“repudiation,” and it will do the hearts of some people good, and will
carry comfort to the ghost of the Rev. Sydney Smith, if it can hear the
tidings, to know I have been assured, over and over again, by eminent
mercantile people and statesmen, that there is a “general desire” on the
part of the repudiating states to pay their bonds, and that no doubt, at
some future period, not very clearly ascertainable or plainly indicated,
that general desire will cause some active steps to be taken to satisfy
its intensity, of a character very unexpected, and very gratifying to
those interested. The tariff of the Southern Confederation has just been
promulgated, and I send herewith a copy of the rates. Simultaneously,
however, with this document, the United States steam-frigates Brooklyn
and Niagara have made their appearance off the Pass à l’Outre, and the
Mississippi is closed, and with it the port of New Orleans. The
steam-tugs refuse to tow out vessels for fear of capture, and British
ships are in jeopardy.
_May 25._--A visit to the camp at Tangipao, about fifty miles from New
Orleans, gave an occasion for obtaining a clearer view of the internal
military condition of those forces of which one reads much and sees so
little than any other way. Major-General Lewis of the State Militia, and
staff, and General Labuzan, a Creole officer, attended by Major Ranney,
President of the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railway, and
by many officers in uniform, started with that purpose at half-past four
this evening in a railway carriage, carefully and comfortably fitted for
their reception. The militia of Louisiana has not been called out for
many years, and its officers have no military experience and the men
have no drill or discipline.
Emerging from the swampy suburbs, we soon pass between white clover
pastures, which we are told invariably salivate the herds of small but
plump cattle browsing upon them. Soon cornfields “in tassel,” alternate
with long narrow rows of growing sugar-cane, which, though scarcely a
fourth of the height of the maize, will soon overshadow it; and the
cane-stalks grow up so densely together that nothing larger than a
rattlesnake can pass between them.
From Kennersville, an ancient sugar plantation cut up into “town lots,”
our first halt, ten miles out, we shoot through a cypress swamp, the
primitive forest of this region, and note a greater affluence of Spanish
moss than in the woods of Georgia or Carolina. There it hung, like a
hermit’s beard, from the pensile branch. Here, to one who should
venture to thread the snake and alligator haunted mazes of the jungle,
its matted profusion must resemble clusters of stalactites pendent from
the roof of some vast cavern; for the gloom of an endless night appears
to pervade the deeper recesses, at the entrance of which stand, like
outlying skeleton pickets, the unfelled and leafless patriarchs of the
clearing, that for a breadth of perhaps fifty yards on either side seems
to have furnished the road with its sleepers.
The gray swamp yields to an open savanna, beyond which, upon the left, a
straggling line of sparse trees skirts the left bank of the Mississippi,
and soon after the broad expanse of Lake Pontchartrain appears within
gunshot of our right, only separated from the road by a hundred yards or
more of rush-covered prairie, which seems but a feeble barrier against
the caprices of so extensive a sheet of water, subject to the influences
of wind and tide. In fact, ruined shanties and out-houses, fields laid
waste, and prostrate fences, remain evidences of the ravages of the
“wash” which a year ago inundated and rendered the railroad impassable
save for boats. The down train’s first notice of the disaster was the
presence of a two-story frame building, which the waves had transported
to the road, and its passengers, detained a couple of days in what now
strikes us as a most grateful combination of timber-skirted meadow and
lake scenery, were rendered insensible to its beauties by the torments
of hungry mosquitos. Had its engineers given the road but eighteen
inches more elevation its patrons would have been spared this suffering,
and its stockholders might have rejoiced in a dividend. Many of the
settlers have abandoned their improvements. Others, chiefly what are
here called Dutchmen, have resumed their tillage with unabated zeal, and
large fields of cabbages, one of them embracing not less than sixty
acres, testify to their energy.
Again, through miles of cypress swamps the train passes on to what is
called the “trembling prairie,” where the sleepers are laid upon a
tressel-work of heavier logs, so that the rails are raised by “cribs” of
timber nearly a yard above the morass. Three species of rail, one of
them as large as a curlew, and the summer-duck, seem the chief occupants
of the marsh, but white cranes and brown bitterns take the alarm, and
falcons and long-tailed “blackbirds” sail in the distance.
Toward sunset a halt took place upon the long bridge that divides Lake
Maurepas, a picturesque sheet of water which blends with the horizon on
our left, from Pass Manchac, an arm of Lake Pontchartrain, which
disappears in the forest on our right. Half-a-dozen wherries and a small
fishing-smack are moored in front of a ricketty cabin, crowded by the
jungle to the margin of the cove. It is the first token of a settlement
that has occurred for miles, and when we have sufficiently admired the
scene, rendered picturesque in the sunset by the dense copse, the water
and the bright colors of the boats at rest upon it, a commotion at the
head of the train arises from the unexpected arrival upon the “switch”
of a long string of cars filled with half a regiment of volunteers, who
had been enlisted for twelve months’ service, and now refused to be
mustered in for the war, as required by the recent enactment of the
Montgomery Congress. The new-comers are at length safely lodged on the
“turn-off,” and our train continues its journey. As we pass the row of
cars, most of them freight wagons, we are hailed with shouts and yells
in every key by the disbanded volunteers, who seem a youngish,
poorly-clad, and undersized lot, though noisy as a street mob.
After Manchac, the road begins to creep up toward _terra firma_, and
before nightfall there was a change from cypresses and swamp laurels to
pines and beeches, and we inhale the purer atmosphere of dry land, with
an occasional whiff of resinous fragrance, that dispels the
fever-tainted suggestions of the swamp below. There we only breathed to
live. Here we seem to live to breathe. The rise of the road is a grade
of but a foot to the mile, and yet at the camp an elevation of not more
than eighty feet in as many miles suffices to establish all the climatic
difference between the malarious marshes and a much higher mountain
region.
But during our journey the hampers have not been neglected. The younger
members of the party astonish the night-owls with patriotic songs,
chiefly French, and the French chiefly with the “Marseillaise,” which,
however inappropriate as the slogan of the Confederate states, they
persist in quavering, forgetful, perhaps, that not three-quarters of a
century ago Toussaint l’Ouverture caught the words and air of his
masters, and awoke the lugubrious notes of the insurrection.
Toward nine P. M., the special car rests in the woods, and is flanked on
one side by the tents and watch-fires of a small encampment, chiefly of
navvy and cotton-handling Milesian volunteers, called “the Tigers,” from
their prehensile powers and predatory habits. A guard is stationed
around the car; a couple of Ethiopians who have attended us from town
are left to answer the query, _quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_, and we
make our way to the hotel, which looms up in the moonlight in a
two-storied dignity. Here, alas! there have been no preparations made to
sleep or feed us. The scapegoat “nobody” announced our coming. Some of
the guests are club men, used to the small hours, who engage a room, a
table, half a dozen chairs, and a brace of bottles to serve as
candlesticks. They have brought stearine and pasteboards with them, and
are soon deep in the finesses of “Euchre.” We quietly stroll back to the
car, our only hope of shelter. At the entrance we are challenged by a
sentry, apparently ignorant that he has a percussion cap on his brown
rifle, which he levels at us cocked. From this unpleasant vision of an
armed and reckless Tiger rampant we are relieved by one of the dusky
squires, who assures the sentinel that we are “all right,” and proceeds
to turn over a seat and arrange what might be called a sedan-chair bed,
in which we prepare to make a night of it. Our party is soon joined by
others in quest of repose, and in half an hour breathings, some of them
so deep as to seem subterranean, indicate that all have attained their
object--like Manfred’s--forgetfulness.
An early breakfast of rashers and eggs was prepared at the _table
d’hôte_, which we were told would be replenished half-hourly until noon,
when a respite of an hour was allowed to the “help,” in which to make
ready a dinner, to be served in the same progression.
Through a shady dingle a winding path led to the camp, and, after
trudging a pleasant half-mile, a bridge of boards, resting on a couple
of trees laid across a pool, was passed, and, above a slight embankment,
tents and soldiers are revealed upon a “clearing” of some thirty acres
in the midst of a pine forest. Turning to the left, we reach a double
row of tents, only distinguished from the rest by their “fly roofs” and
boarded floors, and, in the centre, halt opposite to one which a poster
of capitals on a planed deal marks as “Head-quarters.” Major-General
Tracy commands the camp. The white tents crouching close to the shade of
the pines, the parade alive with groups and colors as various as those
of Joseph’s coat, arms stacked here and there, and occasionally the
march of a double file in green, or in mazarine blue, up an alley from
the interior of the wood, to be dismissed in the open, resembles a
militia muster, or a holiday experiment at soldiering, rather than the
dark shadow of forthcoming battle. The cordon of sentinels suffer no
volunteer to leave the precincts of the camp, even to bathe, without a
pass or the word. There are neither wagons nor ambulances, and the men
are rolling in barrels of bacon and bread and shouldering bags of
pulse--good picnic practice and campaigning gymnastics in fair weather.
The arms of these volunteers are the old United States smooth-bore
musket, altered from flint to percussion, with bayonet--a heavy and
obsolete copy of Brown Bess in bright barrels. All are in creditable
order. Most of them have never been used, even to fire a parade volley,
for powder is scarce in the Confederated States, and must not be
wasted. Except in their material, the shoes of the troops are as varied
as their clothing. None have as yet been served out, and each still
wears the boots, the brogans, the patent leathers, or the Oxford ties in
which he enlisted. The tents have mostly no other floor than the earth,
and that rarely swept; while blankets, boxes, and utensils are stowed in
corners with a disregard of symmetry that would drive a martinet mad.
Camp-stools are rare and tables invisible, save here and there in an
officer’s tent. Still the men look well, and, we are told, would
doubtless present a more cheerful appearance, but for some little
demoralization occasioned by discontent at the repeated changes in the
organic structure of the regiments, arising from misapprehensions
between the state and federal authorities, as well as from some
favoritism toward certain officers, elected by political wire-pulling in
the governing councils. The system of electing officers by ballot has
made the camp as thoroughly a political arena as the poll-districts in
New Orleans before an election, and thus many heroes, seemingly
ambitious of epaulettes, are in reality only “laying pipes” for the
attainment of civil power or distinction after the war.
The volunteers we met at Manchac the previous evening had been enlisted
by the state to serve for twelve months, and had refused to extend their
engagement for the war--a condition now made precedent at Montgomery to
their being mustered into the army of the Confederate States. Another
company, a majority of whom persist in the same refusal, were disbanded
while we were patrolling the camp, and an officer told one of the party
he had suffered a loss of 600 volunteers by this disintegrating process
within the last twenty-four hours. Some of these country companies were
skilled in the use of the rifle, and most of them had made pecuniary
sacrifices in the way of time, journeys, and equipments. Our informant
deplored this reduction of volunteers, as tending to engender
disaffection in the parishes to which they will return, and comfort,
when known, to the Abolitionists of the North. He added that the war
will not perhaps last a twelvemonth, and if unhappily prolonged beyond
that period, the probabilities are in favor of the short-term recruits
willingly consenting to a re-enlistment.
The encampment of the “Perrit Guards” was worthy of a visit. Here was a
company of _professional gamblers_, 112 strong, recruited for the war in
a moment of banter by one of the patriarchs of the fraternity, who, upon
hearing at the St. Charles Hotel one evening that the vanity or the
patriotism of a citizen, not famed for liberality, had endowed with
$1,000 a company which was to bear his name, exclaimed that “he would
give $1,500 to any one who should be fool enough to form a company and
call it after him.” In less than an hour after the utterance of this
caprice, Mr. Perrit was waited upon by fifty-six “professionals,” who
had enrolled their names as the “Perrit Guards,” and unhesitatingly
produced from his wallet the sum so sportively pledged. The Guards are
uniformed in mazarine-blue flannel with red facings, and the captain, a
youngish-looking fellow, with a hawk’s eye, who had seen service with
Scott in Mexico and Walker in Nicaragua, informed us that there is not a
pair of shoes in the company that cost less than $6, and that no money
has been spared to perfect their other appointments. A sack of ice and
half a dozen silver goblets enforced his invitation “to take a drink at
his quarters,” and we were served by an African in uniform, who
afterward offered us cigars received by the last Havana steamer. Looking
at the sable attendant, one of the party observed that if these “experts
of fortune win the present fight, it will be a case of _couleur gagne_.”
It would be difficult to find in the same number of men taken at hazard
greater diversities of age, stature, and physiognomy; but in keenness of
eye and imperturbability of demeanor they exhibit a family likeness, and
there is not an unintelligent face in the company. The gamblers, or, as
they are termed, the “sports,” of the United States have an air of
higher breeding and education than the dice-throwers and card-turners of
Ascot or Newmarket--nay, they may be considered the Anglo-Saxon equals,
minus the title, of those _âmes damnées_ of the continental nobility who
are styled Greeks by their Parisian victims. They are the Pariahs of
American civilization, who are, nevertheless, in daily and familiar
intercourse with their patrons, and not restricted, as in England, to a
betting-ring toleration by the higher orders. The Guards are the model
company of Camp Moore, and I should have felt disposed to admire the
spirit of gallantry with which they have volunteered in this war as a
purification by fire of their maculated lives were it not hinted that
the “Oglethorpe Guards” and more than one other company of volunteers
are youths of large private fortunes, and that in the Secession as in
the Mexican War, these patriots will doubtless pursue their old calling
with as much profit as they may their new one with valor.
From the lower camp we wind through tents, which diminish in neatness
and cleanliness as we advance deeper, to the upper division, which is
styled “Camp Tracy,” a newer formation, whose brooms have been employed
with corresponding success. The adjutant’s report for the day sums up
1,073 rank and file, and but two on the sick list. On a platform, a
desk, beneath the shade of the grove, holds a Bible and Prayer-book,
that await the arrival, at ten o’clock, of the Methodist preacher, who
is to perform Divine service. The green uniforms of the “Hibernian
Guards,” and the gray and light-blue dress of other companies, appertain
to a better appointed sort of men than the lower division.
There may be 2,000 men in Camp Moore--not more, and yet every authority
gives us a different figure. The lowest estimate acknowledged for the
two camps is 3,500 men, and _The Picayune_ and other New Orleans papers
still speak in glowing terms of the 5,000 heroes assembled in Tangipao.
Although the muster there presents a tolerable show of ball-stoppers, it
would require months of discipline to enable them to pass for soldiers,
even at the North; and besides that General Tracy has never had other
experience than in militia duty, there is not, I think, a single
West-Point officer in his whole command. The only hope of shaping such
raw material to the purposes of war would naturally be by the admixture
of a proper allowance of military experience, and until those possessing
it shall be awarded to Camp Moore we must sigh over the delusion which
pictures its denizens to the good people of New Orleans as “fellows
ready for the fray.”
While the hampers are being ransacked, an express locomotive arrives
from town with dispatches for General Tracy, who exclaims, when reading
them, “Always too late!” from which expression it is inferred that
orders have been received to accept the just disbanded volunteers. The
locomotive was hitched to the car and drew it back to the city. Our car
was built in Massachusetts, the engine in Philadelphia, and the
magnifier of its lamp in Cincinnati. What will the South do for such
articles in future?
_May 26._--In the evening, as I was sitting in the house of a gentleman
in the city, it was related, as a topic of conversation, that a very
respectable citizen named Bibb had had a difficulty with three
gentlemen, who insisted on his reading out the news for them from his
paper, as he went to market in the early morning. Mr. Bibb had a
revolver, “casually,” in his pocket, and he shot one citizen dead on the
spot and wounded the other two severely, if not mortally. “Great
sympathy,” I am told, “is felt for Mr. Bibb.” There has been a skirmish
somewhere on the Potomac, but Bibb has done more business “on his own
hook” than any of the belligerents up to this date; and though I can
scarcely say I sympathize with him, far be it from me to say that I do
not respect him.
One curious result of the civil war in its effects on the South will,
probably, extend itself as the conflict continues--I mean the refusal
of the employers to pay their workmen, on the ground of inability. The
natural consequence is much distress and misery. The English consul is
harrassed by applications for assistance from mechanics and skilled
laborers who are in a state bordering on destitution and starvation.
They desire nothing better than to leave the country and return to their
homes. All business, except tailoring for soldiers and cognate labors,
is suspended. Money is not to be had. Bills on New York are worth little
more than the paper, and the exchange against London is
enormous--eighteen per cent. discount from the par value of the gold in
bank, good drafts on England having been negotiated yesterday at
ninety-two per cent. One house has been compelled to accept four per
cent. on a draft on the North, where the rate was usually from
one-fourth per cent. to one-half per cent. There is some fear that the
police force will be completely broken up, and the imagination refuses
to guess at the result. The city schools will probably be
closed--altogether things do not look well at New Orleans. When all
their present difficulties are over, a struggle between the mob and the
oligarchy, or those who have no property and those who have, is
inevitable; for one of the first acts of the legislature will probably
be directed to establish some sort of qualification for the right of
suffrage, relying on the force which will be at their disposal on the
close of the war. As at New York, so at New Orleans. Universal suffrage
is denounced as a curse, as corruption legalized, confiscation
organized. As I sat in a well-furnished clubroom last night, listening
to a most respectable, well-educated, intelligent gentleman descanting
on the practices of “the Thugs”--an organized band who coolly and
deliberately committed murder for the purpose of intimidating Irish and
German voters, and were only put down by a vigilance committee, of which
he was a member--I had almost to pinch myself to see that I was not the
victim of a horrid nightmare.
_Monday, May 27._--The Washington Artillery went off to-day to the
wars--_quo fas et gloria ducunt_; but I saw a good many of them in the
streets after the body had departed--spirits who were disembodied. Their
uniform is very becoming, not unlike that of our own foot artillery, and
they have one battery of guns in good order. I looked in vain for any
account of Mr. Bibb’s little affair yesterday in the papers. Perhaps, as
he is so very respectable, there will not be any reference to it at all.
Indeed, in some conversation on the subject last night, it was admitted
that when men were very rich they might find judges and jurymen as
tender as Danae, and policemen as permeable as the walls of her dungeon.
The whole question now is, “What will be done with the blockade?” The
Confederate authorities are acting with a high hand. An American
vessel, the Ariel, which had cleared out of port with British subjects
on board, has been overtaken, captured, and her crew have been put in
prison. The ground is that she is owned in main by Black Republicans.
The British subjects have received protection from the consul. Prizes
have been made within a league of shore, and in one instance, when the
captain protested, his ship was taken out to sea, and was then
recaptured formally. I went round to several merchants to-day; they were
all gloomy and fierce. In fact, the blockade of Mobile is announced, and
that of New Orleans has commenced, and men-of-war have been reported off
the Pas-à-l’outre. The South is beginning to feel that it is being
bottled up, all fermenting and frothing, and is somewhat surprised and
angry at the natural results of its own acts, or, at least, of the
proceedings which have brought about a state of war. Mr. Slidell did not
seem at all contented with the telegrams from the North, and confessed
that “if they had been received by way of Montgomery he should be
alarmed.” The names of persons liable for military service have been
taken down in several districts, and British subjects have been
included. Several applications have been made to Mr. Mure, the consul,
to interfere in behalf of men who, having enlisted, are now under orders
to march, and who must leave their families destitute if they go away;
but he has, of course, no power to exercise any influence in such cases.
The English journals to the 4th of May have arrived here to-day. It is
curious to see how quaint in their absurdity the telegrams become when
they have reached the age of three weeks. I am in the hapless position
of knowing, without being able to remedy, the evils from this source,
for there is no means of sending through to New York political
information of any sort by telegraph. The electric fluid may be the
means of blasting and blighting many reputations, as there can be no
doubt the revelations which the government at Washington will be able to
obtain through the files of the dispatches it has seized at the various
offices, will compromise some whose views have recently undergone
remarkable changes. It is a hint which may not be lost on governments in
Europe when it is desirable to know friends and foes hereafter, and
despotic rulers will not be slow to take a hint from “the land of
liberty.”
Orders have been issued by the governor to the tow-boats to take out the
English vessels by the south-west passage, and it is probable they will
all get through without any interruption on the part of the blockading
force. It may be imagined that the owners and consignees of cargoes from
England, China, and India, which are on their way here, are not at all
easy in their minds. Two of the Washington artillery died in the train
on their way to that undefinable region called “the seat of war.”