present myself to the members of the cabinet, and to be introduced to
the President of the Confederate States of America. There is no sentry
at the doors, and access is free to all, but there are notices on the
doors warning visitors that they can only be received during certain
hours. The President was engaged with some gentlemen when I was
presented to him, but he received me with much kindliness of manner,
and, when they had left, entered into conversation with me for some time
on general matters. Mr. Davis is a man of slight, sinewy figure, rather
over the middle height, and of erect, soldierlike bearing. He is about
fifty-five years of age; his features are regular and well-defined, but
the face is thin and marked on cheek and brow with many wrinkles, and is
rather careworn and haggard. One eye is apparently blind, the other is
dark, piercing, and intelligent. He was dressed very plainly, in a
light-gray summer suit. In the course of conversation, he gave an order
for the Secretary of War to furnish me with a letter as a kind of
passport, in case of my falling in with the soldiers of any military
posts who might be indisposed to let me pass freely, merely observing
that I had been enough within the lines of camps to know what was my
duty on such occasions. I subsequently was presented to Mr. Walker, the
Secretary of War, who promised to furnish me with the needful documents
before I left Montgomery. In his room were General Beauregard and
several officers, engaged over plans and maps, apparently in a little
council of war, which was, perhaps, not without reference to the
intelligence that the United States troops were marching on Norfolk
Navy-Yard, and had actually occupied Alexandria. On leaving the
Secretary, I proceeded to the room of the Attorney-General, Mr.
Benjamin, a very intelligent and able man, whom I found busied in
preparations connected with the issue of letters of marque. Every thing
in the offices looked like earnest work and business.
On my way back from the State Department, I saw a very fine company of
infantry and three field-pieces, with about one hundred and twenty
artillerymen, on their march to the railway station for Virginia. The
men were all well equipped, but there were no ammunition wagons for the
guns, and the transport consisted solely of a few country carts, drawn
by poor horses, out of condition. There is no lack of muscle and will
among the men. The troops which I see here are quite fit to march and
fight as far as their _personnel_ is concerned, and there is no people
in the world so crazy with military madness. The very children in the
streets ape the air of soldiers, carry little flags, and wear cockades
as they strut in the highways, and mothers and fathers feed the fever by
dressing them up as Zouaves or Chasseurs.
Mrs. Davis had a small levee to-day in right of her position as wife of
the President. Several ladies there probably looked forward to the time
when their states might secede from the new Confederation, and afford
them the pleasure of holding a reception. Why not Presidents of the
State of Georgia, or Alabama? Why not King of South Carolina, or Emperor
of Florida? Soldiers of fortune, make your game! Gentlemen politicians,
the ball is rolling. There is, to be sure, a storm gathering at the
North, but it cannot hurt you, and already there are _condottieri_ from
all parts of the world flocking to your aid, who will eat your Southern
beeves the last of all.
One word more as to a fleet. The English owners of several large
steamers are already in correspondence with government here for the
purchase of their vessels. The intelligence which had reached the
government that their commissioners have gone on to Paris is regarded as
unfavorable to their claims, and as a proof that as yet England is not
disposed to recognize them. It is amusing to hear the tone used on both
sides toward Great Britain. Both are most anxious for her countenance
and support, although the North blusters rather more about its
independence than the South, which professes a warm regard for the
mother country. “But,” say the North, “if Great Britain recognizes the
South, we shall certainly look on it as a declaration of war.” “And,”
say the South, “if Great Britain does not recognize our privateers’
flag, we shall regard it as proof of hostility and of alliance with the
enemy.” The government at Washington seeks to obtain promises from Lord
Lyons that our government will not recognize the Southern Confederacy,
but at the same time refuses any guaranties in reference to the rights
of neutrals. The blockade of the Southern ports would not occasion us
any great inconvenience at present, because the cotton-loading season is
over; but if it be enforced in October, there is a prospect of very
serious and embarrassing questions arising in reference to the rights of
neutrals, treaty obligations with the United States government, the
trade and commerce of England, and the law of blockade in reference to
the distinctions to be drawn between measures of war and means of
annoyance.
As I write, the guns in front of the State Department are firing a
salute, and each report marks a state of the Confederacy. They are now
ten, as Arkansas and Tennessee are now out of the Union.
MONTGOMERY, Monday, _May_ 6, 1861.
Although I have written two letters since my arrival at Charleston, I
have not been able to give an account of many things which have come
under my notice, and which appeared to be noteworthy; and now that I am
fairly on my travels once more, it seems only too probable that I shall
be obliged to pass them over altogether. The rolling fire of the
revolution is fast sweeping over the prairie, and one must fly before it
or burn. I am obliged to see all that can be seen of the South at once,
and then, armed with such safeguards as I can procure, to make an effort
to recover my communications. Bridges broken, rails torn up, telegraphs
pulled down--I am quite in the air, and air charged with powder and
fire. One of the most extraordinary books in the world could be made out
of the cuttings and parings of the newspapers which have been published
within the last few days. The judgments, statements, asseverations of
the press, everywhere necessarily hasty, ill-sifted and off-hand, do not
aspire to even an ephemeral existence here. They are of use if they
serve the purpose of the moment, and of the little boys who commence
their childhood in deceit, and continue to adolescence in iniquity, by
giving vocal utterance to the “sensation” headings of the journals they
retail so sharply and so curtly. Talk of the superstition of the middle
ages; or of the credulity of the more advanced periods of rural life;
laugh at the Holy Coat of Treves, or groan over the Lady of Salette;
deplore the faith in winking pictures, or in a _communiqué_ of the
_Moniteur_; moralize on the superstition which discovers more in the
liquefaction of the ichor of St. Gennaro than a chemical trick, but if
you desire to understand how far faith can see and trust among the
people who consider themselves the most civilized and intelligent in the
world, you will study the American journals, and read the telegrams
which appear in them. One day the Seventh New York regiment is destroyed
for the edification of the South, and is cut up into such small pieces
that none of it is ever seen afterward. The next day it marches into
Washington or Annapolis all the better for the process. Another, in
order to encourage the North, it is said that hecatombs of dead were
carried out of Fort Moultrie, packed up, for easy travelling, in boxes.
Again, to irritate both, it is credibly stated that Lord Lyons is going
to interfere, or that an Anglo-French fleet is coming to watch the
ports, and so on, through a wild play of fancy, inexact in line as
though the batteries were charged with the _aurora borealis_ or summer
lightning, instead of the respectable, steady, manageable offspring of
acid and metal, to whose staid deportment we are accustomed at a
moderate price for entrance. As is usual in such periods, the contending
parties accuse each other of inveterate falsehood, perfidy, oppression
and local tyranny and persecution. “Madness rules the hour.” The
exultation of the South when the flag of the United States was lowered
at Sumter has been answered by a shout of indignation and battle-cry
from the North, and the excitement at Charleston has produced a reflex
action there, the energy of which cannot be described. The apathy which
struck me at New York, when I landed, has been succeeded by violent
popular enthusiasm, before which all Laodicean policy has melted into
fervent activity. The truth must be that the New York population did not
believe in the strength and unanimity of the South, and that they
thought the Union safe, or did not care about it. I can put down the
names of gentlemen who expressed the strongest opinions that the
government of the United States had no power to coerce the South, and
who have since put down their names and their money to support the
government in the attempt to recover the forts which have been taken. As
to the change of opinion in other quarters, which has been effected so
rapidly and miraculously that it has the ludicrous air of a vulgar
juggler’s trick at a fair, the public regard it so little that it would
be unbecoming to waste a word about it.
I expressed a belief in a letter, written a few days after my arrival,
that the South would never go back into the Union. The North thinks that
it can coerce the South, and I am not prepared to say they are right or
wrong; but I am convinced that the South can only be forced back by such
a conquest as that which laid Poland prostrate at the feet of Russia. It
may be that such a conquest can be made by the North, but success must
destroy the Union as it has been constituted in times past. A strong
government must be the logical consequence of victory, and the triumph
of the South will be attended by a similar result, for which, indeed,
many Southerners are very well disposed. To the people of the
Confederate States there would be no terror in such an issue, for it
appears to me they are pining for a strong government exceedingly. The
North must accept it whether they like it or not. Neither party, if such
a term can be applied to the rest of the United States, and to those
states which disclaim the authority of the Federal government, was
prepared for the aggressive or resisting power of the other. Already the
Confederate States perceive that they cannot carry all before them with
a rush, while the North have learnt that they must put forth all their
strength to make good a tithe of their lately uttered threats. But the
Montgomery government are now, they say, anxious to gain time, and to
prepare a regular army. The North, distracted by apprehensions of vast
disturbance in its complicated relations, is clamoring for instant
action and speedy consummation. The counsels of moderate men, as they
were called, have been utterly overruled.
I am now, however, dealing with South Carolina, which has been the _fons
et origo_ of the secession doctrines and their development into the full
life of the Confederate States. The whole foundation on which South
Carolina rests is cotton and a certain amount of rice; or rather she
bases her whole fabric on the necessity which exists in Europe for those
products of her soil, believing and asserting, as she does, that England
and France cannot and will not do without them. Cotton, without a
market, is so much flocculent matter encumbering the ground. Rice,
without demand for it, is unsalable grain in store and on the field.
Cotton at ten cents a pound is boundless prosperity, empire and
superiority, and rice or grain need no longer be regarded. In the matter
of slave labor, South Carolina argues pretty much in this way: England
and France require our products. In order to meet their wants, we must
cultivate our soil. There is only one way of doing so. The white man
cannot live on our land at certain seasons of the year; he cannot work
in the manner required by the crops. He must, therefore, employ a race
suited to the labor, and that is a race which will only work when it is
obliged to do so. That race was imported from Africa, under the sanction
of the law, by our ancestors, when we were a British colony, and it has
been fostered by us, so that its increase here has been as great as that
of the most flourishing people in the world. In other places, where its
labor was not productive or imperatively essential, that race has been
made free, sometimes with disastrous consequences to itself and to
industry. But we will not make it free. We cannot do so. We hold that
slavery is essential to our existence as producers of what Europe
requires, nay more, we maintain it is in the abstract right in
principle; and some of us go so far as to maintain that the only proper
form of society, according to the law of God and the exigencies of man,
is that which has slavery as its basis. As to the slave, he is happier
far in his state of servitude, more civilized and religious, than he is
or could be if free or in his native Africa.
I have already endeavored to describe the aspect of Charleston, and I
will now make a few observations on matters which struck me during my
visit to one or two of the planters of the many who were kind enough to
give me invitations to their residences in the state. Early one morning
I started in a steamer to visit a plantation in the Pedee and Maccamaw
district, in the island coast of the state, north of Charleston. Passing
Sumter, on which men are busily engaged, under the Confederate flag, in
making good damages and mounting guns, we put out a few miles to sea,
and with the low sandy shore, dotted with soldiers, and guard-houses,
and clumps of trees, on our left, in a few hours pass the Santee River,
and enter an estuary into which the Pedee and Maccamaw Rivers run a few
miles further to the north-west. The steamer ran alongside a jetty and
pier, which was crowded by men in uniform waiting for the news and for
supplies of creature comforts. Ladies were cantering along the fine hard
beach, and some gigs and tax-carts fully laden rolled along very much as
one sees them at Scarborough. The soldiers on the pier were all
gentlemen of the county. Some, dressed in gray tunics and yellow
facings, in high felt hats and plumes and jack-boots, would have done no
discredit in face, figure and bearing to the gayest cavaliers who ever
thundered at the heels of Prince Rupert. Their horses, full of
Carolinian fire and mettle, stood picketed under the trees along the
margin of the beach. Among these men, who had been doing the duty of
common troopers in patrolling the sea-coast, were gentlemen possessed of
large estates and princely fortunes; and one who stood among them was
pointed out to me as captain of a company, for whose uses his liberality
provided unbounded daily libations of champagne, and the best luxuries
which French ingenuity can safely imprison in those well-known caskets
with which Crimean warriors were not unacquainted at the close of the
campaign. They were eager for news, which was shouted out to them by
their friends in the steamer, and one was struck by the intimate
personal cordiality and familiar acquaintance which existed among them.
Three heavy guns mounted in an earthwork defended by palisades, covered
the beach and the landing-place, and the garrison was to have been
reinforced by a regiment from Charleston, which, however, had not got in
readiness to go up on our steamer, owing to some little difficulties
between the volunteers, their officers, and the quartermaster-general’s
department.
As the Nina approaches the tumble-down wharf, two or three citizens
advance from the shade of shaky sheds to welcome us, and a few country
vehicles and light phaetons are drawn forth from the same shelter to
receive the passengers, while the negro boys and girls who have been
playing upon the bales of cotton and barrels of rice, which represent
the trade of the place on the wharf, take up commanding positions for
the better observation of our proceedings. There is an air of quaint
simplicity and old-fashioned quiet about Georgetown, refreshingly
antagonistic to the bustle and tumult of most American cities. While
waiting for our vehicle we enjoyed the hospitality of one of our
friends, who took us into an old-fashioned angular wooden mansion, more
than a century old, still sound in every timber, and testifying, in its
quaint wainscotings, and the rigid framework of door and window, to the
durability of its cypress timbers and the preservative character of the
atmosphere. In early days it was the crack house of the old settlement,
and the residence of the founder of the female branch of the family of
our host, who now only makes it his halting place when passing to and
fro between Charleston and his plantation, leaving it the year round in
charge of an old servant and her grandchild. Rose-trees and flowering
shrubs clustered before the porch and filled the garden in front, and
the establishment gave one a good idea of a London merchant’s retreat
about Chelsea a hundred and fifty years ago.
At length we were ready for our journey, and, mounted in two light
covered vehicles, proceeded along the sandy track which, after a while,
led us to a cut deep in the bosom of the woods, where silence was only
broken by the cry of a woodpecker, the boom of a crane, or the sharp
challenge of the jay. For miles we passed through the shades of this
forest, meeting only two or three vehicles containing female planterdom
on little excursions of pleasure or business, who smiled their welcome
as we passed. Arrived at a deep chocolate-colored stream, called Black
River, full of fish and alligators, we find a flat large enough to
accommodate vehicles and passengers, and propelled by two negroes
pulling upon a stretched rope, in the manner usual in the ferry-boats of
Switzerland, ready for our reception. Another drive through a more open
country, and we reach a fine grove of pine and live-oak, which melts
away into a shrubbery guarded by a rustic gateway, passing through
which, we are brought by a sudden turn into the planter’s house, buried
in trees, which dispute with the green sward and with wild flower-beds
every yard of the space which lies between the hall-door and the waters
of the Pedee; and in a few minutes, as we gaze over the expanse of
fields just tinged with green by the first life of the early rice crops,
marked by the deep water-cuts, and bounded by a fringe of unceasing
forest, the chimneys of the steamer we had left at Georgetown gliding as
it were through the fields, indicate the existence of another navigable
river still beyond. Leaving with regret the verandah which commanded so
enchanting a foreground, we enter the house, and are reminded by its
low-browed, old-fashioned rooms, of the country houses yet to be found
in parts of Ireland or on the Scottish border, with additions, made by
the luxury and love of foreign travel, of more than one generation of
educated Southern planters. Paintings from Italy illustrate the walls,
in juxtaposition with interesting portraits of early colonial governors
and their lovely womankind, limned with no uncertain hand, and full of
the vigor of touch and naturalness of drapery, of which Copley has left
us too few exemplars; and one portrait of Benjamin West claims for
itself such honor as his own pencil can give. An excellent
library--filled with collections of French and English classics, and
with those ponderous editions of Voltaire, Rousseau, the _Mémoires pour
Servir_, books of travel and history such as delighted our forefathers
in the last century, and many works of American and general
history--affords ample occupation for a rainy day. But alas! these, and
all things good which else the house affords, can be enjoyed but for a
brief season. Just as nature has expanded every charm, developed every
grace, and clothed the scene with all the beauty of opened flower, of
ripening grain, and of mature vegetation, on the wings of the wind the
poisoned breath comes, borne to the home of the white man, and he must
fly before it or perish. The books lie unopened on their shelves, the
flower blooms and dies unheeded, and, pity ’tis true, the old Madeira
garnered ’neath the roof, settles down for a fresh lease of life, and
sets about its solitary task of acquiring a finer flavor for the
infrequent lips of its banished master and his welcome visitors. This is
the story, at least, that we hear on all sides, and such is the tale
repeated to us beneath the porch, when the moon enhances while softening
the loveliness of the scene, and the rich melody of mocking-birds fills
the grove.
Within these hospitable doors Horace might banquet better than he did
with Nasidienus, and drink such wine as can be only found among the
descendants of the ancestry who, improvident enough in all else, learnt
the wisdom of bottling up choice old Bual and Sercial ere the demon of
oidium had dried up their generous sources forever. To these must be
added excellent bread, ingenious varieties of the _galette_, compounded
now of rice and now of Indian meal, delicious butter and fruits, all
good of their kind. And is there any thing bitter rising up from the
bottom of the social bowl? My black friends who attend on me are grave
as Mussulman Khitmutgars. They are attired in liveries and wear white
cravats and Berlin gloves. At night when we retire, off they go to their
outer darkness in the small settlement of negro-hood, which is separated
from our house by a wooden palisade. Their fidelity is undoubted. The
house breathes an air of security. The doors and windows are unlocked.
There is but one gun, a fowling-piece, on the premises. No planter
hereabouts has any dread of his slaves. But I have seen, within the
short time I have been in this part of the world, several dreadful
accounts of murder and violence, in which masters suffered at the hands
of their slaves. There is something suspicious in the constant
never-ending statement that “we are not afraid of our slaves.” The
curfew and the night patrol in the streets, the prisons and
watch-houses, and the police regulations, prove that strict supervision,
at all events, is needed and necessary. My host is a kind man and a good
master. If slaves are happy anywhere, they should be so with him.
These people are fed by their master. They have upwards of half a pound
per diem of fat pork, and corn in abundance. They rear poultry and sell
their chickens and eggs to the house. They are clothed by their master.
He keeps them in sickness as in health. Now and then there are gifts of
tobacco and molasses for the deserving. There was little labor going on
in the fields, for the rice has been just exerting itself to get its
head above water. These fields yield plentifully; for the waters of the
river are fat, and they are let in whenever the planter requires it, by
means of floodgates and small canals, through which the flats can carry
their loads of grain to the river for loading the steamers.
* * * * *
MOBILE, ALA., _Saturday, May_ 11, 1861.
The wayfarer who confides in the maps of a strange country, or who
should rely upon even the guide-books of the United States, which still
lack a Murray or a Bradshaw, may be at times embarrassed by insuperable
hills and innavigable rivers. When, however, I saw the three towering
stories of the high-pressure steamer Southern Republic, on board of
which we tumbled down the steep bank of the Alabama river at Montgomery,
any such misgivings vanished from my mind. So colossal an ark could have
ascended no mythical stream, and the existence and capabilities of the
Alabama were demonstrated by its presence.