true or not, it is certain that “Uncle Sam” has built strong places for
his enemies to occupy. To-day I visited Fort Pulaski, which defends the
mouth of the Savannah River and the approaches to the city. It was left
to take care of itself, and the Georgians quietly stepped into it, and
have been busied in completing its defences, so that it is now capable
of stopping a fleet very effectually. Pulaski was a Pole who fell in the
defence of Savannah against the British, and whose memory is perpetuated
in the name of the fort, which is now under the Confederate flag, and
garrisoned by bitter foes of the United States. Among our party were
Commodore Tattnall, whose name will be familiar to English ears in
connection with the attack on the Peiho Forts, where the gallant
American showed the world that “blood was thicker than water,”
Brigadier-General Lawton, in command of the forces of Georgia, and a
number of naval and military officers, of whom many had belonged to the
United States regular service. It was strange to look at such a man as
the Commodore, who for forty-nine long years had served under the Stars
and Stripes, quietly preparing to meet his old comrades and friends, if
needs be, in the battle-field--his allegiance to the country and to the
flag renounced, his long service flung away, his old ties and
connections severed--and all this in defence of the sacred right of
rebellion on the part of “his State.” He is not now, nor has he been for
years, a slave-owner; all his family and familiar associations connect
him with the North. There are no naval stations on the Southern coasts
except one at Pensacola, and he knows almost no one in the South. He has
no fortune whatever, his fleet consists of two small river or coasting
steamers, without guns, and as he said, in talking over the resources of
the South, “My bones will be bleached many a long year before the
Confederate States can hope to have a navy.” “State Rights!” To us the
question is simply inexplicable or absurd. And yet thousands of
Americans sacrifice all for it. The river at Savannah is as broad as the
Thames at Gravesend, and resembles that stream very much in the color of
its waters and the level natures of its shores. Rice-fields bound it on
either side, as far down as the influence of the fresh water extends,
and the eye wanders over a flat expanse of mud and water and green
oziers and rushes, till its search is arrested on the horizon by the
unfailing line of forest. In the fields here and there are the
whitewashed, square, wooden huts in which the slaves dwell, looking very
like the beginnings of the camp in the Crimea. At one point a small
fort, covering a creek by which gunboats could get up behind Savannah,
displayed its “garrison” on the walls, and lowered its flag to salute
the small blue ensign at the fore, which proclaimed the presence of the
Commodore of the Naval Forces of Georgia on board our steamer. The guns
on the parapet were mostly field-pieces, mounted on frameworks of wood
instead of regular carriages. There is no mistake about the spirit of
these people. They seize upon every spot of ’vantage ground and prepare
it for defence. There were very few ships in the river; the yacht
Camilla, better known as the America, the property of Captain Deasy, and
several others of those few sailing under British colors, for most of
the cotton ships are gone. After steaming down the river about twelve
miles the sea opened out to the sight, and on a long, marshy, narrow
island near the bar, which was marked by the yellowish surf, Fort
Pulaski threw out the Confederate flag to the air of the Georgian 1st of
May. The water was too shallow to permit the steamer to go up to the
jetty, and the party landed at the wharf in boats. A guard was on duty
at the landing--tall, stout young fellows, in various uniforms, or in
rude mufti, in which the Garibaldian red shirt and felt slouched hats
predominated. They were armed with smooth-bore muskets (date 1851),
quite new, and their bayonets, barrels and locks were bright and clean.
The officer on duty was dressed in the blue frock-coat dear to the
British Linesman in days gone by, with brass buttons, emblazoned with
the arms of the State, a red silk sash, and glazed kepi, and
straw-colored gauntlets. Several wooden huts, with flower-gardens in
front, were occupied by the officers of the garrison; others were used
as hospitals, and were full of men suffering from measles of a mild
type. A few minutes’ walk led us to the fort, which is an irregular
pentagon, with the base line or curtain face inlands, and the other
faces casemated and bearing on the approaches. The curtain, which is
simply crenellated, is covered by a Redan surrounded by a deep ditch,
inside the parapet of which are granite platforms ready for the
reception of guns. The parapet is thick, and the scarp and counterscarp
are faced with solid masonry. A drawbridge affords access to the
interior of the Redan, whence the gate of the fort is approached across
a deep and broad moat, which is crossed by another drawbridge. As the
Commodore entered the Redan the guns of the fort broke out into a long
salute, and the band at the gate struck up almost as noisy a welcome.
Inside, the parade presented a scene of life and animation very unlike
the silence of the city we had left. Men were busy clearing out the
casemates, rolling away stores and casks of ammunition and provisions,
others were at work at the gin and shears, others building sand-bag
traverses to guard the magazine doors, as though expecting an immediate
attack. Many officers were strolling under the shade of an open gallery
at the side of the curtain which contained their quarters in the lofty
bomb-proof casemates. Some of them had seen service in Mexico or border
warfare; some had travelled over Italian and Crimean battle-fields;
others were West Point graduates of the regular army; others young
planters, clerks, or civilians, who rushed with ardor into the First
Georgian Regiment. The garrison of the fort is some six hundred and
fifty men, and fully that number were in and about the work, their tents
being pitched inside the Redan or on the terreplein of the parapets. The
walls are exceedingly solid and well built of gray brick, strong as
iron, and upward of six feet in thickness, the casemates and bomb-proofs
being lofty, airy, and capacious as any I have ever seen, though there
is not quite depth enough between the walls at the salient and the
gun-carriages. The work is intended for one hundred and twenty-eight
guns, of which about one fourth are mounted on the casemates. They are
long 32’s, with a few 42’s, and columbiads. The armaments will be
exceeding heavy when all the guns are mounted, and they are fast getting
the ten-inch columbiads into position _en barbette_. Everything which
could be required, except mortars, was in abundance--the platforms and
gun carriages are solid and well made, the embrasures of the casemates
are admirably constructed, and the ventilation of the bomb-proof
carefully provided for. There are three furnaces for heating red-hot
shot. Nor is discipline neglected, and the officers with whom I went
round the works were as sharp in tone and manner to their men as
volunteers well could be, though the latter often are enlisted for only
three years by the State of Georgia. An excellent lunch was spread in
the casemated bomb-proof, which served as the Colonel’s quarter, and
before sunset the party were steaming towards Savannah through a tideway
full of leaping sturgeon and porpoises, leaving the garrison intent on
the approach of a large ship, which had her sails aback off the bar and
hoisted the Stars and Stripes, but which turned out to be nothing more
formidable than a Liverpool cotton ship. It will take some hard blows
before Georgia is driven to let go her grip of Fort Pulaski. The channel
is very narrow, and passes close to the guns of the fort. The means of
completing the armament have been furnished by the stores of Norfolk
Navy Yard, where between seven hundred and eight hundred guns have
fallen into the hands of the Confederates; and, if there are no
columbiads among them, the Merrimac and other ships, which have been
raised, as we hear, with guns uninjured, will yield up their Dahlgrens
to turn their muzzles against their old masters.
* * * * *
MAY 2.--May-day was so well kept yesterday that the exhausted editors
cannot “bring out” their papers, and consequently there is no news; but
there is, nevertheless, much to be said concerning “Our President’s”
Message, and there is a suddenness of admiration for pacific tendencies
which can with difficulty be accounted for, unless the news from the
North these last few days has something to do with it. Not a word now
about an instant march on Washington! No more threats to seize on
Faneuil Hall! The Georgians are by no means so keen as the Carolinians
on their border--nay, they are not so belligerent to-day as they were a
week ago. Mr. Jefferson Davis’s Message is praised for its “moderation,”
and for other qualities which were by no means in such favor while the
Sumter fever was at its height. Men look grave and talk about the
interference of England and France, which “cannot allow this thing to go
on.” But the change which has come over them is unmistakable, and the
best men begin to look grave. As for me, I must prepare to open my lines
of retreat--my communications are in danger.
LETTER VII.
FACTS AND OPINIONS IN REGARD TO NORTH AND SOUTH.
MONTGOMERY, May 16, 1861.
ALTHOUGH I have written two letters since my arrival at Charleston, I
have not been able to give an account of many things which have come
under my notice, and which appeared to be noteworthy; and now that I am
fairly on my travels once more, it seems only too probable that I shall
be obliged to pass them over altogether. The roaring fire of the
revolution is fast sweeping over the prairies, and one must fly before
it or burn. I am obliged to see all that can be seen of the South at
once, and then, armed with such safeguards as I can procure, to make an
effort to recover my communications. Bridges broken, rails torn up,
telegraphs pulled down--I am quite in the air, and air charged with
powder and fire.
One of the most extraordinary books in the world could be made out of
the cuttings and parings of the newspapers which have been published
within the last few days. The judgments, statements, asseverations of
the press, everywhere necessarily hasty, ill-sifted, and off-hand, do
not aspire to even an ephemeral existence here. They are of use if they
serve the purpose of the moment, and of the little boys who commence
their childhood in deceit, and continue to adolescence in iniquity, by
giving vocal utterance to the “sensation” headings in the journals they
retail so sharply and curtly. Talk of the superstition of the Middle
Ages, or of the credulity of the more advanced periods of rural life;
laugh at the Holy Coat of Treves, or groan over the Lady of Salette;
deplore the faith in winking pictures, or in a _communiquè_ of the
_Moniteur_; moralize on the superstition which discovers more in the
liquefaction of the ichor of St. Gennaro than a chemical trick; but if
you desire to understand how far faith can see and trust among the
people who consider themselves the most civilized and intelligent in the
world, you will study the American journals, and read the telegrams
which appear in them. One day the 7th New York regiment is destroyed for
the edification of the South, and is cut up into such small pieces that
none of it is ever seen afterward. The next day it marches into
Washington, or Annapolis, all the better for the process. Another, in
order to encourage the North, it is said that hecatombs of dead were
carried out of Fort Moultrie, packed up, for easy travelling, in boxes.
Again, to irritate both, it is credibly stated that Lord Lyons is going
to interfere, or that an Anglo-French fleet is coming to watch the
ports, and so on through a wild play of fancy, inexact in line as though
the batteries were charged with the aurora borealis or summer lightning,
instead of the respectable, steady, manageable offspring of acid and
metal, to whose staid deportment we are accustomed at a moderate price
for entrance. As is usual in such periods, the contending parties accuse
each other of inveterate falsehood, perfidy, oppression, and local
tyranny and persecution. “Madness rules the hour.”
It was only a day or two ago I took up a local journal of considerable
influence, in which were two paragraphs which struck me as being
inexpressibly absurd. In the first it was stated that a gentleman who
had expressed strong Southern sentiments in a New York hotel, had been
mobbed and thrown into the street, and the writer indulged in some
fitting reflections on the horrible persecution which prevailed in New
York, and on the atrocity of such tyrannical mob-lawlessness in a
civilized community. In another column there was a pleasant little
narrative how citizens of Opelika, in Georgia, had waited on a certain
person, who was “suspected” of entertaining Northern views, and had
deported him on a rustic conveyance, known as a rail, which was
considered by the journalist a very creditable exercise of public
spirit. Nay, more; in a _naive_ paragraph relative to an attempt to burn
the huge hotel of Willard, at Washington, in which some hundreds of
people were residing, the paper, to account satisfactorily for the
attempt, and to assign some intelligible and laudable motive for it,
adds, that he supposes it was intended to burn out the “Border ruffians”
who were lodged there--a reproduction of the excuse of our Anglo-Irish
lord, who apologized for setting fire to a cathedral, on the ground that
he imagined the Bishop was inside. The exultation of the South when the
flag of the United States was lowered at Sumter, has been answered by a
shout of indignation and a battle-cry from the North, and the excitement
at Charleston has produced a reflex action there, the energy of which
cannot be described. The apathy which struck me at New York, when I
landed, has been succeeded by violent popular enthusiasm, before which
all Laodicean policy has melted into fervent activity. The truth must
be, that the New York population did not believe in the strength and
unanimity of the South, and that they thought the Union safe, or did not
care about it. I can put down the names of gentlemen who expressed the
strongest opinions that the Government of the United States had no power
to coerce the South, and who have since put down their names and their
money to support the Government in the attempt to recover the forts
which have been taken. As to the change of opinion in other quarters,
which has been effected so rapidly and miraculously, that it has the
ludicrous air of a vulgar juggler’s trick at a fair, the public regard
it so little, that it would be unbecoming to waste a word about it.
I expressed a belief in my first letter, written a few days after my
arrival, that the South would never go back into the Union. The North
thinks that it can coerce the South, and I am not prepared to say they
are right or wrong; but I am convinced that the South can only be forced
back by such a conquest as that which laid Poland prostrate at the feet
of Russia. It may be that such a conquest can be made by the North, but
success must destroy the Union as it has been constituted in times past.
A strong Government must be the logical consequence of victory, and the
triumph of the South will be attended by a similar result, for which,
indeed, many Southerners are very well disposed. To the people of the
Confederate States there would be no terror in such an issue, for it
appears to me they are pining for a strong Government exceedingly. The
North must accept it, whether they like it or not. Neither party, if
such a term can be applied to the rest of the United States and to those
States which disdain the authority of the Federal Government, was
prepared for the aggressive or resisting power of the other. Already the
Confederate States perceive that they cannot carry all before them with
a rush, while the North have learnt that they must put forth all their
strength to make good a tithe of their lately uttered threats. But the
Montgomery Government are now, they say, anxious to gain time, and to
prepare a regular army. The North, distracted by apprehensions of vast
disturbances in its complicated relations, is clamoring for instant
action and speedy consummation. The counsels of the moderate men, as
they were called, have been utterly overruled.
I am now, however, dealing with South Carolina, which has been the _fons
et origo_ of the Secession doctrines, and their development into the
full life of the Confederate States. The whole foundation on which South
Carolina rests is cotton and a certain amount of rice, or rather she
bases her whole fabric on the necessity which exists in Europe for those
products of her soil, believing and asserting, as she does, that England
and France cannot and will not do without them. Cotton, without a
market, is so much flocculent matter encumbering the ground. Rice,
without demand for it, is unsalable grain in store and on the field.
Cotton at ten cents a pound is boundless prosperity, empire, and
superiority, and rice or grain need no longer be regarded. In the matter
of slave labor, South Carolina argues pretty much in this way: England
and France require our products. In order to meet their wants, we must
cultivate our soil. There is only one way of doing so. The white man
cannot live on our land at certain seasons of the year; he cannot work
in the manner required by the crops. We must, therefore, employ a race
suited to the labor, and that is a race which will only work when it is
obliged to do so. That race was imported from Africa, under the sanction
of the law, by our ancestors, when we were a British colony, and it has
been fostered by us, so that its increase here has been as that of the
most nourishing people in the world. In other places where its labor was
not productive, or imperatively essential, that race has been made free,
sometimes with disastrous consequences to itself and to industry. But we
will not make it free. We cannot do so. We hold that Slavery is
essential to our existence as producers of what Europe requires; nay,
more, we maintain it is in the abstract right in principle; and some of
us go so far as to maintain that the only proper form of society,
according to the law of God and the exigencies of man, is that which
has Slavery as its basis. As to the slave, he is happier far in his
state of servitude, more civilized and religious than he is or could be
if free or in his native Africa.
I have already endeavored to describe the portion of the State through
which I travelled, and the aspect of Charleston, and I will now proceed,
at the risk of making this letter longer than it should be, to make a
few observations on matters which struck me during my visit to one or
two of the planters of the many who were kind enough to give me
invitations to their residences in the State.
Early one fine morning I started in a coasting steamer to visit a
plantation in the Pedee and Maccamaw district, in the Island coast of
the State, north of Charleston. The only source of uneasiness in the
mind of the party arose from the report that the United States squadron
was coming to blockade the port, which would have cut off our line of
retreat, and compelled us to make a long detour and a somewhat difficult
journey by land, seeing that the roads are mere sand tracts, as the
immense number of rivers and creeks offers excuse for not improving the
means of land communication. Passing Sumter, on which men are busily
engaged, under the Confederate flag, in making good damages, and
mounting guns, we put out a few miles to sea, and with the low sandy
shore, dotted with soldiers, and guard-houses, and clumps of trees, on
our left, in a few hours pass the Santee River, and enter an estuary
into which the Pedee and Maccamaw Rivers run a few miles further to the
northwest. The arid, barren, pine-covered sand-hills, which form the
shores of this estuary, are guarded by rude batteries, mounted with
heavy guns, and manned by the State troops, some of whom we can see
strolling along the beach, or, with arms glancing in the sunlight,
pacing up and down on their posts. On the left hand side there are said
to be plantations, the sites of which are marked by belts of trees, and
after we had proceeded a few miles from the sea, the steamer ran
alongside a jetty and pier, which was crowded by men in uniform, waiting
for the news, and for supplies of creature comforts.
Ladies were cantering along the fine hard beach, and some gigs and
tax-carts, fully laden, rolled along very much as one sees them at
Scarborough. The soldiers on the pier were all gentlemen of the county.
Some, dressed in gray tunics and yellow facings, in high felt hats and
plumes, and jack-boots, would have done no discredit in face, figure,
and bearing, to the gayest cavaliers who ever thundered at the heels of
Prince Rupert. Their horses, full of Carolinian fire and metal, stood
picketed under the trees along the margin of the beach. Among these men,
who had been doing the duty of common troopers in patrolling the
sea-coast, were gentlemen possessed of large estates and princely
fortunes; and one who stood among them was pointed out to me as captain
of a company for whose uses his liberality provided unbounded daily
libations of champagne, and the best luxuries which French ingenuity can
safely imprison in those well-known caskets, with which Crimean warriors
were not unacquainted at the close of the campaign. They were eager for
news, which was shouted out to them by their friends in the steamer, and
one was struck by the intimate personal cordiality and familiar
acquaintance which existed among them. Three heavy guns, mounted in an
earthwork, defended by palisades, covered the beach and landing-place,
and the garrison was to have been reënforced by a regiment from
Charleston, which, however, had not got in readiness to go up on our
steamer, owing to some little difficulties between the Volunteers, their
officers, and the Quartermaster-general’s department.
I mention these particulars to give an idea of the state of defence in
which South Carolina holds itself, for, unless Georgetown, which lies at
the head of this inlet, could be considered an object of attack, one
seeks in vain for any reason to induce an enemy to make his appearance
in this direction. A march on Charleston by land would be an operation
of extreme difficulty, through a series of sand-hills, alternating with
marshes, water-course, rivers, and flooded rice-fields. As to
Georgetown, which we have now reached, nothing can be said by way of
description more descriptive than the remark of its inhabitants, that it
was a finished town a hundred years ago. It is a dosy, sleepy, sandy,
lifeless, straggling village, with wooden houses drawn up in right lines
on the margins of great, straight, grass-grown pathways, lined with
trees, and known to the natives as streets.
As the Nina approaches the tumble-down wharf, two or three citizens
advance from the shade of shaky sheds to welcome us, and a few country
vehicles and light phaetons are drawn forth from the same shelter to
receive the passengers, while the negro boys and girls, who have been
playing upon the bales of cotton and barrels of rice, which represent
the trade of the place on the wharf, take up commanding positions for
the better observation of our proceedings. One or two small yachts and
coasting schooners are moored by the banks of the broad, full stream,
the waters of which we had previously crossed in our journey from the
dismal swamp.
There is an air of quaint simplicity and old-fashioned quiet about
Georgetown, refreshingly antagonistic to the bustle and tumult of most
American cities, and one can, without much stretch of imagination, fancy
the old loyal burghers in cocked hats, small-swords, and long,
square-cut sober suits, stalking solemnly down its streets, rejoicing in
the progress of the city which recalled the name of the King and the old
country, or hastening down to the river’s side to hear the tidings
brought from home by the Bristol bark that has just anchored in the
stream. Instead thereof, however, there are the tall, square forms of
eager citizens bowed over their newspapers in the shade before the
bar-room, or the shuffling negro delighting in the sunshine, and kicking
up the dust in the centre of the road as he goes on his errand.
While waiting for our vehicle, we enjoyed the hospitality of one of our
friends, who took us into an old-fashioned angular wooden mansion, more
than a century old, still sound in every timber, and testifying, in its
quaint wainscotings and the rigid framework of door and window, to the
durability of its cypress timbers, and the preservative character of the
atmosphere. In early days it was the crack house of the old settlement,
and the residence of the founder of the female branch of the family of
our host, who now only makes it his halting-place when passing to and
fro between Charleston and his plantation, leaving it the year round in
charge of an old servant and her grandchild. Rose trees and flowering
shrubs clustered before the porch, and filled the garden in front, and
the establishment gave one a good idea of a London merchant’s retreat
about Chelsea a hundred and fifty years ago.
At length we were ready for our journey, and, mounted in two light
covered vehicles, proceeded along the sandy track which, after a while,
led us to a cut, deep in the bosom of the woods, where silence was only
broken by the cry of a woodpecker, the boom of a crane, or the sharp
challenge of the jay. For miles we passed through the shades of this
forest, meeting only two or three vehicles containing female planterdom
on little excursions of pleasure or business, who smiled their welcome
as we passed. Not more than twice in a drive of two hours did we come
upon any settlement or get a view of any white man’s plantation, and
then it was only when we had emerged from the wood and got out upon the
broad, brown plains, where bunds, and water-dykes, and machinery for
regulating the flooding of the lake indicated the scenes of labor. These
settlements consisted of rows of some ten or twelve quadrangular wooden
sheds, supported upon bricks, so as to allow the air, the children, and
the chickens to play beneath; sometimes with brickwork chimneys at the
side, occasionally with ruder contrivances of mud and woodwork to serve
the same purpose.
Arrived at a deep chocolate-colored stream, called Black River, full of
fish and alligators, we find a flat large enough to accommodate vehicles
and passengers, and propelled by two negroes pulling upon a stretched
rope, in the manner usual in the ferryboats of Switzerland, ready for
our reception. Another drive through a more open country, and we reach a
fine grove of pine and live oak, which melts away into a shrubbery,
guarded by a rustic gateway, passing through which we are brought by a
sudden turn into the planter’s house, buried in trees, which dispute
with the green sward, and with wild flower beds, every yard of the space
which lies between the hall-door and the waters of the Pedee; and in a
few minutes, as we gaze over the expanse of fields, just tinged with
green by the first life of the early rice crops, marked by the deep
water-cuts, and bounded by a fringe of unceasing forest, the chimneys of
the steamer we had left at Georgetown gliding, as it were, through the
fields, indicate the existence of another navigable river still beyond.
Leaving with regret the veranda which commanded so enchanting a
foreground of flowers, rare shrubbery, and bearded live oaks, with each
graceful sylvan outline distinctly penciled upon the waters of the
river, we enter the house, and are reminded by its low-browed,
old-fashioned rooms, of the country houses yet to be found in parts of
Ireland or the Scottish border, with additions made by the luxury and
love of foreign travel of more than one generation of educated Southern
planters. Paintings from Italy illustrate the walls in juxtaposition
with interesting portraits of early Colonial Governors and their lovely
womankind, limned with no uncertain hand, and full of the vigor of
touch and naturalness of drapery, of which Copley has left us too few
exemplars, and one portrait of Benjamin West claims for itself such
honor as his own pencil can give. An excellent library, filled with
collections of French and English classics, and with those ponderous
editions of Voltaire, Rousseau, the Memoires pour Servir, books of
travel and history, such as delighted our forefathers in the last
century, and many works of American and general history, afford ample
occupation for a rainy day. But alas! these, and all good things which
the house affords, can be enjoyed but for a brief season. Just as nature
has expanded every charm, developed every grace, and clothed the scene
with all the beauty of opened flower, of ripening grain, and of mature
vegetation, on the wings of the wind the poisoned breath comes borne to
the home of the white man, and he must fly before it or perish. The
books lie unopened on their shelves, the flower blooms and dies
unheeded, and, pity ’tis ’tis true, the old Madeira, garnered ’neath the
roof, settles down for a fresh lease of life, and sets about its
solitary task of acquiring a finer flavor for the infrequent lips of its
banished master and his welcome visitors. This is the story, at least,
that we hear on all sides, and such is the tale repeated to us beneath
the porch, when the full moon enhances, while softening, the loveliness
of the scene, and the rich melody of hundreds of mocking-birds fills the
grove.
Within these hospitable doors Horace might banquet better than he did
with Nasidienus, and drink such wine as can be only found among the
descendants of an ancestry who, improvident enough in all else, learned
the wisdom of bottling up choice old Bual and Sercial ere the demon of
odium had dried up their generous sources for ever. To these must be
added excellent bread, ingenious varieties of the gallette, compounded
now of rice and now of Indian meal, delicious butter and fruits, all
good of their kind. What more is needed for one who agrees with Mr.
Disraeli in thinking bread and wine man’s two first luxuries and his
best? And is there anything bitter rising up from the bottom of the
social bowl? My black friends who attend on me are grave as Mussulman
Khitmutgars. They are attired in liveries, and wear white cravats and
Berlin gloves. At night, when we retire, off they go to their outer
darkness in the small settlement of negrohood, which is separated from
our house by a wooden palisade. Their fidelity is undoubted. The house
breathes an air of security. The doors and windows are unlocked. There
is but one gun, a fowling-piece, on the premises. No planter hereabouts
has any dread of his slaves.