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BORDER AND BASTILLE.
BY GEORGE A. LAWRENCE
THE AUTHOR OF "GUY LIVINGSTONE"
New York:
W. I. POOLEY & CO.,
Harpers' Building, Franklin Square.
WYNKOOP, HALLENBECK & THOMAS, PRINTERS,
No. 113 Fulton Street, New York.
L'ENVOI.
When, late in last autumn, I determined to start for the Confederate
States as soon as necessary preparations could be completed, I had
listened, not only to my own curiosity, impelling me at least to see one
campaign of a war, the like of which this world has never known, but
also to the suggestions of those who thought that I might find materials
there for a book that would interest many here in England. My intention,
from the first, was to serve as a volunteer-aide in the staff of the
army in Virginia, so long as I should find either pen-work or handiwork
to do. The South might easily have gained a more efficient recruit; but
a more earnest adherent it would have been hard to find. I do not
attempt to disguise the fact that my predilections were thoroughly
settled long before I left England; indeed, it is the consciousness of a
strong partisan spirit at my heart which has made me strive so hard, not
only to state facts as accurately as possible, but to abstain from
coloring them with involuntary prejudice.
To say nothing of my being afterwards backed by the powerful
Secessionist interest at Baltimore, the introductory letters furnished
me by Colonel Dudley Mann and Mr. Slidell, addressed to the most
influential personages--civil and military--in the Confederacy, from
President Davis downwards, were such as could hardly have failed to
secure me the position I desired, though they benevolently over
estimated the qualifications of the bearer. To the first of these
gentlemen I am indebted for much kindness and valuable advice; to the
second I am personally unknown; and I am glad to have this opportunity
of acknowledging his ready courtesy. It was Colonel Mann who counseled
my going through the Northern States, instead of attempting to run the
blockade from Nassau or Bermuda, as I had originally intended. In spite
of the events, I am so certain that the advice was sound and wise, that
I do not repent--scarcely regret--having followed it.
I need not particularize the precaution taken to insure the safe
delivery of these credentials: it is sufficient to state that they were
never submitted to Federal inspection; nor had I ever, at any time, in
my possession, a single document which could vitiate my claim to the
rights of a neutral and civilian. Even Mr. Seward did not pretend to
refuse liberty of unexpressed sympathy with either side to an utter
foreigner. While I was a free agent in the Northern States, I was
careful to indulge in no other.
Since my return, I hear that some one has been kind enough to insinuate
that I might have succeeded better if I had been more careful to
prosecute my journey South with vigor at any risk; or if I had been less
imprudent in parading my object while in Baltimore. I prefer to meet the
first of these assertions by a simple record of facts, and by the most
unqualified denial that it is possible to give to any falsehood, written
or spoken. As to the second--really quite as unfounded--it may be well
to say, that before I had been a full fortnight in America, I was
"posted" in the literary column of "Willis' Home Journal." I could not
quarrel with the terms in which the intelligence--avowedly copied from
an English paper--was couched. The writer seemed to know rather more
about my intentions--if not of my antecedents--than I knew myself; but I
can honestly say that the halo of romance with which he was pleased to
surround a very practical purpose, did not however compensate me for the
inconvenient publicity. This paragraph soon found its way into other
journals, and at last confronted me--to my infinite disgust--in the
"Baltimore Clipper," a bitter Unionist organ.
Perhaps this will answer sufficiently the accusation of "parade," for
even had we been disposed to indulge in an "alarum and flourish of
trumpets," the sensation-mongers would have anticipated the absurdity.
Besides this, my movements were not in anywise interfered with up to the
moment of my arrest, when we were miles beyond all Federal pickets. My
captors, of course, had never heard of my existence till we met. It is
more than probable that the report just referred to did greatly
complicate my position when I was actually in confinement; but here my
person--not my plans--suffered, and here, the real mischief of that very
involuntary publicity began and ended.
After my plans were finally arranged, I had an interview with the
editorial powers of the _Morning Post_; there it was settled that I
should communicate to that journal as constantly as circumstances would
permit, any interesting matter or incidents that fell in my way, in
consideration of which was voted a liberal supplement of the sinews of
war; but it was clearly understood that my movements and line of action
were to be absolutely untrammeled. I could not have entered into any
contract that in any way interfered with the primary object I had in
view. I had no intention of commencing such correspondence before I had
actually crossed the southern frontier, so that one letter from
Baltimore--afterwards quoted--was the solitary contribution I was able
to furnish.
I have said thus much, because I wish any one who may be interested on
the point to know clearly on what footing I stood at starting: for the
general public, of course, the subject cannot have the slightest
interest.
Of all compositions, I suppose, a personal narrative is the most
wearying to the writer, if not to the reader; egotistical talk may be
pleasant enough, but, commit it to paper, the fault carries its own
punishment. The recurrence of that everlasting first pronoun becomes a
real stumbling-block to one at last. Yet there is no evading it, unless
you cast your story into a curt, succinct diary; to carry this off
effectively, requires a succession of incidents, more varied and
important than befell me.
A failure--absolute and complete--however brought about, is a fair mark
for mockery, if not for censure. Perhaps, however, I may hope that some
of my readers, in charity, if not in justice, will believe that I have
honestly tried to avoid over-coloring details of personal adventure, and
that no word here is set down in willful insincerity or malice, though
all are written by one whose enmity to all purely republican
institutions will endure to his life's end.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. A Foul Start
CHAPTER II. Congressia
CHAPTER III. Capua
CHAPTER IV. Friends in Council
CHAPTER V. The Ford
CHAPTER VI. The Ferry
CHAPTER VII. Fallen Across the Threshold
CHAPTER VIII. The Road to Avernus
CHAPTER IX. Caged Birds
CHAPTER X. Dark Days
CHAPTER XI. Homeward Bound
CHAPTER XII. A Popular Armament
CHAPTER XIII. The Debatable Ground
CHAPTER XIV. Slavery and the War
BORDER AND BASTILLE
CHAPTER I.
A FOUL START.
Looking back on an experience of many lands and seas, I cannot recall a
single scene more utterly dreary and desolate than that which awaited
us, the outward-bound, in the early morning of the 20th of last
December. The same sullen neutral tint pervaded and possessed
everything--the leaden sky--the bleak, brown shores over against us--the
dull graystone work lining the quays--the foul yellow water--shading one
into the other, till the division-lines became hard to discern. Even
where the fierce gust swept off the crests of the river wavelets,
boiling and breaking angrily, there was scant contrast of color in the
dusky spray, or murky foam.
The chafing Mersey tried in vain to make himself heard. All other
sounds--a voice, for instance, two yards from your ear--were drowned by
the trumpet of the strong northwester. All through the past night, we
listened to that note of war; we could feel the railway carriages
trembling and quivering, as if shaken by some rude giant's hand, when
they halted at any exposed station; and, this morning, the pilots shake
their wise, grizzled beads, and hint at worse weather yet in the offing.
For forty-eight hours the storm-signals had never been lowered, nor
changed, except to intimate the shifting of a point or two in the
current of the gale, and few vessels, if any, had been found rash enough
to slight "the admiral's" warning.
It had been gravely discussed, we heard afterwards, by the owners and
captain of "The Asia," whether she should venture to sea that day;
finally, the question was left to the latter to decide. There are as
nice points of honor, and as much jealous regard for professional credit
in the merchant service as in any other. Only once, since the line was
started, has a "Cunarder" been kept in port by wind or weather--this was
the commander's first trip across the Atlantic since his promotion; you
may guess which way the balance turned.
We waited on the landing-stage one long cold hour. The huge square
structure, ordinarily steady and solid as the mainland itself, was
pitching and rolling not much less "lively" than a Dutch galliot in a
sea-way; and the tug that was to take us on board parted three hawsers
before she could make fast alongside. It was hard to keep one's footing
on the shaking, slippery bridge, but in ten minutes all staggered or
tumbled, as choice or chance directed, on to the deck of the little
steamer. I was looking for a dry corner, when an American passenger made
room for me very courteously, and I begun to talk to him--about the
weather, of course. It was a keen, intellectual face, pleasant withal,
and kindly, and in its habitual expression not devoid of genial humor.
But, at that moment, it was possessed by an unutterable misery. No
wonder.
"I was ill the whole way over from America," he said, "and _then_ we
started with bright weather and a fair wind."
I was much attracted by the voice, betraying scarcely any Transatlantic
accent: it was quiet and calm in tone, like that of any brave man on his
way to encounter some irresistible pain or woe; but saddened by an agony
of anticipation, he presaged, only too truly, "the burden of the
atmosphere and the wrath to come."
Another struggle and scramble--and we are on board, at last. It is some
comfort to exchange that wretched little wet tug for the deck of the
Asia; though a trifle unsteady even now, she oscillates after the sober
and stately fashion befitting a mighty "liner." Half an hour sees the
end of the long stream of mail-bags, and the huge bales of newspapers
shipped; then the moorings are cast loose; there rises the faintest echo
of a cheer--who could be enthusiastic on such a morning?--the vast
wheels turn slowly and sullenly, as if hating the hard work before them;
and we are fairly off.
The waves and weather grew rapidly wilder; as we neared blue water, just
after passing the light, we saw a large ship driving helplessly and--the
sailors said--hopelessly, among the breakers of the North Sands. She had
tried to run in without a pilot, and _ours_ seemed to think her fate the
justest of judgments; but to disinterested and unprofessional spectators
the sight was very sad, and somewhat discouraging. So with omen and
augury, as well as the wind dead against us.
"The Sword went out to sea."
All that day and night "The Asia" staggered and weltered on through the
yeasty channel waves, breaking in her passengers rather roughly for a
conflict with vaster billows. Thirteen hours of hard steaming barely
brought us abreast of Holyhead. The gale moderated towards morning, and
we ran along the Irish coast under a blue sky, making Queenstown shortly
after sundown.
By this time I had become acquainted with my cabin-mate, in which
respect I was singularly fortunate. M. ---- was a thorough Parisian,
and a favorable specimen of his class. Small of stature, and
slender of proportion--a very important point where space is so
limited--low-voiced, and sparing of violent expletives or gestures,
delicately neat in his person and apparel, one could hardly have
selected a more amiable colleague under circumstances of some
difficulty. I can aver that he conducted himself always with a perfect
modesty and decorum: he would preserve his equilibrium miraculously,
when his perpendicular had been lost long ago: he never fell upon me but
once (sleeping on a sofa, I was exposed defenselessly to all such
contingencies), and then lightly as thistle-down. On the rare occasions
when the _mal-de-mer_ proved too much for his valiant self-assertion, he
yielded to an overruling fate without groan or complaint: folding the
scanty coverlet around him, he would subside gradually into his berth,
composing his little limbs as gracefully as Cæsar. His courtesy was
invincible and untiring: he was anxious to defer and conform even to my
insular prejudices. Discovering that I was in the habit of daily
immersing in cold water--a feat not to be accomplished without much
toil, trouble, and abrasion of the cuticle--he thought it necessary to
simulate a like performance, though nothing would have tempted him to
incur such needless danger. His endeavors to mislead me on this point,
without actually committing himself, were ingenious and wily in the
extreme. Sitting in the saloon at the most incongruous hours of day and
night, he would exclaim, "J'ai l'idée de prendre bientôt mon bain!" or
he would speak with a shiver of recollection of the imaginary plunge
taken that morning. I don't think I should ever have been deluded, even
if my curiosity had not led me to question the steward; but never, by
word or look, did I impugn the reality of that Barmecide bath. To his
other accomplishments, M. ---- added a very pretty talent for piquet;
the match was even enough, though, to be interesting, at almost nominal
stakes, and so we got pleasantly through many hours--dark, wet, or
boisterous.
We were not a numerous company--only thirty-three in all. Few amateurs
travel at this inclement season. I knew only one other Englishman on
board, an officer in the Rifle Brigade, returning to Canada from
sick-leave. Among the Americans was Cyrus Field, the energetic promoter
of the Atlantic Telegraph, then making (I think he said) his thirtieth
transit within five years. He was certainly entitled to the freedom of
the ocean, if intimate acquaintance with every fathom of its depth and
breadth could establish a claim. It rather surprised me, afterwards, to
see such science and experience yield so easily to the common weakness
of seafaring humanity. Mr. Field told me that throughout the fearful
weather to which the Niagara and Agamemnon were exposed, on their first
attempt to lay down the cable, he never once felt a sensation of nausea;
the body had not time to suffer till the mind was relieved from its
heavy, anxious strain.
For three days after leaving Queenstown, the west winds met us, steady
and strong; but it was not till the afternoon of Christmas day that the
sea began to "get up" in earnest, and the weather to portend a gale.
Then, the Atlantic seemed determined to prove that report had not
exaggerated the hardships of a winter passage. It blew harder and harder
all Friday, and after a brief lull on Saturday--as though gathering
breath for the final onset--the storm fairly reached its height, and
then slowly abated, leaving us substantial tokens of its visit in the
shape of shattered boats, and the ruin of all our port bulwarks forward
of the deck-house. I fancy there was nothing extraordinary in the
tempest; and, in a stout ship, with plenty of sea room, there is
probably little real danger; but about the intense discomfort there
could be no question. I speak with no undue bitterness, for of nausea,
in any shape, I know of little or nothing, but--oh, mine enemy!--if I
could feel certain you were well out in the Atlantic, experiencing, for
just one week, the weather that fell to our lot, I would abate much of
my animosity, purely from satiation of revenge.
Unless absolutely prostrated by illness, the voyager, of course, has a
ravenous appetite; such being the case, what can be more exasperating
than having to grapple with a sort of dioramic dinner, where the dishes
represent a series of dissolving views--mutton and beef of mature age,
leaping about with a playfulness only becoming living lambs and
calves--while the proverb of "cup and lip" becomes a truism from
perpetual illustration? Neither is it agreeable, after falling into an
uncertain doze, to feel dampness mingling strangely with your dreams,
and to awake to find yourself, as it were, an island in a little salt
lake formed by distillation through invisible crevices.
"Oh, laith, laith were our gude Scot lords
To wet their cork-heeled shoon,"
says the grand old ballad; so, I suppose, it is nothing "unbecoming the
character of an officer and a gentleman" to hold such midnight
irrigation in utter abhorrence.
On one of these occasions I abandoned a post no longer tenable, and went
into the small saloon close by, to seek a dry spot whereon to finish the
night, I found it occupied by a ghastly man, with long, wild gray hair,
and a white face--striding staggeringly up and down--moaning to himself
in a harsh, hollow voice, "No rest; I can't rest." He never spoke any
other words, and never ceased repeating these, while I remained to hear
him. Instantly there came back to my memory a horrible German tale, read
and forgotten fifteen years ago, of a certain old and unjust steward,
Daniel by name, who, having murdered his master by casting him down an
oubliettes, ever haunted the fatal tower, first as a sleep-walker, then
as a restless ghost--moaning and gibbering to himself, and tearing at a
walled-up door with bleeding hands. The train of thought thereby
suggested was so very sombre, that I preferred returning to my cabin,
and climbing into an unfurnished berth, to spending more minutes in that
weird company. I never made the man out satisfactorily afterwards. It is
possible that he was one of the few who scarcely showed on deck, till we
were in sight of land; but rather, I believe, like other visions and
voices of the night, he changed past recognition under the garish light
of day.
Then come the noisy nuisances, extending through all the diapason of
sound. One--the most annoying--to which the ear never becomes callous by
use, is the incessant crash, not only alongside, but overhead. At
intervals--more frequent, of course, after our bulwarks were swept
away--the green water came tumbling on board by tons; and, being unable
to escape quickly enough by the after-scuppers, surged backwards and
forwards with every roll of the vessel, as if it meant to keep you down
and bury you forever. Lying in my berth, I could feel the heavy seas
smite the strong ship one cruel blow after another on her bows or beam,
till at last she would seem to stop altogether, and, dropping her head,
like a glutton in the P. R., would take her punishment sullenly, without
an effort at rising or resistance. Nevertheless, I stand by "The Asia,"
as a right good boat for rough weather, though she is not a flyer, and
sometimes could hardly do more than hold her own. Eighty-one knots in
the twenty-four hours was all the encouragement the log could give one
day.
I liked our commander exceedingly. He had just left the Mediterranean
station, and there still abode with him a certain languid levantine
softness of voice and manner; when he came in to dinner, out of the wild
weather, the moral contrast with the turmoil outside was quite
refreshing. Report speaks highly of Captain Grace's seamanship; and I
believe in him far more implicitly than I should in one of those hoarse
and blusterous Tritons, who think roughness and readiness inseparable,
and talk to you as if they were hailing a consort.
The library on board was not extensive, consisting (with the exception
of "The Newcomes") chiefly of religious works of the Nonconformist
school, and tales, which have long ago passed into surplus stock, or
been withdrawn from general circulation. But there was one invaluable
novel, which I shall always remember gratefully. I never got quite
through it, but I read enough to be enabled to affirm, that its
principles are unexceptionable, its style grammatically faultless, and
its purpose sustained (ah, how pitilessly!) from first to last. The few
amatory scenes are conducted with the most rigid propriety; and when
there occurs a lover's quarrel, the parties hurl high moral truths at
each other, instead of idle reproaches. But it is mainly as a soporific,
that I would recommend "_Silwood_:" on four different occasions, under
most trying circumstances it succeeded perfectly and promptly with me,
for which relief--unintentional, perchance--I tender much thanks to the
unknown author, and wish "more power to his arm."
Quite crippled for the time being by rheumatism, I was in bad form for
clambering about the sloping, slippery planks; nevertheless I did
contrive to crawl up to the hurricane-deck just before sundown, about
the crisis of the gale. I confess to being disappointed in the
"rollers:" it may be that their vast breadth and volume takes off from
their apparent height, but I scarcely thought it reached Dr. Scoresby's
standard--from 26 to 30 feet, if I remember right, from trough to crest.
One realizes thoroughly the _abysmal_ character of the turbulent chaos,
and there is a sensation of infiniteness around and below you not devoid
of grandeur; but as an exhibition of the puissance of angry water, I do
not think the mid-ocean tempest equal to the storm which brings the
thunder of the surf full on the granite bulwarks of Western Ireland.
It must be owned, that the conversational powers of our small society
were limited. Very often some selfishness mingled with my sincere
compassion for the prostrated sufferings of my Philadelphian friend of
the tug-boat; for whenever his weary aching head would allow of the
exertion, he could talk on almost any subject, fluently and well. He was
returning from a long visit to Paris, and a rapid tour through Germany
and Southern Europe. Most of the countries, that he had been compelled
to hurry over, I had loitered through in days past, and I ought to have
been shamed by the contrast in our recollections--his, so clear and
systematical--mine, so vague and dim. An intellectual American
travelling through strange lands does certainly look at nature, animate
and inanimate, after a practical business-like fashion peculiar to his
race; but it would be unfair to infer that such minds are, necessarily,
unappreciative. At all events, that concentrative, synthetical power,
that takes in surrounding objects at a single glance, and retains them
in a tolerably distinct classification, is rather enviable, even as a
mental accomplishment.
We did not speak much about the troubles beyond sea, and the
Philadelphian was rather reserved as to his proclivities. My impression
is, that his sympathy tended rather southward (all his early life had
been spent in Alabama), but he declined to commit himself much, nor do I
believe that he was a violent partisan either way. On one point he was
very decided: Falkland himself could not have wished more devoutly for
the termination of a fatal civil war--fatal, he said, to the interests,
present and future, of both the combatant powers--ruinous to every
class, with two exceptions; the adventurers who, having little to lose,
gained, by joining the ranks of either army, a social position to which
they could not otherwise have aspired; and the speculators, who,
directly or indirectly, fairly or unfairly, made gains vast and unholy,
such as wreckers are wont to gather in time of tempest and general
disaster. He scarcely alluded to the corruption and peculation prevalent
in all high places, diluted in its downward percolation till sutlers and
horse-thieves would strive in vain to emulate the fraudulent audacity of
their superiors. It was well he spared me then, for soon after landing,
my eyes and ears grew weary with the repetition of all these ignoble
details. To illustrate how heavily the taxes were already beginning to
weigh on the non-militant part of the population, my informant proved to
me by very clear figures that, if he individually could secure permanent
exemption from such burdens by the absolute sacrifice of one-tenth of
his whole property, real and personal, the commutation, would be
decidedly advantageous to him. True, he represented a class whose
incomes exceeded a certain standard, and therefore suffered rather more
heavily; but the same calculation, with very slight alterations, applied
to all other subordinate ones.
Grave and mild of speech was the Philadelphian philosopher, without a
trace of dogmatism or self-assertion in his tone; nevertheless, I judged
him to be a man of mark somewhere, and I afterwards heard that, albeit
not a violent or prominent politician, he had great honor in his own
country.
Strong head-winds and a heavy sea baffled us till we had cleared the
longitude of Cape Race; then the weather softened, the breeze veered
round till it blew on our quarter, and we had clear sky above us all the
way in. We sighted the first pilot-boat on the afternoon of January 3d,
and, as she came sweeping down athwart us, with her broad, white wings
full spread, our glasses soon made out the winning number of the
sweepstakes, "22." It was long past dinner hour when the beautiful
little schooner rounded to, under our lee, but all appetite just then
was merged in a craving for latest intelligence.
It was a caricaturist's study--the crowd of keen, anxious faces round
the gangway--as the pilot came aboard. He was a stout man, of
agricultural exterior, looking as if he were in the habit of ploughing
anything rather than the deep sea; but it is the fashion of his guild to
eschew the nautical as much as possible in their attire. The "anxious
inquirers" got little satisfaction from him--he seemed taciturn by
nature, if not sullen--and they came back to where the rest of us stood
on the hurricane deck, muttering discontentedly, "Gold at 46. No news."
It seemed very odd--such a complete stagnation of affairs, military and
civil--but we went to dinner in spite of our disappointment. Before we
rose from table the truth began to ooze out. One or two New York papers,
that had slipped on board with the pilot, were more communicative than
he would or could be.
Thousands of corpses, the full tale of which will never be known till
the day of judgment, lying rolled in blood, with a handful of earth
raked over them under the fatal Fredericksburg heights; the finest army
in Federaldom hurled back upon its intrenchments; nothing but darkness
covering a disastrous, if not shameful defeat; the papers crowded with
dreary funeral notices, showing how, to every great city of the North,
from hospital and battle-ground, the slain are being gathered in, to be
buried among their own people; a wail of widows and orphans and mothers,
from homestead, hamlet, and town, overpowering with its simple energy,
the bombastic war-notes and false stage-thunder of the press; rumors of
a terrible battle in the far West, where, after three days' hard
fighting, Rosecrans barely holds his own, and yet "_there are no
news_!"
It is an excellent quality in a soldier not to know when he is beaten,
but whether blind obstinacy will succeed when it influences the rulers
and destinies of a great nation, is more than questionable. Pondering
these things, I remembered how, four thousand years ago, a stiff-necked
generation were brought to their senses and on their knees. It was on
the morning after the visit of the Dark Angel, when Egypt awoke, and
found not a house in which there was not one dead. If such fearful waste
of life goes on here, with no decisive or final advantage on either side
attained, that ancient curse may not be long in recurring.
I rose when the sun ought to have risen, on the following morning,
intending to admire the famous harbor which Americans love to compare
with the Neapolitan Bay. But long before we reached the Narrows,
"A blinding mist came up and hid the land
As far as eye could see."
Very soon we were buried in fog, dense and Cimmerian, as ever brooded
over our own Thames or the Righi panorama. More and more slowly the
paddles turned, till they stopped altogether. It was dangerous to
advance, ever so cautiously, when the keenest sight could not pierce
half a ship's length ahead. So there we lay at anchor for weary hours,
listening to the church-bells chiming drowsily through the heavy air,
till an enterprising tug ventured out for the mails, and sent another
for the relief of the passengers.
The custom-house officers were not troublesome, and I was soon at the
Brevoort House, the Parisian Pylades still faithfully following my
fortunes. I was far from entreating him to leave me; landing utterly
alone in a strange land, one does not lightly cast aside companionship.
For reasons easily understood, I had declined to avail myself of many
proffered letters of introduction to New Yorkers.
That lonely feeling did not last long: the first object which caught my
eye on the steps of the Brevoort House was an honest English face--a
face I have known, and liked right well, these dozen years and more.
There stood "the Colonel" (any Ch. Ch. or Rifle Brigade man will
recognize the _sobriquet_), beaming upon the world in general with the
placid cheerfulness that no changes of time or place or fortune seem
able to alter, looking just as comfortable and thoroughly "at home" as
he did, steering Horniblow to victory at Brixworth. I had heard that my
old friend was on his way to England to join the Staff College, but had
never reckoned on such a successful "nick" as this. By my faith, my
turns of luck beyond the Atlantic were not so frequent as to excuse
forgetfulness, when they did befall.
So I had aid and abetment in performing the little lionization which is
obligatory on a visitor to New York; for the "Colonel's" comrade, my
fellow-voyager of the Asia, came to the same hotel.
Assisted by the Parisian, we made trial of the esculents peculiar to the
country--gombo soup, sweet potatoes, terrapins, and canvas-backs--with
much solemnity and satisfaction, agreeing, that fame had spoken truth
for once, in extolling the two last-named delicacies. We went to the
Opera, and there, in a brilliant _salle_ of white and gold, spoilt,
however, by the incongruity of bonnets mingling everywhere with full
evening toilettes, assisted at a massacre--unmusical and melancholy--of
"Lucrezia." We drove out through the crude, unfinished Central Park to
Harlem lane, whither the trotters are wont to resort, and saw several
teams looking very much like work (though no celebrities), almost all of
the lean, rather ragged form which characterizes, more or less, all
American-bred "fast horses." The ground was too hard frozen to allow of
anything beyond gentle exercise; but even at quarter-speed, that
wonderful hind-action was very remarkable. Watching those clean, sinewy
pasterns shoot forward--well _outside_ of the fore hoof-track--straight
and swift as Mace's arm in an "upper-cut," you marvel no longer at the
mile-time which hitherto has seemed barely credible.
Perhaps this same bitter weather may account for our disappointment in
the brilliancy of Broadway. Several careful reviews of the sunny side
failed to detect anything dangerously attractive in beauty, equipage, or
attire. It is probable that most of the _lionnes_ had laid them down in
their delicate dens, waiting for a more clement season, to renew
external depredations; though sometimes you could just catch a glimpse
of bright eyes and a little pink nose peering over dark fur wrappings,
as a brougham or barouche, carefully closed, swept quickly by. We
visited Barnum, of course. I think a conversational and communicative
Albino was the most note-worthy curiosity in the Museum, chiefly, from
his intense appreciation of the imposture of the whole concern,
originated and directed by the King of Humbugdom.
The sanguine popular mind was unusually depressed just then. The
President's emancipatory proclamation had recently issued, and seemed to
adapt itself, with wonderful elasticity, to the discontents of all
parties; not comprehensive enough for the ultra-Abolitionists, it was
stigmatized by the Democrats as unconstitutional and oppressive; while
moderate politicians agreed that, beyond irritating feelings already
bitter enough, it would be practically invalid as an offensive measure.
We shall see, hereafter, how these prognostications were justified.
But the first word in all men's mouths, for a day or two at least after
my arrival, was--Monitor. That same gale which had buffeted the Asia so
rudely on the high seas, had raged yet more savagely shorewards: the
Merrimac's antagonist, like a drowning paladin of the mail-clad days,
had sunk under her mighty armor, and now, with half her crew in their
iron coffin, lay at rest in the crowded burial-ground on which Cape
Hatteras looks down. Great discouragement and consternation--greater
than has often been caused by the loss of any single vessel--fell upon
all the North when the news came in. Ever since her famous duel, which
the Federals never would allow was a drawn battle, they had elevated the
Monitor into a national champion, and prophesied weeping in the South if
she and their batteries should meet: few then dared to insinuate a doubt
about Charleston's certain fall, when once the leaguer was fairly
mustered for assault. Grave doubts were now expressed as to the
seaworthiness of all the new iron-clads, though their advocates could
point to a sister of the unhappy Monitor, which had survived a great
part of the same storm. That they all must be more unsafe in really
rough weather than the crankiest of our old "coffin brigs," seems quite
ascertained now: the fact of their being unable to make headway through
a heavy sea unless towed by a consort, speaks for itself. The immediate
cause of the Monitor's foundering (according to Captain Worden's
account, which my informant had from his own lips) was a leak sprung,
where her protruding stern-armour, coming down flat on the waves with
every plunge of the vessel, became loosened from the main hull; but, for
some time before this was discovered, she seems to have spent more
minutes under than above the water, and nothing alive could have stood
unlashed for a second on her deck. So great was the public
disappointment, that the tribe of false prophets--whose cry of "Go up to
Ramoth Gilead, and prosper," deafens us here, not less, usually in
defeat than in success--did for awhile abate their blatancy; while
Ericsson--most confident of projectors--spake softly, below his breath,
as he suggested faint excuse and encouragement.
The news from the West--hourly improving, and more clearly
confirmed--were hardly welcomed, as they deserved, and scarcely
counter-balanced the naval disaster. It was not long, however, before
Rosecrans the Invincible came in for his full share of credit--perhaps
not more than he merited. Few other Federal commanders can claim that
epithet; and, though some people persisted in considering Murfreesburg a
Pyrrhic victory, it is certain that he held his ground manfully, and
eventually advanced, where defeat, or even a retrograde movement, would
have been simply ruin.
On the fifth day our small company were scattered--each going his own
way, east, north, and south--while the Parisian abode in New York still.