plateau command the rear of the batteries below; the ravines in the
bluff would give cover to a large force of riflemen, who could render
the batteries untenable if taken from the river face, unless the camp in
their rear on the top of the plateau was carried. Great loss of life,
and probable failure, would result from any attack on the works from the
river merely. But a flotilla might get past the guns without any serious
loss, in the present state of their service and equipment; and there is
nothing I saw to prevent the landing of a force on the banks of the
river, which, with a combined action on the part of an adequate force of
gun-boats, could carry the position. As the river falls, the round-shot
fire of the guns will be even less effective. The general is providing
water for the camp, by means of large cisterns dug in the ground, which
will be filled with water from the river by steam-power. The officers of
the army of Tennessee with whom I spoke were plain, farmerly planters,
merchants, and lawyers, and the heads of the department were in no
respect better than their inferiors by reason of any military
acquirements, but were shrewd, energetic, common sense men. The officer
in command of the works, however, understood his business, apparently,
and was well supported by the artillery officer. There were, I was told,
eight pieces of field-artillery disposable for the defence of the camp.
Having returned to the steamer, the party proceeded up the river to
another small camp in defence of a battery of four guns, or rather of a
small parallelogram of soft sand covering a man a little higher than the
knee, with four guns mounted in it on the river face. No communication
exists through the woods between the two camps, which must be six or
seven miles apart. The force stationed here was composed principally of
gentlemen. They were all in uniform. A detachment worked one of the
guns, which the general wished to see fired with round shot. In five or
six minutes after the order was given the gun was loaded, and the word
given, “Fire.” The gunner pulled the lanyard hard, but the tube did not
explode. Another was tried. A strong jerk pulled it out bent and
incombustible. A third was inserted which came out broken. The fourth
time was the charm, and the ball was projected about sixty yards to the
right and one hundred yards short of the mark--a stump, some 1,200 yards
distant, in the river. It must be remembered that there are no disparts,
tangents, or elevating screws to the guns; the officer was obliged to
lay it by the eye with a plain chock of wood. The general explained that
the friction tubes were the results of an experiment he was making to
manufacture them, but I agreed with one of the officers, who muttered in
my ear, “The old linstock and portfire are a darned deal better.” There
were no shells, I could see, in the battery, and, on inquiry, I learned
the fuses were made of wood at Memphis, and were not considered by the
officers at all trustworthy. Powder is so scarce that all salutes are
interdicted, except to the governor of the state. In the two camps there
were, I was informed, about 4,000 men. My eyesight, as far as I went,
confirmed me of the existence of some 1,800, but I did not visit all the
outlying tents. On landing, the band had played “God Save the Queen” and
“Dixie’s Land;” on returning, we had the “Marseillaise” and the national
anthem of the Southern Confederation; and by way of parenthesis, it may
be added, if you do not already know the fact, that “Dixie’s Land” is a
synonym for heaven. It appears that there was once a good planter, named
“Dixie,” who died at some period unknown, to the intense grief of his
animated property. They found expression for their sorrow in song, and
consoled themselves by clamoring in verse for their removal to the land
to which Dixie had departed, and where, probably, the revered spirit
would be greatly surprised to find himself in their company. Whether
they were ill-treated after he died, and thus had reason to deplore his
removal, or merely desired heaven in the abstract, nothing known enables
me to assert. But Dixie’s Land is now generally taken to mean the
seceded states, where Mr. Dixie certainly is not, at this present
writing. The song and air are the composition of the organized African
association, for the advancement of music and their own profit, which
sings in New York, and it may be as well to add, that in all my tour in
the South, I heard little melody from lips black or white, and only once
heard negroes singing in the fields.
Several sick men were put on board the steamboat, and were laid on
mattresses on deck. I spoke to them, and found they were nearly all
suffering from diarrhœa, and that they had had no medical attendance
in camp. All the doctors want to fight, and the medical service of the
Tennessee troops is very defective. As I was going down the river, I had
some interesting conversation with General Clark, who commands about
5,000 troops of the Confederate States, at present quartered in two
camps at Tennessee, on these points. He told me the commissariat and the
medical service had given him the greatest annoyance, and confessed some
desertions and courts-martial had occurred. Guard-mounting and its
accessory duties were performed in a most slovenly manner, and the
German troops, from the Southern parts, were particularly disorderly. It
was late in the afternoon when I reached Memphis. I may mention,
_obiter_, that the captain of the steamer, talking of arms, gave me a
notion of the sense of security he felt on board his vessel. From under
his pillow he pulled one of his two Derringer pistols, and out of his
clothes-press he produced a long heavy rifle, and a double gun, which
was, he said, capital with ball and buckshot.
_June 19._--Up at three A. M., to get ready for the train at five, which
will take me out of Dixie’s Land to Cairo. If the owners of the old
hostelries in the Egyptian city were at all like their Tennesseean
fellow-craftsmen in the upstart institution which takes its name, I
wonder how Herodotus managed to pay his way. My sable attendant quite
entered into our feelings, and was rewarded accordingly. At five A. M.,
covered with dust, contracted in a drive through streets which seem
“paved with waves of mud,” to use the phrase of a Hibernian gentleman
connected with the luggage department of the omnibus, “only the mud was
all dust,” to use my own, I started in the cars along with some
Confederate officers and several bottles of whiskey, which at that early
hour was considered by my unknown companions as a highly efficient
prophylactic against the morning dews, but it appeared that these dews
are of such a deadly character, that, in order to guard against their
affects, one must become dead drunk. The same remedy, I am assured, is
sovereign against rattlesnake bites. I can assure the friends of those
gentlemen that they were amply fortified against any amount of dew or
rattlesnake poison before they got to the end of their whiskey, so great
was the supply. By the Memphis papers, it seems as if that institution
of blood prevailed there as in New Orleans, for I read in my papers, as
I went along, of two murders and one shooting as the incidents of the
previous day, contributed by the “local.”
To contrast with this low state of social existence there must be a high
condition of moral feeling, for the journal I was reading contained a
very elaborate article to show the wickedness of any one paying his
debts, and of any state acknowledging its liabilities, which would
constitute an individual _vade mecum_ for Basinghall street. At Humboldt
there was what is called a change of cars--a process that all the
philosophy of the Baron could not have enabled him to endure without
some loss of temper, for there was a whole Kosmos of southern patriotism
assembled at the station, burning with the fires of liberty, and bent on
going to the camp at Union City, forty-six miles away, where the
Confederate forces of Tennessee, aided by Mississippi regiments, are out
under the greenwood tree. Their force was irresistible, particularly as
there were numbers of relentless citizenesses--what the American papers
call “quite a crowd”--as the advanced guard of the invading army. While
the original occupants were being compressed or expelled by
crinoline--that all absorbing, defensive and aggressive article of
feminine war reigns here in wide-spread, iron-bound circles--I took
refuge on the platform, where I made, in an involuntary way, a good many
acquaintances in this sort: “Sir, my name is Jones--Judge Jones, of
Pumpkin County. I am happy to know you, sir.” We shake hands
affectionately. “Colonel (Jones’ _loquitur_), allow me to introduce you
to my friend, Mr. Scribble! Colonel Maggs, Mr. Scribble.” The colonel
shakes hands and immediately darts off to a circle of his friends, whom
he introduces, and they each introduce some one else to me, and,
finally, I am introduced to the engine-driver, who is really an
acquaintance of value, for he is good enough to give me a seat on his
engine, and the bell tolls, the steam trumpet bellows, and we move from
the station an hour behind time, and with twice the number of passengers
the cars were meant to contain. Our engineer did his best to overcome
his difficulties, and we rushed rapidly, if not steadily, through a
wilderness of forest and tangled brakes, through which the rail, without
the smallest justification, performed curves and twists, indicative of a
desire on the part of the engineer to consume the greatest amount of
rail on the shortest extent of line. My companion was a very intelligent
Southern gentleman, formerly editor of a newspaper. We talked of the
crime of the country, of the brutal shootings and stabbings which
disgraced it. He admitted their existence with regret, but he could
advise and suggest no remedy. “The rowdies have rushed in upon us, so
that we can’t master them.” “Is the law powerless?” “Well, sir, you see
these men got hold of those who should administer the law, or they are
too powerful or too reckless to be kept down.” “That is a reign of
terror--of mob ruffianism?” “It don’t hurt respectable people much; but
I agree with you it must be put down.” “When--how?” “Well, sir, when
things are settled, we’ll just take the law into our hands. Not a man
shall have a vote unless he’s American-born, and, by degrees, we’ll get
rid of these men who disgrace us.” “Are not many of your regiments
composed of Germans and Irish--of foreigners, in fact?” “Yes, sir.” I
did not suggest to him the thought which rose in my mind, that these
gentlemen, if successful, would be very little inclined to abandon their
rights while they had arms in their hands; but it occurred to me as well
that this would be rather a poor reward for the men who were engaged in
establishing the Southern Confederacy. The attempt may fail, but
assuredly I have heard it expressed too often to doubt that there is a
determination on the part of the leaders in the movement to take away
the suffrage from the men whom they do not scruple to employ in fighting
their battles. If they cut the throats of the enemy they will stifle
their own sweet voices at the same time, or soon afterward--a capital
recompense to their emigrant soldiers!
The portion of Tennessee traversed by the railroad is not very
attractive, for it is nearly uncleared. In the sparse clearings were
fields of Indian corn, growing amid blackened stumps of trees and rude
log shanties, and the white population which looked out upon us was
poorly housed at least, if not badly clad. At last we reached Corinth.
It would have been scarcely recognizable by Mummius--even if he had
ruined his old handiwork over again. This proudly-named spot consisted,
apparently, of a grog-shop in wood, and three shanties of a similar
material, with out-offices to match, and the Acro-Corinth was a grocery
store, of which the proprietors had no doubt gone to the wars, as it was
shut up, and their names were suspiciously Milesian. But, if Corinth was
not imposing, Troy, which we reached after a long run through a forest
of virgin timber, was still simpler in architecture and general design.
It was too new for “_Troja fuit_,” and the general “fixins” would
scarcely authorize one to say “_Troja fuerit_.”
The Dardanian Towers were represented by a timber house, and Helen the
Second--whom we may take on this occasion to have been simulated by an
old lady smoking a pipe, whom I saw in the verandah--could have set them
on fire much more readily than did her interesting prototype ignite the
city of Priam. The rest of the place, and of the inhabitants, as I saw
it and them, might be considered as an agglomerate of three or four
sheds, a few log huts, a saw-mill, and some twenty negroes sitting on a
log and looking at the train. From Troy the road led to a cypress swamp,
over which the engines bustled, rattled, tumbled, and hopped at a
perilous rate along a high trestlework, and at last we came to “Union
City,” which seemed to be formed by great aggregate meetings of
discontented shavings which had been whirled into heaps out of the
forest hard by. But here was the camp of the Confederates, which so many
of our fellow passengers were coming out into the wilderness to see.
Their white tents and plank huts gleamed out through the green of oak
and elm, and hundreds of men came out to the platform to greet their
friends, and to inquire for baskets, boxes, and hampers, which put me in
mind of the quartermaster’s store at Balaklava. We have all heard of the
unhappy medical officer who exhausted his resources to get up a large
chest from that store to the camp, and who on opening it, in the hope of
finding inside the articles he was most in need of, discovered that it
contained an elegant assortment of wooden legs; but he could not have
been so much disgusted as a youthful warrior here who was handed a
wicker-covered jar from the luggage van, which he “tapped” on the spot,
expecting to find it full of Bourbon whiskey, or something equally good.
He raised the ponderous vessel aloft and took a long pull, to the envy
of his comrades, and then spirting out the fluid with a hideous face
exclaimed, “d----, etc. Why, if the old woman has not sent me syrup!”
Evidently no joke, for the crowd around him never laughed, and quietly
dispersed. It was fully two hours before the train got away from the
camp, leaving a vast quantity of good things and many ladies, who had
come on in the excursion train, behind them. There were about 6,000 men
there, it is said, rude, big, rough fellows, with sprinklings of odd
companies, composed of gentlemen of fortune exclusively. The soldiers,
who are only entitled to the name in virtue of their carrying arms,
their duty, and possibly their fighting qualities, lay under the trees
playing cards, cooking, smoking, or reading the papers; but the camp was
guarded by sentries, some of whom carried their firelocks under their
arms like umbrellas, others by the muzzle, with the butt over the
shoulder; one, for ease, had stuck his, with the bayonet in the ground,
upright before him; others laid their arms against the trees, and
preferred a sitting to an upright posture. In front of one camp there
were two brass field-pieces, seemingly in good order. Many of the men
had sporting rifles or plain muskets. There were several boys of fifteen
and sixteen years of age among the men, who could scarcely carry their
arms for a long day’s march; but the Tennessee and Mississippi infantry
were generally the materials of good soldiers. The camps were not
regularly pitched, with one exception; the tents were too close
together; the water is bad, and the result was that a good deal of
measles, fever, diarrhœa, and dysentery prevailed. One man who came
on the train was a specimen of many of the classes which fill the
ranks--a tall, very muscular, handsome man, with a hunter’s eye, about
thirty-five years of age, brawny-shouldered, brown-faced, black-bearded,
hairy-handed; he had once owned one hundred and ten negroes--equal, say,
to £20,000--but he had been a patriot, a lover of freedom, a filibuster.
First he had gone off with Lopez to Cuba, where he was taken, put in
prison, and included among the number who received grace; next he had
gone off with Walker to Nicaragua, but in his last expedition he fell
into the hands of the enemy, and was only restored to liberty by the
British officer who was afterward assaulted in New Orleans for the part
he took in the affair. These little adventures had reduced his stock to
five negroes, and to defend them he took up arms, and he looked like one
who could use them. When he came from Nicaragua he weighed only one
hundred and ten pounds, now he was over two hundred pounds--a splendid
_bête fauve_; and, without wishing him harm, may I be permitted to
congratulate American society on its chance of getting rid of a
considerable number of those of whom he is a representative man. We
learned incidentally that the district wherein these troops are
quartered was distinguished by its attachment to the Union. By its last
vote Tennessee proved that there are at least forty thousand voters in
the state who are attached to the United States government. At Columbus
the passengers were transferred to a steamer, which in an hour and a
half made its way against the stream of the Mississippi to Cairo. There,
in the clear light of a summer’s eve, were floating the stars and
stripes--the first time I had seen the flag, with the exception of a
glimpse of it at Fort Pickens, for two months. Cairo is in Illinois, on
the spur of land which is formed by the junction of the Ohio River with
the Mississippi, and its name is probably well known to certain
speculators in England, who believed in the fortunes of a place so
appropriately named and situated. Here is the camp of Illinois troops
under General Prentiss, which watches the shores of the Missouri on the
one hand, and of Kentucky on the other. Of them, and of what may be
interesting to readers in England, I shall speak in my next letter. I
find there is a general expression of satisfaction at the sentiments
expressed by Lord John Russell in the speech which has just been made
known here, and that the animosity excited by what a portion of the
American press called the hostility of the foreign minister to the
United States, has been considerably abated, although much has been done
to fan the anger of the people into a flame, because England has
acknowledged the Confederate States have _limited_ belligerent rights.
* * * * *
CAIRO, ILLINOIS.
In my last letter I gave an account of what I saw on my way to the city
of Memphis, and of my visit to the Secessionists’ camp, and brought up
the narrative of the journey to my arrival at this place, which is the
head-quarters of the brigade of Illinois troops employed in behalf of
the Union to keep a watch and ward over the important point which
commands the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Major-General
Pillow, of Tennessee, blockades the current of the united rivers at
Memphis; Brigadier-General Prentiss blockades both streams before they
join at Cairo higher up. The former is in the midst of friends; the
latter is surrounded by enemies--across the rivers, in his rear, below,
behind, and above him--in his very camp there are Secessionist
feelings, sentiments, and wishes, sometimes represented by actual force.
There are in the larger states about this vast region conditions of
opinion on the subject of Union or Secession which are like the
electrical phenomena of a conductor, charged by induction. As the states
approach or recede from the great slave agriculturists they become
Secessionist, or divided, and finally Unionist. Western Virginia is
rather federalist than otherwise; Southern Illinois is in several
counties all but secessionist; East and West Tennessee differ in
sentiment on the great question. Missouri is also distracted by
federalist and disunionist.
It may be that this schism will not only break up the Union, but even
split up the states, for the sovereignity of which one part of the
republic is arrayed in arms against the other. The secessionists,
however, stop short with their universal remedy at the borders of each
state, and do not admit the right of separation to any portion of a
state unless it be in their own favor. A Union man is very glad to
observe discussion in a state when it is brought about by the friends of
the government at Washington. A Northern man will endure any thing but
the idea of the Union being broken up; he becomes intemperate and angry
if it be hinted at. But, in whatever way the end may be worked out, it
is clear the means used in doing so is the old-fashioned machine in
vogue in the old world in the hands of despots, kings, and rulers; and
that the majority in states which was the ruling power must be destroyed
by the process. The argument of a self-governing people for the whole of
the United States is now convenient enough; but we heard very different
language when England demanded redress for the imprisonment of her
subjects at Charleston, and when a British subject was seized in New
York because he had destroyed a vessel in the service of the enemy. In
fact, the whole of the philosophical abstractions on which the founders
of the republic based their constitution, have given way before the
pressure of events, and every step that is taken by the federal
government in vindication of its rights or prerogatives is embarrassed
by difficulties which in the end must be cut by the sword. The
authorities can scarcely deal even with a rebel privateer; and in the
case of the schooner taken by the United States brig Perry in all but
flagrant piracy, with proofs abundant of her guilt, there is no court to
condemn her, unless one be specially devised, inasmuch as she ought by
law to be condemned in the United States court in the harbor of
Charleston, South Carolina, where the United States processes at this
moment are not of much effect. It is obvious that such an emergency as
the present cannot be met by any constitutional devices. Republics in a
crisis have always had recourse to dictators. If word-splitters,
doctrine-mongers, and dodging politicians, at the forthcoming Congress
at Washington, attempt to control the action of the executive by
“constitutional” devices, motions, or resolutions, they will do more
harm to the cause of the Union than all the militia captains of the
enemy’s host.