----Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps,
which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my
whereabout.--MACBETH.
[Sidenote: ABOLITION TENDENCIES OF KENTUCKIANS.]
There were two of my acquaintances (one very prominent in the Secession
movement) with whom, while they had no suspicion of my real business,
I could converse with a little frankness. One of them desired war, on
the ground that it would unite the inhabitants of all the border slave
States, and overpower the Union sentiment there.
"But," I asked, "will not war also unite the people of the North?"
"I think not. We have a great many earnest and bold friends there."
"True; but do you suppose they could stand for a single week against
the popular feeling which war would arouse?"
"Perhaps you are right," he replied, thoughtfully, "but it never
occurred to me before."
My other friend also talked with great frankness:
"We can get along very well with the New England Yankees who are
permanently settled here. They make the strongest Secessionists we
have; but the Kentuckians give us a great deal of trouble. They were
born and raised where Slavery is unprofitable. They have strong
proclivities toward Abolitionism. The constituents of Rozier and
Roselius, who fought us so persistently in the Convention, are nearly
all Kentuckians."
[Sidenote: TWO CHIEF CAUSES OF SECESSION.]
"Slavery is our leading interest. Right or wrong, we have it and we
must have it. Cotton, rice, and sugar cannot be raised without it.
Being a necessity, we do not mean to allow its discussion. Every thing
which clashes with it, or tends to weaken it, must go under. Our large
German population is hostile to it. About all these Dutchmen would be
not only Unionists, but Black Republicans, if they dared."
Perhaps it is the invariable law of revolutions that, even while the
revolters are in a numerical minority, they are able to carry the
majority with them. It is certain that, before Sumter was fired on,
a majority in every State, except South Carolina, was opposed to
Secession. The constant predictions of the Rebel leaders that there
would be no war, and the assertions of prominent New York journals,
that any attempt at coercion on the part of the Government would be met
with armed and bloody resistance in every northern city and State, were
the two chief causes of the apparent unanimity of the South.
The masses had a vague but very earnest belief that the North, in some
incomprehensible manner, had done them deadly wrong. Cassio-like, they
remembered "a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but
nothing wherefore." The leaders were sometimes more specific.
"The South," said a pungent writer, "has endured a great many wrongs;
but the most intolerable of all the grievances ever thrust upon her was
the Census Report of 1860!" There was a great deal of truth in this
remark. One day I asked my New Orleans friend:
"Why have you raised all this tempest about Mr. Lincoln's election?"
[Sidenote: FUNDAMENTAL GRIEVANCE OF THE REBELS.]
"Don't deceive yourself," he answered. "Mr. Lincoln's election had
nothing to do with it, beyond enabling us to rouse our people. Had
Douglas been chosen, we should have broken up the Union just as
quickly. Had Bell triumphed, it would have been all the same. Even if
Breckinridge had been elected, we would have seceded before the close
of his term. There is an essential incompatibility between the two
sections. _The South stands still, while the North has grown rich and
powerful, and expanded from ocean to ocean._"
This was the fundamental grievance. Very liberal in his general
views, he had not apparently the faintest suspicion that Slavery was
responsible for the decadence of the South, or that Freedom impelled
the gigantic strides of the North.
Yet his theory of the Rebellion was doubtless correct. It arose from
no man, or party, or political event, but from the inherent quarrel
between two adverse systems, which the fullness of time had ripened
into open warfare. His "essential incompatibility" was only another
name for Mr. Seward's "Irrepressible Conflict" between two principles.
They have since recorded, in letters of blood, not merely their
incompatibility, but their absolute, aggressive, eternal antagonism.
During the second week in April, I began to find myself the object of
unpleasant, not to say impertinent, curiosity. So many questions were
asked, so many pointed and significant remarks made in my presence, as
to render it certain that I was regarded with peculiar suspicion.
At first I was at a loss to surmise its origin. But one day I
encountered an old acquaintance in the form of a son of Abraham,
who had frequently heard me, in public addresses in Kansas, utter
sentiments not absolutely pro-slavery; who knew that I once held a
modest commission in the Free State army, and that I was a whilom
correspondent of _The Tribune_.
[Sidenote: SUDDEN DEPARTURE FROM NEW ORLEANS.]
He was by no means an Israelite without guile, for he had been chased
out of the Pike's Peak region during the previous summer, for robbing
one of my friends who had nursed him in sickness. Concluding that he
might play the informer, I made an engagement with him for the next
afternoon, and, before the time arrived, shook from my feet the dust of
New Orleans. Designing to make a _détour_ to Fort Pickens on my way, I
procured a ticket for Washington. The sea was the safer route, but I
was curious to take a final look at the interior.
On Friday evening, April 12th, I left the Crescent City. In five
minutes our train plunged into the great swamp which environs the
commercial metropolis of the Southwest. Deep, broad ditches are cut for
draining, and you sometimes see an alligator, five or six feet long,
and as large as the body of a man, lying lazily upon the edge of the
green water.
The marshy ground is mottled with gorgeous flowers, and the palmetto
is very abundant. It does not here attain to the dignity of a tree,
seldom growing more than four feet high. Its flag, sword-shaped leaves
branch out in flat semicircular clusters, resembling the fan palm. Its
tough bulbous root was formerly cut into fine fragments by the Indians,
then bruised to a pulp and thrown into the lake. It produced temporary
blindness among the fishes, which brought them to the surface, where
they were easily caught by hand.
With rare fitness stands the palmetto as the device of South Carolina.
Indeed, it is an excellent emblem of Slavery itself; for, neither
beautiful, edible, nor useful, it blinds the short-sighted fish coming
under its influence.
To them it is
----"The insane root, Which takes the reason prisoner."
A ride of four miles brought us to Lake Pontchartrain, stretching away
in the fading sunlight. Over the broad expanse of swelling water,
delicate, foamy white caps were cresting the waves.
[Sidenote: THE WAR SPIRIT IN MOBILE.]
We were transferred to the propeller Alabama, and, when I woke the next
morning, were lying at Mobile. With a population of thirty thousand,
the city contains many pleasant residences, embowered in shade-trees,
and surrounded by generous grounds. It is rendered attractive by its
tall pines, live oak, and Pride-of-China trees. The last were now
decked in a profusion of bluish-white blossoms.
The war spirit ran high. Hand-bills, headed "Soldiers wanted," and
"Ho! for volunteers," met the eye at every corner; uniforms and arms
abounded, and the voice of the bugle was heard in the streets. All
northern vessels were clearing on account of the impending crisis,
though some were not more than half loaded.
Mobile was very radical. One of the daily papers urged the imposition
of a tax of one dollar per copy upon every northern newspaper or
magazine brought into the Confederacy!
The leading hotel was crowded with guests, including many soldiers _en
route_ for Bragg's army. It was my own design to leave for Pensacola
that evening, and look at the possible scene of early hostilities.
A Secession friend in New Orleans had given me a personal letter to
General Bragg, introducing me as a gentleman of leisure, who would be
glad to make a few sketches of proper objects of interest about his
camps, for one of the New York illustrated papers. It added that he had
known me all his life, and vouched completely for my "soundness."
[Sidenote: SUSPICIONS AROUSED--AN AWKWARD ENCOUNTER.]
But a little incident changed my determination. Among my
fellow-passengers from New Orleans were three young officers of the
Confederate army, also bound for Fort Pickens. While on the steamer, I
did not observe that I was an object of their special attention; but
just after breakfast this morning, as I was going up to my room, in the
fourth story of the Battle House, I encountered them also ascending the
broad stairs. The moment they saw me, they dropped the subject upon
which they were conversing, and one, with significant glances, burst
into a most violent invective against _The Tribune_, denouncing it as
the vilest journal in America, except Parson Brownlow's _Knoxville
Whig!_ pronouncing every man connected with it a thief and scoundrel,
and asserting that if any of its correspondents could be caught here,
they would be hung upon the nearest tree.
This philippic was so evidently inspired by my presence, and the eyes
of the whole group glared with a speculation so unpleasant, that I felt
myself an unhappy Romeo, "too early seen unknown and known too late." I
had learned by experience that the best protection for a suspected man
was to go everywhere, as if he had a right to go; to brave scrutiny; to
return stare for stare and question for question.
So, during this tirade, which lasted while, side by side, we leisurely
climbed two staircases, I strove to maintain an exterior of serene and
wooden unconsciousness. When the speaker had exhausted his vocabulary
of hard words, I drew a fresh cigar from my pocket, and said to him,
"Please to give me a light, sir." With a puzzled air he took his cigar
from his mouth, knocked off the ashes with his forefinger, handed it to
me, and stood regarding me a little curiously, while, looking him full
in the face, I slowly ignited my own Havana, returned his, and thanked
him.
They turned away apparently convinced that their zeal had outrun their
discretion. The look of blank disappointment and perplexity upon the
faces of those young officers as they disappeared in the passage will
be, to me, a joy forever.
Pondering in my room upon fresh intelligence of the arrest of
suspicious persons in General Bragg's camp, and upon this little
experience, I changed my plan. As Toodles, in the farce, thinks he
"won't smoke," so I decided not to go to Pensacola; but ordered a
carriage, and drove down to the mail-boat St. Charles, which was to
leave for Montgomery that evening.
I fully expected during the afternoon to entertain a vigilance
committee, the police, or some military officials who would invite
me to look at Secession through prison bars. It was not an inviting
prospect; yet there was nothing to do but to wait.
The weather was dreamy and delicious. My state-room looked out upon the
shining river, and the rich olive green of the grassy shore. Upon the
dull, opaque water of a broad bayou beyond, little snowy sails flashed,
and a steamer, with tall black chimneys, left a white, foamy track in
the waters, and long clouds of brown smoke against the sky.
[Sidenote: "MASS'R, FORT SUMTER'S GONE UP!"]
At three o'clock in the afternoon, while I was lying in my state-room,
looking out drowsily upon this picture, a cabin-boy presented his sooty
face at the door and said, "Mass'r, Fort Sumter's gone up!"
[Sidenote: BELLS RINGING AND CANNONS BOOMING.]
The intelligence had just arrived by telegraph. The first battle of
the Great War was over, and seventy-two men, after a bombardment of
two days, were captured by twelve thousand! In a moment church and
steamboat bells rang out their notes of triumph, and cannon belched
forth their deep-mouthed exultation. A public meeting was extemporized
in the street, and enthusiastic speeches were made. Mindful of my
morning experience, I did not leave the boat, but tried to read the
momentous Future. I thought I could see, in its early pages, the
death-warrant of Slavery; but all else was inscrutable.
There was a steam calliope attached to the "St. Charles." That evening,
when the last bell had rung, and the last cable was taken in, she left
the Mobile landing, and plowed slowly up the river to the shrill notes
of "Dixie's Land."[6]
[6] Dixie's Land is a synonym for heaven. It appears that there was
once a good planter named Dixie, who died at some period unknown, to
the intense grief of his animated property. They found expression for
their sorrow in song, and consoled themselves by clamoring in verse
for their removal to the land to which Dixie had departed, and where
probably the renewed spirit would be greatly surprised to find himself
in their company. Whether they were ill treated after he died, and thus
had reason to deplore his removal, or merely desired heaven in the
abstract, nothing known enables me to assert. But Dixie's Land is now
generally taken to be the Seceded States, where Mr. Dixie certainly is
not at the present writing.--_Russell's Diary in America._
The Alabama is the "most monotonously beautiful of rivers." In the
evening twilight, its sinuous sweep afforded a fine view of both
shores, timbered down to the water's edge. Dense foliage, decked in the
blended and intermingled hues of summer, gave them the appearance of
two soft, smooth cushions of variegated velvet.
After dark, we met the descending mail-boat. Our calliope saluted her
with lively music, and the passengers assembled on the guards, greeting
each other with the usual huzzas and waving of hats and handkerchiefs.
On Sunday morning, the inevitable calliope awoke us--this time,
with sacred music. At many river landings there was only a single
well-shaded farm-house on the bank, with ladies sitting upon the
piazzas, and white and negro children playing under the magnificent
live-oaks. At others, a solitary warehouse stood upon the high,
perpendicular bluff, with an inclined-plane railway for the conveyance
of freight to the water. At some points the country was open, and a
great cotton-field extended to the river-bank, with a weather-beaten
cotton-press in the midst of it, like an old northern cider-mill.
[Sidenote: A TERPSICHOREAN YOUNG NEGRO.]
Planters, returning from New Orleans and Mobile, were met at the
landings by their negroes. The slaves appeared glad to see them, and
were greeted with hearty hand-shakings. At one landing the calliope
struck up a lively strain, and a young darkey on the bank, with the
Terpsichorean proclivity of his race, began to dance as if for dear
life, throwing his arms and legs in ludicrous and extravagant fashion.
His master attempted to cuff his ears, but the little fellow ducked his
head and danced away, to the great merriment of the lookers-on. The
negro nurses on the boat fondled and kissed the little white children
in their charge most ardently.
I saw no instance of unkind treatment to slaves; but a young planter on
board mentioned to me, as a noteworthy circumstance, that he had not
permitted a negro to be struck upon his plantation for a year.
A Texian on board the boat was very bitter against Governor Houston,
and, with the usual extreme language of the Rebels, declared he would
be hanged if he persisted in opposing the Disunionists. An old citizen
of Louisiana, too, became so indignant at me for remarking I had always
supposed Douglas to sympathize with the South, that I made haste to
qualify the assertion.
[Sidenote: LEADING CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTHERNERS.]
Our passengers were excellent specimens of the better class of
southerners. Aside from his negrophobia, the southern _gentleman_
is an agreeable companion. He is genial, frank, cordial, profoundly
deferential to women, and carries his heart in his hand. His social
qualities are his weak point. To a northerner, passing through his
country during these disjointed times, I would have said:
"Your best protection is to be 'hail fellow, well met;' spend money
freely, tell good stories, be liberal of your private brandy-flask,
and your after-dinner cigars. If you do this, and your manners are,
in his thinking, gentlemanly, he can by no means imagine you a Yankee
in the offensive sense. He pictures all Yankees as puritanic, rigid,
fanatical, and talking through the nose. 'What the world wants,' says
George William Curtis, 'is not honesty, but acquiescence.' That is
profoundly true here. Acquiesce gracefully, not intemperately, in the
prevailing sentiment. Don't hail from the State of Massachusetts; don't
'guess,' or use other northern provincialisms; don't make yourself
conspicuous--and, if you know human nature, you may pass without
serious trouble."
Our southerner has little humanity--he feels little sympathy for a man,
_as_ a man--as a mere human being--but he has abundant warmth toward
his own social class. Not a very high specimen himself, he yet lays
infinite stress upon being "a gentleman." If you have the misfortune to
be poor, and without credentials, but possess the manners of education
and good society, he will give you kinder reception than you are likely
to obtain in the bustling, restless, crowded North.
[Sidenote: SOUTHERN PROVINCIALISMS.]
He affects long hair, dresses in unqualified black, and wears kid
gloves continually. He pronounces iron "_i_-ron" (two syllables), and
barrel "barl." He calls car "kyah" (one syllable), cigar "_se_-ghah,"
and negro "_nig_-ro"--never negro, and very rarely "nigger." The
latter, by the way, was a pet word with Senator Douglas. Once, while
his star was in the ascendant, some one asked Mr. Seward:
"Will Judge Douglas ever be President?"
"No, sir," replied the New York senator. "No man will ever be President
of the United States who spells negro with two g's!"
These southern provincialisms are sometimes a little startling.
Conversing with a young man in the senior class of a Mississippi
college, I remarked that men were seldom found in any circle who had
not some sympathy or affinity with it, to stimulate them to seek it.
"Yes," he replied, "something to _aig them on_!"
The forests along the river were beautiful with the brilliant green
live-oak festooned with mistletoe, the dark pine, the dense cane, the
spring glory of the cottonwood and maple, the drooping delicate leaves
of the willow, the white-stemmed sycamore with its creamy foliage, and
the great snowy blossoms of the dog-wood.
With a calliope, familiarity breeds contempt. Ours became an
intolerable nuisance, and induced frequent discussions about bribing
the player to stop it. He was apparently animated by the spirit of the
Parisian who set a hand-organ to running by clockwork in his room,
locked the apartment, went to the country for a month, and, when he
returned, found that two obnoxious neighbors, whom he wished to drive
away, had blown out their brains in utter despair.
While I was pleasantly engaged in a whist-party in the cabin, this
fragment of a conversation between two bystanders reached my ears:
"A spy?"
"Yes, a spy from the North, looking about to obtain information for old
Lincoln; and they arrested one yesterday, too."
[Sidenote: CONFEDERATE CAPITOL AT MONTGOMERY.]
This was a pleasing theme of reflection for the timid and contemplative
mind. A passenger explained the matter, by informing me that, at one of
the landings where we stopped, telegraphic intelligence was received
of the arrest of two spies at Montgomery. The popular impression
seemed to be, that about one person in ten was engaged in that
not-very-fascinating avocation!
In Indian dialect, Alabama signifies, "Here we rest;" but, for me, it
had an exactly opposite meaning. We awoke one morning to find our boat
lying at Montgomery. Reaching the hotel too early for breakfast, I
strolled with a traveler from Philadelphia, a pretended Secessionist,
to the State House, which was at present also the Capitol of the
Confederacy.
Standing, like the Capitol in Washington, at the head of a broad
thoroughfare, it overlooks a pleasant city of eight thousand people.
The building is of stucco, and bears that melancholy suggestion of
better days which seems inseparable from the Peculiar Institution.
The senate chamber is a small, dingy apartment, on whose dirty walls
hang portraits of Clay, Calhoun, and two or three Alabama politicians.
The desks and chairs were covered with antiquated public documents, and
the other _débris_ of legislative halls. While returning to the hotel,
we heard from a street loafer a terse description of some model slave:
"He is just the best nigger in this town. He knows enough to work well,
and he knows nothing else."
We were also informed that the Virginia Convention had passed a
Secession ordinance.
"This is capital news; is it not?" said my Philadelphia companion, with
well-assumed glee.
For several days, in spite of his violent assertions, I had doubted his
sincerity. This was the first time he broached the subject when no one
else was present. I looked steadily in his eye, and inquired:
"Do you think so?"
His half-quizzical expression was a satisfactory answer, even without
the reply:
"I want to get home to Philadelphia without being detained on the way."
[Sidenote: "COPPERAS BREECHES" VS. "BLACK BREECHES."]
In the hotel office, two well-dressed southerners were discussing the
omnipresent topic. One of them said:
"We shall have no war."
"Yes, we shall," replied the other. "The Yankees are going to fight for
a while; but it will make no difference to us. We have got copperas
breeches enough to carry this war through. None of the black breeches
will have to shoulder muskets!"
The reader should understand that the clothing of the working whites
was colored with a dye in which copperas was the chief ingredient;
while, of course, the upper, slaveholding classes, wore "customary
suits of solemn black." This was a very pregnant sentence, conveying in
a few words the belief of those Rebels who instigated and impelled the
war.
[Sidenote: A CORRESPONDENT IN DURANCE VILE.]
The morning newspapers, at our breakfast-table, detailed two
interesting facts. First, that "Jasper,"[7] the Charleston
correspondent of _The New York Times_, had been seized and imprisoned
in the Palmetto City. Second, that Gen. Bragg had arrested in his
camp, and sent under guard to Montgomery, "as a prisoner of war," the
correspondent of _The Pensacola_ (Fla.) _Observer_. This journalist was
an enthusiastic Secessionist, but had been guilty of some indiscretion
in publishing facts touching the strength and designs of the Rebel
army. His signature was "Nemo;" and he now bade fair to be No One,
indeed, for some time to come.
[7] This gentleman went to Charleston openly for _The Times_, and
constantly insisted that a candid and truthful correspondent of
any northern paper could travel through the South without serious
difficulty. He was daily declaring that the devil was not so black as
he is painted, denying charges brought against Charlestonians by the
northern press, and sometimes evidently straining a point in his own
convictions to say a kind word for them. But, during the storming of
Sumter, he was suddenly arrested, robbed, and imprisoned in a filthy
cell for several days. He was at last permitted to go; but the mob had
become excited against him, and with difficulty he escaped with his
life. No other correspondent was subjected to such gross indignities.
"Jasper" reached Washington, having obtained a good deal of new and
valuable information about South Carolina character.