“walked the waters” by the aid of machinery, but which was now used as a
floating hotel, depot, and storehouse--three hundred and fifteen feet
long, and fully thirty feet on the upper deck above the level of the
river. Here were my quarters till the boat for Natchez should arrive.
The proprietor was somewhat excited on my arrival because my servants
was away. “Where have you been, you ----?” “Away to buy de newspaper,
Massa.” “For who, you ----?” “Me buy ’em for no one, Massa; me sell ’um
agin, Massa.” “See now, you ----, if ever you goes aboard to meddle with
newspapers, I’m ---- but I’ll kill you, mind that!" Baton Rouge is the
capital of the State of Louisiana, and the State House is a quaint and
very new example of bad taste. The Deaf and Dumb Asylum near it is in a
much better style. It was my intention to visit the State Prison and
Penitentiary, but the day was too hot, and the distance too great, and
so I dined at the oddest little Creole restaurant, with the funniest old
hostess and the strangest company in the world. On returning to the boat
hotel, Mr. Conrad, one of the citizens of the place, and Mr. W. Avery, a
Judge of the Court, were good enough to call to invite me to visit them,
but I was obliged to decline. The old gentlemen were both members of the
Home Guard, and drilled assiduously every evening. Of the one thousand
three hundred voters at Baton Rouge, more than seven hundred and fifty
are already off to the wars, and another company is being formed to
follow them. Mr. Conrad has three sons in the field already. The waiter
who served our drinks in the bar wore a uniform, and his musket lay in
the corner among the brandy bottles. At night a patriotic meeting of
citizen soldiery took place in the bow, in which song and whiskey had
much to do, so that sleep was difficult; but at seven o’clock on
Wednesday morning the Mary T. came alongside, and soon afterward bore me
on to Natchez through scenery which became wilder and less cultivated as
she got upward. Of the one thousand five hundred steamers on the river
not a tithe are now in employment, and the owners are in a bad way. It
was late at night when the steamer arrived at Natchez, and next morning
early I took shelter in another engineless steamer, which was thought to
be an hotel by its owners. Old negress on board, however, said, “There
was nothing for breakfast; go to Curry’s on shore. Walk up hill to
Curry’s--a bar-room, a waiter and flies.” “Can I have any breakfast?”
“No, Sir-ree; it’s over half an hour ago.” “Nothing to eat at all?” “No,
Sir.” “Can I get something anywhere else?” “I guess not.” It had been my
belief that a man with money in his pocket could not starve in any
country _soi-disant_ civilized life. Exceptions prove rules, but they
are disagreeable things. I chewed the cud of fancy _faute de mieux_, and
became the centre of attraction to citizens, from whose conversation I
learned that this was “Jeff. Davis’s fast day.” Observed one, “It quite
puts me in mind of Sunday: all the stores closed.” Said another, “We’ll
soon have Sunday every day, then, for I ’spect it won’t be worth while
for most shops to keep open any longer.” Natchez, a place of much trade
and cotton export in the season, is now as dull--let us say as Harwich
without a regatta. But it is ultra-Secessionist, _nil obstante_. My
hunger was assuaged by a friend who drove me up to his comfortable
mansion through a country not unlike the wooded parts of Sussex,
abounding in fine trees, and in the only lawns and park-like fields I
have yet seen in America. In the evening, after dinner, my host drove me
over to visit a small encampment under a wealthy planter, who has
raised, equipped, and armed his company at his own expense.
We were obliged to get out at a narrow lane and walk toward the
encampment on foot; a sentry stopped us, and we observed that there was
a semblance of military method in the camp. The captain was walking up
and down in the verandah of the poor, deserted hut for which he had
abandoned his splendid home. _A Book of Tactics_ (Hardee’s)--which is,
in part, a translation of the French _Manual_--lay on the table. Our
friend was full of fight, and said he would give all he had in the world
to the cause. But the day before, and a party of horse, composed of
sixty gentlemen in the district, with from £20,000 to £50,000 each, had
started for the war in Virginia. Everything to be seen or heard
testifies to the great zeal and resolution with which the South have
entered upon the quarrel. But they hold the power of the United States
and the loyalty of the North to the Union at far too cheap a rate. Next
day was passed in a delightful drive through cotton fields, Indian corn,
and undulating woodlands, amid which were some charming residences. I
crossed the river at Natchez, and saw one fine plantation in which the
corn, however, was by no means so fine as I have often seen. The cotton
looks well, and some had already burst into flower--bloom, as it is
called--which had turned to a flagrant pink, and seemed saucily
conscious that its boll would play an important part in the world. In
this part of Mississippi the Secessionist feeling was not so
overpowering at first as it has been since the majority declared itself,
but the expression of feeling is now all one way. The rage of Southern
sentiment is to me inexplicable, making every allowance for Southern
exaggeration. It is sudden, hot, and apparently causeless as summer
lightning. From every place I touched at along the Mississippi, a large
proportion of the population has gone forth to fight, or is preparing to
do so. The whispers which rise through the storm are few and feeble.
Some there are who sigh for the peace and happiness they have seen in
England. But they cannot seek those things; they must look after their
property. Each man maddens his neighbor by desperate resolves, and
threats, and vows. Their faith is in Jefferson Davis’s strength, and in
the necessities and weakness of France and England. The inhabitants of
the tracts which lie on the banks of the Mississippi, and on the inland
regions hereabout, ought to be, in the natural order of things, a people
almost nomadic, living by the chase and by a sparse agriculture, in the
freedom which tempted their ancestors to leave Europe. But the Old World
has been working for them. All its trials have been theirs; the fruits
of its experience, its labors, its research, its discoveries, are
theirs. Steam has enabled them to turn their rivers into highways, to
open primeval forests to the light of day and to man. All these,
however, would have availed them little had not the demands of
manufacture abroad, and the increasing luxury and population of the
North and West at home, enabled them to find in these swamps and uplands
sources of wealth richer and more certain than all the gold mines of the
world. But there must be gnomes to work those mines. Slavery was an
institution ready to their hands. In its development there lay every
material means for securing the prosperity which Manchester opened to
them, and in supplying their own countrymen with sugar. The small,
struggling, deeply mortgaged proprietors of swamp and forest set their
negroes to work to raise levees, to cut down trees, to plant and sow. As
the negro became valuable by his produce, the Irish emigrant took his
place in the severer labors of the plantation, and ditched and dug, and
cut into the waste land. Cotton at ten cents a pound gave a nugget in
every boll. Land could be had for a few dollars an acre. Negroes were
cheap in proportion. Men who made a few thousand dollars, invested them
in more negroes and more land, and borrowed as much again for the same
purpose. They waxed fat and rich--there seemed no bounds to their
fortune. But threatening voices came from the North--the echoes of the
sentiments of the civilized world repenting of its evil pierced their
ears, and they found their feet were of clay, and that they were nodding
to their fall in the midst of their power. Ruin inevitable awaited them
if they did not shut out these sounds and stop the fatal utterances. The
issue is to them one of life and death. Whoever raises it hereafter, if
it be not decided now, must expect to meet the deadly animosity which is
displayed toward the North. The success of the South--if it can
succeed--must lead to complications and results in other parts of the
world for which neither it nor Europe is now prepared. Of one thing
there can be no doubt--a Slave State cannot long exist without a
slave-trade. The poor whites who will have won the fight will demand
their share of the spoils. The land is abundant, and all that is wanted
to give them fortunes is a supply of slaves. They will have them in
spite of their masters, unless a stronger power prevents the
accomplishment of their wishes.
LETTER XIV.
CAIRO, Ill., June 20, 1861.
MY last letter was dated from Natchez, but it will probably accompany
this communication, as there are no mails now between the North and the
South, or _vice versa_. Tolerably confident in my calculations that
nothing of much importance could take place in the field till some time
after I had reached my post, it appeared to me desirable to see as much
of the South as I could, and to form an estimate of the strength of the
Confederation, although it could not be done at this time of the year
without considerable inconvenience, arising from the heat, which renders
it almost impossible to write in the day, and from the mosquitoes, which
come out when the sun goes down, and raise a blister at every stroke of
the pen. On several days lately the thermometer has risen to
ninety-eight degrees--on one day to one hundred and five degrees--in the
shade.
On Friday evening, June 14, I started from Natchez for Vicksburg on
board the steamer General Quitman, up the Mississippi. These long yellow
rivers are very fine for patriots to talk about, for poets to write
about, for buffalo fish to live in, and for steamers to navigate when
there are no snags, but I confess the Father of Waters is extremely
tiresome. Even the good cheer and the comfort of the General Quitman
could not reconcile me to the eternal beating of steam drums, blowing
whistles, bumpings at landings, and the general oppression of levees,
clearings, and plantations, which marked the course of the river, and I
was not sorry next morning when Vicksburg came in sight on the left bank
of the giant stream--a city on a hill, not very large, besteepled,
becupolaed, large-hoteled. Here lives a man who has been the pioneer of
hotels in the West, and who has now established himself in a big
caravanserai, which he rules in a curious fashion. M’Makin has, he tells
us, been rendered famous by Sir Charles Lyell. The large dining room--a
stall, _à manger_, as a friend of mine called it--is filled with small
tables covered with particolored cloths. At the end is a long deal
table, heavy with dishes of meat and vegetables, presided over by
negresses and gentlemen of uncertain hue. In the centre of the room
stood my host, shouting out at the top of his voice the names of the
joints, and recommending his guests to particular dishes, very much as
the chronicler tells us was the wont of the taverners in old London.
Many little negroes ran about in attendance, driven hither and thither
by the command of their white Soulouque--white-teethed, pensive-eyed,
but sad as memory. “Are you happy here!” asked I of one of them who
stood by my chair. He looked uneasy and frightened. “Why don’t you
answer?" “I’se feared to tell dat to massa.” “Why, your master is kind
to you?” “Berry good man, sir, when he not angry wid me!" And the
little fellow’s eyes filled with tears at some recollection which pained
him. I asked no more. Vicksburg is Secessionist. There were hundreds of
soldiers in the streets, many in the hotel, and my host said some
hundreds of Irish had gone off to the wars, to fight for the good cause.
If Mr. O’Connell were alive, he would surely be pained to see the course
taken by so many of his countrymen on this question. After dinner I was
invited to attend a meeting of some of the citizens at the railway
station, where the time passed very agreeably till four o’clock, when
the train started for Jackson, the capital of Mississippi; and after a
passage of two hours through a poor, clay country, seared with
water-courses and gullies, with scanty crops of Indian corn and very
backward cotton, we were deposited in that city. It must be called a
City. It is the State capital, but otherwise there is no reason why, in
strict nomenclature, it should be designated by any such title. It is in
the usual style of the “cities” which spring up in the course of a few
years amid the stumps of half-cleared fields in the wilderness--wooden
houses, stores kept by Germans, French, Irish, Italians; a large hotel
swarming with people, with a noisy billiard-room and a noisier bar, the
arena and the cause of “difficulties;” wooden houses, with portentous
and pretentious white porticoes, and pillars of all the Grecian orders:
a cupola or two, and two or three steeples, too large for the feeble
bodies beneath--hydrocephalic architecture; a State house, looking well
at a distance, ragged, dirty, and mean within; groups of idlers in front
of “Exchange,” where the business transacted consists of a barter
between money or credit and “drinks” of various stimulants; a secluded
telegraph office round a corner; a forward newspaper office in the
street, and a population of negroes shuffling through the thick dust
which forms the streets. I called on Mr. Pettus, the Governor of the
State of Mississippi, according to invitation, and found him in the
State House in a very poor room, with broken windows and ragged carpets
and dilapidated furniture. He is a grim, silent man, tobacco-ruminant,
abrupt-speeched, firmly believing that the state of society in which he
exists, wherein there are monthly foul murders perpetrated at the very
seat of Government, is the most free and civilized in the world. He is
easy of access to all, and men sauntered in and out of his office just
as they would walk into a public house. Once on a time, indeed, the
Governor was a deer hunter in the forest, and lived far away from the
haunts of men, and he is proud of the fact. He is a strenuous Seceder,
and has done high-handed things in his way--simple apparently, honest
probably, fierce certainly--and he lives, while he is Governor, on his
salary of $4,000 a year in the house provided for him by the State.
There was not much to say on either side. I can answer for one. Next day
being Sunday I remained at rest in the house of a friend listening to
local stories--not _couleur de rose_, but of a deeper
tint--blood-red--how such a man shot another, and was afterwards stabbed
by a third; how this fellow and his friends hunted down in broad day and
murdered one obnoxious to them--tale after tale such as I have heard
through the South and seen daily narratives of in the papers. Aceldama!
No security for life! Property is quite safe. Its proprietor is in
imminent danger, were it only from stray bullets when he turns a corner.
The “bar,” the “drink,” the savage practice of walking about with pistol
and poniard--ungovernable passions ungoverned because there is no law to
punish the deeds to which they lead--these are the causes of acts which
would not be tolerated in the worst days of Corsican _vendette_, and
which must be put down, or the countries in which they are unpunished
will become as barbarous as jungles of wild beasts. In the evening I
started by railroad for the city of Memphis, in Mississippi. There was a
sleeping car on the train, but the flying bug and the creature less
volatile, more pungent and persistent, which bears its name, murdered
sleep, and when Monday morning came I was glad to arise and get into one
of the carriages, although it was full of noisy soldiers bound to the
camp at Corinth, in the State of Mississippi, who had been drinking
whiskey all night, and were now screaming for water and howling like
demons. At Holly Spring, where a rude breakfast awaited us, the warriors
got out on the top of the carriages and performed a war dance to the
music of their band, which was highly creditable to the carriage-maker’s
workmanship. Along the road at all the settlements and clearings the
white people cheered, and the women waved white things, and Secession
flags floated. There is no doubt of the state of feeling in this part of
the country; and yet it does not look much worth fighting for--an arid
soil, dry water-courses, clay ravines, light crops. Perhaps it will be
better a month hence, and negroes may make it pay. There were many in
the fields, and it struck me they looked better than those who work in
gangs on the larger and richer plantations. Among our passengers were
gentlemen from Texas going to Richmond to offer services to Mr. Davis.
They declared the feeling in their State was almost without exception in
favor of Secession. It is as astonishing how positive all these people
are that England is in absolute dependence on cotton for her national
existence. They are at once savage and childish. If England does not
recognize the Southern Confederacy pretty quick, they will pass a
resolution not to let her have any cotton, except, &c. Suppose England
does ever recognize a Confederation based on the principles of the
South, what guarantee is there that in her absolute dependence, if it
exists, similar coercive steps may not be taken against her? “Oh! we
shall be friends, you know;” and so on.
On the train before us there had just passed on a company armed with
large bowie-knives and rifled pistols, who called themselves the
“Toothpick Company.” They carried a coffin along with them, on which was
a plate with “Abe Lincoln” inscribed on it, and they amused themselves
with the childish conceit of telling the people as they went along that
“they were bound” to bring his body back in it. At Grand Junction
Station the troops got out and were mustered preparatory to their
transfer to a train for Richmond, in Virginia. The first company, about
seventy strong, consisted exclusively of Irish, who were armed with
rifles without bayonets. The second consisted of fifty-six Irish, armed
mostly with muskets; the third were of Americans, who were well
uniformed, but had no arms with them. The fourth, clad in green, were
nearly all Irish; they wore all sorts of clothing, and had no
pretensions to be regarded as disciplined soldiers. I am led to believe
that the great number of Irish who have enlisted for service indicates a
total suspension of all the works on which they are ordinarily engaged
in the South. They were not very orderly. “Fix bayonets,” elicited a
wonderful amount of controversy in the ranks. “Whar are yer dhrivin to?”
“Sullivan, don’t yer hear we’re to fix beenits.” “Ayse the strap of mee
baynit, sargint, jewel!” “If ye prod me wid that agin, I’ll let dayloite
into ye.” Officer, reading muster--“No. 23, James Phelan.” No reply.
Voice from the ranks--“Faith Phelan’s gone; sure he wint at the last
dipot.” Old men and boys were mixed together, but the mass of the rank
and file were strong, full-grown men. In one of the carriages were some
women dressed as “vivandieres,” minus the coquet air and the trousers
and boots of those ladies. They looked sad, sorry, dirty, and foolish.
There was a great want of water along the line, and the dust and heat
were very great and disagreeable. When they have to march many of the
men will break down, owing to bad shoes and the weight of clothes and
trash of various kinds they sling on their shoulders. They moved off
amid much whooping, and our journey was continued through a country in
which the railroad engineer had made the only opening for miles at a
time. When a clearing was reached, however, there were signs that the
soil was not without richness, and all the wheat was already cut and in
sheaf. The passengers said it was fine and early, and that it averaged
from forty to sixty bushels to the acre (more than it looked). Very
little ground here is under cotton. It was past one o’clock on Monday
when the train reached Memphis, in Tennessee, which is situated on a
high bluff overhanging the Mississippi. Here is one of the strategic
positions of the Confederates. It is now occupied by a force of the
Tennesseeans, which is commanded by Major-General Pillow, whom I found
quartered in Gayoso House, a large hotel, named after one of the old
Spanish rulers here, and as he was just starting to inspect his
batteries and the camp at Randolph, sixty odd miles higher up the river,
I could not resist his pressing invitations, tired as I was, to
accompany him and his staff on board the Ingomar, to see what they were
really like. First we visited the bluff on the edge of which is
constructed a breastwork of cotton bales, which no infantry could get
at, and which would offer no resistance to vertical and but little to
horizontal fire. It is placed so close to the edge of the bluff at
various places that shell and shot would knock away the bank from under
it. The river rolls below deep and strong, and across the roads or
water-courses leading to it are feeble barricades of plank, which a
howitzer would shiver to pieces in a few rounds. Higher up the bank, on
a commanding plateau, there is a breastwork and parapet, within which
are six guns, and the General informed me he intended to mount thirteen
guns at this part of the river which would certainly prove very
formidable to such steamers as they had on these waters, if any attempt
were made to move from Cairo.
In the course of the day I was introduced to exactly seventeen colonels
and one captain. My happiness was further increased by an introduction
to a youth of some twenty-three years of age, with tender feet if I may
judge from prunella slippers, dressed in a green cutaway, jean pants,
and a tremendous sombrero with a plume of ostrich feathers, and gold
tassels looped at the side, who had the air and look of an apothecary’s
errand boy. This was “General” Maggles (let us say) of Arkansas.
Freighted deeply with the brave, the Ingomar started for her voyage, and
we came alongside the bank at Chickasaw Bluffs, too late to visit the
camp, as it was near midnight before we arrived. I forgot to say that a
large number of steamers were lying at Memphis, which had been seized by
General Pillow, and he has forbidden all traffic in boats to Cairo.
Passengers must go round by rail to Columbus.
* * * * *