several thousands of savages, or red men, and “the warriors” are
actually engaged in pursuing the United States troops in Texas, in
conjunction with the state volunteers. A few days ago a deputation of
the chiefs of the Five Nations, Creeks, Choctaws, Seminoles, Comanches,
and others, passed through New Orleans on their way to Montgomery, where
they hoped to enter into terms with the government for the transfer of
their pension list and other responsibilities from Washington, and to
make such arrangements for their property and their rights as would
justify them in committing their fortunes to the issue of war. These
tribes can turn out twenty thousand warriors, scalping-knives,
tomahawks, and all. The chiefs and principal men are all slave-holders.
_May 29._--A new “affair” occurred this afternoon. The servants of the
house in which I am staying were alarmed by violent screams in a house
in the adjoining street, and by the discharge of firearms--an occurrence
which, like the cry of “murder” in the streets of Havana, clears the
streets of all wayfarers, if they be wise, and do not wish to stop stray
bullets. The cause is thus stated in the journals:
SAD FAMILY AFFAIR.--Last evening, at the residence of Mr. A. P.
Withers, in Nayades street, near Thalia, Mr. Withers shot and
dangerously wounded his stepson, Mr. A. F. W. Mather. As the police
tell it, the nature of the affair was this: The two men were in the
parlor, and talking about the Washington artillery, which left on
Monday for Virginia. Mather denounced the artillerists in strong
language, and his stepfather denied what he said. Violent language
followed, and, as Withers says, Mather drew a pistol and shot at
him once, not hitting him. He snatched up a Sharp’s revolver that
was lying near and fired four times at his stepson. The latter fell
at the third fire, and as he was falling Withers fired a fourth
time, the bullet wounding the hand of Mrs. Withers, wife of one and
mother of the other, she having rushed in to interfere, and she
being the only witness of the affair. Withers immediately went out
into the street and voluntarily surrendered himself to Officer
Casson, the first officer he met. He was locked up. Three of his
shots hit Mather, two of them in the breast. Last night Mather was
not expected to live.
Another difficulty is connected with the free colored people who may be
found in prize ships. Read and judge of the conclusion:
What shall be done with them? On the 28th inst., Captain G. W.
Gregor, of the privateer Calhoun, brought to the station of this
district about ten negro sailors, claiming to be free, found on
board the brigs Panama, John Adams, and Mermaid.
The recorder sent word to the marshal of the confederate states
that said negroes were at his disposition. The marshal refused to
receive them or have any thing to do with them, whereupon the
recorder gave the following decision:
Though I have no authority to act in the case, I think it is my
duty as a magistrate and good citizen to take upon myself, in this
critical moment, the responsibility of keeping the prisoners in
custody, firmly believing it would not only be bad policy, but a
dangerous one, to let them loose upon the community.
The following dispatch was sent by the recorder to the Hon. J. P.
Benjamin:
NEW ORLEANS, May 29.
To J. P. Benjamin, Richmond--_Sir_: Ten free negroes taken by a
privateer from on board three vessels returning to Boston, from a
whaling voyage, have been delivered to me. The marshal refuses to
take charge of them. What shall I do with them?
Respectfully,
A. BLACHE,
Recorder, Second District.
The monthly statement I inclose of the condition of the New Orleans
banks on the 25th inst., must be regarded as a more satisfactory exhibit
to their depositors and shareholders, though of no greater benefit to
the commercial community in this its hour of need than the tempting show
of a pastrycook’s window to the famished street poor. These institutions
show assets estimated at $54,000,000, of which $20,000,000 are in specie
and sterling exchange, to meet $25,000,000 of liabilities, or more than
two for one. But, with this apparent amplitude of resources, the New
Orleans banks are at a dead-lock, affording no discounts and buying no
exchange--the latter usually their greatest source of profit in a mart
which ships so largely of cotton, sugar, and flour, and the commercial
movement of which for not over nine months of the year is the second in
magnitude among the cities of the old Union.
As an instance of the caution of their proceedings, I have only to state
that a gentleman of wealth and the highest respectability, who needed a
day or two since some money for the expenses of an unexpected journey,
was compelled, in order to borrow of these banks the sum of $1,500, to
hypothecate, as security for his bill at sixty days, $10,000 of bonds of
the Confederate states, and for which a month ago he paid par in coin--a
circumstance which reflects more credit upon the prudence of the banks
than upon the security pledged for this loan.
* * * * *
NATCHEZ, MISS., _June 14, 1861_.
On the morning of the 3d of June I left New Orleans, in one of the
steamers proceeding up the Mississippi, along that fertile but
uninteresting region of reclaimed swamp lands, called “the coast,” which
extends along both banks for one hundred and twenty miles above the
city. It is so called from the name given to it, “La Côte,” by the early
French settlers. Here is the favored land--alas! it is a fever-land,
too--of sugar-cane and Indian corn. To those who have very magnificent
conceptions of the Mississippi, founded on mere arithmetical
computations of leagues, or vague geographical data, it may be
astonishing, but it is nevertheless true, the Mississippi is artificial
for many hundreds of miles. Nature has, of course, poured out the
waters, but man has made the banks. By a vast system of raised
embankments, called levees, the river is constrained to abstain from
overflowing the swamps, now drained, and green with wealth-producing
crops. At the present moment the surface of the river is several feet
higher than the land at each side, and the steamer moves on a level with
the upper stories, or even the roofs of the houses, reminding one of
such scenery as could be witnessed in the old days of treckshuyt in
Holland. The river is not broader than the Thames at Gravesend, and is
quite as richly colored. But then it is one hundred and eighty feet
deep, and for hundreds of miles it has not less that one hundred feet of
water. Thus deeply has it scooped into the rich clay and marl in its
course; but as it flows out to join the sea, it throws down the vast
precipitates which render the bars so shifting and difficult, and bring
the mighty river to such a poor exit. A few miles above the wharfs and
large levees of the city, the country really appears to be a sea of
light green, with shores of forest in the distance, about two miles away
from the bank. This forest is the uncleared land, extending for a
considerable way back, which each planter hopes to take into culture one
day or other, and which he now uses to provide timber for his farm. Near
the banks are houses of wood, with porticoes, pillars, verandahs, and
sun-shades, generally painted white and green. There is a great
uniformity of style, but the idea aimed at seems to be that of the old
French chateau, with the addition of a colonnade around the ground
story. These dwellings are generally in the midst of small gardens, rich
in semi-tropical vegetation, with glorious magnolias, now in full bloom,
rising in their midst, and groves of live-oak interspersed. The levee is
as hard and dry as the bank of a canal. Here and there it is propped up
by wooden revetements. Between it and the uniform line of palings, which
guards the river face of the plantations, there is a carriage-road. In
the enclosure, near each residence, there is a row of small wooden huts,
whitewashed, in which live the negroes attached to the service of the
family. Outside the negroes who labor in the fields are quartered, in
similar constructions, which are like the small single huts, called
“Maltese,” which were plentiful in the Crimea. They are rarely
furnished with windows; a wooden slide or a grated space admits such
light and air as they want. One of the most striking features of the
landscape is, its utter want of life. There were a few horsemen
exercising in a field, some gigs and buggies along the levee roads, and
the little groups at the numerous watering-places, generally containing
a few children in tom-fool costumes, as zouaves, chasseurs, or some sort
of infantry; but the slaves who were there had come down to look after
luggage or their masters. There were no merry, laughing, chattering
gatherings of black faces and white teeth, such as we hear about.
Indeed, the negroes are not allowed hereabouts to stir out of their
respective plantations, or to go along the road without passes from
their owners. The steamer J. L. Cotton, which was not the less popular,
perhaps, because she had the words “low pressure” conspicuous on her
paddle-boxes, carried a fair load of passengers, most of whom were
members of creole families living on the coast. The proper meaning of
the word “creole” is very different from that which we attach to it. It
signifies a person of Spanish or French descent, born in Louisiana or in
the southern or tropical countries. The great majority of the planters
here are French creoles, and it is said they are kinder and better
masters than Americans or Scotch, the latter being considered the most
severe. Intelligent on most subjects, they are resolute in the belief
that England must take their cotton or perish. Even the keenest of their
financiers, Mr. Forstall, an Irish creole, who is representative of the
house of Baring, seems inclined to this faith, though he is prepared
with many ingenious propositions, which would rejoice Mr. Gladstone’s
inmost heart, to raise money for the Southern Confederacy and make them
rich exceedingly. One thing has rather puzzled him. M. Baroche, who is
in New Orleans, either as a looker-on or as an accredited _employe_ of
his father or of the French government, suggested to him that it would
not be possible for all the disposable mercantile marine of England and
France together to carry the cotton crop, which hitherto gave employment
to a great number of American vessels, now tabooed by the South, and the
calculations seem to bear out the truth of the remark. Be that as it
may, Mr. Forstall is quite prepared to show that the South can raise a
prodigious revenue by a small direct taxation, for which the machinery
already exists in every parish of the state, and that the North must be
prodigiously damaged in the struggle, if not ruined outright. One great
source of strength in the South is, its readiness--at least, its
professed alacrity--to yield any thing that is asked. There is unbounded
confidence in Mr. Jefferson Davis. Whereever I go, the same question is
asked: “Well, sir, what do you think of our President? Does he not
strike you as being a very able man?” In finance he is trusted as much
as in war. When he sent orders to the New Orleans banks, some time ago,
to suspend specie payment, he exercised a power which could not be
justified by any reading of the Southern constitution. All men
applauded. The President of the United States is far from receiving any
such support or confidence, and it need not be said any act of his, of
the same nature as that of Mr. Davis, would have created an immense
outcry against him. But the South has all the unanimity of a conspiracy,
and its unanimity is not greater than its confidence. One is rather
tired of endless questions, “Who can conquer such men?” But the question
should be, “Can the North conquer us?” Of the fustian about dying in
their tracks and fighting till every man, woman and child is
exterminated, there is a great deal too much, but they really believe
that the fate which Poland could not avert, to which France, as well as
the nations she overran, bowed the head, can never reach them. With
their faithful negroes to raise their corn, sugar and cotton while they
are at the wars, and England and France to take the latter and pay them
for it, they believe they can meet the American world in arms. A
glorious future opens before them. Illimitable fields, tilled by
multitudinous negroes, open on their vision, and prostrate at the base
of the mountain of cotton, from which they rule the kings of the earth,
the empires of Europe shall lie, with all their gold, their
manufactures, and their industry, crying out, “Pray give us more cotton!
All we ask is more!”
But here is the boat stopping opposite Mr. Roman’s--ex-governor of the
state of Louisiana, and ex-commissioner of the Confederate government at
Montgomery to the government of the United States at Washington. Not
very long ago he could boast of a very handsome garden--the French
creoles love gardens--Americans and English do not much affect them;
when the Mississippi was low one fine day, levee and all slid down the
bank into the maw of the river, and were carried off. This is what is
called the “caving in” of a bank; when the levee is broken through at
high water it is said that a “crevasse” has taken place. The governor,
as he is called--once a captain always a captain--has still a handsome
garden, however, though his house has been brought unpleasantly near the
river. His mansion and the out-offices stand in the shade of magnolias,
green oaks, and other Southern trees. To the last Governor Roman was a
Unionist, but when his state went he followed her, and now he is a
Secessionist for life and for death, not extravagant in his hopes, but
calm and resolute, and fully persuaded that in the end the South must
win. As he does not raise any cotton, the consequences for him will be
extremely serious should sugar be greatly depreciated; but the
consumption of that article in America is very large, and, though the
markets in the North and West are cut off, it is hoped, as no imported
sugar can find its way into the states, that the South will consume all
its own produce at a fair rate. The governor is a very good type of the
race, which is giving way a little before the encroachments of the
Anglo-Saxons, and he possesses all the ease, candid manner, and suavity
of the old French gentleman--of that school in which there are now few
masters or scholars. He invited me to visit the negro quarters. “Go
where you like, do what you please, ask any questions. There is nothing
we desire to conceal.” As we passed the house, two or three young women
flitted past in snow-white dresses with pink sashes, and no doubtful
crinolines, but their head-dresses were not _en règle_--handkerchiefs of
a gay color. They were slaves going off to a dance at the sugar-house;
but they were indoor servants, and therefore better off, in the way of
clothes than their fellow slaves who labor in the field. On approaching
a high paling at the rear of the house the scraping of fiddles was
audible. It was Sunday, and Mr. Roman informed me that he gave his
negroes leave to have a dance on that day. The planters who are not
Catholics rarely give any such indulgence to their slaves, though they
do not always make them work on that day, and sometimes let them enjoy
themselves on the Saturday afternoon. Entering a wicket gate, a
quadrangular enclosure, lined with negro huts, lay before us. The bare
ground was covered with litter of various kinds, amid which pigs and
poultry were pasturing. Dogs, puppies, and curs of low degree scampered
about on all sides; and deep in a pond, swinking in the sun, stood some
thirty or forty mules, enjoying their day of rest. The huts of the
negroes belonging to the personal service of the house were separated
from the negroes engaged in field labor by a close wooden paling; but
there was no difference in the shape and size of their dwellings, which
consisted generally of one large room, divided by a partition
occasionally into two bedrooms. Outside the whitewash gave them a
cleanly appearance; inside they were dingy and squalid--no glass in the
windows, swarms of flies, some clothes hanging on nails in the boards,
dressers with broken crockery, a bedstead of rough carpentry; a
fireplace in which, hot as was the day, a log lay in embers; a couple of
tin cooking utensils; in the obscure, the occupant, male or female,
awkward and shy before strangers, and silent till spoken to. Of course
there were no books, for the slaves do not read. They all seemed
respectful to their master. We saw very old men and very old women, who
were the canker-worms of the estate, and were dozing away into eternity
mindful only of hominy, and pig, and molasses. Two negro fiddlers were
working their bows with energy in front of one of the huts, and a crowd
of little children were listening to the music, and a few grown-up
persons of color--some of them from the adjoining plantations. The
children are generally dressed in a little sack of coarse calico, which
answers all reasonable purposes, even if it be not very clean. It might
be an interesting subject of inquiry to the natural philosophers who
follow crinology to determine why it is that the hair of the infant
negro, or of the child up to six or seven years of age, is generally a
fine red russet, or even gamboge color, and gradually darkens into dull
ebon. These little bodies were mostly large-stomached, well fed, and not
less happy than freeborn children, although much more valuable--for once
they get over juvenile dangers, and advance toward nine or ten years of
age, they rise in value to £100 or more, even in times when the market
is low and money is scarce. The women were not very well-favored, except
one yellow girl, whose child was quite white, with fair hair and light
eyes; and the men were disguised in such strangely cut clothes, their
hats and shoes and coats were so wonderfully made, that one could not
tell what they were like. On all faces there was a gravity which must be
the index to serene contentment and perfect comfort, for those who ought
to know best declare they are the happiest race in the world. It struck
me more and more, as I examined the expression of the faces of the
slaves all over the South, that deep dejection is the prevailing, if not
universal, characteristic of the race. Let a physiognomist go and see.
Here there were abundant evidences that they were well treated, for they
had good clothing of its kind, good food, and a master who wittingly
could do them no injustice, as he is, I am sure, incapable of it. Still,
they all looked exceedingly sad, and even the old woman who boasted that
she had held her old master in her arms when he was an infant, did not
look cheerful, as the nurse at home would have done, at the sight of her
ancient charge. The precincts of the huts were not clean, and the
enclosure was full of weeds, in which poultry--the perquisites of the
slaves--were in full possession. The negroes rear domestic birds of all
kinds, and sell eggs and poultry to their masters. The money they spend
in purchasing tobacco, molasses, clothes and flour--whisky, their great
delight, they must not have. Some seventy or eighty hands were quartered
in this part of the estate. The silence which reigned in the huts as
soon as the fiddlers had gone off to the sugar-house was profound.
Before leaving the quarter I was taken to the hospital, which was in
charge of an old negress. The naked rooms contained several flock beds
on rough stands, and five patients, three of whom were women. They sat
listlessly on the beds, looking out into space; no books to amuse them,
no conversation--nothing but their own dull thoughts, if they had any.
They were suffering from pneumonia and swellings of the glands of the
neck; one man had fever. Their medical attendant visits them regularly,
and each plantation has a practitioner, who is engaged by the term for
his services. Negroes have now only a nominal value in the market--that
is, the price of a good field hand is as high as ever, but there is no
one to buy him at present, and no money to pay for him, and the trade of
the slave-dealers is very bad. The menageries of the “Virginia negroes
constantly on sale. Money advanced on all descriptions of property,”
etc., must be full--their pockets empty. This question of price is
introduced incidentally in reference to the treatment of negroes. It has
often been said to me that no one will ill-use a creature worth £300 or
£400, but that is not a universal rule. Much depends on temper, and many
a hunting-field could show that if value be a guarantee for good usage,
the slave is more fortunate than his fellow chattel, the horse. If the
growth of sugar-cane, cotton and corn, be the great end of man’s mission
on earth, and if all masters were like Governor Roman, slavery might be
defended as a natural and innocuous institution. Sugar and cotton are,
assuredly, two great agencies in this latter world. The older got on
well enough without them.
The scraping of the fiddles attracted us to the sugar-house, a large
brick building with a factory-looking chimney, where the juice of the
cane is expressed, boiled, granulated, and prepared for the refiner. In
a space of the floor unoccupied by machinery some fifteen women and as
many men were assembled, and four couples were dancing a kind of Irish
jig to the music of the negro musicians--a double shuffle and a thumping
ecstasy, with loose elbows, pendulous paws, and angulated knees, heads
thrown back, and backs arched inwards--a glazed eye, intense solemnity
of mien, worthy of the minuet in _Don Giovanni_. At this time of year
there is no work done in the sugar-house, but when the crushing and
boiling are going on the labor is intense, and all the hands work in
gangs night and day; and, if the heat of the fires be superadded to the
temperature in September, it may be conceded that nothing but
“involuntary servitude” could go through the toil and suffering required
to produce sugar for us. This is not the place for an account of the
processes and machinery used in the manufacture, which is a scientific
operation, greatly improved by recent discoveries and apparatus.
In the afternoon the governor’s son came in from the company which he
commands. He has been camping out with them to accustom them to the
duties of actual war, and he told me that all his men were most zealous
and exceedingly proficient. They are all of the best families
around--planters, large and small, their sons and relatives, and a few
of the creole population, who are engaged as hoopers and stavemakers.
One of the latter had just stained his hands with blood. He had reason
to believe a culpable intimacy existed between his wife and his foreman.
A circumstance occurred which appeared to confirm his worst suspicions.
He took out his firelock, and, meeting the man, he shot him dead without
uttering a word, and then delivered himself up to the authorities. It is
probable his punishment will be exceedingly light, as divorce suits and
actions for damages are not in favor in this part of the world. Although
the people are Roman Catholics, it is by no means unusual to permit
relations within the degree of consanguinity forbidden by the church to
intermarry, and the elastic nature of the rules which are laid down by
the priesthood in that respect would greatly astonish the orthodox in
Ireland or Bavaria. The whole of the planters and their dependents along
“the coast” are in arms. There is but one sentiment, as far as I can
see, among them, and that is, “We will never submit to the North.” In
the evening, several officers of M. Alfred Roman’s company and neighbors
came in, and out under the shade of the trees, in the twilight,
illuminated by the flashing fireflies, politics were discussed--all on
one side, of course, with general conversation of a more agreeable
character. The customary language of the creoles is French, and several
newspapers in French are published in the districts around us; but they
speak English fluently.