graceful speech he always does.... Then broke forth the deafening,
enthusiastic cry, ‘Yancey, Yancey.’ He came like a man conscious of
right should always come.... As with modesty becoming a maiden of
sixteen, he requested to be permitted to occupy the stand, ‘To the
stand,’ shouted an hundred voices.... Bowing low he began--Here I
must pause. I should despise my own presumption should I undertake
further description of what followed. First went the _Confederation_
newspaper, once in existence, now a dream, a shadow of things that
were, gone glimmering like a schoolboy’s tale. At every blow some
foe fell, broken in every bone. For just two hours this work of
destruction proceeded amidst deafening shouts from the throats of
what is admitted on all sides to have been at least two-thirds of the
crowded house, called to put Yancey down.”
[Illustration: FIRST PAGE OF THE PERMANENT CONSTITUTION OF THE
CONFEDERATE STATES AS REPORTED BY THE COMMITTEE.
THIS IS IN THE HANDWRITING OF GEN. THOS. R. R. COBB, WHO WAS A MEMBER
OF THE COMMITTEE. TAKEN FROM THE ORIGINAL, WHICH IS IN THE POSSESSION
OF MR. A. L. HULL, ATHENS, GA.]
In the debates and speeches of those days the men and the measures of
the last decade before the war are preserved with a vividness that
seems almost magical. Estelle Hall echoes with fierce discussions of
the great Compromise of 1850. What a vista of history opens before the
mind as the streets resound to the tramp of Colonel Buford’s men on
their vain errand to Kansas! And what a sobering sense of reality it
brings to read his card in the papers! “I wish to raise three hundred
industrious, sober, discreet, reliable men, capable of bearing arms;
not prone to use them wickedly or unnecessarily, but willing to protect
their section in every real emergency.”
But interesting as these incidents are to the student, they were
historically only preliminary to the dramatic events connected with
the secession of the State and the organization of the Confederate
Government. The course of South Carolina and the propositions for
compromise had been watched with the greatest eagerness, and when the
Alabama Convention assembled in the capitol on January 7, 1861, the
excitement was intense. Hotels were crowded, lobbies thronged, the
factions were busy caucusing, and so close did the estimate of votes
run that a delegate who was opposed to secession exclaimed: “Mr. Yancey
can save the Union by the wave of his hand.” When the convention
finally, on January 11th, came to a vote, the scene was a solemn and
impressive one. Mr. Yancey, as chairman of the committee to draw up the
ordinance of secession, rose to close the debate. The majority of the
committee, he said, preferred that the ordinance should state simply
that the State resumed its original sovereignty by its own act, without
adding anything that might seem an apology; but for harmony they had
yielded to the desire of the minority and agreed to a preamble and
certain resolutions. The question was put and the vote stood 61 to 39.
Alabama had declared her independence.
[Illustration: THE PERMANENT CONSTITUTION OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES.
AS REPORTED BY COMMITTEE AND AMENDED BY CONGRESS, IS IN THE POSSESSION
OF THE DAUGHTER OF ALEX. B. CLITHERALL, MRS. A. C. BIRCH, MONTGOMERY,
ALA.]
The scenes that followed are best described in the next day’s newspaper:
“THE RUBICON IS CROSSED.”
“Yesterday will form a memorable epoch in the history of Alabama.
On that day our gallant little State resumed her sovereignty, and
became free and independent. So soon as it was announced that the
ordinance of secession had passed, the rejoicing commenced and the
people seemed wild with excitement. At the moment the beautiful flag
presented by the ladies to the convention was run up on the capitol,
... the cannon reverberated through the city, the various church
bells commenced ringing, and shout after shout might have been heard
along the principal streets.”
At night the capitol and other buildings were “most beautifully
illumined,” and fireworks and speeches gave vent to feelings long pent
up.
But in the excited crowd were sad hearts as well as gay. Many who
heartily believed in the right of secession deemed it inexpedient at
the time. A few caught some vision of the dreadful days to come; and
one house at least amidst the general rejoicing was draped in mourning.
All hesitation was, however, soon swept away by the contagious
excitement of the speedy assembling of the Confederate Congress. South
Carolina had suggested Montgomery as the place of meeting, partly
because of its central location, partly because of the conspicuous
part it had already played. The idea met with favor, and the Alabama
convention gave the proper formal invitation.
The little city, so soon to become the storm centre of the South, was
at that time a town of some twelve thousand inhabitants, but made
the proud boast of being the richest for its size in the country. A
newspaper writer of the day thus describes it:
“The principal streets are wide and well improved, the stores and
other houses for the transaction of business are large, commodious
and handsome.... In regard to the private residences of the
well-to-do portion of the population, too much cannot be said in
their praise. A large number of them present much architectural skill
and beauty, surrounded by capacious grounds, handsomely ornamented
with the rarest shrubbery known to the South.”
[Illustration: THE POLLARD RESIDENCE, BUILT BEFORE THE WAR.]
Another visitor was impressed with the numerous
“residences of gentlemen who own plantations in the hotter and less
healthful parts of the State. Many of these have been educated in the
older States, and with minds enlarged and liberalized by travel, they
form, with their families, a cultivated and attractive society.”
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS ERECTED ON THE CAPITOL
GROUNDS BY THE LADIES’ MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION.]
Here assembled, on February 4, 1861, the delegates from the Southern
States that had seceded, and, amidst scenes still familiar to all
Americans, they proceeded to organize the Confederate Government.
The excitement culminated with the arrival and inauguration of Mr.
Davis. An enormous crowd escorted him from the depot to the Exchange
Hotel, where he was welcomed by Mr. Yancey in an apt little speech
containing the famous words “The man and the hour have met.” The
ceremony of inauguration took place February 18th in front of the
capitol. The enthusiasm was unbounded. One who was present declared
years afterwards: “I never before or since that hour so experienced the
ecstasy of patriotism.” At 10 o’clock in the morning Mr. Davis left
the Exchange in a carriage drawn by six white horses. A vast throng
escorted him up Dexter Avenue to the capitol.
[Illustration: JEFFERSON DAVIS.]
“After he took his seat on the platform in front of the capitol,”
wrote an eye-witness, “and a short prayer had been offered, he read
a very neat little speech, not making many promises, but hoping by
God’s help to be able to fulfill all expectations. He took the oath
amidst the deepest silence; and when he raised his hand and his eyes
to heaven, and said ‘so help me God,’ I think I never saw any scene
so solemn and impressive.”
Years have gone by since those brave days. The scenes that so
stirred not only Montgomery but the entire land have passed into
the pages of history. The eager throng that crowded Capitol Hill,
and hung breathlessly on every word of the brief inaugural address;
the ringing cheers and the roar of cannon that welcomed the news of
Virginia’s secession; the groups of leaders planning earnestly laws
and constitutions and deep schemes of public policy; the soldiers in
gray marching by with high hopes and light step; the sad day when the
Confederate Government packed its archives and took its departure for
Richmond--these memories and a thousand others that cluster about them
will always be kept alive by the tender sentiment that clings to the
Lost Cause.
But Montgomery, true to the spirit of its history, does not look
backward. Business enterprise has adapted itself to new surroundings.
It is to-day a city of the New South. On the site of the old Indian
town, Ecunchatty, stands a great modern factory. The change is typical.
Far over the wide stretches of field and river float the long streamers
of smoke, the banners of the modern army of industry, in striking but
friendly contrast to the white dome on Capitol Hill, the centre of
Montgomery’s past and present political life.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
NEW ORLEANS
“THE CRESCENT CITY”
BY GRACE KING
Sail across the blue waters of the Gulf and make your way up the mighty
current of the Mississippi, like the leisurely traveler of yore,
if you wish to approach New Orleans in the proper way and spirit;
unless--which also furnishes a proper way and spirit--you wind your
way down the mighty current, from some far northern starting-point.
And for guidance provide not yourself with an up-to-date map of the
United States, crisscrossed with railroads, and speckled with illegibly
printed names of swarming towns. The pilot chart of the steamboat is
the true informant here if you are not the fortunate possessor or
borrower of some old print of the last century, one of those happy
combinations of fact and imagination issued by the ancient cartographer
in the effort to compromise old theories with new discoveries; charts
tracked by the foot of the pioneer, not by the wheel of the locomotive,
graded by the paddle of the canoe, not by that of the steamer; charts
that bear record to the history as well as geography of a country and
chronicle its ever-clearer and ever-increasing vastness and importance.
Upon such a map was the name New Orleans first written down. Naught to
the north but Canada and the Great Lakes; to the east, the Atlantic
seaboard with its mere fringe of English settlements fenced in by
impassable mountains; to the west, mountains again, and illimitable
prairies, covered over by bounding buffalo. South, lay the Gulf of
Mexico with Florida on the one side, Mexico on the other. From one of
the Great Lakes at the north, Lake Michigan, to the Gulf of Mexico
at the south, comes through the blank expanse of paper, the huge,
black serpent line of the Mississippi twisting and curving through, a
triumph of the artist, its great valley, pictured from mountain range
to mountain range, teeming with Indian villages, fields of waving corn,
droves of innumerable deer, and illimitable forests. At the head of
navigation lay the little village of Chicagou, about midway the little
stronghold of St. Louis, at the terminus New Orleans; the three names
linking together across the distance two hundred years ago even as
to-day.
[Illustration: TOMB OF AVAR, CITY PARK.]
De Soto first conceived the project of founding a settlement upon the
Mississippi River, his Rio Grande. As he lay stricken with fever upon
its banks within sight of its majestic currents, his mind dwelt upon
the glory of annexing the great stream and its territory to Spain,
the souls of its peoples to the Catholic Church. From his couch, he
urged forward the building of the ships to be sent to Havana for the
necessary supplies; with dying ears he listened to the sound of the
busy axes and hammers, and with dying voice he charged upon his men the
accomplishment of what would turn all the suffering and loss of their
expedition into brilliant success and ensure his fame and theirs to all
time.
But the Spaniards, sinking the body of their commander beneath the
turbid waters of the Mississippi, sank there too his plans and
ambitions, and, turning their backs upon the river, recked not that
Spain should gain or lose it.
Over the burial spot of the Spanish explorer floated, a century and a
half later, the boats of La Salle, the Canadian explorer. As he paddled
his way down the gigantic stream, the like of which he had never
dreamed existed in the world, he was, in thought, making that map of
the country described above. And by the time his boats came into view
of the Gulf, his scheme for affixing the great river and valley to
France lay as clear in his mind as the blue expanse before his eyes.
He would first build strongholds, settle colonies, and mass friendly
Indians at the mouth of each tributary. French traders, _coureurs de
bois_, and missionaries, with a free and secure route before them,
would then ply their canoes backwards and forwards between Lake
Michigan and the Gulf, where French vessels would be lying at anchor
in the sheltered harbor of the commodious city he purposed to build.
The French flag once securely established on the Gulf coast of the
continent meant nothing less than the gradual elbowing of the English
out of the country on the Atlantic side, and the capture of the Mexican
gold mines from Spain whenever opportunity offered.
[Illustration: THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, NEW ORLEANS.]
Like De Soto, La Salle proved only a forerunner in history. The
brilliant scheme he conceived and failed to execute was carried to
success ten years after his death by Iberville. He discovered the
river from the Gulf, and, entering it, explored its course until he
identified it as the river discovered from the Lakes by La Salle.
And he it was who selected the site for the future city upon the
Mississippi, the possession of which meant, to any power that held it,
domination of the Gulf of Mexico and of the great waterway, the life
artery of the American continent. When Iberville selected that site
upon the narrow neck of land lying between the river and an equally
navigable chain of lakes, he wrote the history of his city in advance.
The first year of the eighteenth century saw France indeed mistress of
the Mississippi and of the Gulf of Mexico, but Iberville, like De Soto
and La Salle, was cut off in the prime of life and activity, and his
work was left to another for accomplishment--to Bienville, his young
brother.
One cannot think of New Orleans without Bienville, nor of Bienville
without New Orleans. From the time he came into the country, a mere
stripling, midshipman to Iberville, until he left it, a middle-aged
man, the city upon the Mississippi was the star by which he guided
all his hopes and ambitions, all his colonial ventures. For eighteen
years, during which the seat of government was shifted from Biloxi to
Mobile and from Mobile back again to Biloxi, through changes of king
and ministry, and through all the personal political vicissitudes of
an official dependant of those troublous times, he never ceased to
urge upon the home authorities the founding of the city, all the while
setting aside with unwearied patience the baffling objections against
it in his own council-boards.
His opportunity came at last, in 1718, when Louisiana was made over by
contract to John Law and the Company of the West; then, as Governor,
he had full authority to act with men and money at his disposal. He
himself brought his axemen to the spot, saw the land cleared and laid
off in lots, according to the map prepared by the royal engineers.
A handsome little city it was to be according to this map; with
fair, square sides, straight streets; with a _place d’armes_, parish
church, cemetery, barracks; all complete, even to the naming of the
streets--Chartres, Condé, Royal, Bourbon, Dauphine, Burgundy, Conti,
St. Louis, Toulouse, St. Peter, Orleans, St. Anne. No nicknames were
to be allowed here to chance and illiteracy, no plebeian “Broads,”
“Mains,” “Highs”--a right royal little city it was designed to be from
the first, and one worthy its princely godfather, Law’s patron, the
Duke of Orleans.
Bienville himself piloted the first royal vessel of provisions and
immigrants through the mouth of the river, and made the first landing
at the levee bank, crowded to-day with commerce and shipping. Finally,
in 1723, Bienville removed thither all the government offices and
stores, and made New Orleans the capital of the colony. In a year, the
city was in full tide of progress, and attaining its majority as a city
among the oldest cities of the continent.
History and romance carry on the chronicle of its life, for it
is a place whose history has become romance, romance history, in
our literature. The neat little square checker-board prepared by
Bienville’s engineers, has grown out of all regularity of proportion;
unwieldy and awkward enough it is now upon paper, with its streets that
vainly strive to run straight, as they follow the bend of the river,
or “Crescent” as it is called. But the first map still represents
the centre, the heart of the city, the source of its tradition and
sentiment. And to the children of the city--or, we should say, the
descendants of the children of the first-born of the city, there has
been no change in this “mother” spot, save that of harmonious growth
and age;--at least so they think in tender reverence as they saunter
through the old thoroughfares with the high-sounding names.
[Illustration: CHARTRES STREET AND CATHEDRAL.]
The _place d’armes_ has become Jackson Square; the public market, the
French market; the parish church, the Cathedral; the Ursulines Convent,
the Archbishopric; the cemetery is now the old St. Louis--beyond
Rampart Street, instead of outside the Ramparts, as it used to be
called. The _vieu carré_--as the original city is affectionately
called--has suffered its share of the vicissitudes of cities. More
than once, tornadoes and fires have swept whole quarters of it bare of
dwellings. Epidemics of yellow fever--then as now said to be brought in
from Havana--decimated the inhabitants at recurrent intervals; while
the river ever and anon rose up and overflowed its banks, producing a
steady crop of domestic fevers. But the gay-hearted inhabitants--then,
even as now--seemed to draw from their misfortunes only zest for
greater energy of work and greater pleasure in life.
[Illustration: THE URSULINES CONVENT.]
Every ship that arrived brought accessions to the
population--accessions, not immigrants, and therefore reckoned by
quality, not quantity. Gay sprigs of the nobility were sent out to “la
Nouvelle Orleans” to mend their morals; thrifty ones, to mend their
fortunes; ambitious sons of the bourgeoisie came seeking opportunity
for acquiring landed estate; old officers remained when their terms
of service expired; new officers willingly grew into old ones in a
place so near akin in society and elegance to Paris. For Paris was the
arbiter and model of New Orleans, and never had the great city by the
Seine an apter pupil than the little city by the Mississippi.
Social elegance and pleasure reached its standard height under the
administration of the Marquis de Vaudreuil--“le grand Marquis,”
as he was called. His entertainments, banquets, balls, theatrical
performances, his manners, dress, conversation, his etiquette, civil
and military, furnished the code which, in a way, still governs social
practice in the city.
When, in 1763, France, by the Treaty of Paris, signed away all her
possessions east of the Mississippi to England, she yet retained her
grasp on the jugular vein of the North American continent by reserving
the Island of Orleans, as it was denominated--that is, the mouth of
the Mississippi. And now the city, by right and title the sole French
metropolis of North America, made so rapid and so great a stride
forward in wealth, population, and commercial activity, that even its
easy-going, pleasure-loving citizens began to feel the exhilarating
reality of the possibilities of their geographical and political
situation in the country; of their importance, not alone to France,
but to the American continent. But the awakening of the people to
the consciousness of their political virility was no better than an
awakening by the hand of an executioner.
[Illustration: THE JACKSON MONUMENT.]
On a bright day in October, 1764, the men of the city were called
together in the _place d’armes_, to listen to the royal edict that
transferred them, their families, and property; in short, all the
territory and subjects yet possessed by France in America, to Spain.
The consternation of the people, their indignation and excitement,
their public meetings, address to the King, their repudiation of
Spanish authority and Spanish government, the bloody punishment
by O’Reilly, executing six and imprisoning in Havana five of the
conspirators, as he called them, and, finally, the forcing of the
colony under the domination of Spain--all of this can but be enumerated
here, but it forms a chapter in the history of New Orleans, the
omission of which can be justified only by necessity.
The city became Spanish in language, law, manner, dress,--in all
externals, but its heart remained firmly French, as after events
proved. It is ever acknowledged, however, in the history of the city,
that the Spanish rule was a wise and just one; and, as is well said by
all chroniclers, the Spanish found the city a city of wooden one-story
houses, and left it a city of brick mansions.
It was during the Spanish domination that the great conflagration of
1788 took place--when the heart of the _vieu carré_ was left a mere
heap of rubbish and ashes. Bienville himself had not a barer spot
before him when he laid out the first streets in his clearing than
Don Andres Almonester, the Alferez Real had when, in the midst of the
public sorrow and grief over the disaster, he offered to rebuild the
religious and civil official edifices. His tombstone in the Cathedral
gives the list of his claims upon the gratitude of posterity: founder
and donor of the Holy Cathedral Church, founder of the Royal Hospital
of St. Charles (the present Charity Hospital), founder of the hospital
for lepers, of the Church of the Ursulines Convent, of a public school;
of the Casa-Curiel (Court-House)--in virtue of which munificence, Don
Andres lies buried under the altar of the Cathedral, and a prayer is
said for the repose of his soul every day at Vespers.
Following the example of the edifices of Don Andres, private buildings
were constructed on a style grandiose beyond any that the city had
seen before, and the manner of living imitated the manner of building.
And now, under the well-regulated, ponderous monotony of the Spanish
domination, the city might have enjoyed a repose as immutable as that
of her pious benefactor, had it not been for the great stream rolling
past her to the Gulf.
No longer did the Upper Mississippi flow through virgin forests and
savage villages. Out of the independence of the United colonies was
born the “West,”--the great West as it was then and is still called,
teeming with energy and hardihood, with fruitfulness and prosperity.
Before the day of railroads rivers furnished the only outlet to
commerce. The Mississippi, gathering up with the waters of its
tributaries the harvests of their valleys, bore down to New Orleans
a continuous line of flatboats laden to the edge. The cargoes found
ready sale and were soon the main food supply of the city, and the
sturdy flatboatmen returning to their farms were ever better and better
satisfied with their market, and more and more discontented with the
foreign ownership of it. In their parlance, the valley owned the river,
and the river owned the mouth. Spanish obstinacy and American temper,
concessions and evasions, threats and brawls, kept the city for a score
of years filled to the brim with political excitement. Outside the wall
and canal--the Canal Street of to-day--lay a new city, an American
city, populated by flatboatmen and produce traders, against which the
gates of the Spanish city were carefully closed and sentinels set at
nightfall.
But it were as well to attempt to hold back the current of the river
itself as the current of popular determination that flowed down with
it from its great valley. As it came, so, by secret compact, the
Spanish flag went--to be replaced not by the old Fleur-de-Lys, but by
the Tricolor; the new and glorious banner of liberty, equality, and
fraternity. It was easily made at home in a city whose republicanism
under the pruning of Spanish rule had only rooted itself the more
deeply.
[Illustration: CANAL STREET, NEW ORLEANS.]
[Illustration: THE CABILDO, OLD COURT BUILDING, JACKSON SQUARE.]