totally different set of persons, about my proceedings with regard to
the negroes. I had not been in the city twenty-four hours before we were
amused with ridiculous reports of my championship on behalf of the
blacks; and, long after I had left the place, reported speeches of mine
were in circulation which were remarkably striking to me when I at
length heard them. This circumstance shows how irritable the minds of
the people are upon this topic. I met with no difficulty, however,
among my associates. I made it a rule to allow others to introduce the
subject of slavery, knowing that they would not fail to do so, and that
I might learn as much from their method of approaching the topic as from
anything they could say upon it. Before half an hour had passed, every
man, woman, or child I might be conversing with had entered upon the
question. As it was likewise a rule with me never to conceal or soften
my own opinions, and never to allow myself to be irritated by what I
heard (for it is too serious a subject to indulge frailties with), the
best understanding existed between slaveholders and myself. We never
quarrelled, while, I believe, we never failed to perceive the extent of
the difference of opinion and feeling between us. I met with much more
cause for admiration in their frankness than reason to complain of
illiberality. The following may serve as a specimen of this part of our
intercourse:--
The first time I met an eminent Southern gentleman, a defender of
slavery, he said to me (within the half hour),
"I wish you would not be in such a hurry away. I wish you would stay a
year in this city. I wish you would stay ten years, and then you would
change your opinions."
"What opinions?"
"Your opinions on slavery."
"What do you know of my opinions on slavery?"
"Oh, we know them well enough: we have all read 'Demerara.'"
"Very well: now we shall understand each other; for I must tell you that
I think about slavery exactly as I did when I wrote that story. Nothing
that I have seen shows me that I have anything to qualify of what is
said there. So now you do know my opinions."
"Oh yes. I don't want to know anything more of your opinions. I want you
to know mine."
"That is exactly what I want. When will you let me have them?"
We had engaged to dine with this gentleman the next week; it was now
arranged that our party should go two hours earlier than the other
guests, in order to hear this gentleman's exposition of slavery. He was
well prepared, and his statement of facts and reasons was clear, ready,
and entertaining. The fault was in the narrowness of his premises, for
his whole argument was grounded on the supposition that human rights
consist in sufficient subsistence in return for labour. Before he began
I told him that I fully understood his wish not to argue the question,
and that I came to hear his statement, not to controvert it; but that I
must warn him not to take my silence for assent. Upon this understanding
we proceeded, with some little irritability on his part when I asked
questions, but with no danger of any quarrel. I never found the
slightest difficulty in establishing a similar clear understanding with
every slaveholder I met. In the drawing-room of the boarding-house at
Richmond, Virginia, three gentlemen, two of whom were entire strangers,
attacked me in the presence of a pretty large company one afternoon.
This was a direct challenge, which I did not think fit to decline, and
we had it all out. They were irritable at first, but softened as they
went on; and when, at the end of three hours, we had exhausted the
subject, we were better friends than when we began.
Some of the reports of my championship of the negroes arose from a
circumstance which occurred the day after my arrival at Charleston. Our
host proposed to take us up a church steeple, to obtain a view of the
city and its environs. The key of the church was at the Guardhouse
opposite, and our host said we might as well go for it ourselves, and
thus get a sight of the Guardhouse. One of the city authorities showed
us over it, and we stayed a few moments in a room where a lady was
preferring a complaint against two negro boys for robbing a henroost.
They were proved guilty, and sentenced to be flogged at the place of
punishment at the other end of the city.
The view from the church steeple was very fine; and the whole, steeped
in spring sunshine, had an oriental air which took me by surprise. The
city was spread out beneath us in a fanlike form, in streets converging
towards the harbour. The heat and moisture of the climate give to the
buildings the hue of age, so as to leave nothing of the American air of
spruceness in the aspect of the place. The sandy streets, the groups of
mulattoes, the women with turbaned heads, surmounted with water-pots and
baskets of fruit; the small panes of the house windows; the yucca
bristling in the gardens below us, and the hot haze through which we saw
the blue main and its islands, all looked so oriental as to strike us
with wonder. We saw Ashley and Cooper rivers, bringing down produce to
the main, and were taught the principal buildings--the churches and
the Custom-house, built just before the Revolution--and the leading
streets, Broad and Meeting streets intersecting, and affording access to
all that we were to see. It would be wise in travellers to make it their
first business in a foreign city to climb the loftiest point they can
reach, so as to have the scene they are to explore laid out as in a
living map beneath them. It is scarcely credible how much time is saved
and confusion of ideas obviated by these means. I gained much by
mounting the State House at Boston, Pennsylvania Hospital at
Philadelphia, the new hotel at Baltimore, the Capitol at Washington, the
high hills about Cincinnati, the college at Lexington, the hill where
the Statehouse is to be at Nashville, the Cotton-press at New Orleans,
and this church steeple at Charleston.
Another care of the traveller should be to glance at the local
newspapers. This first morning I found a short newspaper article which
told volumes. It was an ordinance for raising ways and means for the
city. Charitable and religious institutions were left free from
taxation, as were the salaries of the clergy and schoolmasters. There
was a direct levy on real property, on slaves, and on carriages, and a
special tax on free people of colour; a class who, being precluded from
obtaining taxable property and luxuries, were yet made to pay by means
of a polltax.
Our mornings were divided between receiving callers and drives about the
city and in the country. The country is flat and sandy, and the only
objects are planters' mansions, surrounded with evergreen woods, the
gardens exhibiting the tropical yucca, and fenced with hedges of the
Cherokee rose. From the lower part of the city glimpses of the main may
be had; but the intervening space is very ugly, except at high tide; an
expanse of reeking slime over which large flocks of buzzards are
incessantly hovering. On the top of each of the long row of stakes
discovered at low water sits a buzzard. A fine is imposed for killing
one of these birds, the unsalaried scavengers of the moister districts
of the city.
The houses which we visited in returning calls were generally handsome,
with capacious piazzas, rich plants and bouquets, and good furniture.
The political bias of the inhabitant was often discoverable from the
books on the table, or the prints and casts on the walls. In no society
in the world could the division of parties be more distinct, and their
alienation more threatening than in Charleston at the time I was
there.[15] The Union gentlemen and ladies were dispirited and timid.
They asked one another's opinion whether there was not some mysterious
stir among the nullifiers; whether they were not concerting measures for
a new defiance of the general government. This anxious watchfulness
contrasted strangely with the arrogant bearing of the leading
nullifiers. During my stay Mr. Calhoun and his family arrived from
Congress; and there was something very striking in the welcome he
received, like that of a chief returned to the bosom of his clan. He
stalked about like a monarch of the little domain; and there was
certainly an air of mysterious understanding between him and his
followers, whether there was really any great secret under it or not.
One lady, who had contributed ample amounts of money to the
nullification funds, and a catechism to nullification lore, amused while
she grieved me by the strength of her political feelings. While calling
on her one morning, the conversation turned on prints, and I asked an
explanation of a strange-looking one which hung opposite my eye; the
portrait of a gentleman, the top of the head and the dress visible, but
the face obliterated or covered over. She was only too ready to explain.
It was a portrait of President Jackson, which she had hung up in days
when he enjoyed her favour. Since nullification she had covered over the
face, to show how she hated him. A stranger hardly knows what to think
of a cause whose leaders will flatter and cherish the perpetrators of a
piece of petty spite like this; yet this lady is treated as if she were
a main pillar of the nullification party.
Footnote 15: For an explanation of nullification, and a short history
of the struggle of the nullifiers, see "Society in America," vol. i.,
p. 92-109.
Some of our mornings were spent in going with the Hayne and Calhoun
families to the public library, to a panorama, and to the arsenal. The
library is supported by private subscriptions, and is very creditable to
the city, whose zeal about its books might well have been exhausted by
the repeated destruction of the library by fire and in the war. We
amused ourselves with files of newspapers which have survived all
disasters; old London Gazettes and colonial papers extending as far back
as 1678.
We visited the arsenal twice; the second time with Mr. Calhoun and
Governor Hayne, when we saw the arms and ammunition, which were not
visible the first time, because "the key was not on the premises;" a
token that no invasion was immediately expected. There were two bombs
brought in by Governor Hayne, and all the warlike apparatus which was
made ready during the nullification struggle. It is difficult to believe
that Mr. Calhoun seriously meant to go to war with such means as his
impoverished state could furnish; but there is no doubt that he did
intend it. The ladies were very animated in their accounts of their
State Rights Ball, held in the area of the arsenal, and of their
subscriptions of jewels to the war fund. They were certainly in earnest.
The soldiers were paraded in our presence, some eleven or twelve
recruits, I believe; and then Mr. Calhoun first, and Governor Hayne
afterward, uncovered and addressed them with as much gravity and
effusion of patriotic sentiment as if we had been standing on the verge
of a battle-field. Some of our party were of Union politics, and they
looked exceedingly arch during the speechifying. It will be too sad if
this child's play should be turned into bloodshed after all, for the
gratification of any man's restless ambition, or in the guilty hope of
protracting slavery under the reprobation of the whole of society except
a small band of mercenaries.
My chief interest in these expeditions was in the personages who
accompanied me. Governor Hayne's name is well known in England from his
having furnished the provocation to Webster's renowned speech,
exhibiting the constitutional argument against nullification; and from
his being afterward the leader of the struggle in South Carolina, while
Mr. Calhoun fulfilled the same function in Congress. He is descended
from the Haynes whose cruel sufferings in the Revolutionary War are
notorious, to the disgrace of the British; one of the two brothers
having perished through the miseries of a British prison-ship, and the
other having been hanged by Lord Rawdon and Colonel Balfour, under
circumstances which, I believe, justify the horror and reprobation with
which the act is viewed by all who have heard the story. It is one of
the most dreadful tales of the Revolutionary War, and the English have
not been behind the Americans in their feeling with regard to the case.
The circumstances are briefly these:--
Colonel Isaac Hayne was a peaceful planter at the time of the breaking
out of the war. He lived upon his estate all the year round, and was
remarkably quiet and domestic in his temper and habits. He served in the
American army during the siege of Charleston; and, on the fall of the
city, returned to his plantation, under the guarantee of security to
person and property shared by all who had capitulated at Charleston. The
smallpox broke out in his family; all his children had it; one was dead,
and his wife dying, when Colonel Hayne received peremptory orders to
repair to the British standard, to take up arms as a British subject, or
to surrender himself prisoner at Charleston. He declared that no force
should separate him from his dying wife and children, and asserted his
inviolability under the capitulation of Charleston. The British officer,
Colonel Bellingall, who brought the order, assured him of his immediate
return home if he would repair to Charleston, to give an assurance that
he would "demean himself as a British subject while the country should
be covered with a British army." Colonel Hayne went, with the written
agreement of Colonel Bellingall in his hand. He was, however, detained,
and offered the alternative of lasting imprisonment or of signing an
unconditional promise to obey orders as a British subject. He declared
that he never would bear arms against his country, and was assured that
this act would never be required of him. There were several witnesses to
his having signed under this protest and assurance. He returned to his
family, finding another of his children dead, and his wife just
expiring.
He observed the strictest neutrality while the promise under which he
signed was kept. His house was alternately occupied by English and
American troops, when the prospects of the republicans began to improve;
and he is known to have refused to let his horses be used by friends in
the American force; in short, to have kept his engagement like a man of
honour. His position was, however, considered too perilous a one, and he
was summoned to join the British standard. He considered that this was
such a violation of a promise on the part of the British officers as set
him free. He joined his countrymen, fought, and was captured. He was
imprisoned at Charleston for some weeks till Lord Rawdon came to town,
and then, after two days' notice, brought before a court of inquiry,
consisting of four general officers and five captains. Having no idea
that this was anything more than a preliminary measure, and finding that
the members of the court were not sworn, nor the witnesses examined on
oath, Colonel Hayne called no witnesses, and the proceedings closed
without his being aware that he had gone through an affair of life or
death. He was wholly taken by surprise, therefore, at the news conveyed
to him by letter that he was to die on the gibbet the next day but one.
He was respited for forty-eight hours, in order that he might see his
children, and in consideration of the "humane treatment shown by him to
the British prisoners who fell into his hands," and he spent the
interval in the discharge of business and affectionate intercourse with
his friends. His chief regret was, that this act would probably provoke
retaliation, and so lead to the shedding of much innocent blood. He
required his eldest son, a boy of thirteen, to be present at his
execution, in order to receive his body, and see that it was laid in the
family burial-place. The boy, frantic with grief, declared that he
should not long survive him; and it is not surprising that he shortly
became insane and died. Colonel Hayne met his fate with a tranquillity
which convinced his enemies that (to use their own words), "though he
did not die in a good cause, he must, at least, have acted from a
persuasion of its being so."
Such stories are very painful, but they ought not to be forgotten. The
horrors of colonial war may not be over; and it is well that the
conflicts of duty and affection which can take place only in wars of
this character should be remembered, while Great Britain has colonies
which she may oppress, and noble subjects, like Colonel Hayne, whom she
may be even now alienating, and whose contrariety of affections she may
be yet again driven or tempted to solve in blood.
The present representative of the family was made speaker of the South
Carolina House of Representatives at the age of twenty-seven. He was
afterward attorney-general of the state, a senator in Congress, and
governor of the state. During the preparations for war in 1832, he was
the soul of every movement. He is now considered to be deeply involved
in the Southern transactions relating to the acquisition of Texas,
whatever these may in reality be, and to have linked his fortunes with
the slavery question. When I saw him he was forty-four years of age,
with a robust, active frame, a lively, pleasant countenance, and very
engaging manners, with much of the eagerness of the schoolboy mixed with
the ease of the gentleman. He can do everything better than reason, as
appeared in the senatorial conflict, in which he was ground to powder by
the tremendous weight and force of Webster's constitutional argument and
sound declamation. Governor Hayne can state clearly, enforce ardently,
illustrate gracefully, and boast magnificently, but he cannot reason.
His best friends are probably the most anxious to admit this; for there
is such want of reason in his present course of opposition to the first
principles on which society is founded, and in his attachment to wornout
feudal institutions, that the observer, however friendly, finds himself
reduced to the alternative of supposing this busy mind perverted by
unholy passions or by an unbalanced imagination.
Governor Hamilton is less known at a distance, but he is, perhaps, a yet
more perfect representative of the Southern gentleman. He is handsome,
and his manners have all the grace without much of the arrogance of the
bearing of his class. I was much struck, too, with his generous
appreciation of the powers and virtues of the great men of every party
at Washington; a moral grace which I should have been glad to see shared
in a greater degree by some of his neighbours. Governor Hamilton has
done what he could to impair the favourable impressions he makes upon
all who know him by the atrocious report he issued in 1835, as chairman
of a committee of the South Carolina Legislature appointed to consider
what steps should be taken in defence of "the peculiar domestic
institutions of the South." This report is unconstitutional in its
requisitions, and savage in its spirit towards the abolitionists.
With these gentlemen, their friends, and the ladies of their families,
we saw many sights and passed many pleasant hours; and with gentlemen
and ladies of the opposite party we spent other portions of our leisure.
I was told much of the Poorhouse, rather in a tone of boasting; and I
was anxious to see what a poorhouse could be in a region where all
labourers were private property, and where pauperism would therefore
seem to be obviated. Infirmity, vice, and orphanhood keep up a small
amount of pauperism even here, reducing capitalists to a state of
dependance. There were about one hundred and twenty inmates when I
visited the institution, and the number was soon to be reduced by the
periodical clearance made by sending the children to the Orphan-house,
and the insane to the State asylum at Columbia. The intemperate and
vagrants were employed in coffin-making and stone-breaking. By a slight
stretch of the law, persons found drunk are sent here and locked up for
a month. We saw two respectable-looking men who had been brought in
intoxicated the day before, and who looked duly ashamed of their
situation.
The Orphan-house has been established about forty years, and it
contained, at the time of my visit, two hundred children. As none but
whites are admitted, it is found to be no encouragement to vice to admit
all destitute children, whether orphans or not; for the licentiousness
of the South takes the women of colour for its victims. The children in
this establishment are taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the
girls sewing; but the prejudice against work appears as much here as
anywhere. No active labour goes on; the boys do not even garden. No
employment is attempted which bears any resemblance to what is done by
slaves. The boys are apprenticed out to trades at fourteen, and the
girls to mantuamaking, almost the only employment in which a white
Southern woman can earn a subsistence. The children are taken in from
the age of two years, but they generally enter at the ages of four,
five, or six. I was rather surprised to see them badged, an
anti-republican practice which had better be abolished; but I wondered
the less when I observed the statue of Pitt still standing in the
courtyard, with the right arm shot off in the war, however. There is a
good-sized church connected with this establishment, which was well
filled on the afternoon when I went with the family of a friend, who was
taking his turn with his brother clergy to preach.
Charleston is the place in which to see those contrasting scenes of
human life brought under the eye which moralists gather together for the
purpose of impressing the imagination. The stranger has but to pass from
street to street, to live from hour to hour in this city, to see in
conjunction the extremes between which there is everywhere else a wide
interval. The sights of one morning I should remember if every other
particular of my travels were forgotten. I was driven round the city by
a friend whose conversation was delightful all the way. Though I did not
agree in all his views of society, the thoughtfulness of his mind and
the benevolence of his exertions betokened a healthy state of feeling,
and gave value to all he said. He had been a friend of the lamented
Grimké; and he showed me the house where Grimké lived and died, and told
me much of him; of the nobleness of his character, the extent of his
attainments, and how, dying at fifty-four, he had lived by industry a
long life. My mind was full of the contemplation of the heights which
human beings are destined to reach, when I was plunged into a new scene;
one which it was my own conscientious choice to visit, but for which the
preceding conversation had ill-prepared me. I went into the slave
market, a place which the traveller ought not to avoid to spare his
feelings. There was a table on which stood two auctioneers, one with a
hammer, the other to exhibit "the article" and count the bids. The
slaves for sale were some of them in groups below, and some in a long
row behind the auctioneers. The sale of a man was just concluding when
we entered the market. A woman, with two children, one at the breast,
and another holding by her apron, composed the next lot. The restless,
jocose zeal of the auctioneer who counted the bids was the most infernal
sight I ever beheld. The woman was a mulatto; she was neatly dressed,
with a clean apron and a yellow head-handkerchief. The elder child clung
to her. She hung her head low, lower, and still lower on her breast, yet
turning her eyes incessantly from side to side, with an intensity of
expectation which showed that she had not reached the last stage of
despair. I should have thought that her agony of shame and dread would
have silenced the tongue of every spectator; but it was not so. A lady
chose this moment to turn to me and say, with a cheerful air of
complacency, "You know my theory, that one race must be subservient to
the other. I do not care which; and if the blacks should ever have the
upper hand, I should not mind standing on that table, and being sold
with two of my children." Who could help saying within himself, "Would
you were! so that that mother were released!" Who could help seeing in
vision the blacks driving the whites into the field, and preaching from
the pulpits of Christian churches the doctrines now given out there,
that God has respect of persons; that men are to hold each other as
property, instead of regarding each other as brethren; and that the
right interpretation of the golden rule by the slaveholder is, "Do unto
your slaves as you would wish your master to do unto you if you were a
slave!" A little boy of eight or nine years old, apparently, was next
put up alone. There was no bearing the child's look of helplessness and
shame. It seemed like an outrage to be among the starers from whom he
shrunk, and we went away before he was disposed of.