Charleston, Now and Four Years Ago.
In the afternoon, the General commanding the post was waiting with
carriages for the party, at the wharf, when Admiral Dahlgren set us
ashore. The wheels cut deep into the sand, throwing it into our faces
and filling the carriage with it, till we began to realize what it meant
to have taken up the pavements to get stone for the fortifications.
“Shall we go first to the statue of Calhoun?” asked the General. “It is
scarcely necessary—here is his monument,” said some one (in imitation of
the old eulogium), pointing around the destroyed parts of the city.
Later in the ride we did pass an old statue to William Pitt, which the
English-loving cavaliers of Carolina had erected in the old Colonial
days. During the Revolutionary war, a British ball broke off one of its
arms. When we entered the city it was found that the other was also
gone.
A foreigner, who visited Charleston in May, 1861, spoke of these streets
as “looking like Paris in the revolution—crowds of armed men singing and
promenading the streets; the battle blood running through their veins;
that hot oxygen, which is called ‘the flush of victory,’ on the cheek;
restaurants full; reveling in bar rooms, club rooms crowded, orgies and
carousings in taverns or private houses, in tap rooms, down narrow
alleys, in the broad highways.” This is the anniversary of that mad era;
but the streets look widely different. There are crowds of armed men in
the streets, but they move under the strictest discipline and their
color is black. No battle blood mantles the faces of the haggard and
listless Charlestonians one meets—it is rather blood born of low diet
and water gruel. For the flush of victory we have utter despondency. The
restaurants are closed and the shutters are up; the occupants of the
club rooms are dead, or in prison, or in exile; there is still carousing
in taverns, but it is only by the flushed and spendthrift Yankee
officers who are willing to pay seventy-five cents for a cobbler.
Of the leaders of those days, scarcely one remains to receive the curses
which, even in the midst of their hatred of the Yankees, the people pour
out upon the men who converted their prosperity into desolation. Then
they were singing—
“With mortar, paixhan and petard,
We send Old Abe our Beauregard.”
But Beauregard is a prisoner, given leave, by “Old Abe’s” parole, to
humbly enter his home at New Orleans, from which the loving wife, whom
he deserted for secession, has gone out forever. Huger is dead. Barnwell
Rhett is in exile, and the very journal by which he fed and nurtured the
germs of the Rebellion, has passed absolutely out of existence—no new
editor daring to revive so ill-omened a thing as the Charleston
_Mercury_.[12] Governor Pickens, who announced in one of his early
proclamations that he was born insensible to fear, has lived to learn
his mistake, and has vanished into the dim unknown of “the interior.”
Governor Aiken, who, (like that political eunuch, Alexander H.
Stephens,) weakly yielded his convictions and eased his conscience by
blockade running, instead of fighting, has, for some unknown reason,
been arrested and sent to Washington. Governor Manning, Porcher Miles,
Senator Chesnut, Barnwell, have all vanished into thin air before the
Ithuriel touch—nay, rather before the mere approach of negro bayonets.
The merchants, too, whom Southern independence was to make the cotton
factors of the world, have disappeared. Their direct line of steamers to
Liverpool failed to get beyond the blockading fleet, and long before the
politicians had given it up, these men were hopelessly ruined. Trenholm,
indeed, pushed a precarious but lucrative trade in blockade running, and
succeeded better in managing his own funds than he did those of the
Rebel Treasury Department; but he is now an absconding member of the
Jeff. Davis Cabinet, and will be fortunate if he escape arrest. Rose and
Minor are gone.
One name, of all that were so prominent in Charleston four years ago,
should never be taken on loyal lips save with reverent regard—that of
Mr. Petigru. He remained faithful to the last; but his eyes were not
permitted to see the old flag waving again, and his wife is to-day in
Charleston, living on Government rations! She has stated her destitution
frankly, however, to General Gillmore, commanding the Department, and
some small part of the nation’s debt to her husband will yet, it is
hoped, be paid in the tenderest care for herself.
“There are twenty thousand people here in Charleston,” said the haughty
representative of an ancient Carolinian name, “and only six families
among them all!” Judging from what one sees on the streets, one could
very readily believe the paradox which, in Carolina lips, becomes no
paradox at all. There are plenty of resident Irish on the streets; the
poorer class of natives, too, begin to venture out; but, in the course
of the whole afternoon’s driving about the city, I did not see a single
one whom I should have supposed to belong to a leading family. My
companion had spent the greater part of his life in Charleston, and, in
his own language, knew everybody in the town; but he failed to see one
whom he recognized as having ever held any position in politics or
society.
The extent of the damage by the bombardment has, I imagine, been
generally overrated at the North. The lower part of the city was
certainly not an eligible location for a quiet residence; but it is an
error to suppose that most of the houses, or any considerable number of
them, have been destroyed. The shells generally failed to explode, and
the marks on the houses are rather scars than serious breaches. Roofs
are injured, walls are weakened, windows destroyed and floors more or
less ripped up; but still the houses stand, and can, with comparatively
little outlay, be repaired. The General’s headquarters are established
in the midst of the bombarded district; but the elegant house which he
occupies shows no mark whatever. Most of the other officers who have
taken houses are in the same quarter, and I observe that they have the
same passion, as at Wilmington, for getting the very best establishments
in a place.
The General drove us through the Arsenal grounds, and past those of the
Military Academy, where, of old, the martial spirit of South Carolina
had been fostered. The drives and walks had been bordered with spherical
case, round shot and shell; and here and there, at the corners, little
ornamental effects were produced by the erection of small pillars, made
of our long rifle projectiles, flanked by a few broken bayonets. It was
thus the Charlestonians amused themselves during the progress of the
bombardment.
* * * * *
Passing through the shabby suburbs, which would hardly comport with the
dignity of a first-class Northern village, we came out upon the track
where, of yore, all the beauty and fashion of Charleston was wont to
congregate—the Race Course. Of late years it has been used for a
different purpose. Here, without shelter, without clothing, and with
insufficient food, were confined the Yankee prisoners; and in a little
inclosure, back of the judges’ stand, may be seen their uncounted
graves. Sympathizing hands have cleared away the weeds, and placed over
the entrance an inscription that must bring shame to the cheek of every
Southern man who passes: “The Martyrs of the Race Course.” Near it was
an elegant cemetery, carefully tended, glorious with superb live-oaks,
and weeping with the long, pendent trails of the silvery Spanish moss;
but into this consecrated ground no Yankee’s body could be borne. Negro
soldiers were strolling through it as we passed, and some were reading
from showy tombstones, to the dusky groups around them, the virtues of
the—masters from whom they had run away to enlist!
Occasional vehicles were seen on the road, bringing in black and white
refugees. The country is in such confusion that many seek the safe
shelter of the cities, solely from the blind instinct that where there
is force there must be protection. Such wagons and such horses were
surely never seen. Each rivaled the other in corners, in age, in
protuberance, and shakiness, and general disposition to tumble down and
dissolve. They all bring in saddening stories of destitution in the
country. Still I am inclined to think that these stories are
exaggerated. There is little evidence of actual suffering in the
country; and in the cities none who want have any scruples in calling
upon the hireling minions of the tyrannical Washington Government for
rations. Next winter is the dead point of danger. There is a smaller
breadth of cereals sown in the South this year than in any year since
1861, and by fall the stock on hand is likely to be exhausted. Now the
suffering is only individual; then it promises to be too nearly general.
On the other hand, the reports from the North-west, or mountain region
of the State, indicate little prospect of suffering. “I tell you,” said
a South Carolinian, from Greenville, “the South could have continued the
war for ten years, if it had had your Northern gift of perseverance. We
were neither exhausted of men nor of provisions; it was only that the
flame of enthusiasm had burnt out. I have myself traveled, within the
past month, through sections of South Carolina, from Greenville to
Columbia, and thence north-east and north-west, so as to know accurately
the condition of the crops in one-half the State. There is no trouble
about starvation. The people are not suffering, except in such isolated
cases as you will always find, and there is a larger breadth of grains
planted than ever before. With reasonable care there ought to be no
starvation this winter.”
* * * * *
There was a little party in the evening, in the fine old mansion of a
noted Charleston banker, but there were few South Carolinians there,
excepting the house servants who had remained to wait on the new
occupants. Admiral Dahlgren, Major-General Saxton, two or three
Brigadiers and Brevet Brigadiers, and their wives, made up the bulk of
the company; and the talk was of the army and navy and the policy of the
Government. A gentleman was introduced as the editor of the Charleston
_Courier_, and I was not a little surprised to find that redoubtable
Rebel personage greeting me with the warmth of an old acquaintance. He
turned out to be a former _attaché_ of a leading New York paper, who had
often reported to me in Washington, when I had been in temporary charge
of its bureau there.
Persons writing from here in the spring of 1861, said there was no
feature of the feeling among the leaders more marked than their scarcely
disguised hostility to the freedom of the press. I had been reading over
some of those letters, of four years ago, in the morning; and it sounded
curiously, like a continuation of the old strain, to hear the editor’s
lamentations over the impossibility of making a newspaper where you
could express no opinions, and couldn’t always even print the news.
“Here, yesterday, for example, was a reconstruction meeting. The call
for it was sent to me. I published that, and then sent phonographers to
make a full report of the proceedings. There was a big row; the whites
ordered out the negroes; then the latter got re-enforced, and came back
to maintain their ground, whereupon the whites left. The speeches on
both sides were racy; there was a good deal of excitement. I had a
splendid report of the whole thing, and it was capital news. I had it
all in type, when an order came to make no allusion whatever to the
meeting. This morning everybody thinks the _Courier_ is behind the
times, because it didn’t know anything about the reconstruction
meeting!”
After the party, the Dominie told me of his explorations among his old
friends in Charleston.
I ought, perhaps, before this, to have explained that my genial room
mate, whom I have been rather irreverently terming the Dominie, is Rev.
Dr. Fuller, of Baltimore, now a noted Baptist clergyman, formerly a
leading South Carolina lawyer and planter. He still owns large
plantations on the sea islands, and, down to the date of the
emancipation proclamation, had on them between two hundred and two
hundred and fifty slaves, who came to him by inheritance, and whom,
under the laws of South Carolina, he was unable either to educate or
emancipate. Governor Bradford said to him once: “Mr. Lincoln’s
emancipation idea has been an expensive one to you, Doctor. It must have
cost you over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” “Yes, I presume it
did; but then, Governor, it took over a hundred and fifty thousand
pounds of iron off my conscience!” So great had been the change since he
held his public discussion with President Wayland, on the rightfulness
of, and Scriptural warrant for, slavery!
All the Doctor’s connections were with the South, and nearly all his
relations, who have not been killed, are living here. It was his nephew
who held Fort Sumter to the last; a near relative of his laid out the
fortifications at Fort Fisher; another was the Rebel engineer at
Norfolk. Last night he found a granddaughter, of perhaps the most
prominent member of the first Congress, living on Government rations!
Another, equally destitute, bears a historic name, and is the
granddaughter of one of Washington’s most confidential friends and
intimate advisers in the Revolutionary war.
It has been naturally supposed that the bitterest drop in all the bitter
cup of humiliation for these haughty South Carolinians, must be the
necessity of accepting alms from the Government they had been seeking to
overthrow. But the ingenious high priestesses of secession regard the
matter in no such light. The Dominie found a number of them living
solely on Government rations. He hastened to offer them assistance.
Their Northern relatives had already repeatedly volunteered similar
offers, but they refused them all, and persisted in living on the bacon
and hard bread issued by the United States Commissary. They explained
that they preferred to make “the Washington Government” support them. It
had robbed them of all they had, and now the very least it could do was
to pay their expenses.[13] Every penny of cost to which they put it was
so much got back from the fortunes of which it had robbed them, by
waging this wicked war for their subjugation! Doesn’t somebody think it
a shame that these repentant South Carolinians should be treated with so
little magnanimity as the Government is displaying; and that Northern
Abolitionists should quit watching them critically, and “mind their own
business?” Already, a few of the South Carolinians talk thus; and in a
few months, if freedom of expression is allowed them, we shall see much
of the old vituperation of the Government and of the North.
-----
Footnote 12:
A proposition has since been made to re-establish it, as an organ of
the freedmen—to be edited by negroes!
Footnote 13:
The same idea prevailed among some of the Richmond Rebels. A Richmond
letter to the Boston _Commonwealth_, dated 30th June, describing the
scenes at the points where rations were gratuitously issued to the
destitute, says:
“‘We are all beggars, now!’ I heard one of them say, apologetically.
But most of the high-born were coarse and imperious. ‘This is not
begging,’ one of the most inveterate beggars said. ‘It is taking from
the United States Government a very small portion of what it owes us.’
‘As long as the Yankees have taken possession of Richmond, of course
it’s their place to feed us,’ more than one said. To the few who gave
thanks, and to the many who cursed, all the Commissions gave largely,
for several weeks.”