----My business in this State Made me a looker-on here in
Vienna.--MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
I whipped me behind the arras, and there heard it agreed
upon.--MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
JACKSON, MISS., _April 1, 1861_.
[Sidenote: THE MISSISSIPPI STATE HOUSE.]
The Mississippi State House, upon a shaded square in front of my
window, is a faded, sober edifice, of the style in vogue fifty years
ago, with the representative hall at one end, the senate chamber at the
other, an Ionic portico in front, and an immense dome upon the top.
Above this is a miniature dome, like an infinitesimal parasol upon a
gigantic umbrella. The whole is crowned by a small gilded pinnacle,
which has relapsed from its original perpendicular to an angle of
forty-five degrees, and looks like a little jockey-cap, worn jantily
upon the head of a plethoric quaker, to whom it imparts a rowdyish air,
at variance with his general gravity.
The first story is of cracked free-stone, the front and end walls of
stucco, and the rear of brick. As you enter the vestibule two musty
cannon stand gaping at you, and upon one of them you may see, almost
any day, a little "darkey" sound asleep. Whether he guards the gun, or
the gun guards him, opens a wide field for conjecture.
Ascending a spiral stairway, and passing along the balustrade which
surrounds the open space under the dome, you turn to the left, through
a narrow passage into the representative hall. Here is the Mississippi
Convention.
[Sidenote: VIEW OF THE REPRESENTATIVE HALL.]
At the north end of the apartment sits the president, upon a high
platform occupying a recess in the wall, with two Ionic columns upon
each side of him. Before him is a little, old-fashioned mahogany
pulpit, concealing all but his head and shoulders from the vulgar gaze.
In front of this, and three or four feet lower, at a long wooden desk,
sit two clerks, one smoking a cigar.
Before them, and still lower, at a shorter desk, an unhappy Celtic
reporter, with dark shaggy hair and eyebrows, is taking down the speech
of the honorable member from something or other county. In front of his
desk, standing rheumatically upon the floor, is a little table, which
looks as if called into existence by a drunken carpenter on a dark
night, from the relics of a superannuated dry-goods box.
Upon one of the columns at the president's right, hangs a faded
portrait of George Poindexter, once a senator from this State. Further
to the right is an open fire-place, upon whose mantel stand a framed
copy of the Declaration of Independence, now sadly faded and blurred,
a lithographic view of the Medical College of Louisiana, and a pitcher
and glass. On the hearth is a pair of ancient andirons, upon which a
genial wood fire is burning.
[Sidenote: GENERAL AIR OF DILAPIDATION.]
The hypocritical plastering which coated the fireplace has peeled
off, leaving bare the honest, worn faces of the original bricks. Some
peculiar non-adhesive influence must affect plastering in Jackson. In
whole rooms of the hotel it has seceded from the lath. Judge Gholson
says that once, in the old State House, a few hundred yards distant,
when Seargeant S. Prentiss was making a speech, he saw "an acre or
two" of the plastering fall upon his head, and quite overwhelm him for
the time. The Judge is what Count Fosco would call the Man of Brains;
he is deemed the ablest member of the Convention. He was a colleague
in Congress of the lamented Prentiss, whom he pronounces the most
brilliant orator that ever addressed a Mississippi audience.
On the left of the president is another fire-place, also with a sadly
blurred copy of the great Declaration standing upon its mantel. The
members' desks, in rows like the curved line of the letter D, are
of plain wood, painted black. Their chairs are great, square, faded
mahogany frames, stuffed and covered with haircloth. As you stand
beside the clerk's desk, facing them, you see behind the farthest row a
semi-circle of ten pillars, and beyond them a narrow, crescent shaped
lobby. Half-way up the pillars is a little gallery, inhabited just now
by two ladies in faded mourning.
In the middle of the hall, a tarnished brass chandelier, with pendants
of glass, is suspended from the ceiling by a rod festooned with
cobwebs. This medieval relic is purely ornamental, for the room is
lighted with gas. The walls are high, pierced with small windows, whose
faded blue curtains, flowered and bordered with white, are suspended
from a triple bar of gilded Indian arrows.
Chairs of cane, rush, wood and leather seats--chairs with backs, and
chairs without backs, are scattered through the hall and lobby, in
pleasing illustration of that variety which is the spice of life. The
walls are faded, cracked, and dingy, pervaded by the general air of
mustiness, and going to "the demnition bow-wows" prevalent about the
building.
The members are in all sorts of social democratic positions. In the
open spaces about the clerk's desk and fire-places, some sit with
chairs tilted against the wall, some upon stools, and three slowly
vibrate to and fro in pre-Raphaelite rocking-chairs. These portions
of the hall present quite the appearance of a Kentucky bar-room on a
winter evening.
[Sidenote: A FREE AND EASY CONVENTION.]
Two or three members are eating apples, three or four smoking cigars,
and a dozen inspect their feet, resting upon the desks before them.
Contemplating the spectacle yesterday, I found myself involuntarily
repeating the couplet of an old temperance ditty:
"The rumseller sat by his bar-room fire,
With his feet as high as his head, and higher,"
and a moment after I was strongly tempted to give the prolonged,
stentorian shout of "B-O-O-T-S!" familiar to ears theatrical. Pardon
the irreverence, O decorous _Tribune_! for there is such a woful dearth
of amusement in this solemn, funereal city, that one waxes desperate.
To complete my inventory, many members are reading this morning's
_Mississippian_, or _The New Orleans Picayune_ or _Delta_, and the rest
listen to the one who is addressing the Chair.
They impress you by their pastoral aspect--the absence of urban
costumes and postures. Their general bucolic appearance would assure
you, if you did not know it before, that there are not many large
cities in the State of Mississippi. Your next impression is one of
wonder at their immense size and stature. Of them the future historian
may well say: "There were giants in those days."
All around you are broad-shouldered, herculean-framed,
well-proportioned men, who look as if a laugh from them would bring
this crazy old capitol down about their ears, and a sneeze, shake
the great globe itself. The largest of these Mississippi Anakim is a
gigantic planter, clothed throughout in blue homespun.
[Illustration: THE MISSISSIPPI CONVENTION VIEWED BY A TRIBUNE
CORRESPONDENT.]
You might select a dozen out of the ninety-nine delegates, each of whom
could personate the Original Scotch Giant in a traveling exhibition.
They have large, fine heads, and a profusion of straight brown hair,
though here and there is a crown smooth, bald, and shining. Taken for
all in all, they are fine specimens of physical development, with
frank, genial, jovial faces.
[Sidenote: SOUTHERN ORATORS--ANGLO-AFRICAN DIALECT.]
The speaking is generally good, and commands respectful attention.
There is little _badinage_ or satire, a good deal of directness and
coming right to the point, qualified by the strong southern proclivity
for adjectives. The pungent French proverb, that the adjective is the
most deadly enemy of the substantive, has never journeyed south of
Mason & Dixon's line.
The members, like all deliberative bodies in this latitude, are mutual
admirationists. Every speaker has the most profound respect for the
honest motives, the pure patriotism, the transcendent abilities of the
honorable gentleman upon the other side. It excites his regret and
self-distrust to differ from such an array of learning and eloquence;
and nothing could impel him to but a sense of imperious duty.
He speaks fluently, and with grammatical correctness, but in the
Anglo-African dialect. His violent denunciations of the Black
Republicans are as nothing to the gross indignities which he offers
to the letter _r_. His "_mo's_," "_befo's_," and "_hea's_" convey
reminiscences of the negress who nursed him in infancy, and the little
"pickaninnies" with whom he played in boyhood.
The custom of stump-speaking, universal through the South and West,
is a capital factory for converting the raw material into orators. Of
course there are strong exceptions. This very morning we had an address
from one member--Mr. D. B. Moore, of Tuppah county--which is worthy
of more particular notice. I wish I could give you a literal report.
Pickwick would be solemn in comparison.
[Sidenote: A SPEECH WORTH PRESERVATION.]
Mr. Moore conceives himself an orator, as Brutus was; but in attempting
to cover the whole subject (the Montgomery Constitution), he spread
himself out "very thin." I will "back" him in a given time to quote
more Scripture, incorrectly, irreverently, and irrelevantly, than any
other man on the North American continent.
His "like we" was peculiarly refreshing, and his history and classics
had a strong flavor of originality. He quoted Patrick Henry, "_Let_
Cæsar have his Brutus;" piled "Pelion upon _Pelion_!" and made Sampson
kill Goliah!! He thought submitting the Secession ordinance to the
people in Texas had produced an excellent effect. Previous to it, the
_New York Tribune_ said: "Secession is but a scheme of demagogues--a
move on the political chess-board--the people oppose it." But afterward
it began to ask: "How is this? What does it all mean? The people seem
to have a hand in it, and to be in earnest, too." The tone of Mr.
Seward also changed radically, he observed, after that election.
Mr. Moore spoke an hour and a half, and the other members, though
listening courteously, betrayed a lurking suspicion that he was a
bore. In person he resembles Henry S. Lane, the zealous United States
Senator-elect from Indiana. The sergeant-at-arms, who, in a gray coat,
and without a neckerchief, walks to and fro, with hands in his pockets,
looks like the unlovely James H. Lane, Senator-expectant from Kansas.
Shall I give you a little familiar conversation of the members, as
they smoke their post-prandial cigars in the hall, waiting for the
Convention to be called to order? Every mother's son of them has a
title.
[Sidenote: FAMILIAR CONVERSATION OF MEMBERS.]
JUDGE.--Toombs is a great blusterer. When speaking, he seems determined
to force, to drive you into agreeing with him. Howell Cobb is another
blusterer, much like him, but immensely fond of good dinners. Aleck
Stephens is very different. When _he_ speaks, you feel that he desires
to carry you with him only by the power of reason and argument.
COLONEL.--I knew him when he used to be a mail-carrier in Georgia. He
was a poor orphan boy, but a charitable society of ladies educated him.
He is a very small man, with a hand no wider than my three fingers,
and as transparent as any lady's who has been sick for a year. He
always looked like an invalid. If you were to cut his head off, I don't
believe he would bleed a pint.[4]
[4] He never weighed over ninety-six pounds, and, to see his attenuated
figure bent over his desk, the shoulders contracted, and the shape of
his slender limbs visible through his garments, a stranger would select
him as the John Randolph of our time. He has the appearance of having
undergone great bodily anguish.--_Newspaper Biography of Alexander H.
Stephens._
MAJOR.--Do you know what frightened Abe Lincoln out of Baltimore?
Somebody told him that Aleck Stephens was lying in wait for him on a
street corner, with a six-pounder strapped to his back. When he heard
that, he _sloped_. [Loud laughter from the group.]
JUDGE.--Well, Lincoln has been abused immensely about his flight
through Baltimore; but I believe the man acted from good motives. He
knew that his partisans there meant to make a demonstration when he
arrived, and that they were very obnoxious to the people; he had good
reason to believe that it would produce trouble, and perhaps bloodshed;
so he went through, secretly, to avoid it.
[Sidenote: NEW ORLEANS AGAIN--REVIEWING TROOPS.]
NEW ORLEANS, _April 5, 1861_.
The Second Louisiana Zouaves were reviewed on Lafayette Square last
evening, before leaving for Pensacola. They are boyish-looking, and
handle their muskets as if a little afraid of them, but seem to be
the raw material of good soldiers. They are luridly grotesque, in
closely-fitting, blue-tasseled, red fez caps, blue flannel jackets and
frocks, faced with red, baggy red breeches, like galvanized corn-sacks,
and gutta-percha greaves about their ankles.
_April 6._
All the Secession leaders except Senator Benjamin declare there will
be no war. He asserts that war is sure to come; and in a recent speech
characterized it as "by no means an unmixed evil."
The Fire-Eaters are intensely bitter upon the border States for
refusing to plunge into the whirlpool of Secession. They are bent
on persuading or driving all the slave States into their ranks.
Otherwise they fear--indeed, predict frankly--that the border will
gradually become Abolitionized, and extend free territory to the Gulf
itself. They are quite willing to devote Kentucky and Virginia to the
devastation of civil war, or the embarrassment of a contiguous hostile
republic, which would not return their run-away negroes.[5] But they
will move heaven and earth to save themselves from any such possible
contingency.
[5] By the last census report, the whole number of escaping fugitives
in the United States, in the year 1860, was eight hundred and three,
being a trifle over _one-fiftieth of one per cent._ upon the whole
number of slaves. Of these, it is probable that the greater part
fled to places of refuge in the South, the Dismal Swamp, everglades
of Florida, southern mountain regions, and the northern States of
Mexico.--_Everett's New York Oration, July 4, 1861._
_April 8._
The recent warlike movements of the National Government cause
excitement and surprise. At last, the people begin to suspect that they
have invoked grim-visaged war. The newspapers descant upon the injury
to commerce and industry. Why did they not think of all this before?
[Sidenote: THREE OBNOXIOUS NORTHERNERS.]
It is vouchsafed to few mortals to learn, before death, exactly what
their associates think of them; but your correspondent is among
the favored few. The other evening, I was sitting with a Secession
acquaintance, in the great exchange of the St. Charles Hotel, when
conversation turned upon the southern habit of lynching people who
do not happen to agree with the majority. He presumed enough upon my
ignorance to insist that any moderate, gentlemanly Republican might
come here with impunity.
"But," he added, "there are three men whose safety I would not
guarantee."
"Who are they?"
"Governor Dennison, of Ohio, is one. Since he refused to return that
fugitive slave to Kentucky, he would hardly be permitted to stay in New
Orleans; at all events, I should oppose it. Then there is Andy Johnson.
He ought to be shot, or hanged, wherever found. But for him, Kentucky
and Tennessee would have been with us long ago. He could not remain
here unharmed for a single hour."
"And the third?"
"Some infernal scoundrel, who is writing abusive letters about us to
_The New York Tribune_."
"Is it possible?"
"Yes, sir, and he has been at it for more than a month."
"Can't you find him out?"
"Some think it is a Kentuckian, who pretends to be engaged in
cattle-trading, but only makes that a subterfuge. I suspect, however,
that it is an editor of _The Picayune_, which is a Yankee concern
through and through. If he is caught, I don't think he will write many
more letters."
I ventured a few words in palliation of the Governor and the Senator,
but quite agreed that this audacious scribbler ought to be suppressed.
[Sidenote: ATTACK ON SUMTER--REBEL BOASTING.]
_April 12._
Telegraphic intelligence to-day of the attack upon Fort Sumter causes
intense excitement. _The Delta_ office is besieged by a crowd hungry
for news. The universal expectation of the easy capture of the fort is
not stronger than the belief that it will be followed by an immediate
and successful movement against the city of Washington. The politicians
and newspapers have persuaded the masses that the Yankees (a phrase
which they no longer apply distinctively to New Englanders, but to
every person born in the North) mean to subjugate them, but are arrant
cowards, who may easily be frightened away. Leading men seldom express
this opinion; yet _The Crescent_, giving the report that eight thousand
Massachusetts troops have been called into the field, adds, that if
they would come down to Pensacola, eighteen hundred Confederates would
easily "whip them out."
"God help them if the tempest swings
The pine against the palm!"