all, but no one believes that the South will ever go back of its own
free will, and the only reason that can be given by those who hope
rather than think in that way is to be found in the faith that the North
will accept some mediation, and will let the South go in peace. But
could there--can there be peace? The frontier question--the adjustment
of various claims--the demands for indemnity, or for privileges or
exemptions, in the present state of feeling, can have but one result.
The task of mediation is sure to be as thankless as abortive. Assuredly
the proffered service of England would, on one side at least, be
received with something like insult. Nothing but adversity can teach
these people its own most useful lessons. Material prosperity has puffed
up the citizens to an unwholesome state. The toils and sacrifices of the
old world have been taken by them as their birthright, and they have
accepted the fruits of all that the science, genius, suffering, and
trials of mankind in time past have wrought out, perfected, and won as
their own peculiar inheritance, while they have ignorantly rejected the
advice and scorned the lessons with which these were accompanied.
_May_ 23.--The Congress at Montgomery, having sat with closed doors
almost since it met, has now adjourned till July the 20th, when it will
reassemble at Richmond, in Virginia, which is thus designated, for the
time, capital of the Confederate States of America. Richmond, the
principal city of the Old Dominion, is about one hundred miles in a
straight line south by west of Washington. The rival capitals will thus
be in very close proximity by rail and by steam, by land and by water.
The movement is significant. It will tend to hasten a collision between
the forces which are collected on the opposite sides of the Potomac.
Hitherto, Mr. Jefferson Davis has not evinced all the sagacity and
energy, in a military sense, which he is said to possess. It was bad
strategy to menace Washington before he could act. His secretary of war,
Mr. Walker, many weeks ago, in a public speech, announced the intention
of marching upon the capital. If it was meant to do so, the blow should
have been struck silently. If it was not intended to seize upon
Washington, the threat had a very disastrous effect on the South, as it
excited the North to immediate action, and caused General Scott to
concentrate his troops on points which present many advantages in the
face of any operations which may be considered necessary along the lines
either of defence or attack. The movement against the Norfolk navy-yard
strengthened Fortress Monroe, and the Potomac and Chesapeake were
secured to the United States. The fortified ports held by the Virginians
and the Confederate States troops, are not of much value as long as the
streams are commanded by the enemy’s steamers; and General Scott has
shown that he has not outlived either his reputation or his vigor by
the steps, at once wise and rapid, he has taken to curb the malcontents
in Maryland, and to open his communications through the city of
Baltimore. Although immense levies of men may be got together, on both
sides, for purposes of local defence or for state operations, it seems
to me that it will be very difficult to move these masses in regular
armies. The men are not disposed for regular, lengthened service, and
there is an utter want of field trains, equipment, and commissariat,
which cannot be made good in a day, a week, or a month.
The bill passed by the Montgomery Congress, entitled “An act to raise an
additional military force to serve during the war,” is, in fact, a
measure to put into the hands of the government the control of irregular
bodies of men, and to bind them to regular military service. With all
their zeal, the people of the South will not enlist. They detest the
recruiting sergeant, and Mr. Davis knows enough of war to feel
hesitation in trusting himself in the field to volunteers. The bill
authorizes Mr. Davis to accept volunteers who may offer their services,
without regard to the place of enlistment, “to serve during the war,
unless sooner discharged.” They may be accepted in companies, but Mr.
Davis is to organize them into squadrons, battalions, or regiments, and
the appointment of field and staff officers is reserved especially to
him. The company officers are to be elected by the men of the company,
but here again Mr. Davis reserves to himself the right of veto, and will
only commission those officers whose election he approves.
The absence of cavalry and the deficiency of artillery may prevent
either side obtaining any decisive results in one engagement; but, no
doubt, there will be great loss whenever these large masses of men are
fairly opposed to each other in the field. Of the character of the
Northern regiments I can say nothing more from actual observation; nor
have I yet seen, in any place, such a considerable number of the troops
of the Confederate States, moving together, as would justify me in
expressing any opinion with regard to their capacity for organized
movements, such as regular troops in Europe are expected to perform. An
intelligent and trustworthy observer, taking one of the New York state
militia regiments as a fair specimen of the battalions which will fight
for the United States, gives an account of them which leads me to the
conclusion that such regiments are much superior, when furnished by the
country districts, to those raised in the towns and cities. It appears,
in this case at least, that the members of the regular militia companies
in general send substitutes to the ranks. Ten of these companies form
the regiment, and, in nearly every instance, they have been doubled in
strength by volunteers. Their drill is exceedingly incomplete, and in
forming the companies there is a tendency for the different
nationalities to keep themselves together. In the regiment in question
the rank and file often consists of quarrymen, mechanics, and canal
boatmen, mountaineers from the Catskill, bark peelers, and timber
cutters--ungainly, square-built, powerful fellows, with a Dutch tenacity
of purpose crossed with an English indifference to danger. There is no
drunkenness and no desertion among them. The officers are almost as
ignorant of military training as their men. The colonel, for instance,
is the son of a rich man in his district, well educated, and a man of
travel. Another officer is a shipmaster. A third is an artist; others
are merchants and lawyers, and they are all busy studying “Hardee’s
Tactics,” the best book for infantry drill in the United States. The men
have come out to fight for what they consider the cause of the country,
and are said to have no particular hatred of the South, or of its
inhabitants, though they think they are “a darned deal too high and
mighty, and require to be wiped down considerably.” They have no notion
as to the length of time for which their services will be required, and
I am assured that not one of them has asked what his pay is to be.
Reverting to Montgomery, one may say without offence that its claims to
be the capital of a republic which asserts that it is the richest, and
believes that it will be the strongest in the world, are not by any
means evident to a stranger. Its central position, which has reference
rather to a map than to the hard face of matter, procured for it a
distinction to which it had no other claim. The accommodations which
suited the modest wants of a state legislature vanished or were
transmuted into barbarous inconveniences by the pressure of a central
government, with its offices, its departments, and the vast crowd of
applicants which flocked thither to pick up such crumbs of comfort as
could be spared from the executive table. Never shall I forget the
dismay of myself, and of the friends who were travelling with me, on our
arrival at the Exchange Hotel, under circumstances with some of which
you are already acquainted. With us were men of high position, members
of Congress, senators, ex-governors, and General Beauregard himself. But
to no one was greater accommodation extended than could be furnished by
a room held, under a sort of ryot-warree tenure, in common with a
community of strangers. My room was shown to me. It contained four large
four-post beds, a ricketty table, and some chairs of infirm purpose and
fundamental unsoundness. The floor was carpetless, covered with litter
of paper and ends of cigars, and stained with tobacco juice. The broken
glass of the window afforded no ungrateful means of ventilation. One
gentleman sat in his shirt sleeves at the table reading the account of
the marshalling of the Highlanders at Edinburgh in the Abbottsford
edition of Sir Walter Scott; another, who had been wearied, apparently,
by writing numerous applications to the government for some military
post, of which rough copies lay scattered around, came in, after
refreshing himself at the bar, and occupied one of the beds, which by
the bye, were ominously provided with two pillows apiece. Supper there
was none for us in the house, but a search in an outlying street enabled
us to discover a restaurant, where roasted squirrels and baked opossums
figured as luxuries in the bill of fare. On our return we found that due
preparation had been made in the apartment by the addition of three
mattresses on the floor. The beds were occupied by unknown statesmen and
warriors, and we all slumbered and snored in friendly concert till
morning. Gentlemen in the South complain that strangers judge of them by
their hotels, but it is a very natural standard for strangers to adopt,
and in respect to Montgomery it is almost the only one that a gentleman
can conveniently use, for if the inhabitants of this city and its
vicinity are not maligned, there is an absence of the hospitable spirit
which the South lays claim to as one of its animating principles, and a
little bird whispered to me that from Mr. Jefferson Davis down to the
least distinguished member of his government there was reason to observe
that the usual attentions and civilities offered by residents to
illustrious stragglers had been “conspicuous for their absence.” The
fact is, that the small planters who constitute the majority of the
land-owners are not in a position to act the Amphytrion, and that the
inhabitants of the district can scarcely aspire to be considered what we
would call gentry in England, but are a frugal, simple, hog-and-hominy
living people, fond of hard work and, occasionally, of hard drinking.
* * * * *
NEW ORLEANS, _May_ 24, 1861.
It is impossible to resist the conviction that the Southern Confederacy
can only be conquered by means as irresistible as those by which Poland
was subjugated. The South will fall, if at all, as a nation prostrate at
the feet of a victorious enemy. There is no doubt of the unanimity of
the people. If words mean any thing, they are animated by only one
sentiment, and they will resist the North as long as they can command a
man or a dollar. There is nothing of a sectional character in this
disposition of the South. In every state there is only one voice
audible. Hereafter, indeed, state jealousies may work their own way.
Whatever may be the result, unless the men are the merest
braggarts--and they do not look like it--they will fight to the last
before they give in, and their confidence in their resources is only
equalled by their determination to test them to the utmost. There is a
noisy vociferation about their declarations of implicit trust and
reliance on their slaves which makes one think “they do protest too
much,” and it remains to be seen whether the slaves really will remain
faithful to their masters should the abolition army ever come among them
as an armed propaganda. One thing is obvious here. A large number of men
who might be usefully employed in the ranks are idling about the
streets. The military enthusiasm is in proportion to the property
interest of the various classes of the people, and the very boast that
so many rich men are serving in the ranks is a significant proof, either
of the want of a substratum, or of the absence of great devotion to the
cause, of any such layer of white people as may underlie the great
slave-holding, mercantile, and planting oligarchy. The whole state of
Louisiana contains about 50,000 men liable to serve when called on. Of
that number only 15,000 are enrolled and under arms in any shape
whatever, and if one is to judge of the state of affairs by the
advertisements which appear from the adjutant-general’s office, there
was some difficulty in procuring the 3,000 men--merely 3,000
volunteers--“to serve during the war,” who are required by the
Confederate government. There is “plenty of prave ’ords,” and if fierce
writing and talking could do the work, the armies on both sides would
have been killed and eaten long ago. It is found out that “lives of the
citizens” at Pensacola are too valuable to be destroyed in attacking
Pickens. A storm that shall drive away the ships, a plague, yellow
fever, mosquitos, rattlesnakes, small-pox--any of these agencies, is
looked to with confidence to do the work of shot, shell, and bayonet.
Our American “brethren in arms” have yet to learn that great law in
military cookery, that “if they want to make omelets they must break
eggs.” The “moral suasion” of the lasso, of head-shaving, ducking,
kicking, and such processes, are, I suspect, used not unfrequently to
stimulate volunteers; and the extent to which the acts of the recruiting
officer are somewhat aided by the arm of the law, and the force of the
policeman and the magistrate, may be seen from paragraphs in the morning
papers now and then, to the effect that certain gentlemen of Milesian
extraction, who might have been engaged in pugilistic pursuits, were
discharged from custody unpunished on condition that they enlisted for
the war. With the peculiar views entertained of freedom of opinion and
action by large classes of people on this continent, such a mode of
obtaining volunteers is very natural, but resort to it evinces a want of
zeal on the part of some of the 50,000 who are on the rolls; and, from
all I can hear--and I have asked numerous persons likely to be
acquainted with the subject--there are not more than those 15,000 men of
whom I have spoken in all the state under arms, or in training, of whom
a considerable proportion will be needed for garrison and coast defence
duties. It may be that the Northern states and Northern sentiments are
as violent as those of the South but I see some evidences to the
contrary. For instance, in New York ladies and gentlemen from the South
are permitted to live at their favorite hotel without molestation, and
one hotel keeper at Saratoga Springs advertises openly for the custom of
his Southern patrons. In no city of the South which I have visited would
a party of Northern people be permitted to remain for an hour if the
“citizens” were aware of their presence. It is laughable to hear men
speaking of the “unanimity” of the South. Just look at the peculiar
means by which unanimity is enforced and secured! This is an extract
from a New Orleans paper:
CHARGES OF ABOLITIONISM.--Mayor Monroe has disposed of some of the
cases brought before him on charges of this kind by sending the
accused to the workhouse.
A Mexican named Bernard Cruz, born in Tampico, and living here with
an Irish wife, was brought before the Mayor this morning charged
with uttering Abolition sentiments. After a full investigation, it
was found from the utterance of his incendiary language, that
Cruz’s education was not yet perfect in Southern classics, and his
Honor therefore directed that he be sent for six months to the
Humane Institution for the Amelioration of the Condition of
Northern Barbarians and Abolition Fanatics, presided over by
Professor Henry Mitchell, keeper of the workhouse, who will put him
through a course of study on Southern ethics and institutions.
The testimony before him Saturday, however, in the case of a man
named David O’Keefe, was such as to induce him to commit the
accused for trial before the Criminal Court. One of the witnesses
testified positively that he heard him make his children shout for
Lincoln; another, that the accused said, “I am an abolitionist,”
&c. The witnesses, the neighbors of the accused, gave their
evidence reluctantly, saying that they had warned him of the folly
and danger of his conduct. O’Keefe says he has been a United States
soldier, and came here from St. Louis and Kansas.
John White was arraigned before Recorder Emerson on Saturday for
uttering incendiary language while traveling in the baggage car of
a train of the New Orleans, Ohio, and Great Western Railroad,
intimating that the decapitator of Jefferson Davis would get
$10,000 for his trouble, and the last man of us would be whipped
like dogs by the Lincolnites. He was held under bonds of $500 to
answer the charge on the 8th of June.
Nicholas Gento, charged with declaring himself an Abolitionist, and
acting very much like he was one, by harboring a runaway slave, was
sent to prison in default of bail, to await examination before the
recorder.
Such is “freedom of speech” in Louisiana! But in Texas the machinery for
the production of “unanimity” is less complicated, and there are no
insulting legal formalities connected with the working of the simple
appliances which a primitive agricultural people have devised for their
own purposes. Hear the Texan correspondent of one of the journals of
this city on the subject. He says:
It is to us astonishing, that such unmitigated lies as those
Northern papers disseminate of anarchy and disorder here in Texas,
dissension among ourselves, and especially from our German, &c.,
population, with dangers and anxieties from the fear of
insurrection among the negroes, &c., should be deemed anywhere
South worthy of a moment’s thought. It is surely notorious enough
that in no part of the South are Abolitionists, or other disturbers
of the public peace, so very unsafe as in Texas. The _lasso_ is so
_very_ convenient!
Here is an excellent method of preventing dissension described by a
stroke of the pen; and, as such, an ingenious people are not likely to
lose sight of the uses of a revolution in developing peculiar principles
to their own advantage, repudiation of debts to the North has been
proclaimed and acted on. One gentleman has found it convenient to inform
Major Anderson that he does not intend to meet certain bills which he
had given the major for some slaves. Another declares he won’t pay any
one at all, as he has discovered it is immoral and contrary to the law
of nations to do so. A third feels himself bound to obey the commands of
the governor of his state, who has ordered that debts due to the North
shall not be liquidated. As a _naïve_ specimen of the way in which the
whole case is treated, take this article and the correspondence of “one
of the most prominent mercantile houses in New Orleans:”
SOUTHERN DEBTS TO THE NORTH.
The _Cincinnati Gazette_ copies the following paragraph from _The
New York Evening Post_:
“BAD FAITH.--The bad faith of the Southern merchants in their
transactions with their Northern correspondents is becoming more
evident daily. We have heard of several recent cases where parties
in this city, retired from active business, have, nevertheless,
stepped forward to protect the credit of their Southern friends.
They are now coolly informed that they cannot be reimbursed for
these advances until the war is over. We know of a retired merchant
who in this way has lost $100,000”--and adds:
“The same here. Men who have done most for the South are the chief
sufferers. Debts are coolly repudiated by Southern merchants, who
have heretofore enjoyed a first-class reputation. Men who have
grown rich upon the trade furnished by the West are among the first
to pocket the money of their correspondents, asking, with all the
impudence and assurance of a highwayman, “What are you going to do
about it?” There is honor among thieves, it is said, but there is
not a spark of honor among these repudiating merchants. People who
have aided and trusted them to the last moment, are the greatest
losers. There is a future, however. This war will be over, and the
Southern merchants will desire a resumption of their connections
with the West. As the repudiators--such as Goodrich & Co., of New
Orleans--will be spurned, there will be a grand opening for honest
men.
“There are many honorable exceptions in the South, but dishonesty
is the rule. The latter is but the development of latent rascality.
The rebellion has afforded a pretext merely for the swindling
operations. The parties previously acted honestly, only because
that was the best policy. The sifting process that may now be
conducted will be of advantage to Northern merchants in the future.
The present losses will be fully made up by subsequent gains.”
We have been requested to copy the following reply to this tirade
from one of our most prominent mercantile houses, Messrs. Goodrich
& Co.:
NEW ORLEANS, _May 24_, 1861.
_Cincinnati Gazette._--We were handed, through a friend of ours,
your issue of the 18th inst., and attention directed to an article
contained therein, in which you are pleased to particularize us out
of a large number of highly respectable merchants of this and other
Southern cities as repudiators, swindlers, and other epithets,
better suited to the mouths of the Wilson regiment of New York than
from a once respectable sheet, but which now has sunk so low in the
depths of niggerdom that it would take all the soap in Porkopolis
and the Ohio River to cleanse it from its foul pollution.
We are greatly indebted to you for using our name in the above
article, as we deem it the best card you could publish for us, and
may add greatly to our business relations in the Confederate
States, which will enable us in the end to pay our indebtedness to
those who propose cutting our throats, destroying our property,
stealing our negroes, and starving our wives and children, to pay
such men in times of war. You may term it rascally, but we beg
leave to call it patriotism.
“Giving the sinews of war to your enemies has ever been considered
treason.”--_Kent._
Now for “repudiating.” We have never, nor do we ever expect to
repudiate any debt owing by our firm. But this much we will say,
never will we pay a debt due by us to a man, or any company of men,
who is a known Black Republican, and marching in battle array to
invade our homes and firesides, until every such person shall be
driven back and their polluted footsteps shall, now on our once
happy soil, be entirely obliterated.
We have been in business in this city for twenty years, have passed
through every crisis with our names untarnished or credit impaired,
and would at present sacrifice all we have made, were it necessary,
to sustain our credit in the Confederacy, but care nothing for the
opinions of such as are open and avowed enemies. We are
sufficiently known in this city not to require the indorsement of
_The Cincinnati Gazette_, or any such sheet, for a character.
The day is coming, and not far distant, when there will be an awful
reckoning, and we are willing and determined to stand by our
Confederate flag, sink or swim, and would like to meet some of _The
Gazette’s_ editors _vis-à-vis_ on the field of blood, and see who
would be the first to flinch.
Our senior partner has already contributed one darkey this year to
your population, and she is anxious to return, but we have a few
more left which you can have, provided you will come and take them
yourselves.
We have said more than we intended, and hope you will give this a
place in your paper.
GOODRICH & CO.