THE TRIP TO GALVESTON.
On the 12th day of January, 1861, we left Freeport, Illinois, with our
family, for Galveston, Texas; making that port on the Gulf of Mexico
the 23d of the same month, eleven days on the passage. Galveston lies
in north latitude, twenty-nine degrees, while Freeport is nearly
forty-three degrees north, making about fourteen degrees difference,
or one thousand miles. The distance traveled by us was about eighteen
hundred miles. Just before leaving Freeport the thermometer had
registered thirty degrees below zero. In Galveston it was as much above
zero. A stiff norther' was blowing the day we landed, and while it was
pleasant to us, just from a high northern clime, we observed that the
Galvestonians, as they were passing on the streets, had overcoats on,
and were muffled to the ears, hurrying to their business places and
homes with the same shivering rapidity that would characterize people
in a climate where the cold ranged twenty to thirty degrees below
zero, and a stiff wester' or nor'wester' were beating cold music out of
the icy keys of the weather.
We took the Illinois Central Railroad to Cairo, thence the fine steamer
"Champion," Captain Moore. She was afterward transferred to the war
service of the United States. We landed at New Orleans on the 21st
of the month, which was the day before the vote on Secession was to
be taken in the State of Louisiana. When time is not an important
consideration with the traveler, we know of no more delightful voyage
than by a first-class steamboat down the "Father of Waters" to the
Crescent City--a palace on the waters, in a delicious climate, through
a magnificent country in the "Sunny South," sweeping from thirty-seven
to thirty degrees north latitude, but ten hundred and forty miles by
the meandering river.
But the times lent an increased and somewhat fearful enchantment to the
novel voyage, in January, 1861. Standing as we did, for the first time
in our life, on the Ohio levee at Cairo, and still on free soil, though
in sight of slave territory, just across the river in old Kentucky,
where the great Henry Clay lived, and whence radiated his greatness
over the world, the steamer standing at her wharf with a capacity of
two thousand tons, her state-rooms taken by Southern-bound travelers,
and having on board eighteen thousand bushels of corn from Egypt,
we confess, as we stood there, at the hour of seven in the morning,
ready with our company to take passage, and be borne away from all
our free-soil associations, imagination stood on strained wing for a
thousand miles down the river, essaying to divine the possible events
of the next few days, and of that novel trip.
Already before committing us and ours to the atmosphere and destiny
of the Southern clime, did the darkness of the future pass over us
and compel imagination to fold her wings. And then again, faith in
progress, faith in _Christian_ America, faith in Providence, struck
that darkness from the sky, and bid us hope for peace. Up to that time,
with thousands of others, we had indulged the pleasing and prominent
thought that Christian civilization had progressed too far in this
country to allow the people to plunge themselves into a fratricidal
war. But events since have demonstrated to the contrary; and one is
reminded that the reasons still exist that called forth the utterance
from the Son of God: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth:
I came not to send peace, but a sword."
The steamer left the wharf at Cairo, steamed down the river and passed
Columbus, Kentucky, and the islands in the river. They had no special
histories then, such as stirred the whole country a few months later,
not even Island Number Ten, where commenced the first rebel blockade of
the river. Nothing of special interest transpired to mar the general
pleasure of the voyage. Sometimes one would hear the question of
secession quietly mooted; but no excited or angry discussion. There was
obviously a terrible thinking going on generally, with all on board;
but the passengers seemed indisposed to become much acquainted. They
would not converse unless they could do so on the subject uppermost in
their thoughts. And all plainly saw, and deeply felt, what that subject
was. But lips were sealed, they were in the bondage of the country, and
the riveted fetters of silence were upon all.
We remember a Southern gentleman came on board at Memphis. His personal
appearance was imposing, his presence commanding, and would have been
more so if he could have divested himself of that peculiarly haughty
air that he wore as a sort of "martial cloak wrapped round him." He
probably stood six feet and two to four inches in hight, had a military
build, and looked as though he was born to command, at least, as if he
wanted to command, and thought he was born for that purpose. And the
probability is that he enjoyed the misfortune of having been born on
a plantation, the "heir apparent" to five or six hundred negroes. We
were sitting near his dignity, one evening, in the gentlemen's cabin,
others were sitting around, conversation was at low tide, when we made
some remark about secession, at which his majesty took umbrage, and
he contradicted us with an emphatic "_No sir_." He then eyed us in
momentary silence, as though canvassing the question mentally, whether
we were not a live Yankee, and spying abolitionist, from the land
toward the "north star," coming down South to steal negroes, or incite
them to insurrection. And though he did not give us the benefit in
words of his cogitations on the subject, we thought words were needless
to convey to the mind what he thought and how he felt.
We knew nothing then of the existence of the organization known as the
"S. S." or "Sons of the South;" but probably it was then in operation,
and for aught we know our name and personal description went down on
the books of that secret organization. We were probably spotted about
that time. No other collision happened between the Memphis gentleman
and ourself, as we avoided further contact with him, observing that he
was so agonized with self-importance that we judged he would be happier
without intercourse with us than with it; and, _vice versa_, we felt in
the same way toward him. The nearest approach to sociability afterward
between us was by a mutual exchange of leering glances of the eye.
If the Southern man hate it is with a perfect hatred, and his wrath is
more easily provoked than that of the Northern man. He speaks not to
his enemy except with the fiery tongue of his revolver. The man of the
North hates with a mental reservation, leaving room for reconciliation;
but the man of the South is as hospitable and warm-hearted to a
friend or guest as he is terrible in hate of an enemy. It was when
we met his Memphis majesty that we began to appreciate the power of
sectional prejudices, based on sectional differences--differences in
institutions, customs, habits, climate and ways of thinking.
It is a fact, patent to the intelligent traveler, that the temper of
a people partakes largely and inevitably of the isothermal character
of the climate they live in. This is seen in the Southern States; and
the further south one penetrates the more conspicuous the fact. Like
the climate the temper of the people is hot, fiery, impetuous, and, on
occasions, will burst out in volcanic eruption, submerging in utter
ruin what has become obnoxious to its vengeful wrath. In the Northern
States the temper of the people is like the climate, temperate,
platonic, philosophical; they take things patiently, steadily,
perseveringly, certainly, and herein may be seen--bating other
modifying conditions--the causal reason for the disparity of temper
between the Northern man and the Southern. One is steady, persevering
and more reliable; the other unsteady, more easily discouraged and less
reliable; can not brook contradiction or opposition without _thoughts_,
at least, of his six-shooter. Not so with the Northern man, he would
prefer sitting down with his opponent and arguing the difference out to
legitimate conclusions and a good understanding.
Right here is one of the main reasons why the South, in the late war,
was overwhelmed with defeat in four years. The commissarial department
of army supplies lacked energy, integrity, perseverance. The armies,
by consequence, suffered terribly the last year and a half of the war
from desertion. Scores of thousands of men took leave of absence during
that time--we will not stigmatize them deserters--went home and managed
to keep out of the way of the ubiquitous conscript officer, or, by
collusion with him, secured freedom from molestation by him. With naked
feet and backs, and empty stomachs, they preferred to leave the field
of active operations and let fat officers "fight it out on that line."
Thus the impetus with which the South inaugurated the war, though
tremendous in maddened enthusiasm at first, soon became exhausted, and
the grand on-rush was left by the suicidal policy, or want of policy,
without resources, and in four years died out and succumbed to the
superior powers of the North.
The general drift of past history goes to show that North men have
generally been victors in all wars with South men where the mutual
conditions of the contending parties otherwise were anything like
equal. The northern climes are sturdy and masculine, while the
southern are enervating and effeminate. The people of these respective
latitudes, as it were by an inevitable law of assimilation in nature,
are conformed to them in physical and mental condition.
Without raising a question of the possible or impossible, but simply
of the probable or improbable, as touching the adaptability of white
labor to the South--for the white man _can_ do anything possible to be
done by human agency at all, and if challenged _will_ do it for the
sake of experiment, or pride, or some pet theory, if nothing more--and
by white man we mean the Anglo-Saxon, headship of all the human species
in physical symmetry and intellectual force--it will be sufficient to
say that, "judging the future by the past," which is a safe general
rule, making all due allowance for exceptional cases, it is not to be
expected the Anglo-Saxon race will ever perform the common field labor
of the Southern States of this country, the Gulf States in particular.
An appeal to their history in past ages, and other countries, will show
they never have done it in such extreme latitudes. The reasons appear
to be those of constitution and Providence, and are inseparably dual
in form and action. The constitutional make-up of the Anglo-Saxon is
such, so fine and sensitive, and so elastic withal, as displayed in his
more native northern climes that he will probably ever obey, in the
main, the isothermal conditions of nature and climate, which affect and
influence his activity, _pro_ and _con._, and in and to which he was
born. The temperate zone is unquestionably his center of gravity, and
toward this his specific race will continue in the future, as in the
past, to gravitate.
If we go round the globe, neither in present nor past history will be
found this race doing the common out-door labor in any countries lying
between the equator and thirty-five degrees north latitude; and the
supposition is reasonable that they never will in the ages to come;
unless in course of time a radical climatic transformation should
take place, driving the south pole thirty degrees over into Asia, and
bringing the north pole down thirty degrees nearer the equator. We
would not advise movements or investments in anticipation of such an
event.
The reader will please mark that we do not say the white man _can not_
do it, but simply that he _has_ not, _does_ not, and hence probably
_will_ not. Not that the maximum heat of those latitudes is greater
or more oppressive than of the more northern latitude, or as much
so, where grateful winds come in and compensate, but the heated term
instead of closing at the end of one, two, or four weeks, at the
most, as in the North, continues four to six months in the South, and
brings upon the human system at last an enervation of body and spirit
inevitable, and in the end almost constitutional. Northern people would
freely pronounce and denounce it as sheer laziness, not taking account
of the climatic conditions of the country. Now in this state of the
case it is an open question if, after several generations had come and
gone, the Anglo-Saxon type would not almost disappear, or so far change
as to fail of recognition. The Anglican tongue might preserve it if
preserved itself. The more dusky races of mankind are the aboriginal
inhabitants of those countries and latitudes, and they constitute the
normal industrial agencies thereof. We noticed while in the South that
the proportion of old people among the white population was small in
comparison with their proportional numbers in the North; while with
the blacks, despite the hardships of their enslaved condition, the
proportion appeared much larger, thereby showing that the Anglo-Saxon's
longevity there is less than in his native climate North. The violent
probability is that correct tables of mortality, if they could be had,
would confirm this view of the subject.