yet disperse the Convention, and place the Old Dominion in the
Secession ranks." _De Bow's Review_, a leading Secession oracle, with
high pretensions to philosophy and political economy, says, in its
current issue:

     "All government begins with usurpation, and is continued by
     force. Nature puts the ruling elements uppermost, and the
     masses below, and subject to those elements. Less than this
     is not a government. The right to govern resides with a very
     small minority, and the duty to obey is inherent with the
     great mass of mankind."

To-day's _Crescent_ discusses the propriety of admitting northern
States into the Southern Confederacy, "when they find out, as they soon
will, that they can not get along by themselves." It is quite confident
that they will, ere long, beg admission--but predicts for them the fate
of the Peri, who

        ----"At the gate
    Of Eden stood, disconsolate,
    And wept to think her recreant race
    Should e'er have lost that glorious place."

They must not be permitted to enter. Upon this point it is inexorable.
It will permit no compunctious visitings of nature to shake its fell
purpose.

[Sidenote: THE NORTHWEST TO JOIN THEM.]

I know all this sounds vastly like a joke; but _The Crescent_ is
lugubriously in earnest. In sooth, these Rebels are gentlemen of
magnificent expectations. "Sir," remarked one of them, a judge, too,
while conversing with me this very day, "in seven years, the Southern
Confederacy will be the greatest and richest nation on earth. We
shall have Cuba, Central America, Mexico, and every thing west of the
Alleghanies. We are the natural market of the northwestern States, and
they are bound to join us!"

Think of that, will you! Imagine Father Giddings, Carl Schurz, and
Owen Lovejoy--the stanch Republican States of Wisconsin, Michigan, and
even young Kansas--whose infant steps to Freedom were over the burning
plowshare and through the martyr's blood--knocking for admission at the
door of a Slave Confederacy! Is not this the very ecstasy of madness?

  _March 26._

That virtuous and lamented body, the Louisiana Convention, after a very
turbulent session to-day, has adjourned until the 1st of November.

_The Crescent_ is exercised at the presence here of "correspondents
of northern papers, who indite _real falsehoods and lies_ as coolly
as they would eat a dinner at the Saint Charles." _The Crescent's_
rhetoric is a little limping; but its watchfulness and patriotism are
above all praise. The matter should certainly be attended to.

[Sidenote: THE SWAMP--A TRIP THROUGH LOUISIANA.]

We are still enjoying the delights of summer. The air is fragrant with
daffodils, violets, and roses, the buds of the sweet olive and the
blossoms of the orange. I have just returned from a ride through the
swamp--that great cesspool of this metropolis, which generates, with
the recurrence of summer, the pestilence that walketh in darkness.

It is full of sights strange to northern eyes. The stagnant pools
of black and green water harmonize with the tall, ghastly dead
trees, from whose branches depend long fleeces of gray Spanish moss,
with the effect of Gothic architecture. It is used in lounges and
mattresses; but when streaming from the branches, in its native state,
reminds one of the fantastic term which the Choctaw Indians apply to
leaves--"tree-hair."

The weird dead trunks, the moss and the water, contrast strikingly
with the rich, bright foliage of the deciduous trees just glowing
into summer life. The balmy air makes physical existence delicious,
and diffuses a luxurious languor through the system. Remove your hat,
close your eyes, and its strong current strokes your brow lovingly and
nestles against your cheek like a pillow.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the last week in March, I went by the New Orleans and Great
Northern Railway to Jackson, Mississippi, where the State Convention
was in session.

There is not in Louisiana a hill two hundred feet high. Along the
railroad, smooth, grassy everglades give place to gloomy swamps, dark
with the gigantic cypress and the varnished leaves of the laurel.

On the plantations, the white one-story cabins of the negroes stood
in long double rows, near the ample porched and balconied residences
of the planters. Young sugar-cane, resembling corn two or three weeks
old, was just peering through the ground. Noble live-oaks waved their
drooping boughs above the fields. The Pride-of-China tree was very
abundant about the dwellings. It produces a berry on which the birds
eagerly feed, though its juice is said to intoxicate them. As they do
not wear revolvers or bowie-knives, it is rather a harmless form of
dissipation.

[Sidenote: LIFE IN THE CITY OF JACKSON.]

Jackson was not a paradise for a man of my vocation. Containing four
or five thousand people, it was one of those delightful villages,
calling themselves cities, of which the sunny South by no means enjoys
a monopoly--where everybody knows everybody's business, and where, upon
the advent of a stranger, the entire community resolves itself into a
Committee of the Whole to learn who he is, where he came from, and what
he wants.

In a great metropolis, espionage was easily baffled; but in Jackson, an
unknown chiel, who looked capable of "takin' notes," to say nothing of
"prentin' 'em," was subject to constant and uncomfortable scrutiny.

Contrasted with the bustle of New Orleans, existence seemed an unbroken
seventh-day rest, though a dire certainty possessed me, that were my
errand suspected, e'en Sunday would shine no Sabbath day for me.

Some months later, a refugee, who had resided there, pictured vividly
to me the indignant and bewildered astonishment of the Jacksonians,
when, through a stray copy of _The Tribune_, they learned that one of
its correspondents had not only walked with them, talked with them, and
bought with them, but, less scrupulous than Shylock, had been ready to
eat with them, drink with them, and pray with them.

At this time the Charleston papers and some northern journals declared
_The Tribune's_ southern correspondence fictitious, and manufactured at
the home office. To remove that impression touching my own letters, I
wrote, on certain days, the minutest records of the Convention, and of
affairs in Jackson, which never found their way into the local prints.

Mournfully metropolitan was Jackson in one respect--the price of
board at its leading hotel. The accommodations were execrable; but I
suppose we were charged for the unusual luxury of an unctuous Teutonic
landlord, who bore the formidable patronymic of H-i-l-z-h-e-i-m-e-r!

    "----Ph[oe]bus, what a name,
    To fill the speaking-trump of future fame!"

[Sidenote: REPORTING THE MISSISSIPPI CONVENTION.]

The Convention was discussing the submission of the Montgomery
Constitution to the people. The chief clerk, with whom I formed a
chance acquaintance, kindly invited me to a chair beside his desk, and
as I sat facing the members, explained to me their capacity, views,
and antecedents. Whether an undue inquisitiveness seemed to him the
distinguishing quality of the New Mexican mind, he did not declare; but
once he asked me abruptly if I was connected with the press? With the
least possible delay, I disabused his mind of that peculiarly unjust
misapprehension.

After a long discussion, the Convention, by a vote of fifty-three
to thirty-two, refused to submit the Constitution to the people, and
ratified it in the name of Mississippi. Seven Union members could not
be induced to follow the usual practice of making the action unanimous,
but to the last steadfastly refused their adherence.




CHAPTER VI.

     ----My business in this State Made me a looker-on here in
     Vienna.--MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

     I whipped me behind the arras, and there heard it agreed
     upon.--MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

  JACKSON, MISS., _April 1, 1861_.

[Sidenote: THE MISSISSIPPI STATE HOUSE.]


The Mississippi State House, upon a shaded square in front of my
window, is a faded, sober edifice, of the style in vogue fifty years
ago, with the representative hall at one end, the senate chamber at the
other, an Ionic portico in front, and an immense dome upon the top.
Above this is a miniature dome, like an infinitesimal parasol upon a
gigantic umbrella. The whole is crowned by a small gilded pinnacle,
which has relapsed from its original perpendicular to an angle of
forty-five degrees, and looks like a little jockey-cap, worn jantily
upon the head of a plethoric quaker, to whom it imparts a rowdyish air,
at variance with his general gravity.

The first story is of cracked free-stone, the front and end walls of
stucco, and the rear of brick. As you enter the vestibule two musty
cannon stand gaping at you, and upon one of them you may see, almost
any day, a little "darkey" sound asleep. Whether he guards the gun, or
the gun guards him, opens a wide field for conjecture.

Ascending a spiral stairway, and passing along the balustrade which
surrounds the open space under the dome, you turn to the left, through
a narrow passage into the representative hall. Here is the Mississippi
Convention.

[Sidenote: VIEW OF THE REPRESENTATIVE HALL.]

At the north end of the apartment sits the president, upon a high
platform occupying a recess in the wall, with two Ionic columns upon
each side of him. Before him is a little, old-fashioned mahogany
pulpit, concealing all but his head and shoulders from the vulgar gaze.
In front of this, and three or four feet lower, at a long wooden desk,
sit two clerks, one smoking a cigar.

Before them, and still lower, at a shorter desk, an unhappy Celtic
reporter, with dark shaggy hair and eyebrows, is taking down the speech
of the honorable member from something or other county. In front of his
desk, standing rheumatically upon the floor, is a little table, which
looks as if called into existence by a drunken carpenter on a dark
night, from the relics of a superannuated dry-goods box.

Upon one of the columns at the president's right, hangs a faded
portrait of George Poindexter, once a senator from this State. Further
to the right is an open fire-place, upon whose mantel stand a framed
copy of the Declaration of Independence, now sadly faded and blurred,
a lithographic view of the Medical College of Louisiana, and a pitcher
and glass. On the hearth is a pair of ancient andirons, upon which a
genial wood fire is burning.

[Sidenote: GENERAL AIR OF DILAPIDATION.]

The hypocritical plastering which coated the fireplace has peeled
off, leaving bare the honest, worn faces of the original bricks. Some
peculiar non-adhesive influence must affect plastering in Jackson. In
whole rooms of the hotel it has seceded from the lath. Judge Gholson
says that once, in the old State House, a few hundred yards distant,
when Seargeant S. Prentiss was making a speech, he saw "an acre or
two" of the plastering fall upon his head, and quite overwhelm him for
the time. The Judge is what Count Fosco would call the Man of Brains;
he is deemed the ablest member of the Convention. He was a colleague
in Congress of the lamented Prentiss, whom he pronounces the most
brilliant orator that ever addressed a Mississippi audience.

On the left of the president is another fire-place, also with a sadly
blurred copy of the great Declaration standing upon its mantel. The
members' desks, in rows like the curved line of the letter D, are
of plain wood, painted black. Their chairs are great, square, faded
mahogany frames, stuffed and covered with haircloth. As you stand
beside the clerk's desk, facing them, you see behind the farthest row a
semi-circle of ten pillars, and beyond them a narrow, crescent shaped
lobby. Half-way up the pillars is a little gallery, inhabited just now
by two ladies in faded mourning.

In the middle of the hall, a tarnished brass chandelier, with pendants
of glass, is suspended from the ceiling by a rod festooned with
cobwebs. This medieval relic is purely ornamental, for the room is
lighted with gas. The walls are high, pierced with small windows, whose
faded blue curtains, flowered and bordered with white, are suspended
from a triple bar of gilded Indian arrows.

Chairs of cane, rush, wood and leather seats--chairs with backs, and
chairs without backs, are scattered through the hall and lobby, in
pleasing illustration of that variety which is the spice of life. The
walls are faded, cracked, and dingy, pervaded by the general air of
mustiness, and going to "the demnition bow-wows" prevalent about the
building.

The members are in all sorts of social democratic positions. In the
open spaces about the clerk's desk and fire-places, some sit with
chairs tilted against the wall, some upon stools, and three slowly
vibrate to and fro in pre-Raphaelite rocking-chairs. These portions
of the hall present quite the appearance of a Kentucky bar-room on a
winter evening.

[Sidenote: A FREE AND EASY CONVENTION.]

Two or three members are eating apples, three or four smoking cigars,
and a dozen inspect their feet, resting upon the desks before them.
Contemplating the spectacle yesterday, I found myself involuntarily
repeating the couplet of an old temperance ditty:

    "The rumseller sat by his bar-room fire,
    With his feet as high as his head, and higher,"

and a moment after I was strongly tempted to give the prolonged,
stentorian shout of "B-O-O-T-S!" familiar to ears theatrical. Pardon
the irreverence, O decorous _Tribune_! for there is such a woful dearth
of amusement in this solemn, funereal city, that one waxes desperate.
To complete my inventory, many members are reading this morning's
_Mississippian_, or _The New Orleans Picayune_ or _Delta_, and the rest
listen to the one who is addressing the Chair.

They impress you by their pastoral aspect--the absence of urban
costumes and postures. Their general bucolic appearance would assure
you, if you did not know it before, that there are not many large
cities in the State of Mississippi. Your next impression is one of
wonder at their immense size and stature. Of them the future historian
may well say: "There were giants in those days."

All around you are broad-shouldered, herculean-framed,
well-proportioned men, who look as if a laugh from them would bring
this crazy old capitol down about their ears, and a sneeze, shake
the great globe itself. The largest of these Mississippi Anakim is a
gigantic planter, clothed throughout in blue homespun.

[Illustration: THE MISSISSIPPI CONVENTION VIEWED BY A TRIBUNE
CORRESPONDENT.]

You might select a dozen out of the ninety-nine delegates, each of whom
could personate the Original Scotch Giant in a traveling exhibition.
They have large, fine heads, and a profusion of straight brown hair,
though here and there is a crown smooth, bald, and shining. Taken for
all in all, they are fine specimens of physical development, with
frank, genial, jovial faces.

[Sidenote: SOUTHERN ORATORS--ANGLO-AFRICAN DIALECT.]

The speaking is generally good, and commands respectful attention.
There is little _badinage_ or satire, a good deal of directness and
coming right to the point, qualified by the strong southern proclivity
for adjectives. The pungent French proverb, that the adjective is the
most deadly enemy of the substantive, has never journeyed south of
Mason & Dixon's line.

The members, like all deliberative bodies in this latitude, are mutual
admirationists. Every speaker has the most profound respect for the
honest motives, the pure patriotism, the transcendent abilities of the
honorable gentleman upon the other side. It excites his regret and
self-distrust to differ from such an array of learning and eloquence;
and nothing could impel him to but a sense of imperious duty.

He speaks fluently, and with grammatical correctness, but in the
Anglo-African dialect. His violent denunciations of the Black
Republicans are as nothing to the gross indignities which he offers
to the letter _r_. His "_mo's_," "_befo's_," and "_hea's_" convey
reminiscences of the negress who nursed him in infancy, and the little
"pickaninnies" with whom he played in boyhood.

The custom of stump-speaking, universal through the South and West,
is a capital factory for converting the raw material into orators. Of
course there are strong exceptions. This very morning we had an address
from one member--Mr. D. B. Moore, of Tuppah county--which is worthy
of more particular notice. I wish I could give you a literal report.
Pickwick would be solemn in comparison.

[Sidenote: A SPEECH WORTH PRESERVATION.]

Mr. Moore conceives himself an orator, as Brutus was; but in attempting
to cover the whole subject (the Montgomery Constitution), he spread
himself out "very thin." I will "back" him in a given time to quote
more Scripture, incorrectly, irreverently, and irrelevantly, than any
other man on the North American continent.

His "like we" was peculiarly refreshing, and his history and classics
had a strong flavor of originality. He quoted Patrick Henry, "_Let_
Cæsar have his Brutus;" piled "Pelion upon _Pelion_!" and made Sampson
kill Goliah!! He thought submitting the Secession ordinance to the
people in Texas had produced an excellent effect. Previous to it, the
_New York Tribune_ said: "Secession is but a scheme of demagogues--a
move on the political chess-board--the people oppose it." But afterward
it began to ask: "How is this? What does it all mean? The people seem
to have a hand in it, and to be in earnest, too." The tone of Mr.
Seward also changed radically, he observed, after that election.

Mr. Moore spoke an hour and a half, and the other members, though
listening courteously, betrayed a lurking suspicion that he was a
bore. In person he resembles Henry S. Lane, the zealous United States
Senator-elect from Indiana. The sergeant-at-arms, who, in a gray coat,
and without a neckerchief, walks to and fro, with hands in his pockets,
looks like the unlovely James H. Lane, Senator-expectant from Kansas.

Shall I give you a little familiar conversation of the members, as
they smoke their post-prandial cigars in the hall, waiting for the
Convention to be called to order? Every mother's son of them has a
title.

[Sidenote: FAMILIAR CONVERSATION OF MEMBERS.]

JUDGE.--Toombs is a great blusterer. When speaking, he seems determined
to force, to drive you into agreeing with him. Howell Cobb is another
blusterer, much like him, but immensely fond of good dinners. Aleck
Stephens is very different. When _he_ speaks, you feel that he desires
to carry you with him only by the power of reason and argument.

COLONEL.--I knew him when he used to be a mail-carrier in Georgia. He
was a poor orphan boy, but a charitable society of ladies educated him.
He is a very small man, with a hand no wider than my three fingers,
and as transparent as any lady's who has been sick for a year. He
always looked like an invalid. If you were to cut his head off, I don't
believe he would bleed a pint.[4]

[4] He never weighed over ninety-six pounds, and, to see his attenuated
figure bent over his desk, the shoulders contracted, and the shape of
his slender limbs visible through his garments, a stranger would select
him as the John Randolph of our time. He has the appearance of having
undergone great bodily anguish.--_Newspaper Biography of Alexander H.
Stephens._

MAJOR.--Do you know what frightened Abe Lincoln out of Baltimore?
Somebody told him that Aleck Stephens was lying in wait for him on a
street corner, with a six-pounder strapped to his back. When he heard
that, he _sloped_. [Loud laughter from the group.]

JUDGE.--Well, Lincoln has been abused immensely about his flight
through Baltimore; but I believe the man acted from good motives. He
knew that his partisans there meant to make a demonstration when he
arrived, and that they were very obnoxious to the people; he had good
reason to believe that it would produce trouble, and perhaps bloodshed;
so he went through, secretly, to avoid it.

[Sidenote: NEW ORLEANS AGAIN--REVIEWING TROOPS.]

  NEW ORLEANS, _April 5, 1861_.

The Second Louisiana Zouaves were reviewed on Lafayette Square last
evening, before leaving for Pensacola. They are boyish-looking, and
handle their muskets as if a little afraid of them, but seem to be
the raw material of good soldiers. They are luridly grotesque, in
closely-fitting, blue-tasseled, red fez caps, blue flannel jackets and
frocks, faced with red, baggy red breeches, like galvanized corn-sacks,
and gutta-percha greaves about their ankles.

  _April 6._

All the Secession leaders except Senator Benjamin declare there will
be no war. He asserts that war is sure to come; and in a recent speech
characterized it as "by no means an unmixed evil."

The Fire-Eaters are intensely bitter upon the border States for
refusing to plunge into the whirlpool of Secession. They are bent
on persuading or driving all the slave States into their ranks.
Otherwise they fear--indeed, predict frankly--that the border will
gradually become Abolitionized, and extend free territory to the Gulf
itself. They are quite willing to devote Kentucky and Virginia to the
devastation of civil war, or the embarrassment of a contiguous hostile
republic, which would not return their run-away negroes.[5] But they
will move heaven and earth to save themselves from any such possible
contingency.

[5] By the last census report, the whole number of escaping fugitives
in the United States, in the year 1860, was eight hundred and three,
being a trifle over _one-fiftieth of one per cent._ upon the whole
number of slaves. Of these, it is probable that the greater part
fled to places of refuge in the South, the Dismal Swamp, everglades
of Florida, southern mountain regions, and the northern States of
Mexico.--_Everett's New York Oration, July 4, 1861._

  _April 8._

The recent warlike movements of the National Government cause
excitement and surprise. At last, the people begin to suspect that they
have invoked grim-visaged war. The newspapers descant upon the injury
to commerce and industry. Why did they not think of all this before?

[Sidenote: THREE OBNOXIOUS NORTHERNERS.]

It is vouchsafed to few mortals to learn, before death, exactly what
their associates think of them; but your correspondent is among
the favored few. The other evening, I was sitting with a Secession
acquaintance, in the great exchange of the St. Charles Hotel, when
conversation turned upon the southern habit of lynching people who
do not happen to agree with the majority. He presumed enough upon my
ignorance to insist that any moderate, gentlemanly Republican might
come here with impunity.

"But," he added, "there are three men whose safety I would not
guarantee."

"Who are they?"

"Governor Dennison, of Ohio, is one. Since he refused to return that
fugitive slave to Kentucky, he would hardly be permitted to stay in New
Orleans; at all events, I should oppose it. Then there is Andy Johnson.
He ought to be shot, or hanged, wherever found. But for him, Kentucky
and Tennessee would have been with us long ago. He could not remain
here unharmed for a single hour."

"And the third?"

"Some infernal scoundrel, who is writing abusive letters about us to
_The New York Tribune_."

"Is it possible?"

"Yes, sir, and he has been at it for more than a month."

"Can't you find him out?"

"Some think it is a Kentuckian, who pretends to be engaged in
cattle-trading, but only makes that a subterfuge. I suspect, however,
that it is an editor of _The Picayune_, which is a Yankee concern
through and through. If he is caught, I don't think he will write many
more letters."

I ventured a few words in palliation of the Governor and the Senator,
but quite agreed that this audacious scribbler ought to be suppressed.

[Sidenote: ATTACK ON SUMTER--REBEL BOASTING.]

  _April 12._

Telegraphic intelligence to-day of the attack upon Fort Sumter causes
intense excitement. _The Delta_ office is besieged by a crowd hungry
for news. The universal expectation of the easy capture of the fort is
not stronger than the belief that it will be followed by an immediate
and successful movement against the city of Washington. The politicians
and newspapers have persuaded the masses that the Yankees (a phrase
which they no longer apply distinctively to New Englanders, but to
every person born in the North) mean to subjugate them, but are arrant
cowards, who may easily be frightened away. Leading men seldom express
this opinion; yet _The Crescent_, giving the report that eight thousand
Massachusetts troops have been called into the field, adds, that if
they would come down to Pensacola, eighteen hundred Confederates would
easily "whip them out."

  "God help them if the tempest swings
  The pine against the palm!"




CHAPTER VII.

     ----Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps,
     which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my
     whereabout.--MACBETH.

[Sidenote: ABOLITION TENDENCIES OF KENTUCKIANS.]

There were two of my acquaintances (one very prominent in the Secession
movement) with whom, while they had no suspicion of my real business,
I could converse with a little frankness. One of them desired war, on
the ground that it would unite the inhabitants of all the border slave
States, and overpower the Union sentiment there.

"But," I asked, "will not war also unite the people of the North?"

"I think not. We have a great many earnest and bold friends there."

"True; but do you suppose they could stand for a single week against
the popular feeling which war would arouse?"

"Perhaps you are right," he replied, thoughtfully, "but it never
occurred to me before."

My other friend also talked with great frankness:

"We can get along very well with the New England Yankees who are
permanently settled here. They make the strongest Secessionists we
have; but the Kentuckians give us a great deal of trouble. They were
born and raised where Slavery is unprofitable. They have strong
proclivities toward Abolitionism. The constituents of Rozier and
Roselius, who fought us so persistently in the Convention, are nearly
all Kentuckians."

[Sidenote: TWO CHIEF CAUSES OF SECESSION.]

"Slavery is our leading interest. Right or wrong, we have it and we
must have it. Cotton, rice, and sugar cannot be raised without it.
Being a necessity, we do not mean to allow its discussion. Every thing
which clashes with it, or tends to weaken it, must go under. Our large
German population is hostile to it. About all these Dutchmen would be
not only Unionists, but Black Republicans, if they dared."

Perhaps it is the invariable law of revolutions that, even while the
revolters are in a numerical minority, they are able to carry the
majority with them. It is certain that, before Sumter was fired on,
a majority in every State, except South Carolina, was opposed to
Secession. The constant predictions of the Rebel leaders that there
would be no war, and the assertions of prominent New York journals,
that any attempt at coercion on the part of the Government would be met
with armed and bloody resistance in every northern city and State, were
the two chief causes of the apparent unanimity of the South.

The masses had a vague but very earnest belief that the North, in some
incomprehensible manner, had done them deadly wrong. Cassio-like, they
remembered "a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but
nothing wherefore." The leaders were sometimes more specific.

"The South," said a pungent writer, "has endured a great many wrongs;
but the most intolerable of all the grievances ever thrust upon her was
the Census Report of 1860!" There was a great deal of truth in this
remark. One day I asked my New Orleans friend:

"Why have you raised all this tempest about Mr. Lincoln's election?"

[Sidenote: FUNDAMENTAL GRIEVANCE OF THE REBELS.]

"Don't deceive yourself," he answered. "Mr. Lincoln's election had
nothing to do with it, beyond enabling us to rouse our people. Had
Douglas been chosen, we should have broken up the Union just as
quickly. Had Bell triumphed, it would have been all the same. Even if
Breckinridge had been elected, we would have seceded before the close
of his term. There is an essential incompatibility between the two
sections. _The South stands still, while the North has grown rich and
powerful, and expanded from ocean to ocean._"

This was the fundamental grievance. Very liberal in his general
views, he had not apparently the faintest suspicion that Slavery was
responsible for the decadence of the South, or that Freedom impelled
the gigantic strides of the North.

Yet his theory of the Rebellion was doubtless correct. It arose from
no man, or party, or political event, but from the inherent quarrel
between two adverse systems, which the fullness of time had ripened
into open warfare. His "essential incompatibility" was only another
name for Mr. Seward's "Irrepressible Conflict" between two principles.
They have since recorded, in letters of blood, not merely their
incompatibility, but their absolute, aggressive, eternal antagonism.

During the second week in April, I began to find myself the object of
unpleasant, not to say impertinent, curiosity. So many questions were
asked, so many pointed and significant remarks made in my presence, as
to render it certain that I was regarded with peculiar suspicion.

At first I was at a loss to surmise its origin. But one day I
encountered an old acquaintance in the form of a son of Abraham,
who had frequently heard me, in public addresses in Kansas, utter
sentiments not absolutely pro-slavery; who knew that I once held a
modest commission in the Free State army, and that I was a whilom
correspondent of _The Tribune_.

[Sidenote: SUDDEN DEPARTURE FROM NEW ORLEANS.]

He was by no means an Israelite without guile, for he had been chased
out of the Pike's Peak region during the previous summer, for robbing
one of my friends who had nursed him in sickness. Concluding that he
might play the informer, I made an engagement with him for the next
afternoon, and, before the time arrived, shook from my feet the dust of
New Orleans. Designing to make a _détour_ to Fort Pickens on my way, I
procured a ticket for Washington. The sea was the safer route, but I
was curious to take a final look at the interior.

On Friday evening, April 12th, I left the Crescent City. In five
minutes our train plunged into the great swamp which environs the
commercial metropolis of the Southwest. Deep, broad ditches are cut for
draining, and you sometimes see an alligator, five or six feet long,
and as large as the body of a man, lying lazily upon the edge of the
green water.

The marshy ground is mottled with gorgeous flowers, and the palmetto
is very abundant. It does not here attain to the dignity of a tree,
seldom growing more than four feet high. Its flag, sword-shaped leaves
branch out in flat semicircular clusters, resembling the fan palm. Its
tough bulbous root was formerly cut into fine fragments by the Indians,
then bruised to a pulp and thrown into the lake. It produced temporary
blindness among the fishes, which brought them to the surface, where
they were easily caught by hand.

With rare fitness stands the palmetto as the device of South Carolina.
Indeed, it is an excellent emblem of Slavery itself; for, neither
beautiful, edible, nor useful, it blinds the short-sighted fish coming
under its influence.

To them it is

     ----"The insane root, Which takes the reason prisoner."

A ride of four miles brought us to Lake Pontchartrain, stretching away
in the fading sunlight. Over the broad expanse of swelling water,
delicate, foamy white caps were cresting the waves.

[Sidenote: THE WAR SPIRIT IN MOBILE.]

We were transferred to the propeller Alabama, and, when I woke the next
morning, were lying at Mobile. With a population of thirty thousand,
the city contains many pleasant residences, embowered in shade-trees,
and surrounded by generous grounds. It is rendered attractive by its
tall pines, live oak, and Pride-of-China trees. The last were now
decked in a profusion of bluish-white blossoms.

The war spirit ran high. Hand-bills, headed "Soldiers wanted," and
"Ho! for volunteers," met the eye at every corner; uniforms and arms
abounded, and the voice of the bugle was heard in the streets. All
northern vessels were clearing on account of the impending crisis,
though some were not more than half loaded.

Mobile was very radical. One of the daily papers urged the imposition
of a tax of one dollar per copy upon every northern newspaper or
magazine brought into the Confederacy!

The leading hotel was crowded with guests, including many soldiers _en
route_ for Bragg's army. It was my own design to leave for Pensacola
that evening, and look at the possible scene of early hostilities.
A Secession friend in New Orleans had given me a personal letter to
General Bragg, introducing me as a gentleman of leisure, who would be
glad to make a few sketches of proper objects of interest about his
camps, for one of the New York illustrated papers. It added that he had
known me all his life, and vouched completely for my "soundness."

[Sidenote: SUSPICIONS AROUSED--AN AWKWARD ENCOUNTER.]

But a little incident changed my determination. Among my
fellow-passengers from New Orleans were three young officers of the
Confederate army, also bound for Fort Pickens. While on the steamer, I
did not observe that I was an object of their special attention; but
just after breakfast this morning, as I was going up to my room, in the
fourth story of the Battle House, I encountered them also ascending the
broad stairs. The moment they saw me, they dropped the subject upon
which they were conversing, and one, with significant glances, burst
into a most violent invective against _The Tribune_, denouncing it as
the vilest journal in America, except Parson Brownlow's _Knoxville
Whig!_ pronouncing every man connected with it a thief and scoundrel,
and asserting that if any of its correspondents could be caught here,
they would be hung upon the nearest tree.

This philippic was so evidently inspired by my presence, and the eyes
of the whole group glared with a speculation so unpleasant, that I felt
myself an unhappy Romeo, "too early seen unknown and known too late." I
had learned by experience that the best protection for a suspected man
was to go everywhere, as if he had a right to go; to brave scrutiny; to
return stare for stare and question for question.

So, during this tirade, which lasted while, side by side, we leisurely
climbed two staircases, I strove to maintain an exterior of serene and
wooden unconsciousness. When the speaker had exhausted his vocabulary
of hard words, I drew a fresh cigar from my pocket, and said to him,
"Please to give me a light, sir." With a puzzled air he took his cigar
from his mouth, knocked off the ashes with his forefinger, handed it to
me, and stood regarding me a little curiously, while, looking him full
in the face, I slowly ignited my own Havana, returned his, and thanked
him.

They turned away apparently convinced that their zeal had outrun their
discretion. The look of blank disappointment and perplexity upon the
faces of those young officers as they disappeared in the passage will
be, to me, a joy forever.

Pondering in my room upon fresh intelligence of the arrest of
suspicious persons in General Bragg's camp, and upon this little
experience, I changed my plan. As Toodles, in the farce, thinks he
"won't smoke," so I decided not to go to Pensacola; but ordered a
carriage, and drove down to the mail-boat St. Charles, which was to
leave for Montgomery that evening.

I fully expected during the afternoon to entertain a vigilance
committee, the police, or some military officials who would invite
me to look at Secession through prison bars. It was not an inviting
prospect; yet there was nothing to do but to wait.

The weather was dreamy and delicious. My state-room looked out upon the
shining river, and the rich olive green of the grassy shore. Upon the
dull, opaque water of a broad bayou beyond, little snowy sails flashed,
and a steamer, with tall black chimneys, left a white, foamy track in
the waters, and long clouds of brown smoke against the sky.

[Sidenote: "MASS'R, FORT SUMTER'S GONE UP!"]

At three o'clock in the afternoon, while I was lying in my state-room,
looking out drowsily upon this picture, a cabin-boy presented his sooty
face at the door and said, "Mass'r, Fort Sumter's gone up!"

[Sidenote: BELLS RINGING AND CANNONS BOOMING.]

The intelligence had just arrived by telegraph. The first battle of
the Great War was over, and seventy-two men, after a bombardment of
two days, were captured by twelve thousand! In a moment church and
steamboat bells rang out their notes of triumph, and cannon belched
forth their deep-mouthed exultation. A public meeting was extemporized
in the street, and enthusiastic speeches were made. Mindful of my
morning experience, I did not leave the boat, but tried to read the
momentous Future. I thought I could see, in its early pages, the
death-warrant of Slavery; but all else was inscrutable.

There was a steam calliope attached to the "St. Charles." That evening,
when the last bell had rung, and the last cable was taken in, she left
the Mobile landing, and plowed slowly up the river to the shrill notes
of "Dixie's Land."[6]

[6] Dixie's Land is a synonym for heaven. It appears that there was
once a good planter named Dixie, who died at some period unknown, to
the intense grief of his animated property. They found expression for
their sorrow in song, and consoled themselves by clamoring in verse
for their removal to the land to which Dixie had departed, and where
probably the renewed spirit would be greatly surprised to find himself
in their company. Whether they were ill treated after he died, and thus
had reason to deplore his removal, or merely desired heaven in the
abstract, nothing known enables me to assert. But Dixie's Land is now
generally taken to be the Seceded States, where Mr. Dixie certainly is
not at the present writing.--_Russell's Diary in America._

The Alabama is the "most monotonously beautiful of rivers." In the
evening twilight, its sinuous sweep afforded a fine view of both
shores, timbered down to the water's edge. Dense foliage, decked in the
blended and intermingled hues of summer, gave them the appearance of
two soft, smooth cushions of variegated velvet.

After dark, we met the descending mail-boat. Our calliope saluted her
with lively music, and the passengers assembled on the guards, greeting
each other with the usual huzzas and waving of hats and handkerchiefs.

On Sunday morning, the inevitable calliope awoke us--this time,
with sacred music. At many river landings there was only a single
well-shaded farm-house on the bank, with ladies sitting upon the
piazzas, and white and negro children playing under the magnificent
live-oaks. At others, a solitary warehouse stood upon the high,
perpendicular bluff, with an inclined-plane railway for the conveyance
of freight to the water. At some points the country was open, and a
great cotton-field extended to the river-bank, with a weather-beaten
cotton-press in the midst of it, like an old northern cider-mill.

[Sidenote: A TERPSICHOREAN YOUNG NEGRO.]

Planters, returning from New Orleans and Mobile, were met at the
landings by their negroes. The slaves appeared glad to see them, and
were greeted with hearty hand-shakings. At one landing the calliope
struck up a lively strain, and a young darkey on the bank, with the
Terpsichorean proclivity of his race, began to dance as if for dear
life, throwing his arms and legs in ludicrous and extravagant fashion.
His master attempted to cuff his ears, but the little fellow ducked his
head and danced away, to the great merriment of the lookers-on. The
negro nurses on the boat fondled and kissed the little white children
in their charge most ardently.

I saw no instance of unkind treatment to slaves; but a young planter on
board mentioned to me, as a noteworthy circumstance, that he had not
permitted a negro to be struck upon his plantation for a year.

A Texian on board the boat was very bitter against Governor Houston,
and, with the usual extreme language of the Rebels, declared he would
be hanged if he persisted in opposing the Disunionists. An old citizen
of Louisiana, too, became so indignant at me for remarking I had always
supposed Douglas to sympathize with the South, that I made haste to
qualify the assertion.

[Sidenote: LEADING CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTHERNERS.]

Our passengers were excellent specimens of the better class of
southerners. Aside from his negrophobia, the southern _gentleman_
is an agreeable companion. He is genial, frank, cordial, profoundly
deferential to women, and carries his heart in his hand. His social
qualities are his weak point. To a northerner, passing through his
country during these disjointed times, I would have said:

"Your best protection is to be 'hail fellow, well met;' spend money
freely, tell good stories, be liberal of your private brandy-flask,
and your after-dinner cigars. If you do this, and your manners are,
in his thinking, gentlemanly, he can by no means imagine you a Yankee
in the offensive sense. He pictures all Yankees as puritanic, rigid,
fanatical, and talking through the nose. 'What the world wants,' says
George William Curtis, 'is not honesty, but acquiescence.' That is
profoundly true here. Acquiesce gracefully, not intemperately, in the
prevailing sentiment. Don't hail from the State of Massachusetts; don't
'guess,' or use other northern provincialisms; don't make yourself
conspicuous--and, if you know human nature, you may pass without
serious trouble."

Our southerner has little humanity--he feels little sympathy for a man,
_as_ a man--as a mere human being--but he has abundant warmth toward
his own social class. Not a very high specimen himself, he yet lays
infinite stress upon being "a gentleman." If you have the misfortune to
be poor, and without credentials, but possess the manners of education
and good society, he will give you kinder reception than you are likely
to obtain in the bustling, restless, crowded North.

[Sidenote: SOUTHERN PROVINCIALISMS.]

He affects long hair, dresses in unqualified black, and wears kid
gloves continually. He pronounces iron "_i_-ron" (two syllables), and
barrel "barl." He calls car "kyah" (one syllable), cigar "_se_-ghah,"
and negro "_nig_-ro"--never negro, and very rarely "nigger." The
latter, by the way, was a pet word with Senator Douglas. Once, while
his star was in the ascendant, some one asked Mr. Seward:

"Will Judge Douglas ever be President?"

"No, sir," replied the New York senator. "No man will ever be President
of the United States who spells negro with two g's!"

These southern provincialisms are sometimes a little startling.
Conversing with a young man in the senior class of a Mississippi
college, I remarked that men were seldom found in any circle who had
not some sympathy or affinity with it, to stimulate them to seek it.
"Yes," he replied, "something to _aig them on_!"

The forests along the river were beautiful with the brilliant green
live-oak festooned with mistletoe, the dark pine, the dense cane, the
spring glory of the cottonwood and maple, the drooping delicate leaves
of the willow, the white-stemmed sycamore with its creamy foliage, and
the great snowy blossoms of the dog-wood.

With a calliope, familiarity breeds contempt. Ours became an
intolerable nuisance, and induced frequent discussions about bribing
the player to stop it. He was apparently animated by the spirit of the
Parisian who set a hand-organ to running by clockwork in his room,
locked the apartment, went to the country for a month, and, when he
returned, found that two obnoxious neighbors, whom he wished to drive
away, had blown out their brains in utter despair.

While I was pleasantly engaged in a whist-party in the cabin, this
fragment of a conversation between two bystanders reached my ears:

"A spy?"

"Yes, a spy from the North, looking about to obtain information for old
Lincoln; and they arrested one yesterday, too."

[Sidenote: CONFEDERATE CAPITOL AT MONTGOMERY.]

This was a pleasing theme of reflection for the timid and contemplative
mind. A passenger explained the matter, by informing me that, at one of
the landings where we stopped, telegraphic intelligence was received
of the arrest of two spies at Montgomery. The popular impression
seemed to be, that about one person in ten was engaged in that
not-very-fascinating avocation!

In Indian dialect, Alabama signifies, "Here we rest;" but, for me, it
had an exactly opposite meaning. We awoke one morning to find our boat
lying at Montgomery. Reaching the hotel too early for breakfast, I
strolled with a traveler from Philadelphia, a pretended Secessionist,
to the State House, which was at present also the Capitol of the
Confederacy.

Standing, like the Capitol in Washington, at the head of a broad
thoroughfare, it overlooks a pleasant city of eight thousand people.
The building is of stucco, and bears that melancholy suggestion of
better days which seems inseparable from the Peculiar Institution.

The senate chamber is a small, dingy apartment, on whose dirty walls
hang portraits of Clay, Calhoun, and two or three Alabama politicians.
The desks and chairs were covered with antiquated public documents, and
the other _débris_ of legislative halls. While returning to the hotel,
we heard from a street loafer a terse description of some model slave:

"He is just the best nigger in this town. He knows enough to work well,
and he knows nothing else."

We were also informed that the Virginia Convention had passed a
Secession ordinance.

"This is capital news; is it not?" said my Philadelphia companion, with
well-assumed glee.

For several days, in spite of his violent assertions, I had doubted his
sincerity. This was the first time he broached the subject when no one
else was present. I looked steadily in his eye, and inquired:

"Do you think so?"

His half-quizzical expression was a satisfactory answer, even without
the reply:

"I want to get home to Philadelphia without being detained on the way."

[Sidenote: "COPPERAS BREECHES" VS. "BLACK BREECHES."]

In the hotel office, two well-dressed southerners were discussing the
omnipresent topic. One of them said:

"We shall have no war."

"Yes, we shall," replied the other. "The Yankees are going to fight for
a while; but it will make no difference to us. We have got copperas
breeches enough to carry this war through. None of the black breeches
will have to shoulder muskets!"

The reader should understand that the clothing of the working whites
was colored with a dye in which copperas was the chief ingredient;
while, of course, the upper, slaveholding classes, wore "customary
suits of solemn black." This was a very pregnant sentence, conveying in
a few words the belief of those Rebels who instigated and impelled the
war.

[Sidenote: A CORRESPONDENT IN DURANCE VILE.]

The morning newspapers, at our breakfast-table, detailed two
interesting facts. First, that "Jasper,"[7] the Charleston
correspondent of _The New York Times_, had been seized and imprisoned
in the Palmetto City. Second, that Gen. Bragg had arrested in his
camp, and sent under guard to Montgomery, "as a prisoner of war," the
correspondent of _The Pensacola_ (Fla.) _Observer_. This journalist was
an enthusiastic Secessionist, but had been guilty of some indiscretion
in publishing facts touching the strength and designs of the Rebel
army. His signature was "Nemo;" and he now bade fair to be No One,
indeed, for some time to come.

[7] This gentleman went to Charleston openly for _The Times_, and
constantly insisted that a candid and truthful correspondent of
any northern paper could travel through the South without serious
difficulty. He was daily declaring that the devil was not so black as
he is painted, denying charges brought against Charlestonians by the
northern press, and sometimes evidently straining a point in his own
convictions to say a kind word for them. But, during the storming of
Sumter, he was suddenly arrested, robbed, and imprisoned in a filthy
cell for several days. He was at last permitted to go; but the mob had
become excited against him, and with difficulty he escaped with his
life. No other correspondent was subjected to such gross indignities.
"Jasper" reached Washington, having obtained a good deal of new and
valuable information about South Carolina character.




CHAPTER VIII.

     I reckon this always, that a man is never undone until he be
     hanged.--TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.


I now began to entertain sentiments of profound gratitude toward the
young officer, at Mobile, who kept me from going to Fort Pickens.
Rejecting the tempting request of my Philadelphia companion to remain
one day in Montgomery, that he might introduce me to Jefferson Davis, I
continued my "Journey Due North."

[Sidenote: EFFECT OF CAPTURING FORT SUMTER.]

When we reached the cars, my baggage was missing. The omnibus agent,
who was originally a New Yorker, and probably thought it precarious for
a man desiring to reach Washington to be detained, even a few hours,
kindly induced the conductor to detain the train for five minutes while
we drove back to the Exchange Hotel and found the missing valise. The
event proved that delay would have been embarrassing, if not perilous.

A Georgian on the car-seat with me, while very careful not to let
others overhear his remarks, freely avowed Union sentiments, and
asserted that they were predominant among his neighbors. I longed to
respond earnestly and sincerely, but there was the possibility of a
trap, and I merely acquiesced.

The country was intoxicated by the capture of Sumter. A newspaper on
the train, several days old, in its regular Associated Press report,
contained the following:

[Sidenote: WASHINGTON TO BE CAPTURED.]

  MONTGOMERY, Ala., Friday, _April 12, 1861_.

     An immense crowd serenaded President Davis and Mr. Walker,
     Secretary of War, at the Exchange Hotel to-night. The former
     was not well, and did not appear. Secretary Walker, in a
     few words of electrical eloquence, told the news from Fort
     Sumter, declaring, in conclusion, that before many hours the
     flag of the Confederacy would float over that fortress. No
     man, he said, could tell where the war this day commenced
     would end, but he would prophesy that the flag which here
     streams to the breeze would float over the dome of the old
     Capitol at Washington before the first of May. Let them test
     Southern courage and resources, and it might float eventually
     over Faneuil Hall itself.

An officer from General Bragg's camp informed me that all preparations
for capturing Fort Pickens were made, the United States sentinels on
duty upon a certain night being bribed; but that "Nemo's" intimation of
the intended attack frustrated it, a copy of his letter having found
its way into the post, and forewarned and forearmed the commander.

Everybody was looking anxiously for news from the North. The
predictions of certain New York papers, that the northern people would
inaugurate war at home if the Government attempted "coercion," were
received with entire credulity, and frequently quoted.

There was much admiration of Major Anderson's defense of Sumter; but
the opinion was general, that only a military sense of honor dictated
his conduct; that now, relieved from a soldier's responsibility, he
would resign and join the Rebels. "He is too brave a man to remain with
the Yankees," was the common remark. Far in the interior of Georgia, I
saw fragments of his flag-staff exhibited, and highly prized as relics.

We dined at the little hamlet of West Point, on the line between
Alabama and Georgia, and stopped for two evening hours at the bustling
city of Atlanta. Our stay was enlivened by a fresh conversation in
the car about northern spies and reporters, who were declared to be
infesting the country, and worthy of hanging wherever found.

[Sidenote: APPREHENSION ABOUT ARMING THE NEGROES.]

We spent the night in pursuit of sleep under difficulties, upon a rough
Georgia railway. The next morning, the scantiness of the disappearing
foliage indicated that we were going northward. In Augusta, we passed
through broad, pleasant shaded streets, and then crossed the Savannah
river into South Carolina. Companies of troops, bound for Charleston,
began to come on board the train, and were greeted with cheering at all
the stations. A young Carolinian, taking me for a southerner, remarked:

"The only thing we fear in this war is that the Yankees will arm our
slaves and turn them against us."

This was the first statement of the kind I heard. Persons had said many
times in my presence that they were perfectly sure of the slaves--who
would all fight for their masters. In the last article of faith they
proved as deluded as those sanguine northerners who believed that slave
insurrections would everywhere immediately result from hostilities.

At Lee's Station we met the morning train from Charleston. Within
two yards of my window, I saw a dark object disappear under the
cow-catcher; and a moment after, a woman, wringing her hands, shrieked:

"My God! My God! Mr. Lee killed!"

Lying on the track was a shapeless, gory mass, which only the clothing
showed to be the remains of a human being. The station-keeper,
attempting to cross the road just in advance of the train, was struck
down and run over. His little son was standing beside him at the very
moment, and two of his daughters looking on from the door of his
residence, a few yards away. In the first bewilderment of terror, they
now stood wildly beating their foreheads, and gasping for breath. In
strange contrast with this scene, a martial band was discoursing lively
music, and people were loudly cheering the soldiers. Buoyant Life and
grim Death stood side by side and walked hand in hand.

Our train plunged into deep pine woods, and wended through large
plantations, whose cool frame houses were shaded by palmetto-trees. The
negro men and women, who stood in the fields persuading themselves that
they were working, handled their hoes with indescribable awkwardness. A
sketch of their exact positions would look ridiculously unnatural. They
were in striking contrast with the zeal and activity of the northern
laborer, who moves under the stimulus of freedom.

[Sidenote: LOOKING AT THE CAPTURED FORTRESS.]

In the afternoon, we passed through the Magnolia Cemetery, and in view
of the State Arsenal, with the palmetto flag waving over it. The Mills'
House, in Charleston, was crowded with guests and citizens, half of
them in uniform. After I registered my name, a brawny fellow, with
a "plug-ugly" countenance, looked over my shoulder at the book, and
then regarded me with a long, impudent, scrutinizing stare, which I
endeavored to return with interest. In a few seconds his eyes dropped,
and he went back to his seat.

I strolled down the narrow streets, with their antiquated houses, to
the pleasant Battery, where several columbiads, with pyramidal piles of
solid shot between them, pointed at Fort Sumter. Down the harbor, among
a few snow-white sails, stood the already historic fortress. The line
of broken roof, visible above the walls, was torn and ragged from Rebel
shots. At the distance of two miles, it was impossible, with the naked
eye, to identify the two flags above it. A bystander told me that they
were the colors of South Carolina and of the Confederacy.

The devices of treason flaunting in the breeze where the Stars and
Stripes, after being insulted for months, were so lately lowered in
dishonor, were not a pleasant spectacle, and I turned slowly and sadly
back to the hotel. In its reading-room, among the four or five papers
on file, was a copy of _The Tribune_, whose familiar face was like the
shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

[Sidenote: A SHORT STAY IN CHARLESTON.]

The city reeled with excitement. In the evening martial music and
huzzas came floating up to my window from a meeting at the Charleston
Hotel, where the young Virginian Hotspur, Roger A. Pryor, was one of
the prominent speakers. Publicly and privately, the Charlestonians were
boasting over their late Cadmean victory. They had not heard from the
North.

I hoped to remain several days, but the public frenzy had grown so
uncontrollable, that every stranger was subjected to espionage. One
could hardly pick up a newspaper without seeing, or stand ten minutes
in a public place without hearing, of the arrest of some northerner,
charged with being a spy. While the lines of retreat were yet open, it
was judicious to flee from the wrath to come.

Designing to stop for a while in North Carolina, whose Rip Van Winkle
sleep seemed proof against any possible convulsion, I took the midnight
train northward. A number of Baltimoreans on board were returning
home, after assisting at the capture of Sumter. They were voluble and
boisterous Rebels, declaring in good set terms that Maryland would
shortly be revolutionized, Governor Hicks and Henry Winter Davis
hanged, and President Lincoln driven out of Washington. They averred
with great vehemence and iteration that the Yankees were all cowards,
and could easily be "whipped out;" but when one, whose denunciations
had been peculiarly bitter, was asked:

[Sidenote: THE COUNTRY ON FIRE.]

"Are you going home through Washington?"

"Not I," was the reply. "Old Abe might have us nabbed!"

We were soon on the clayey soil of the Old North State, which, to the
eye, closely resembles those regions of Ohio near Lake Erie. Hour after
hour, we rode through the deep forests of tall pines, from which the
bark had been stripped for making rosin and turpentine.

My anticipations of quiet proved altogether delusive. President
Lincoln's Proclamation, calling for seventy-five thousand soldiers,
had just arrived by telegraph, and the country was on fire. It was the
first flush of excitement here, and the feeling was more intense and
demonstrative than in those States which had become accustomed to the
Revolution. Forts were being seized, negroes and white men impressed
to labor upon them, military companies forming, clergymen taking up
the musket, and women encouraging the determination to fight the
"Abolitionists." All Union sentiment was awed into utter silence.

While the train was stopping at Wilmington, a telegram, announcing that
Virginia had passed a Secession ordinance, was received with yells
of applause. Sitting alone at one end of the car, I observed three
fellow-passengers, with whom I had formed a traveling acquaintance,
conferring earnestly. Their frequent glances toward me indicated
the subject of the conversation. As I had said nothing to define my
political position, I resolved to set myself right at once, should they
put me to the test. One of them approached me, and remarked:

"We just have news that Virginia has seceded."

I replied, with considerable emphasis: "Good! That will give us all the
border States."

Apparently satisfied, he returned to his friends, and they said no
more to me upon the all-absorbing question.

[Sidenote: SUBMITTING TO REBEL SCRUTINY.]

A fragment of conversation which occurred near me, will illustrate the
general tone of remark. A young man observed to a gentleman beside him:

"We shall have possession of Washington before the first of June."

"Do you think so? Lincoln is going to call out an army of one hundred
and fifty thousand men."

"Oh, well, we can whip them out any morning before breakfast. Throw
three or four shells among those blue-bellied Yankees and they will
scatter like a flock of sheep!"

Up to this day I had earnestly hoped that a bloody conflict between
the two sections might be averted; but these remarks were so
frequent--the opinion that northerners were unmitigated cowards seemed
so universal,[8] that I began to look with a great deal of complacency
upon the prospect which the South enjoyed of testing this faith. It was
time to ascertain, once for all, whether these gentlemen of the cotton
and the canebrake were indeed a superior race, destined to wield the
scepter, or whether their pretensions were mere arrogance and swagger.

[8] Of course the folly was not all on one side. Few northerners, up
to the attack on Sumter, thought the Rebels would do any thing but
threaten. And long after this error was exploded, our ablest journals
were fond of contrasting the resources of the two sections, and
demonstrating therefrom, with mathematical precision, that the war
could not last long; that the superiority of the North in men and money
would make the subjugation of the South a short and easy task. But they
did not commit the egregious blunder of imputing cowardice to any class
of native-born Americans.

It seemed impossible for the southern mind to comprehend that he
who never blusters, or flourishes the bowie-knife, who will endure a
great deal before fighting, who would rather suffer a wrong than do
a wrong, is, when roused, the most dangerous of adversaries--a fact
so universal, that it has given us the proverb, "Beware the fury of a
patient man."

[Sidenote: THE NORTH HEARD FROM.]

New York papers, issued after receiving intelligence of the fall of
Sumter, now reached us, and both in their news and editorial columns
indicated how suddenly that event had aroused the whole North. The
voice of every journal was for war. _The Herald_, which one morning
spoke bitterly against coercion, received a visit during the day from
several thousand tumultuous citizens, who left it the alternative of
running up the American flag or having its office torn down. By the
presence of the police, and the intercession of leading Union men,
its property was saved from destruction. In next morning's paper
appeared one of its periodical and constitutional somersaults. Its four
editorial articles all cried "War to the knife!"

The Rebels were greatly surprised, half appalled, and doubly
exasperated at the unexpected change of all the northern papers which
they had counted friendly to them; but they also shouted "War!" even
louder than before.

At Goldsboro, where we stopped for supper, a small slab of marble,
standing upon the mantel in the hotel office, had these words upon it:

     "Sacred to the memory of A. Lincoln, who died of a broken
     neck, at Newburn, April 16, 1861."

[Sidenote: AN INEBRIATED PATRIOT.]

Before the train started again, a young patriot, whose articulation was
impeded by whisky, passed through it, asking:

"S'thr any ---- Yankee onth'strain? F'thr's a ---- Union man
board these cars, Ic'nwhip him by ---. H'rahfr Jeff. Davis
nth'southrncnfdrcy!" He afterward amused himself by firing his revolver
from the car door. At the next station he stepped out upon the
platform, and repeated:

"H'rah fr Jeff. Davis n'th'Southrn Confdrcy!" Another patriot among the
bystanders at the station promptly responded:

"Good. Hurra for Jeff. Davis!"

"Yre th'man fr me," responded our passenger; "Come 'n' takeadrink. All
fr Jeff. Davis here, ain't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thatsallrightth'n. But what d'you elect that ---- Abolitionist, Murphy,
t'th' Leg'slature for?"

"_I'm_ Murphy," replied the patriot, who had been standing in the
group, but now sprang forward belligerently. "Who calls _me_ an
Abolitionist?"

"Beg y'r padon sr. Reck'n you ain't the man. But who _is_ that
Abolitionist you 'lected here? 's name's Brown, 'sn't it? Yes, that's
it. ---- Brown; y'ought t'hang _him_!"

Just then the whistle shrieked and the train moved on, amid shouts of
laughter.

At six o'clock next morning, we reached Richmond. Here, also, I had
hoped to stop, but the caldron was seething too hotly. Rebel flags were
everywhere flying, the newspapers all exulted over the passage of the
Secession ordinance, and some of them warned northerners and Union men
to leave the country forthwith. The tone of conversation, too, was very
bitter. The farther I went, the intenser the frenzy; and, beginning to
wonder whether there was any safe haven south of Philadelphia or New
York, I continued northward without a moment's unnecessary delay.

The railway accommodations grew better in exact ratio to our approach
to Mason and Dixon's line, and northern physiognomies were numerous
on the train. At Ashland, a few miles north of Richmond, the first
palatable meal since leaving the Alabama River was set before us. All
the intervening distance, to the epicurean eye, stretched out in a
dreary perspective of bacon and corn bread.

[Sidenote: THE OLD DOMINION IN A FRENZY.]

Half the passengers were soldiers. Every village bristled with
bayonets. At Fredericksburgh, one of the polished F. F. V.'s on
the platform presented his face at our window, and asked what the
unmentionable-to-ears-polite all these people were going north for? As
the passengers maintained an "heroic reticence," he exploded a fresh
oath, and went to the next car to pursue his investigations.

A citizen of Richmond, who occupied the seat with me, satisfied that I
was sound on the Secession question, assured me that it had been very
difficult to get the ordinance through the Convention; that trouble
was anticipated from Union men in Western Virginia; that business in
Richmond was utterly suspended, New York exchange commanding a premium
of fifteen per cent.

"We are fearful," he added, "of difficulty with our free negroes. There
are several thousand in Richmond, many of whom are intelligent, and
some wealthy. They show signs of turbulence, and we are perfecting an
organization to hold them in check. I sent the money to New York this
morning for a quantity of Sharp's rifles, ordering them to be forwarded
in dry-goods boxes, that they might not excite suspicion."

He added, that Ben McCulloch was in Virginia, and had perfected a
plan by which, at the head of Rebel troops, he was about to capture
Washington. As we progressed northward, the noisy Secession element
grew small by degrees, and beautifully less. At Acquia Creek, we left
the cars and took a steamer up the Potomac.

[Sidenote: THE OLD FLAG ONCE MORE.]

A quiet gentleman, who had come on board at Richmond, impressed
me, through that mysterious freemasonry which exists among
journalists--indeed, between members of all professions--as a
representative of the Fourth Estate. In reply to inquiries, he informed
me that he had been reporting the Virginia Convention for _The Richmond
Enquirer_, but, being a New Yorker, had concluded, like Jerry Blossom,
he wanted "to go home." He described the Convention, which at first
had an emphatic majority for the Government; but in time, one Union
man after another was dragooned into the ranks, until a bare Secession
majority was obtained.

The ordinance explicitly provided that it should not take effect until
submitted to the popular vote; but the State authorities immediately
assumed that it would be ratified. Senator Mason wrote a public letter,
warning all Union men to leave the State; and before the time for
voting arrived, the Secessionists succeeded in inaugurating a bloody
conflict upon the soil, and bringing in armies from the Gulf States. It
was then ratified by a large majority.

We steamed up the Potomac, passed the quiet tomb at Mount Vernon, which
was soon to hear the clangor of contending armies, and early in the
afternoon came in sight of Washington. There, at last, thank God! was
the old Starry Banner, flying in triumph over the Capitol, the White
House, the departments, and hundreds of dwellings. Albeit unused to the
melting mood, my heart was full, and my eyelids quivered as I saw it.
Until that hour, I never knew how I loved the old flag!

Walking down Pennsylvania avenue, I encountered troops of old friends,
and constantly wondered that I had been able to spend ten weeks in the
South, without meeting more than two or three familiar acquaintances.

[Sidenote: AN HOUR WITH PRESIDENT LINCOLN.]

A body-guard for the President, made up entirely of citizens of Kansas,
armed with Sharp's rifles, was on duty every night at the White House.
It contained two United States Senators, three members and ex-members
of Congress, the Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court, and several
editors and other prominent citizens of that patriotic young State.

With two friends, I spent an hour at the White House. The President,
though overwhelmed with business, received us kindly, and economized
time by taking a cup of tea while conversing with us, and inquiring
very minutely about affairs in the seceding States.

     "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,"

though the crown be only the chaplet of a Republic.

This man had filled the measure of American ambition, but the
remembered brightness of his face was in strange contrast with the
weary, haggard look it now wore, and his blushing honors seemed pallid
and ashen. There was the same honest, kindly tone--the same fund of
humorous anecdote--the same genuineness; but the old, free, lingering
laugh was gone.

"Mr. Douglas," remarked the President, "spent three hours with me
this afternoon. For several days he has been too unwell for business,
and has devoted his time to studying war-matters, until he understands
the military position better, perhaps, than any one of the Cabinet.
By the way," continued Mr. Lincoln, with his peculiar twinkle of the
eye, "the conversation turned upon the rendition of slaves. 'You know,'
said Douglas, 'that I am entirely sound on the Fugitive Slave Law. I
am for enforcing it in all cases within its true intent and meaning;
but, after examining it carefully, I have concluded that a negro
insurrection is a case to which it does not apply.'"

[Sidenote: PANIC IN WASHINGTON.]

I had not come north a moment too early. The train which brought me
from Richmond to Acquia Creek was the last which the Rebel authorities
permitted to pass without interruption, and the steamer, on reaching
Washington, was seized by our own Government, and made no more regular
trips. Before I had been an hour in the Capital, the telegraph wires
were cut, and railway tracks in Maryland torn up. Intelligence of
the murderous attack of a Baltimore mob on the Sixth Massachusetts
regiment, _en route_ for Washington, startled the town from its
propriety.

Chaos had come again. Washington was the seat of an intense panic. An
attack from the Rebels was hourly expected, and hundreds of families
fled from the city in terror. During the next two days, twenty-five
hundred well-officered, resolute men could undoubtedly have captured
the city. The air was filled with extravagant and startling rumors.
From Virginia, Union refugees were hourly arriving, often after narrow
escapes from the frenzied populace.

Massachusetts soldiers, who had safely run the Baltimore gantlet of
death, were quartered in the United States Senate Chamber. They had
mustered with characteristic promptness. At 5 o'clock one evening,
a telegram reached Boston asking for troops for the defense of the
imperiled Capital. At 9 o'clock the next morning, the first company,
having come twenty-five miles from the country, stacked arms in
Faneuil Hall. At 5 o'clock that night the Sixth Regiment, with full
ranks, started for Washington. They were fine-looking fellows, but
greatly embittered by their Baltimore experience. In a very quiet,
undemonstrative way, they manifested an earnest desire for immediate
and active service.

[Sidenote: "CAME OUT TO FIGHT!"]

The bewilderment and terror which had so long rested like a nightmare
on the National authorities--which for months had left almost every
leading Republican statesman timid and undecided--was at last over.
The echoes of the Charleston guns broke the spell! The masses had been
heard from! Then, as at later periods of the war, the popular instinct
was clearer and truer than all the wisdom of the politicians.

During the three days I spent in Washington, the city was virtually
blockaded, receiving neither mails, telegrams, nor re-enforcements.
Martial law, though not declared, was sadly needed. Most of the
Secessionists had left, but enough remained to serve as spies for the
Virginia Revolutionists.

I left for New York, by an evening train crowded with fleeing
families. Most of them went west from the Relay House, deterred from
passing through Baltimore by the reign of terror which the Rebels had
inaugurated. The most zealous Union papers advocated Secession as
their only means of personal and pecuniary safety. The State and city
authorities, though professedly loyal, bowed helpless before the storm.
Governor Sprague, with his Rhode Island volunteers, had started for
Washington. Mayor Brown telegraphed him, requesting that they should
not come through Baltimore, as it would exasperate the people.

"The Rhode Island regiment," was Sprague's epigrammatic response,
"came out to fight, and may just as well fight in Maryland as in
Virginia." It passed unmolested!

[Sidenote: BALTIMORE UNDER REBEL RULE.]

We found Baltimore in a frenzy. The whole city seemed under arms. The
Union men were utterly silenced, and many had fled. The only person I
heard express undisguised loyalty was a young lady from Boston, and
only her sex protected her. Several persons had been arrested as spies
during the day, including two supposed correspondents of New York
papers.

Baltimore, for the time, was worse than any thing I had seen in
Charleston, New Orleans, or Mobile. Through the evening Barnum's hotel
was filled with soldiers. Stepping into the office to make arrangements
for going to Philadelphia, I encountered an old acquaintance from
Cincinnati, now commanding a Baltimore company under arms:

"If Lincoln persists in attempting to send troops through Maryland,"
said he, "we are bound to have his head!"

Another Baltimorean came up and began to question me, but my
acquaintance promptly vouched for me as "a true southern man," and I
escaped annoyance. The same belief was expressed here which prevailed
throughout the whole South, that northern men were cowards; and persons
actually alluded to the attack upon the unarmed Massachusetts troops as
an act of bravery.

Leaving Baltimore, I took a carriage for the nearest northern railway
point. The roads were crowded with families leaving the city, and
infested by Rebel scouts and patrols. Union citizens were helpless. One
of them said to us:

"For God's sake, beg the Administration and the North not to let us be
crushed out!"

We hoped to take the Philadelphia cars, twenty-six miles out, but a
detachment of Baltimore soldiers that very morning had passed up the
railroad, destroying every bridge; smoke was still rising from their
ruins. We were compelled to press on and on, until, in the evening,
after a ride of forty-six miles, we reached York, Pennsylvania.

[Sidenote: THE NORTH FULLY AROUSED.]

Here, at last, we could breathe freely. But both railroads being
monopolized by troops, we were compelled, wearily, to drive on to the
village of Columbia, on the Susquehanna river. There we began to see
that the North, as well as the South, was under martial rule. Armed
sentinels peremptorily ordered us to halt.

On identifying the driver, and learning my business, they allowed us to
proceed. At the bridge, the person in charge declined to open the gate:

"I guess you can't cross to-night, sir," said he.

I replied by "guessing" that we could; but he continued:

"Our orders are positive, to let no one pass who is not personally
known to us."

He soon became convinced that I was not an emissary of the enemy; and
the sentinels escorted us across the bridge, a mile and a quarter in
length. We proceeded undisturbed to Lancaster, arriving there at two
o'clock, after a carriage-ride of seventy miles. Thence to New York,
communication was undisturbed.

The cold-blooded North was fully aroused. Rebel sympathizers found
themselves utterly swept away by a Niagara of public indignation. In
Pennsylvania, in New York, in New England, I heard only the sentiment
that talking must be ended, and acting begun; that, cost what it might,
in money and blood, all must unite to crush the gigantic Treason which
was closing its fangs upon the throat of the Republic.

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