present myself to the members of the Cabinet, and to be introduced to
the President of the Confederate States of America. There is no sentry
at the doors, and access is free to all, but there are notices on the
doors warning visitors that they can only be received during certain
hours. The President was engaged with some gentlemen when I was
presented to him, but he received me with much kindliness of manner, and
when they had left entered into conversation with me for some time on
general matters. Mr. Davis is a man of slight, sinewy figure, rather
over the middle height, and of erect, soldier-like bearing. He is about
fifty-five years of age; his features are regular and well-defined, but
the face is thin and marked on cheek and brow with many wrinkles, and is
rather careworn and haggard. One eye is apparently blind, the other is
dark, piercing, and intelligent. He was dressed very plainly in a light
gray summer suit. In the course of conversation he gave an order for the
Secretary of War to furnish me with a letter as a kind of passport in
case of my falling in with the soldiers of any military posts who might
be indisposed to let me pass freely, merely observing that I had been
enough within the lines of camps to know what was my duty on such
occasions. I subsequently was presented to Mr. Walker, the Secretary of
War, who promised to furnish me with the needful documents before I left
Montgomery. In his room were General Beauregard and several officers,
engaged over plans and maps, apparently in a little council of war,
which was, perhaps, not without reference to the intelligence that the
United States troops were marching on Norfolk Navy Yard, and had
actually occupied Alexandria. On leaving the Secretary I proceeded to
the room of the Attorney General, Mr. Benjamin, a very intelligent and
able man, whom I found busied in preparations connected with the issue
of letters of marque. Everything in the offices looked like earnest work
and business.
On my way back from the State Department I saw a very fine company of
infantry and three field pieces, with about one hundred and twenty
artillerymen, on their march to the railway station for Virginia. The
men were all well equipped, but there were no ammunition wagons for the
guns, and the transport consisted solely of a few country carts drawn by
poor horses, out of condition. There is no lack of muscle and will among
the men. The troops which I see here are quite fit to march and fight as
far as their _personnel_ is concerned, and there is no people in the
world so crazy with military madness. The very children in the streets
ape the air of soldiers, carry little flags, and wear cockades as they
strut in the highways; and mothers and fathers feed the fever by
dressing them up as Zouaves or Chasseurs.
Mrs. Davis had a small levee to-day in right of her position as wife of
the President. Several ladies there probably looked forward to the time
when their States might secede from the new Confederation, and afford
them the pleasure of holding a reception. Why not Presidents of the
State of Georgia, or Alabama? Why not King of South Carolina, or Emperor
of Florida? Soldiers of fortune, make your game! Gentlemen politicians,
the ball is rolling. There is, to be sure, a storm gathering at the
North, but it cannot hurt you, and already there are _condottieri_ from
all parts of the world flocking to your aid, who will eat your Southern
beeves the last of all.
One word more as to a fleet. The English owners of several large
steamers are already in correspondence with the Government here for the
purchase of their vessels. The intelligence which had reached the
Government that their Commissioners have gone on to Paris is regarded as
unfavorable to their claims, and as a proof that as yet England is not
disposed to recognize them. It is amusing to hear the tone used on both
sides toward Great Britain. Both are most anxious for her countenance
and support, although the North blusters rather more about its
independence than the South, which professes a warm regard for the
mother country. “But,” says the North, “if Great Britain recognizes the
South, we shall certainly look on it as a declaration of war.” “And,”
says the South, “if Great Britain does not recognize our privateers’
flag, we shall regard it as proof of hostility and of alliance with the
enemy.” The Government at Washington seeks to obtain promises from Lord
Lyons that our Government will not recognize the Southern Confederacy,
but at the same time refuses any guaranties in reference to the rights
of neutrals. The blockade of the Southern ports would not occasion us
any great inconvenience at present, because the cotton-loading season is
over; but if it be enforced in October, there is a prospect of very
serious and embarrassing questions arising in reference to the rights of
neutrals, treaty obligations with the United States Government, the
trade and commerce of England, and the law of blockade in reference to
the distinctions to be drawn between measures of war and means of
annoyance.
As I write the guns in front of the State Department are firing a
salute, and each report marks a State of the Confederacy. They are now
ten, as Arkansas and Tennessee are now out of the Union.
LETTER IX.
FROM MONTGOMERY TO MOBILE.
MOBILE, Alabama, May 11.
THE wayfarer who confides in the maps of a strange country, or who
should rely upon even the guide-books of the United States, which still
lack a Murray or a Bradshaw, may be at times embarrassed by insuperable
hills and unnavigable rivers. When, however, I saw the three towering
stories of the high-pressure steamer Southern Republic, on board of
which we tumbled down the steep bank of the Alabama river at Montgomery,
any such misgivings vanish from my mind. So colossal an ark could have
ascended no mythical stream, and the existence and capabilities of the
Alabama were demonstrated by its presence.
Punctuality is reputed a rare virtue in the river steamers of the West
and South, which seldom leave their wharves until they have bagged a
fair complement of passengers, although steaming up and ringing gongs
and bells every afternoon for a week or more before their departure, as
if travellers were to be swarmed like bees. Whether stimulated by the
infectious activity of these “war times,” or convinced that the
“politeness of kings” is the best steamboat policy, the grandson of Erin
who owns and commands the Southern Republic casts off his fastenings but
half an hour after his promised start, and the short puff of the engine
is enlivened by the wild strains of a steam-organ called a “calliope,”
which gladdens us with the assurance that we are in the incomparable
“land of Dixie.”
Reserving for a cooler hour the attractions of the lower floor--a Hades
consecrated to machinery, freight, and negroes--we betake ourselves to
the second landing, where we find a long dining-hall surrounded by two
tiers of state rooms, the upper one accessible by a stairway leading to
a gallery, which divides the “saloon” between floor and roof. We are
shown to our quarters, which leave much to be desired and nothing to
spare, and rush from their suffocating atmosphere to the outer balcony,
where a faint breeze stirs the air. There is a roofed balcony above us
that corresponds to the second tier of state rooms, from which a party
of excited Secessionists are discharging revolvers at the dippers on the
surface and the cranes on the banks of the river.
After we have dropped down five or six miles from Montgomery, the steam
whistle announces our approach to a landing, and, as there is no wharf
in view, we watch curiously the process by which our top-heavy craft,
under the sway of a four-knot current, is to swing round in her
invisible moorings. As we draw nigh to a wagon-worn indenture in the
bank, the “scream” softens into the dulcet pipes of the “calliope,” and
the steamer doubles upon her track, like an elephant turning at bay, her
two engines being as independent of each other as Seceding States, and,
slowly stemming the stream, lays her nose upon the bank, and holds it
there, with the judicious aid of her paddles, until a long plank is run
ashore from her bow, over which three passengers, with valises, make way
for a planter and his family, who come on board. The gang-plank is
hauled in, the steamer turns her head down stream with the expertness of
a whale in a canal, and we resume our voyage. We renew these stoppages
at various times before dark, landing here a barrel and there a box, and
occasionally picking up a passenger.
After supper, which is served on a series of parallel tables running
athwart the saloon, we return to enjoy from the balcony the cool
obscurity of the evening in this climate, where light means heat. As we
cleave the glass surface of the black water, the timber-clad banks seem
to hem us in more closely and to shut up in the vista before us, and
while we glide down with a rapidity which would need but the roar of
rapids to prefigure a cataract beyond, we yield to the caprice of fancy,
instituting comparisons between the dark perspective ahead and the
mystery of the future.
Again a scream, and a ruddy light flashes from our prow and deepens the
shades around us. This proceeds from the burning of “light wood”--a
highly resinous pine--in a wire basket hung on gimbals and held like a
landing-net below the bow of the steamer, so as to guide without
blinding the pilot, who is ensconced like a Hansom cabman upon its roof.
The torch-bearer raises his cresset as we steam up to the bank, and
plants it in a socket, when a hawser is seized round a tree, and the
crew turned ashore to “wood up.” There is a steep high bank above us,
and while dusky forms are flitting to and fro with food for our
furnaces, we survey a long stairway ascending the bank at a sharp angle
in a cut, which is lost in the sheds that crown the eminence over head.
This stair is flanked on either side by the bars of an iron tramway, up
which freight is hauled when landed, and parallel to it is a wooden
slide, down which bales of cotton and sacks of corn are shot upon the
steamer. One or two passengers slowly ascend, and a voice in the air
notifies us that a team is at hand with a load of ladies, who shortly
after are seen picking their way down the flight of steps. The cresset
is constantly replenished with fresh light wood, and the shadows cast by
its flickering flame make us regret that we have not with us a Turner to
preserve this scene, which would have been a study for Rembrandt or
Salvator Rosa.
At midnight we halt for a couple of hours at Selma, a “rising town,”
which has taken a start of late, owing to the arrival of a branch
railway, that connects it with Tennessee and the Mississippi River. Here
a huge _embarcadere_, several stories high, seems fastened to the side
of the bank, and affords us an opportunity of stepping out from either
story of the Southern Republic upon a corresponding landing. Upon one of
these floors there are hackmen and hotel runners, competing for those
who land, and indicating the proximity of a town, if not a city. Our
captain had resolved upon making but a short stay, in lieu of tying up
until morning--his usual practice--when an acquaintance comes on board
and begs him to wait an hour for a couple of ladies and some children,
whom he will hunt up a mile or so out of town. Times are hard, and the
captain very cheerfully consents, not insensible to the flattering
insinuation: “You know our folks never go with any one but you, if they
can help it.”
The next day and evening are a repetition of the foregoing scenes, with
more plantations in view and a general air of tillage and prosperity. We
are struck by the uniformity of the soil, which everywhere seems of
inexhaustible fertility, and by the unvarying breadth of the stream,
which, but for its constantly recurring sinuosities, might pass for a
broad ship canal. We also remark that the bluffs rarely sink into
bottoms susceptible of overflow, and admire the verdure of the primitive
forest, a tangle of magnolias in full flower, of laurel, and of various
oaks peculiar to this region, and which, though never rising to the
dignity of that noble tree in higher latitudes, are many of them
extremely graceful. All this sylva of moderate stature is intertwined
with creepers, and at intervals we see the Spanish moss, indicating the
malarious exhalations of the soil beneath. The Indian corn, upon which
the Southerners rely principally for food, has attained a height of two
feet, and we were told that, in consequence of the war, it is sown in
greater breadth than usual. The cotton plant has but just peeped above
the earth, and, alluding to its tenderness, those around us express
anxieties about that crop, which, it seems, are never allayed until it
has been picked, bagged and pressed, shipped and sold.
As I am not engaged upon an itinerary, let these sketches suffice to
convey an idea of the four hundred and seventeen miles of winding river
which connect Montgomery with Mobile, to which place the Southern
Republic conveyed us in thirty-four hours, stoppings included.
One of the Egyptian pyramids owes its origin to the strange caprice of a
princess, and the Southern Republic is said to have been built with the
proceeds of an accidental “haul” of Gold Coast natives, who fell into
the net of her enterprising proprietor. This worthy, born of Irish
parents in Milk street, is too striking a type of what the late Mr.
Webster was wont to call a “Northern man with Southern principles,” not
to deserve something more than a passing notice.
For out-and-out Southern notions there is nothing in Dixie’s Land like
the successful emigrant from the North and East. Captain Meagher had at
his fingers’ ends all the politico-economical facts and figures of the
Southern side of the question, and rested his reasoning solely upon the
more sordid and material calculations of the Secessionists. It was a
question of tariffs. The North had, no doubt, provided the protection of
a navy, the facilities of mails, the construction of forts, Custom
Houses, and Post Offices, in the South, and placed countless well-paid
offices at the disposal of gentlemen fond of elegant leisure; but for
all these the South had been paying more than their value, and when
Abolitionists were allowed to elect a Sectional President, and the
system of forced labor, which is the basis of Southern prosperity, was
threatened, the South were too happy to take a “snap judgment,” as in a
_pie poudre_ Court, and declare the Federal compact forfeited and
annulled forever.
During the long second day of our voyage, we examined the faces of the
proletarians, whose color and constitutions so well adapted them for the
Cyclopian realms of the main deck. Among them we detect several
physiognomies which strike us as resembling seedlings from the Gold
Coast rather than the second or third fruits of ancient transplantation.
A fellow traveller gratifies at the same time our curiosity and our
penetration. There are several native Africans, or, as they are called
in Cuba, _bozales_, on board. They are the property of the argumentative
captain, and were acquired by a coup de main, at which I have already
hinted in this letter. It seems that a club of planters in this State
and one or two others resolved, little more than a year ago, to import a
cargo of Africans. They were influenced partly by cupidity and partly by
fancy to set the United States laws at defiance, and to evince their
contempt for New England philanthropy. The job was accepted by an
Eastern house, which engaged to deliver the cargo at a certain point on
the coast within certain limits of time.
Whether the shipment arrived earlier than anticipated, or whether
Captain Meagher was originally designed as the person to whom the bold
and delicate manoeuvre of landing them should be intrusted, it is
certain that on a certain Sunday in last July he took a little coasting
trip in his steamer Czar, and appeared at Mobile on the following
morning in season to make his regular voyage up river. It is no less
certain that he ran the dusky strangers in at night by an unfrequented
pass, and landed them among the cane-brakes of his own plantation with
sufficient celerity to be back at the moorings of the Czar without his
absence having been noticed. The vessel from which the _bozales_ were
delivered was scuttled and sunk, and her master and crew found their way
North by rail.
But the parties in interest soon claimed to divide the spoils, when, to
their infinite disgust, the enterprising Captain very coolly professed
to ignore the whole business, and defied them to seek to recover by suit
at law property the importation of which was regarded and would be
punished as felony, if not as piracy, by the judicial tribunals. A case
was made and issue joined, when the Captain proved a circumstantial
_alibi_, and, having cast the claimants, doled them out a few _bonzes_,
perhaps to escape assassination, as shells, while he kept the oyster in
the shape of the pick of the importation, which he still holds,
reconciling his conscience to the transaction by interpreting it as
_salvage_.
All this is told us by our interlocutor, who was one of the losers by
the affair, and who stigmatized the conduct of its hero as having been
treacherous. The latter, after repeated jocular inquiries, suffers his
vanity to subdue his reticence, and finishes by “acknowledging the
corn.”
In the forenoon of the second day we meet two steamers ascending the
river, with heavy cargoes, and are told that they are the Keyes and the
Lewis, recently warned off, and _not seized_ by the blockading squadron
off Pensacola. They are deep with provisions for the forces of the
Confederate States Army before Pickens, which must now be dispatched
from Montgomery by rail.
In Mobile, for the first time since leaving Washington, “we realize” the
entire stagnation of business. There are but five vessels in port,
chiefly English, which will suffice to carry away the _dêbris_ of the
cotton crop. Exchange on the North is unsalable, owing to the
impossibility of importing coin through the unsettled country, and bills
on London are of slow sale at par, which would leave a profit of seven
per cent. upon the importation of gold from your side.
* * * * *
MOBILE, Sunday, May 11.
The heat of the city rendered an excursion to which I was invited, for
the purpose of visiting the forts at the entrance of the bay,
exceedingly agreeable, and I was glad to get out from the smell of warm
bricks to the breezy waters of the sea. The party comprised many of the
leading merchants and politicians of this city, which is the third in
importance as a port of exportation in the United States of America.
There was not a man among them who did not express, with more or less
determination, the resolve never to submit to the rule of the accursed
North. Let there be no mistake whatever as to the unanimity which exists
at present in the South to fight for what it calls its independence, and
to carry on a war to the knife with the Government of the United States.
I have frequently had occasion to remark the curious operation of the
doctrine of State Rights on the minds of the people: but an examination
of the institutions of the country as they actually exist leads to the
inference that, where the tyranny of the majority is at once
irresponsible and cruel, it is impossible for any man, where the
doctrine prevails, to resist it with safety or success. It is the
inevitable result of the action of this majority, as it operates in
America, first to demoralize and finally to absorb the minority; and
even those who have maintained what are called “Union doctrines,” and
who are opposed to secession or revolution, have bowed their heads
before the majesty of the mass, and have hastened to signify their
acquiescence in the decisions which they have hitherto opposed. The
minority, cowardly in consequence of the arbitrary and vindictive
character of the overwhelming power against which it has struggled, and
disheartened by defeat, of which the penalties are tremendous in such
conflicts as these, hastens to lick the feet of the conqueror, and
rushes with frantic cheers after the chariot in the triumph which
celebrates its own humiliation. If there be a minority at all on this
great question of Secession in the Southern States, it hides in holes
and corners, inaccessible to the light of day, and sits there in
darkness and sorrow, silent and fearful, if not dumb and hopeless. There
were officers who had served with distinction under the flag of the
United States, now anxious to declare that it was not their flag, and
that they had no affection for it, although they were ready to admit
they would have continued to serve under it if the States had not gone
out. A man’s State, in fact, under the operation of these majority
doctrines to which I have adverted, holds hostages for his fidelity to
the majority, not only in such land or fortune as he may possess within
her bounds, but in his family, his relatives, and kin, and if the State
revolts, the officer who remains faithful to the flag of the United
States is considered by the authorities of the revolting State a
traitor, and, what is worse, he is treated in the persons of those he
leave behind him as the worst kind of political renegade. General Scott,
but a few months ago the most honored of men in a Republic which sets
such store on military success, is now reviled and abused because, being
a Virginian by birth, he did not immediately violate his oath, abandon
his post, and turn to fight against the flag which he has illustrated by
repeated successes, during a career of half a century, the moment his
State passes an ordinance of Secession.
An intelligent and accomplished officer, who accompanied me to-day
around the forts under his command, told me that he had all along
resisted Secession, but that when his State went out he felt it was
necessary to resign his commission in the United States army, and to
take service with the Confederates. Among the most determined opponents
of the North, and the most vehement friends of what are called here
“domestic institutions,” are the British residents, English, Irish, and
Scotch, who have settled here for trading purposes, and who are
frequently slave-holders. These men have no State rights to uphold, but
they are convinced of the excellence of things as they are, or find it
their interest to be so.
The waters of two rivers fall into the head of the Bay of Mobile, which
is, in fact, a narrow sea creek between low, sandy banks, covered with
pine and forest trees, broken here and there into islands, and extending
some thirty miles inland, with a breadth varying from three to seven
miles. No attempt has been made apparently to improve the waters or to
provide docks or wharfage for the numerous cotton ships which lie out at
the mouth of the bay, more than twenty-five miles from Mobile. All the
cotton has to be sent down to them in lighters, and the number of men
thus employed in the cotton season in loading the barges, navigating and
transferring the cargoes to the ships, is very considerable, and their
rate of wages is high.