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PICTURES
OF
SOUTHERN LIFE,
SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND MILITARY.
WRITTEN FOR THE LONDON TIMES,
BY
WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL, LL. D.,
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.
NEW YORK:
James G. Gregory,
(SUCCESSOR TO W. A. TOWNSEND & CO.,)
46 WALKER STREET.
1861.
PICTURES OF SOUTHERN LIFE.
CHARLESTON, _April_ 30, 1861.[A]
[A] Mr. Russell wrote one letter from Charleston previous to
this, but it is occupied exclusively with a description of the
appearance of Fort Sumter after the siege. His “Pictures of Southern
Life” properly begin at the date above.
NOTHING I could say can be worth one fact which has forced itself upon
my mind in reference to the sentiments which prevail among the gentlemen
of this state. I have been among them for several days. I have visited
their plantations; I have conversed with them freely and fully, and I
have enjoyed that frank, courteous, and graceful intercourse which
constitutes an irresistible charm of their society. From all quarters
have come to my ears the echoes of the same voice; it may be feigned,
but there is no discord in the note, and it sounds in wonderful strength
and monotony all over the country. Shades of George III., of North, of
Johnson, of all who contended against the great rebellion which tore
these colonies from England, can you hear the chorus which rings through
the state of Marion, Sumter, and Pinckney, and not clap your ghostly
hands in triumph? That voice says, “If we could only get one of the
royal race of England to rule over us, we should be content.” Let there
be no misconception on this point. That sentiment, varied in a hundred
ways, has been repeated to me over and over again. There is a general
admission that the means to such an end are wanting, and that the desire
cannot be gratified. But the admiration for monarchical institutions on
the English model, for privileged classes, and for a landed aristocracy
and gentry, is undisguised and apparently genuine. With the pride of
having achieved their independence is mingled in the South Carolinians’
hearts a strange regret at the result and consequences, and many are
they who “would go back to-morrow if we could.” An intense affection for
the British connection, a love of British habits and customs, a respect
for British sentiment, law, authority, order, civilization, and
literature, pre-eminently distinguish the inhabitants of this state,
who, glorying in their descent from ancient families on the three
islands, whose fortunes they still follow, and with whose members they
maintain not unfrequently familiar relations, regard with an aversion of
which it is impossible to give an idea to one who has not seen its
manifestations, the people of New England and the populations of the
Northern States, whom they regard as tainted beyond cure by the venom of
“Puritanism.” Whatever may be the cause, this is the fact and the
effect. “The state of South Carolina was,” I am told, “founded by
gentlemen.” It was not established by witch-burning Puritans, by cruel
persecuting fanatics, who implanted in the North the standard of
Torquemada, and breathed into the nostrils of their newly-born colonies
all the ferocity, bloodthirstiness, and rabid intolerance of the
Inquisition. It is absolutely astounding to a stranger who aims at the
preservation of a decent neutrality to mark the violence of these
opinions. “If that confounded ship had sunk with those ---- Pilgrim
Fathers on board,” says one, “we never should have been driven to these
extremities!” “We could have got on with the fanatics if they had been
either Christians or gentlemen,” says another; “for in the first case
they would have acted with common charity, and in the second they would
have fought when they insulted us; but there are neither Christians nor
gentlemen among them!” “Any thing on the earth!” exclaims a third, “any
form of government, any tyranny or despotism you will; but”--and here is
an appeal more terrible than the adjuration of all the gods--“nothing on
earth shall ever induce us to submit to any union with the brutal,
bigoted blackguards of the New England States, who neither comprehend
nor regard the feelings of gentlemen! Man, woman, and child, we’ll die
first.” Imagine these and an infinite variety of similar sentiments
uttered by courtly, well-educated men, who set great store on a nice
observance of the usages of society, and who are only moved to extreme
bitterness and anger when they speak of the North, and you will fail to
conceive the intensity of the dislike of the South Carolinians for the
free states. There are national antipathies on our side of the Atlantic
which are tolerably strong, and have been unfortunately pertinacious and
long-lived. The hatred of the Italian for the Tedesco, of the Greek for
the Turk, of the Turk for the Russ, is warm and fierce enough to satisfy
the Prince of Darkness, not to speak of a few little pet aversions among
allied powers and the atoms of composite empires; but they are all mere
indifference and neutrality of feeling compared to the animosity evinced
the “gentry” of South Carolina for the “rabble of the North.”
The contests of Cavalier and Roundhead, of Vendean and Republican, even
of Orangeman and Croppy, have been elegant joustings, regulated by the
finest rules of chivalry, compared with those which North and South will
carry on if their deeds support their words. “Immortal hate, the study
of revenge,” will actuate every blow, and never in the history of the
world, perhaps, will go forth such a dreadful _væ victis_ as that which
may be heard before the fight has begun. There is nothing in all the
dark caves of human passion so cruel and deadly as the hatred the South
Carolinians profess for the Yankees. That hatred has been swelling for
years till it is the very life-blood of the state. It has set South
Carolina to work steadily to organize her resources for the struggle
which she intended to provoke if it did not come in the course of time.
“Incompatibility of temper” would have been sufficient ground for the
divorce, and I am satisfied that there has been a deep-rooted design,
conceived in some men’s minds thirty years ago, and extended gradually
year after year to others, to break away from the Union at the very
first opportunity. The North is to South Carolina a corrupt and evil
thing, to which for long years she has been bound by burning chains,
while monopolists and manufacturers fed on her tender limbs. She has
been bound in a Maxentian union to the object she loathes. New England
is to her the incarnation of moral and political wickedness and social
corruption. It is the source of every thing which South Carolina hates,
and of the torrents of free thought and taxed manufactures, of
Abolitionism and of Filibustering, which have flooded the land. Believe
a Southern man as he believes himself, and you must regard New England
and the kindred states as the birthplace of impurity of mind among men
and of unchastity in women--the home of Free Love, of Fourierism, of
Infidelity, of Abolitionism, of false teachings in political economy and
in social life; a land saturated with the drippings of rotten
philosophy, with the poisonous infections of a fanatic press; without
honor or modesty; whose wisdom is paltry cunning, whose valor and
manhood have been swallowed up in a corrupt, howling demagogy, and in
the marts of a dishonest commerce. It is the merchants of New York who
fit out ships for the slave-trade, and carry it on in Yankee ships. It
is the capital of the North which supports, and it is Northern men who
concoct and execute, the filibustering expeditions which have brought
discredit on the slave-holding states. In the large cities people are
corrupted by itinerant and ignorant lecturers--in the towns and in the
country by an unprincipled press. The populations, indeed, know how to
read and write, but they don’t know how to think, and they are the easy
victims of the wretched impostors on all the ’ologies and ’isms who
swarm over the region, and subsist by lecturing on subjects which the
innate vices of mankind induce them to accept with eagerness, while they
assume the garb of philosophical abstractions to cover their nastiness,
in deference to a contemptible and universal hypocrisy.
“Who fills the butchers’ shops with large blue flies?”
Assuredly the New England demon, who has been persecuting the South
until its intolerable cruelty and insolence forced her, in a spasm of
agony, to rend her chains asunder. The New Englander must have something
to persecute, and as he has hunted down all his Indians, burnt all his
witches, and persecuted all his opponents to the death, he invented
Abolitionism as the sole resource left to him for the gratification of
his favorite passion. Next to this motive principle is his desire to
make money dishonestly, trickily, meanly, and shabbily. He has acted on
it in all his relations with the South, and has cheated and plundered
her in all his dealings by villainous tariffs. If one objects that the
South must have been a party to this, because her boast is that her
statesmen have ruled the government of the country, you are told that
the South yielded out of pure good-nature. Now, however, she will have
free-trade, and will open the coasting trade to foreign nations, and
shut out from it the hated Yankees, who so long monopolized and made
their fortunes by it. Under all the varied burdens and miseries to which
she was subjected, the South held fast to her sheet-anchor. South
Carolina was the mooring-ground in which it found the surest hold. The
doctrine of State Rights was her salvation, and the fiercer the storm
raged against her--the more stoutly demagogy, immigrant preponderance,
and the blasts of universal suffrage bore down on her, threatening to
sweep away the vested interests of the South in her right to govern the
states--the greater was her confidence and the more resolutely she held
on her cable. The North attracted “hordes of ignorant Germans and
Irish,” and the scum of Europe, while the South repelled them. The
industry, the capital of the North increased with enormous rapidity,
under the influence of cheap labor and manufacturing ingenuity and
enterprise, in the villages which swelled into towns, and the towns
which became cities, under the unenvious eye of the South. She, on the
contrary, toiled on slowly, clearing forests and draining swamps to find
new cotton-grounds and rice-fields, for the employment of her only
industry and for the development of her only capital--“involuntary
labor.” The tide of immigration waxed stronger, and by degrees she saw
the districts into which she claimed the right to introduce that capital
closed against her, and occupied by free labor. The doctrine of squatter
“sovereignty,” and the force of hostile tariffs, which placed a heavy
duty on the very articles which the South most required, completed the
measure of injuries to which she was subjected, and the spirit of
discontent found vent in fiery debate, in personal insults, and in
acrimonious speaking and writing, which increased in intensity in
proportion as the Abolition movement, and the contest between the
Federal principle and State Rights became more vehement. I am desirous
of showing in a few words, for the information of English readers, how
it is that the Confederacy which Europe knew simply as a political
entity has succeeded in dividing itself. The slave states held the
doctrine, or say they did, that each state was independent, as France or
as England, but that for certain purposes they chose a common agent to
deal with foreign nations, and to impose taxes for the purpose of paying
the expenses of the agency. We, it appears, talked of American citizens
when there were no such beings at all. There were, indeed, citizens of
the sovereign state of South Carolina, or of Georgia or Florida, who
permitted themselves to pass under that designation, but it was merely
as a matter of personal convenience. It will be difficult for Europeans
to understand this doctrine, as nothing like it has been heard before,
and no such Confederation of sovereign states has ever existed in any
country in the world. The Northern men deny that it existed here, and
claim for the Federal Government powers not compatible with such
assumptions. _They_ have lived for the Union, they served it, they
labored for and made money by it. A man as a New York man was
nothing--as an American citizen he was a great deal. A South Carolinian
objected to lose his identity in any description which included him and
a “Yankee clockmaker” in the same category. The Union was against him;
he remembered that he came from a race of English gentlemen who had been
persecuted by the representatives--for he will not call them the
ancestors--of the Puritans of New England, and he thought that they were
animated by the same hostility to himself. He was proud of old names,
and he felt pleasure in tracing his connection with old families in the
old country. His plantations were held by old charters, or had been in
the hands of his fathers for several generations; and he delighted to
remember that when the Stuarts were banished from their throne and their
country, the burgesses of South Carolina had solemnly elected the
wandering Charles king of their state, and had offered him an asylum and
a kingdom. The philosophical historian may exercise his ingenuity in
conjecturing what would have been the result if this fugitive had
carried his fortunes to Charleston.
South Carolina contains 34,000 square miles, and a population of 720,000
inhabitants, of whom 385,000 are black slaves. In the old rebellion it
was distracted between revolutionary principles and the loyalist
predilections, and at least one half of the planters were faithful to
George III., nor did they yield till Washington sent an army to support
their antagonists, and drove them from the colony.
In my next letter I shall give a brief account of a visit to some of
the planters, as far as it can be made consistent with the obligations
which the rites and rights of hospitality impose on the guest as well as
upon the host. These gentlemen are well-bred, courteous, and hospitable.
A genuine aristocracy, they have time to cultivate their minds, to apply
themselves to politics and the guidance of public affairs. They travel
and read, love field-sports, racing, shooting, hunting, and fishing, are
bold horsemen, and good shots. But, after all, their state is a modern
Sparta--an aristocracy resting on a helotry, and with nothing else to
rest upon. Although they profess (and I believe, indeed, sincerely) to
hold opinions in opposition to the opening of the slave-trade, it is
nevertheless true that the clause in the constitution of the Confederate
States which prohibited the importation of negroes was especially and
energetically resisted by them, because, as they say, it seemed to be an
admission that slavery was in itself an evil and a wrong. Their whole
system rests on slavery, and as such they defend it. They entertain very
exaggerated ideas of the military strength of their little community,
although one may do full justice to its military spirit. Out of their
whole population they cannot reckon more than 60,000 adult men by any
arithmetic, and as there are nearly 30,000 plantations which must be,
according to law, superintended by white men, a considerable number of
these adults cannot be spared from the state for service in the open
field. The planters boast that they can raise their crops without any
inconvenience by the labor of their negroes, and they seem confident
that the negroes will work without superintendence. But the experiment
is rather dangerous, and it will only be tried in the last extremity.
* * * * *
SAVANNAH, GA., _May_ 1, 1861.
It is said that “fools build houses for wise men to live in.” Be that
true or not, it is certain that “Uncle Sam” has built strong places for
his enemies to occupy. To-day I have visited Fort Pulaski, which defends
the mouth of the Savannah River and the approaches to the city. It was
left to take care of itself, and the Georgians quietly stepped into it,
and have been busied in completing its defences, so that it is now
capable of stopping a fleet very effectually. Pulaski was a Pole who
fell in the defence of Savannah against the British, and whose memory is
perpetuated in the name of the fort, which is now under the Confederate
flag, and garrisoned by bitter foes of the United States. Among our
party were Commodore Tatnall, whose name will be familiar to English
ears in connection with the attack on the Peiho Forts, where the gallant
American showed the world that “blood was thicker than water;”
Brigadier-General Lawton, in command of the forces of Georgia, and a
number of naval and military officers, of whom many had belonged to the
United States regular services. It was strange to look at such a man as
the commodore, who, for forty-nine long years, had served under the
stars and stripes, quietly preparing to meet his old comrades and
friends, if needs be, in the battle-field--his allegiance to the country
and to the flag renounced, his long service flung away, his old ties and
connections severed--and all this in defence of the sacred right of
rebellion on the part of “his state.” He is not now, nor has he been for
years, a slave-owner; all his family and familiar associations connect
him with the North. There are no naval stations on the Southern coasts
except one at Pensacola, and he knows almost no one in the South. He has
no fortune whatever, his fleet consists of two small river or coasting
steamers, without guns, and as he said, in talking over the resources of
the South, “My bones will be bleached many a long year before the
Confederate States can hope to have a navy.” “State Rights!” To us the
question is simply inexplicable or absurd. And yet thousands of
Americans sacrifice all for it. The river at Savannah is broad as the
Thames at Gravesend, and resembles that stream very much in the color of
its waters and the level nature of its shores. Rice-fields bound it on
either side, as far down as the influence of the fresh water extends,
and the eye wanders over a flat expanse of mud and water, and green
oziers and rushes, till its search is arrested on the horizon by the
unfailing line of forest. In the fields here and there, are the
whitewashed, square, wooden huts in which the slaves dwell, looking very
like the beginnings of the camp in the Crimea. At one point a small
fort, covering a creek, by which gun-boats could get up behind Savannah,
displayed its “garrison” on the walls, and lowered its flag to salute
the small blue ensign at the fore, which proclaimed the presence of the
commodore of the naval forces of Georgia on board our steamer. The guns
on the parapet were mostly field-pieces, mounted on frameworks of wood
instead of regular carriages. There is no mistake about the spirit of
these people. They seize upon every spot of vantage ground and prepare
it for defence. There were very few ships in the river; the yacht
Camilla, better known as the America, the property of Captain Deasy, and
several others of those few sailing under British colors, for most of
the cotton ships are gone. After steaming down the river about twelve
miles the sea opened out to the sight, and on a long marshy, narrow
island near the bar, which was marked by the yellow surf, Fort Pulaski
threw out the Confederate flag to the air of the Georgian 1st of May.
The water was too shallow to permit the steamer to go up to the jetty,
and the party landed at the wharf in boats. A guard was on duty at the
landing--tall, stout young fellows, in various uniforms, or in rude
mufti, in which the Garibaldian red shirt, and felt slouched hats
predominated. They were armed with smooth-bore muskets (date 1851),
quite new, and their bayonets, barrels, and locks, were bright and
clean. The officer on duty was dressed in the blue frock-coat, dear to
the British linesman in days gone by, with brass buttons, emblazoned
with the arms of the state, a red silk sash, and glazed kepi, and
straw-colored gauntlets. Several wooden huts, with flower-gardens in
front, were occupied by the officers of the garrison; others were used
as hospitals, and were full of men suffering from measles of a mild
type. A few minutes’ walk led us to the fort, which is an irregular
pentagon, with the base line or curtain face inlands, and the other
faces casemated and bearing on the approaches. The curtain, which is
simply crenellated, is covered by a redan surrounded by a deep ditch,
inside the parapet of which are granite platforms ready for the
reception of guns. The parapet is thick, and the scarp and counterscarp
are faced with solid masonry. A drawbridge affords access to the
interior of the redan, whence the gate of the fort is approached across
a deep and broad moat, which is crossed by another drawbridge. As the
commodore entered the redan, the guns of the fort broke out into a long
salute, and the band at the gate struck up almost as noisy a welcome.
Inside, the parade presented a scene of life and animation very unlike
the silence of the city we had left. Men were busy clearing out the
casemates, rolling away stores and casks of ammunition and provisions,
others were at work at the gin and shears, others building sand-bag
traverses to guard the magazine doors, as though expecting an immediate
attack. Many officers were strolling under the shade of an open gallery
at the side of the curtain which contained their quarters in the lofty
bomb-proof casemates. Some of them had seen service in Mexican or border
warfare; some had travelled over Italian and Crimean battle-fields;
others were West Point graduates of the regular army; others young
planters, clerks, or civilians, who rushed with ardor into the first
Georgian regiment. The garrison of the fort is some 650 men, and fully
that number were in and about the work, their tents being pitched inside
the redan, or on the terreplein of the parapets. The walls are
exceedingly solid, and well built of gray brick, strong as iron, and
upward of six feet in thickness, the casemates and bomb-proofs being
lofty, airy, and capacious as any I have ever seen, though there is not
quite depth enough between the walls at the salient and the
gun-carriages. The work is intended for 128 guns, of which about one
fourth are mounted on the casemates. They are long 32’s, with a few
42’s and columbiads. The armaments will be exceedingly heavy when all
the guns are mounted, and they are fast getting the ten-inch columbiads
into position _en barbette_. Every thing which could be required, except
mortars, was in abundance--the platforms and gun-carriages are solid and
well made, the embrasures of the casemates are admirably constructed,
and the ventilation of the bomb-proof carefully provided for. There are
three furnaces for heating redhot shot. Nor is discipline neglected, and
the officers with whom I went round the works were as sharp in tone and
manner to their men as volunteers well could be, though the latter often
are enlisted for only three years by the state of Georgia. An excellent
lunch was spread in the casemated bomb-proof which served as the
colonel’s quarter, and before sunset the party were steaming toward
Savannah through a tide-way full of leaping sturgeon and porpoises,
leaving the garrison intent on the approach of a large ship, which had
her sails aback off the bar, and hoisted the stars and stripes, but
which turned out to be nothing more formidable than a Liverpool cotton
ship. It will take some hard blows before Georgia is driven to let go
her grip of Fort Pulaski. The channel is very narrow, and passes close
to the guns of the fort. The means of completing the armament have been
furnished by the stores of Norfolk Navy-Yard, where between 700 and 800
guns have fallen into the hands of the Confederates; and, if there are
no columbiads among them, the Merrimac and other ships, which have been
raised, as we hear, with guns uninjured, will yield up their Dahlgrens
to turn their muzzles against their old masters.
_May_ 2.--May Day was so well kept yesterday that the exhausted editors
cannot “bring out” their papers, and consequently there is no news; but
there is, nevertheless, much to be said concerning “our President’s”
message, and there is a suddenness of admiration for pacific tendencies
which can with difficulty be accounted for, unless the news from the
North these last few days has something to do with it. Not a word now
about an instant march on Washington! no more threats to seize Faneuil
Hall! The Georgians are by no means so keen as the Carolinians on their
border--nay, they are not so belligerent to-day as they were a week ago.
Mr. Jefferson Davis’s message is praised for its “moderation” and for
other qualities which were by no means in such favor while the Sumter
fever was at its height. Men look grave and talk about the interference
of England and France, which “cannot allow this thing to go on.” But the
change which has come over them is unmistakable, and the best men begin
to look grave. As for me, I must prepare to open my lines of retreat--my
communications are in danger.
MONTGOMERY, CAPITAL OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA,
_May_ 8, 1861.
In my last letter I gave an account of such matters as passed under my
notice on my way to this city, which I reached, as you are aware, on the
night of Saturday, May 4. I am on difficult ground, the land is on fire,
the earth is shaking with the tramp of armed men, and the very air is
hot with passion. My communications are cut off, or are at best
accidental, and in order to reopen them I must get further away from
them, paradoxical as the statement may appear to be. It is impossible to
know what is going on in the North, and it is almost the same to learn
what is doing in the South out of eye-shot; it is useless to inquire
what news is sent to you to England. Events hurry on with tremendous
rapidity, and even the lightning lags behind them. The people of the
South at last are aware that the “Yankees” are preparing to support the
government of the United States, and that the Secession can only be
maintained by victory in the field. There has been a change in their war
policy. They now aver that “they only want to be left alone,” and they
declare that they do not intend to take Washington, and that it was
merely as a feint they spoke about it. The fact is, there are even in
the compact and united South men of moderate and men of extreme views,
and the general tone of the whole is regulated by the preponderance of
one or other at the moment. I have no doubt on my mind that the
government here intended to attack and occupy Washington--not the least
that they had it much at heart to reduce Fort Pickens as soon as
possible. Now some of their friends say that it will be a mere matter of
convenience whether they attack Washington or not, and that, as for Fort
Pickens, they will certainly let it alone, at all events for the
present, inasmuch as the menacing attitude of General Bragg obliges the
enemy to keep a squadron of their best ships there and to retain a force
of regulars they can ill spare in a position where they must soon lose
enormously from diseases incidental to the climate. They have
discovered, too, that the position is of little value so long as the
United States hold Tortugas and Key West. But the Confederates are
preparing for the conflict, and when they have organized their forces,
they will make, I am satisfied, a very resolute advance all along the
line. They are at present strong enough, they suppose, in their domestic
resources, and in the difficulties presented to a hostile force by the
nature of the country, to bid defiance to invasion, or, at all events,
to inflict a very severe chastisement on the invaders, and their excited
manner of speech so acts upon their minds that they begin to think they
can defy, not merely the United States, but the world. Thus it is that
they declare they never can be conquered, that they will die, to a man,
woman, and child, first, and that if 50,000, or any number of thousands
of black republicans get 100 miles into Virginia, not one man of them
shall ever get out alive. Behind all this talk, however, there is
immense energy, great resolution, and fixed principles of action. Their
strategy consists in keeping quiet till they have their troops well in
hand, in such numbers and discipline as shall give them fair grounds for
expecting success in any campaign with the United States troops. They
are preparing with vigor to render the descent of the Mississippi
impossible, by erecting batteries on the commanding levees, or
embankments which hem in its waters for upwards of 800 miles of bank,
and they are occupying, as far as they can, all the strategical points
of attack or defence within their borders. When every thing is ready, it
is not improbable that Mr. Jefferson Davis will take command of the
army, for he is reported to have a high ambition to acquire reputation
as a general, and in virtue of his office he is generalissimo of the
armies of the Confederate States. It will be remarked that this plan
rests on the assumption that the United States cannot or will not wage
an offensive war, or obtain any success in their attempts to recover the
forts and other property of the Federal government. They firmly believe
the war will not last a year, and that 1862 will behold a victorious,
compact, slaveholding confederate power of fifteen states under a strong
government, prepared to hold its own against the world, or that portion
of it which may attack it. I now but repeat the sentiments and
expectations of those around me. They believe in the irresistible power
of cotton, in the natural alliance between manufacturing England and
France and the cotton-producing slave states, in the force of their
simple tariff, and in the interests which arise out of a system of free
trade, which, however, by a rigorous legislation, they will interdict to
their neighbors in the free states, and only open for the benefit of
their foreign customers. Commercially, and politically, and militarily,
they have made up their minds, and never was there such confidence
exhibited by any people in the future as they have, or pretend to have,
in their destiny. Listen to their programme.
It is intended to buy up all the cotton crop which can be brought into
the market at an average price, and to give bonds of the Confederate
States for the amount, these bonds being, as we know, secured by the
export duty on cotton. The government, with this cotton crop in its own
hands, will use it as a formidable machine of war, for cotton can do any
thing, from the establishment of an empire to the securing of a shirt
button. It is at once king and subject, master and servant, captain and
soldier, artilleryman and gun. Not one bale of cotton will be permitted
to enter the Northern States. It will be made an offence punishable
with tremendous penalties, among which confiscation of property,
enormous fines, and even the penalty of death, are enumerated, to send
cotton into the free states. Thus Lowell and its kindred factories will
be reduced to ruin, it is said, and the North to the direst distress. If
Manchester can get cotton and Lowell cannot, there are good times coming
for the mill-owners.
The planters have agreed among themselves to hold over one half of their
cotton crop for their own purposes and for the culture of their fields,
and to sell the other to the government. For each bale of cotton, as I
hear, a bond will be issued on the fair average price of cotton in the
market, and this bond must be taken at par as a circulating medium
within the limits of the slave states. This forced circulation will be
secured by the act of the legislature. The bonds will bear interest at
ten per cent., and they will be issued on the faith and security of the
proceeds of the duty of one eighth of a cent on every pound of cotton
exported. All vessels loading with cotton will be obliged to enter into
bonds or give security that they will not carry their cargoes to
Northern ports, or let it reach Northern markets to their knowledge. The
government will sell the cotton for cash to foreign buyers, and will
thus raise funds amply sufficient, they contend, for all purposes. I
make these bare statements, and I leave to political economists the
discussion of the question which may and will arise out of the acts of
the Confederate States. The Southerners argue that by breaking from
their unnatural alliance with the North they will save upward of
$47,000,000, or nearly £10,000,000 sterling annually. The estimated
value of the annual cotton crop is $200,000,000. On this the North
formerly made at least $10,000,000, by advances, interest and exchanges,
which in all came to fully five per cent. on the whole of the crop.
Again, the tariff to raise revenue sufficient for the maintenance of the
government of the Southern Confederacy is far less than that which is
required by the government of the United States. The Confederate States
propose to have a tariff which will be about 12½ per cent. on imports,
which will yield $25,000,000. The Northern tariff is 30 per cent., and
as the South took from the North $70,000,000 worth of manufactured goods
and produce, they contribute, they assert, to the maintenance of the
North to the extent of the difference between the tax sufficient for the
support of their government and that which is required for the support
of the Federal government. Now they will save the difference between 30
per cent. and 12½ per cent. (17½ per ct.), which amounts to $37,000,000,
which, added to the saving on commissions, exchanges, advances, &c.,
makes up the good round sum which I have put down higher up. The
Southerners are firmly convinced that they have “kept the North going”
by the prices they have paid for the protected articles of their
manufacture, and they hold out to Sheffield, to Manchester, to Leeds, to
Wolverhampton, to Dudley, to Paris, to Lyons, to Bordeaux, to all the
centres of English manufacturing life, as of French taste and luxury,
the tempting baits of new and eager and hungry markets. If their facts
and statistics are accurate, there can be no doubt of the justice of
their deductions on many points; but they can scarcely be correct in
assuming that they will bring the United States to destruction by
cutting off from Lowell the 600,000 bales of cotton which she usually
consumes. One great fact, however, is unquestionable--the government has
in its hands the souls, the wealth, and the hearts of the people. They
will give anything--money, labor, life itself--to carry out their
theories. “Sir,” said an ex-governor of this state to me to-day, “sooner
than submit to the North, we will all become subject to Great Britain
again.” The same gentleman is one of many who have given to the
government a large portion of their cotton crop every year as a
free-will offering. In this instance his gift is one of 500 bales of
cotton, or £5,000 per annum, and the papers teem with accounts of
similar “patriotism” and devotion. The ladies are all making sand-bags,
cartridges, and uniforms, and, if possible, they are more fierce than
the men. The time for mediation is past, if it ever were at hand or
present at all; and it is scarcely possible now to prevent the processes
of phlebotomization which are supposed to secure peace and repose.
There was no intelligence of much interest on Sunday, but there is a
general belief that Arkansas and Missouri will send in their adhesion to
the Confederacy this week, and the Commissioners from Virginia are
hourly expected. The attitude of that state, however, gives rise to
apprehensions lest there may be a division of her strength; and any
aggression on her territories by the Federal government, such as that
contemplated in taking possession of Alexandria, would be hailed by the
Montgomery government with sincere joy, as it would, they think, move
the state to more rapid action and decision.
Montgomery is on an undulating plain, and covers ground large enough for
a city of 200,000 inhabitants, but its population is only 12,000.
Indeed, the politicians here appear to dislike large cities, but the
city designers certainly prepare to take them if they come. There is a
large negro population, and a considerable number of a color which
forces me to doubt the evidence of my senses rather than the statements
made to me by some of my friends, that the planters affect the character
of parent in their moral relations merely with the negro race. A waiter
at the hotel--a tall, handsome young fellow, with the least tinge of
color in his cheek, not as dark as the majority of Spaniards or
Italians--astonished me in my ignorance to-day when, in reply to a
question asked by one of our party, in consequence of a discussion on
the point, he informed me he “was a slave.” The man, as he said so,
looked confused; his manner altered. He had been talking familiarly to
us, but the moment he replied, “I am a slave, sir,” his loquacity
disappeared, and he walked hurriedly and in silence out of the room. The
River Alabama, on which the city rests, is a wide, deep stream, now a
quarter of a mile in breadth, with a current of four miles an hour. It
is navigable to Mobile, upward of 400 miles, and steamers ascend its
waters for many miles beyond this into the interior. The country around
is well wooded, and is richly cultivated in broad fields of cotton and
Indian corn, but the neighborhood is not healthy, and deadly fevers are
said to prevail at certain seasons of the year. There is not much
animation in the streets, except when “there is a difficulty among the
citizens,” or in the eternal noise of the hotel steps and bars. I was
told this morning by the hotel keeper that I was probably the only
person in the house, or about it, who had not loaded revolvers in his
pockets, and one is aware occasionally of an unnatural rigidity scarcely
attributable to the osseous structure in the persons of those who pass
one in the crowded passages.
_Monday, May_ 6.--To-day I visited the capitol, where the Provisional
Congress is sitting. On leaving the hotel, which is like a small
Willard’s, so far as the crowd in the hall is concerned, my attention
was attracted to a group of people to whom a man was holding forth in
energetic sentences. The day was hot, but I pushed near to the spot, for
I like to hear a stump-speech, or to pick up a stray morsel of divinity
in the _via sacra_ of strange cities, and it appeared as though the
speaker was delivering an oration or a sermon. The crowd was small.
Three or four idle men in rough, homespun, makeshift uniforms, leaned
against the iron rails enclosing a small pond of foul, green-looking
water, surrounded by brick-work, which decorates the space in front of
the Exchange hotel. The speaker stood on an empty deal packing-case. A
man in a cart was listening with a lacklustre eye to the address. Some
three or four others, in a sort of vehicle which might either be a
hearse or a piano van, had also drawn up for the benefit of the address.
Five or six other men, in long black coats and high hats, some whittling
sticks, and chewing tobacco, and discharging streams of discolored
saliva, completed the group. “N-i-n-e h’hun’ nerd and fifty dollars?
Only nine h-hun nerd and fifty dollars offered for him!” exclaimed the
man, in the tone of injured dignity, remonstrance and surprise, which
can be insinuated by all true auctioneers into the dryest numerical
statements. “Will _no one_ make any advance on nine hundred and fifty
dollars?” A man near me opened his mouth, spat, and said, “twenty-five.”
“Only nine hundred and seventy-five dollars offered for him. Why, at’s
radaklous--only nine hundred and seventy-five dollars! Will no one,” &c.
Beside the orator auctioneer stood a stout young man of five-and-twenty
years of age, with a bundle in his hand. He was a muscular fellow,
broad-shouldered, narrow flanked, but rather small in stature; he had on
a broad, greasy, old wide-awake, a blue jacket, a coarse cotton shirt,
loose and rather ragged trowsers, and broken shoes. The expression of
his face was heavy and sad, but it was by no means disagreeable, in
spite of his thick lips, broad nostrils, and high cheek-bones. On his
head was wool instead of hair. I am neither sentimentalist nor black
republican, nor negro-worshipper, but I confess the sight caused a
strange thrill through my heart. I tried in vain to make myself familiar
with the fact that I could, for the sum of $975, become as absolutely
the owner of that mass of blood, bones, sinew, flesh, and brains, as of
the horse which stood by my side. There was no sophistry which could
persuade me the man was not a man--he was, indeed, by no means my
brother, but assuredly he was a fellow-creature. I have seen slave
markets in the East, but somehow or other the Orientalism of the scene
cast a coloring over the nature of the sales there which deprived them
of the disagreeable harshness and matter-of-fact character of the
transaction before me. For Turk, or Smyrniote, or Egyptian to buy and
sell slaves seemed rather suited to the eternal fitness of things than
otherwise. The turbaned, shawled, loose-trowsered, pipe-smoking
merchants speaking an unknown tongue looked as if they were engaged in a
legitimate business. One knew that their slaves would not be condemned
to any very hard labor, and that they would be in some sort the inmates
of the family, and members of it. Here it grated on my ear to listen to
the familiar tones of the English tongue as the medium by which the
transfer was effected, and it was painful to see decent-looking men in
European garb engaged in the work before me. Perchance these impressions
may wear off, for I meet many English people who are the most strenuous
advocates of the slave system, although it is true that their
perceptions may be quickened to recognize its beauties by their
participation in the profits. The negro was sold to one of the
bystanders, and walked off with his bundle, God knows where. “Niggers is
cheap,” was the only remark of the bystanders. I continued my walk up a
long, wide, straight street, or more properly, an unpaved sandy road,
lined with wooden houses on each side, and with trees by the side of the
footpath. The lower of the two stories is generally used as a shop,
mostly of the miscellaneous store kind, in which all sorts of articles
are to be had if there is any money to pay for them; and, in the present
case, if any faith is to be attached to the conspicuous notices in the
windows, credit is of no credit, and the only thing that can be accepted
in exchange for the goods is “cash.” At the end of this long street, on
a moderate eminence, stands a whitewashed or painted edifice, with a
gaunt, lean portico, supported on lofty lanky pillars, and surmounted by
a subdued and dejected-looking little cupola. Passing an unkempt lawn,
through a very shabby little gateway in a brick frame, and we ascend a
flight of steps into a hall, from which a double staircase conducts us
to the vestibule of the chamber. Any thing much more offensive to the
eye cannot well be imagined than the floor and stairs. They are stained
deeply by tobacco juice, which has left its marks on the white stone
steps and on the base of the pillars outside. In the hall which we have
entered there are two tables, covered with hams, oranges, bread and
fruits, for the refreshment of members and visitors, over which two
sable goddesses, in portentous crinoline, preside. The door of the
chamber is open, and we are introduced into a lofty, well-lighted and
commodious apartment, in which the Congress of the Confederate States
holds its deliberations. A gallery runs half round the room, and is half
filled with visitors--country cousins, and farmers of cotton and maize,
and, haply, seekers of places great or small. A light and low
semicircular screen separates the body of the house, where the members
sit, from the space under the gallery, which is appropriated to ladies
and visitors. The clerk sits at a desk above this table, and on a
platform behind him are the desk and chair of the presiding officer or
Speaker of the Congress. Over his head hangs the unfailing portrait of
Washington, and a small engraving, in a black frame, of a gentleman
unknown to me. Seated in the midst of them, at a senator’s desk, I was
permitted to “assist,” in the French sense, at the deliberations of the
Congress. Mr. Howell Cobb took the chair, and a white-headed clergyman
was called upon to say prayers, which he did, upstanding, with
outstretched hands and closed eyes, by the side of the speaker. The
prayer was long and sulphureous. One more pregnant with gunpowder I
never heard, nor could aught like it have been heard since.
“Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,
Was beat with fist instead of stick.”
The reverend gentleman prayed that the Almighty might be pleased to
inflict on the arms of the United States such a defeat that it might be
the example of signal punishment forever--that this president might be
blessed, and the other president might be the other thing--that the
gallant, devoted young soldiers who were fighting for their country
might not suffer from exposure to the weather or from the bullets of
their enemies; and that the base mercenaries who were fighting on the
other side might come to sure and swift destruction, and so on.
Are right and wrong mere geographical expressions? The prayer was over
at last, and the house proceeded to business. Although each state has
several delegates in Congress, it is only entitled to one vote on a
strict division. In this way some curious decisions may be arrived at,
as the smallest state is equal to the largest, and a majority of the
Florida representatives may neutralize a vote of all the Georgia
representatives. For example, Georgia has ten delegates; Florida has
only three. The vote of Florida, however, is determined by the action of
any two of its three representatives, and these two may, on a division,
throw the one state vote into the scale against that of Georgia, for
which ten members are agreed. The Congress transacts all its business in
secret session, and finds it a very agreeable and commendable way of
doing it. Thus, to-day, for example, after the presentation of a few
unimportant motions and papers, the speaker rapped his desk, and
announced that the house would go into secret session, and that all who
were not members should leave.
As I was returning to the hotel there was another small crowd at the
fountain. Another auctioneer, a fat, flabby, perspiring, puffy man, was
trying to sell a negro girl, who stood on the deal box beside him. She
was dressed pretty much like a London servant-girl of the lower order
out of place, except that her shoes were mere shreds of leather patches,
and her bonnet would have scarce passed muster in the New Cut. She, too,
had a little bundle in her hand, and looked out at the buyers from a
pair of large sad eyes. “Niggers were cheap;” still here was this young
woman going for an upset price of $610, but no one would bid, and the
auctioneer, after vain attempts to raise the price and excite
competition, said, “Not sold to-day, Sally; you may get down.”
_Tuesday, May_ 7.--The newspapers contain the text of the declaration of
a state of war on the part of President Davis, and of the issue of
letters of marque and reprisal, &c. But it may be asked, who will take
these letters of marque? Where is the government of Montgomery to find
ships? The answer is to be found in the fact that already numerous
applications have been received from the shipowners of New England, from
the whalers of New Bedford, and from others in the Northern States, for
these very letters of marque, accompanied by the highest securities and
guaranties! This statement I make on the very highest authority. I leave
it to you to deal with the facts.