enclosure of a high wall there stood a well-shaded mansion, amid trees
of live-oak and sycamore, with sentries at the gate and horses held by
orderlies under the portico. General Bragg received me at the top of the
steps which lead to the verandah, and, after a few earnest and
complimentary words, conducted me to his office, where he spoke of the
contest in which he was to play so important a part in terms of
unaffected earnestness. Why else had he left his estates? After the
Mexican war he had retired from the United States artillery; but when
his state was menaced he was obliged to defeat her. He was satisfied the
North meant nothing but subjugation. All he wanted was peace. Slavery
was an institution for which he was not responsible; but his property
was guaranteed to him by law, and it consisted of slaves. Why did the
enemy take off slaves from Tortugas to work for them at Pickens? Because
whites could not do their work. It was quite impossible to deny his
earnestness, sincerity, and zeal as he spoke, and one could only wonder
at the difference made by the “standpoint” from which the question is
reviewed. General Bragg finally, before we supped, took down his plans
and showed me the position of every gun in his works and all his
batteries. He showed the greatest clearness of unreserved openness in
his communications, and was anxious to point out that he had much
greater difficulties to contend with than General Beauregard had at
Charleston. The inside of Pickens is well-known to him, as he was
stationed there the very first tour of duty which he had after he left
West Point. It was late at night when I returned on one of the general’s
horses toward the navy-yard. The orderly who accompanied me was, he
said, a Mississippi planter, but he had left his wife and family to the
care of the negroes, had turned up all his cotton land and replanted it
with corn, and had come off to the wars. Once only were we challenged,
and I was only required to show my pass as I was getting on board the
schooner. Before I left General Bragg he was good enough to say he would
send down one of his aides-de-camp and horses early in the morning, to
give me a look at the works.
* * * * *
MOBILE, _May_ 16, 1861.
Our little schooner lay quietly at the wharf all night, but no one was
allowed to come on board without a pass, for these wild-looking sentries
are excellent men of business, and look after the practical part of
soldiering with all the keenness which their direct personal interest
imparts to their notions of duty. The enemy is to them the incarnation
of all evil, and they hunt his spies and servants very much as a terrier
chases a rat--with intense traditional and race animosity. The silence
of the night is not broken by many challenges or the “All’s well!” of
patrols, but there is warlike significance enough in the sound of the
shot which working parties are rolling over the wooden jetty with a
dull, ponderous thumping on board the flats that are to carry them off
for the food and _nourriture_ of the batteries. With the early morning,
however, came the usual signs of martial existence. I started up from
among my cockroaches, knocked my head against the fine pine beams over
my hammock, and then, considerably obfuscated by the result, proceeded
to investigate all the grounds that presented themselves to me as worthy
of consideration in reference to the theory which had suddenly forced
itself upon my mind that I was in the Crimea. For close at hand, through
the sleepy organ of the only sense which was fully awake, came the well
known _réveillé_ of the Zouaves, and then French clangors, rolls,
ruffles and calls ran along the line, and the volunteers got up, or did
not, as seemed best to them. An ebony and aged Ganymede, however,
appeared with coffee, and told me “the cap’n wants ask weder you take
some bitters, sar;” and, indeed, “the captain” did compound some amazing
preparation for the judges and colonels present on deck and below that
met the approval of them all, and was recommending it for its fortifying
qualities in making a redan and Malakoff of the stomach. Breakfast came
in due time--not much Persic apparatus to excite the hate of the
simpleminded, but a great deal of substantial matter, in the shape of
fried onions, ham, eggs, biscuit, with accompaniments of iced-water,
Bordeaux and coffee. Our guests were two--a broad farmer-like gentleman,
weighing some sixteen stone, dressed in a green frieze tunic, with gold
lace and red and scarlet worsted facings, and a felt wide-a-wake, who,
as he wiped his manly brow, informed me he was a “rifleman.” We have
some volunteers quite as corpulent, and not more patriotic, for our
farmer was a man of many bales, and in becoming an officer in his
company of braves, had given an unmistakable proof of his devotion to
his distant home and property. The other, a quiet, modest,
intelligent-looking young man, was an officer in a different battalion,
and talked with sense about a matter with which sense has seldom any
thing to do--I mean uniform. He remarked that in a serious action and a
close fighting, or in night work, it would be very difficult to prevent
serious mistakes, and even disasters, owing to the officers of the
Confederate States troop swearing the same distinguishing marks of rank
and similar uniforms, whenever they can get them, to those used in the
regular service of the United States, and that much inconvenience will
inevitably result from the great variety and wonderful diversity of the
dresses of the immense number of companies forming the different
regiments of volunteers. The only troops near us which were attired with
a military exactness, were the regiment of Zouaves, from New Orleans.
Most of these are Frenchmen or Creoles; some have belonged to the
battalions which the Crimea first made famous, and were present before
Sebastopol, and in Italy; the rest are Germans and Irish. Our friends
went off to see them drill, but, as a believer in the enchanting power
of distance, I preferred to look on at such of the manœuvres as could
be seen from the deck. These Zouaves look exceedingly like the real
article. They are, perhaps, a trifle leaner and taller, and are not so
well developed at the back of the head, the heels and the ankles as
their prototypes. They are dressed in the same way, except that I saw no
turban on the fez cap. The jacket, the cummerbund, the baggy red
breeches and the gaiters are all copies of the original. They are all
armed with rifle musket and sword-bayonet, and their pay is at the usual
rate of $11, or something like £2 6s. a month, with rations and
allowances. The officers do their best to be the true “chacal.” I was
more interested, I confess, in watching the motions of vast shoals of
mullet and other fish, which flew here and there, like flocks of plover,
before the red-fish and other enemies, and darted under our boat, than
in examining Zouave drill. Once, as a large fish came gamboling along
the surface close at hand, a great gleam of white shot up in the waves
beneath, and a boiling whirl, marked with a crimson pool, which
gradually melted off in the tide, showed where a monster shark had taken
down a part of his breakfast. “That’s a ground sheark,” quoth the
skipper; “there’s quite a many of them about here.” Porpoises passed by
in a great hurry for Pensacola, and now and then a turtle showed his
dear little head above the enviable fluid which he honored with his
presence. Far away in the long stretch of water toward Pensacola are six
British merchantmen in a state of blockade--that is, they have only
fifteen days to clear out, according to the reading of the law adopted
by the United States officers. The navy-yard looks clean and neat in the
early morning, and away on the other side of the channel Fort
Pickens--_teterrima causa_--raises its dark front from the white sand
and green sward of the glacis, on which a number of black objects
invite inspection through a telescope, and obligingly resolve themselves
into horses turned out to graze on the slope. Fort M’Rae, at the other
side of the channel, as if to irritate its neighbor, flings out a flag
to the breeze, which is the counterpart of the “stars and stripes” that
wave from the rival flagstaff, and is, at this distance, identical to
the eye, until the glass detects the solitary star in its folds instead
of the whole galaxy. On the dazzling snowy margin of sand that separates
the trees and brushwood from the sea close at hand, the outline of the
batteries which stud the shore for miles is visible. Let us go and make
a close inspection. Mr. Ellis, lieutenant in the Louisiana regiment, who
is aide-de-camp to Brigadier-General Bragg, has just arrived with a
message from his chief to escort me round all the works, and wherever
else I like to go, without any reservation whatever. He is a handsome,
well-built, slight young fellow, very composed and staid in manner, but
full of sentiment for the South. Returned from a tour in Europe, he is
all admiration for English scenery, life and habits. “After all, nature
has been more bountiful to you than to us.” He is dressed in a tight
undress cavalry-jacket and trousers of blue flannel, with plain
gold-lace pipings and buttons, but on his heels are heavy brass spurs,
worthy of the heaviest of field officers. Our horses are standing in the
shade of a large tree near the wharf, and mine is equipped with a saddle
of ponderous brass-work, on raised pummel, and cantle, and housings, and
emblazoned cloth, and mighty stirrups of brass, fit for the stoutest
marshal that ever led an army of France to victory; General Braxton
Bragg is longer in the leg than Marshal Pelissier, or Canrobert, or the
writer, and as we jogged along over the deep, hot sand, my kind
companion, in spite of my assurances that the leathers were quite
comfortable, made himself and me somewhat uneasy on the score of their
adjustment, and, as there was no implement at hand to make a hole, we
turned into the general’s courtyard to effect the necessary alterations.
The cry of “Orderly” brought a smart, soldierly-looking young man to the
front, who speedily took me three holes up, and as I was going away he
touched his cap and said: “I beg your pardon, sir, but I often saw you
in the Crimea.” His story as he told it was brief. He had been in the
Eleventh Hussars, and on the 25th of October he was following, as he
said, close after Lord Cardigan and Captain Nolan when his horse was
killed under him. As he tried to make his escape the Cossacks took him
prisoner, and for eleven months he was in captivity, but was exchanged
at Odessa. “Why did you leave the service?” “Well, sir, I was one of the
two sergeants that were permitted to leave in each regiment on the close
of the war, and I came away.” “But here you are soldiering again?” “Yes,
sir. I came over here to better myself, as I thought, and I had to
enter one of their cavalry regiments, but now I am an orderly.” He told
me further, that his name was Montague, and that he “thought his father
lived near Windsor, twenty-one miles from London;” and I was pleased to
find his superior officers spoke of him in very high terms, although I
could have wished those who spoke so were in our own service.
I do not think that any number of words can give a good idea of a long
line of detached batteries. I went through them all, and I certainly
found stronger reasons than ever for distrusting the extraordinary
statements which appear in the American journals in reference to
military matters, particularly on their own side of the question.
Instead of hundreds of guns, there are only ten. They are mostly of
small calibre, and the gun-carriages are old and unsound, or new and
rudely made. There are only five “heavy” guns in all the works; but the
mortar batteries, three in number, of which one is unfinished, will
prove very damaging, although they will only contain nine or ten
mortars. The batteries are all sand-bag and earthworks, with the
exception of Fort Barrancas. They are made after all sorts of ways, and
are of very different degrees of efficiency. In some the magazines will
come to speedy destruction; in others they are well made. Some are of
the finest white sand, and will blind the gunners, or be blown away with
shells; others are cramped, and hardly traversed; others, again, are
very spacious and well constructed. The embrasures are usually made of
sand-bags, covered with raw hides to save the cotton-bags from the
effect of the fire of their own guns. I was amused to observe that most
of these works had galleries in the rear, generally in connection with
the magazine passages, which the constructors called “rat-holes,” and
which are intended as shelter to the men at the guns in case of shells
falling inside the battery. They may prove to have a very different
result, and are certainly not so desirable in a military point of view
as good traverses. A rush for the “rat-hole” will not be very dignified
or improving to the _morale_ every time a bomb hurtles over them; and
assuredly the damage to the magazines will be enormous if the fire from
Pickens is accurate and well sustained. Several of the batteries were
not finished, and the men who ought to have been working were lying
under the shade of trees, sleeping or smoking--long-limbed, long-bearded
fellows in flannel shirts and slouched hats, uniformless in all, save
bright well-kept arms and resolute purpose. We went along slowly, from
one battery to the other. I visited nine altogether, not including Fort
Barrancas, and there are three others, among which is Fort M’Rae.
Perhaps there may be fifty guns of all sorts in position for about three
miles, along a line extending 135 degrees round Fort Pickens, the
average distance being about one and one-third miles. The mortar
batteries are well placed among brushwood, quite out of view of the
fort, at distances varying from 2,500 to 2,800 yards, and the mortars
are generally of calibres corresponding nearly with our ten-inch pieces.
Several of the gun batteries are put on the level of the beach; others
have more command, and one is particularly well placed, close to the
White Lighthouse, on a high plateau which dominates the sandy strip that
runs out to Fort M’Rae. Of the latter I have already spoken. Fort
Barrancas is an old fort--I believe of Spanish construction, with a very
meagre trace--a plain curtain-face toward the sea, protected by a dry
ditch and an outwork, in which, however, there are no guns. There is a
drawbridge in the rear of the work, which is a simple parallelogram
showing twelve guns mounted _en barbette_ on the sea-face. The walls are
of brick, and the guns are protected by thick merlons of sand-bags. The
sole advantage of the fort is in its position; it almost looks down into
the casemates of Pickens opposite at its weakest point, and it has a
fair command of the sea entrance, but the guns are weak, and there are
only three pieces mounted which can do much mischief. While I was
looking round, there was an entertaining dispute going on between two
men, whom I believe to have been officers, as to the work to be done,
and I heard the inferior intimate pretty broadly his conviction that his
chief did not know his own business in reference to some orders he was
conveying.
The amount of ammunition which I saw did not appear to me to be at all
sufficient for one day’s moderate firing, and many of the shot were
roughly cast and had deep flanges from the moulds in their sides, and
very destructive to the guns as well as to accuracy. In the rear of
these batteries, among the pine woods and in deep brush, are three
irregular camps, which, to the best of my belief, could not contain more
than 2,700 men. There are probably 3,000 in and about the batteries, the
navy-yard and the suburbs, and there are, also, I am informed, 1,500 at
Pensacola, but I doubt exceedingly that there are as many as 8,000 men,
all told, of effective strength under the command of General Bragg. It
would be a mistake to despise these irregulars. One of the Mississippi
regiments out in camp was evidently composed of men who liked
campaigning, and who looked as though they would like fighting. They had
no particular uniforms--the remark will often be made--but they had
pugnacious physiognomies and the physical means of carrying their
inclinations into effect, and every man of them was, I am informed,
familiar with the use of arms. Their tents are mostly small and bad, on
the ridge-pole pattern, with side flys to keep off the sun. In some
battalions they observe regularity of line, in others they follow
individual or company caprice. The men use green boughs and bowers, as
our poor fellows did in the old hot days in Bulgaria, and many of them
had benches and seats before their doors, and the luxury of boarded
floors to sleep upon. There is an embarrassing custom in America,
scarcely justifiable in any code of good manners, which, in the South at
least, is only too common, and which may be still more general in the
North; at all events, to a stranger it is productive of the annoyance
which is experienced by one who is obliged to inquire whether the
behavior of those among whom he is at the time, is intentional rudeness
or conventional want of breeding. For instance, my friend and myself, as
we are riding along, see a gentleman standing near his battery, or his
tent--“Good morrow, colonel,” or “general” (as the case may be), says my
friend--“Good morrow (imagining military rank according to the notion
possessed by speaker of the importance of the position of a general’s A.
D. C.), Ellis.” “Colonel, etc., allow me to introduce to you Mr. Jones,
of London.” The colonel advances with effusion, holds out his hand,
grasps Jones’s hand rigidly, and says, warmly, as if he had just gained
a particular object of his existence: “Mr. Jones, I’m very glad to make
your acquaintance, sir. Have you been pretty well since you have been in
our country, sir?” etc. But it is most likely that the colonel will just
walk away when he pleases, without saying a word to, or taking the least
notice of, the aforesaid Jones, as to whose acquaintance he had just
before expressed such friendly feelings, and in whose personal health he
had taken so deep an interest; and Jones, till he is accustomed to it,
feels affronted. The fact is, that the introduction means nothing; you
are merely told each other’s names, and if you like, you may improve
your acquaintance. The hand-shaking is a remnant of barbarous times,
when men with the same colored skin were glad to see each other.
The country through which we rode was most uninteresting, thick
brushwood and pine-trees springing out of deep sand, here and there a
nullah and some dirty stream--all flat as ditchwater. On our return we
halted at the general’s quarters. I had left a note for him, in which I
inquired whether he would have any objection to my proceeding to Fort
Pickens from his command, in case I obtained permission to do so, and
when I entered General Bragg’s room he was engaged in writing not merely
a very courteous and complimentary expression of his acquiescence in my
visit, but letters of introduction to personal friends in Louisiana, in
the hope of rendering my sojourn more agreeable. He expressed a doubt
whether my comrades would be permitted to enter the fort, and talked
very freely with me in reference to what I had seen at the batteries,
but I thought I perceived an indication of some change of purpose with
respect to the immediate urgency of the attack on Fort Pickens compared
with his expressions last night. At length I departed, with many thanks
to General Bragg for his kindness and confidence, and returned to a room
full of generals and colonels, who made a _levee_ of their visits.
On my return to the schooner, I observed that the small houses on the
side of the long sandy beach were filled with men, many of whom were in
groups round the happy possessors of a newspaper, and listened with the
utmost interest to the excited delivery of the oracular sentences. How
much of the agony and bitterness of this conflict--nay, how much of its
existence--may be due to these same newspapers, no man can say, but I
have very decided opinions, or rather a very strong belief, on the
subject. There were still more people around the various bar-rooms than
were attracted even by the journalists. Two of our companions were on
board when I got back to the quay. The Mobile gentlemen had gone off to
Pensacola, and had not returned to time, and under any circumstances it
was not probable that they would be permitted to land, as undoubtedly
they were no friends to the garrison, or to the cause of the United
States. Our skipper opened his eyes and shook his rough head a little
when he was ordered to get under way for Fort Pickens, and to anchor off
the jetty. Up went the flag of truce to the fore once more, but the
ever-watchful sentry, diverted for the time from his superintendence of
the men who were fishing at our pier, forbade our departure till the
corporal of the guard had given leave, and the corporal of the guard
would not let the fair Diana cast off her warp till he had consulted the
sergeant of the guard, and so there was some delay occasioned by the
necessity for holding an interview with that functionary, who finally
permitted the captain to proceed on his way, and with a fair light
breeze the schooner fell round into the tide-way and glided off toward
the fort. We drew up with it rapidly, and soon attracted the notice of
the look-out men and some officers who came down to the jetty.