TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been
placed at the end of the book.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
MY DIARY
NORTH AND SOUTH.
BY
WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, 11, BOUVERIE STREET.
1863.
[_The right of Translation is reserved._]
LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS
TO
RICHARD QUAIN, M.D.,
These Volumes are Dedicated
IN TESTIMONY
OF
THE REGARD AND GRATITUDE
OF
THE AUTHOR.
INTRODUCTORY.
A book which needs apologies ought never to have been written.
This is a canon of criticism so universally accepted, that authors
have abstained of late days from attempting to disarm hostility by
confessions of weakness, and are almost afraid to say a prefatory
word to the gentle reader.
It is not to plead in mitigation of punishment or make an appeal
_ad misericordiam_, I break through the ordinary practice, but by
way of introduction and explanation to those who may read these
volumes, I may remark that they consist for the most part of
extracts from the diaries and note-books which I assiduously kept
whilst I was in the United States, as records of the events and
impressions of the hour. I have been obliged to omit many passages
which might cause pain or injury to individuals still living in the
midst of a civil war, but the spirit of the original is preserved
as far as possible, and I would entreat my readers to attribute the
frequent use of the personal pronoun and personal references to
the nature of the sources from which the work is derived, rather
than to the vanity of the author.
Had the pages been literally transcribed, without omitting a word,
the fate of one whose task it was to sift the true from the false
and to avoid error in statements of fact, in a country remarkable
for the extraordinary fertility with which the unreal is produced,
would have excited some commiseration; but though there is much
extenuated in these pages, there is not, I believe, aught set down
in malice. My aim has been to retain so much relating to events
passing under my eyes, or to persons who have become famous in this
great struggle, as may prove interesting at present, though they
did not at the time always appear in their just proportions of
littleness or magnitude.
During my sojourn in the States, many stars of the first order
have risen out of space or fallen into the outer darkness. The
watching, trustful, millions have hailed with delight or witnessed
with terror the advent of a shining planet or a splendid comet,
which a little observation has resolved into watery nebulæ. In the
Southern hemisphere, Bragg and Beauregard have given place to Lee
and Jackson. In the North M‘Dowell has faded away before M‘Clellan,
who having been put for a short season in eclipse by Pope, only to
culminate with increased effulgence, has finally paled away before
Burnside. The heroes of yesterday are the martyrs or outcasts of
to-day, and no American general needs a slave behind him in the
triumphal chariot to remind him that he is a mortal. Had I foreseen
such rapid whirls in the wheel of fortune I might have taken
more note of the men who were below, but my business was not to
speculate but to describe.
The day I landed at Norfolk, a tall lean man, ill-dressed, in a
slouching hat and wrinkled clothes, stood, with his arms folded
and legs wide apart, against the wall of the hotel looking on the
ground. One of the waiters told me it was “Professor Jackson,” and
I have been plagued by suspicions that in refusing an introduction
which was offered to me, I missed an opportunity of making the
acquaintance of the man of the stonewalls of Winchester. But, on
the whole, I have been fortunate in meeting many of the soldiers
and statesmen who have distinguished themselves in this unhappy war.
Although I have never for one moment seen reason to change the
opinion I expressed in the first letter I wrote from the States,
that the Union as it was could never be restored, I am satisfied
the Free States of the North will retain and gain great advantages
by the struggle, if they will only set themselves at work to
accomplish their destiny, nor lose their time in sighing over
vanished empire or indulging in abortive dreams of conquest and
schemes of vengeance; but my readers need not expect from me any
dissertations on the present or future of the great republics,
which have been so loosely united by the Federal band, nor any
description of the political system, social life, manners or
customs of the people, beyond those which may be incidentally
gathered from these pages.
It has been my fate to see Americans under their most unfavourable
aspect; with all their national feelings, as well as the vices of
our common humanity, exaggerated and developed by the terrible
agonies of a civil war, and the throes of political revolution.
Instead of the hum of industry, I heard the noise of cannon through
the land. Society convulsed by cruel passions and apprehensions,
and shattered by violence, presented its broken angles to the
stranger, and I can readily conceive that the America I saw, was no
more like the country of which her people boast so loudly, than the
St. Lawrence when the ice breaks up, hurrying onwards the rugged
drift and its snowy crust of crags, with hoarse roar, and crashing
with irresistible force and fury to the sea, resembles the calm
flow of the stately river on a summer’s day.
The swarming communities and happy homes of the New England
States--the most complete exhibition of the best results of
the American system--it was denied me to witness; but if I
was deprived of the gratification of worshipping the frigid
intellectualism of Boston, I saw the effects in the field, among
the men I met, of the teachings and theories of the political,
moral, and religious professors, who are the chiefs of that
universal Yankee nation, as they delight to call themselves, and
there recognised the radical differences which must sever them for
ever from a true union with the Southern States.
The contest, of which no man can predict the end or result, still
rages, but notwithstanding the darkness and clouds which rest upon
the scene, I place so much reliance on the innate good qualities
of the great nations which are settled on the Continent of North
America, as to believe they will be all the better for the sweet
uses of adversity; learning to live in peace with their neighbours,
adapting their institutions to their necessities, and working
out, not in their old arrogance and insolence--mistaking material
prosperity for good government--but in fear and trembling, the
experiment on which they have cast so much discredit, and the
glorious career which misfortune and folly can arrest but for a
time.
W. H. RUSSELL.
_London, December 8, 1862._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Departure from Cork--The Atlantic in March--Fellow-passengers--
American politics and parties--The Irish in New York--Approach
to New York 1
CHAPTER II.
Arrival at New York--Custom-house--General impressions as to
North and South--Street in New York--Hotel--Breakfast--American
women and men--Visit to Mr. Bancroft--Street-railways 10
CHAPTER III.
“St. Patrick’s day” in New York--Public dinner--American
Constitution--General topics of conversation--Public estimate
of the Government--Evening party at Mons. B----’s 22
CHAPTER IV.
Streets and shops in New York--Literature--A funeral--Dinner
at Mr. H----’s--Dinner at Mr. Bancroft’s--Political and social
features--Literary breakfast: Heenan and Sayers 34
CHAPTER V.
Off to the railway station--Railway carriages--Philadelphia--
Washington--Willard’s Hotel--Mr. Seward--North and South--The
“State Department” at Washington--President Lincoln--Dinner
at Mr. Seward’s 43
CHAPTER VI.
A state dinner at Mr. Abraham Lincoln’s--Mrs. Lincoln--The
Cabinet Ministers--A newspaper correspondent--Good Friday at
Washington 60
CHAPTER VII.
Barbers’ shops--Place-hunting--The Navy Yard--Dinner at Lord
Lyons’--Estimate of Washington among his countrymen--Washington’s
house and tomb--The Southern Commissioners--Dinner with the
Southern Commissioners--Feeling towards England among the
Southerners--Animosity between North and South 73
CHAPTER VIII.
New York Press--Rumours as to the Southerners--Visit to the
Smithsonian Institute--Pythons--Evening at Mr. Seward’s--Rough
draft of official dispatch to Lord J. Russell--Estimate of its
effect in Europe--The attitude of Virginia 99
CHAPTER IX.
Dinner at General Scott’s--Anecdotes of General Scott’s early
life--The startling dispatch--Insecurity of the capital 105
CHAPTER X.
Preparations for war at Charleston--My own departure for
the Southern States--Arrival at Baltimore--Commencement of
hostilities at Fort Sumter--Bombardment of the fort--General
feeling as to North and South--Slavery--First impressions of
the city of Baltimore-- Departure by steamer 111
CHAPTER XI.
Scenes on board an American steamer--The Merrimac--Irish sailors
in America--Norfolk--A telegram on Sunday: news from the seat
of war--American “chaff” and our Jack tars 117
CHAPTER XII.
Portsmouth--Railway journey through the forest--The great Dismal
Swamp--American newspapers--Cattle on the line--Negro labour--On
through the pine forest--The Confederate flag--Goldsborough:
popular excitement--Weldon--Wilmington--The Vigilance
Committee 126
CHAPTER XIII.
Sketches round Wilmington--Public opinion--Approach to Charleston
and Fort Sumter--Introduction to General Beauregard--Ex-Governor
Manning--Conversation on the chances of the war--“King Cotton”
and England--Visit to Fort Sumter--Market-place at Charleston 138
CHAPTER XIV.
Southern Volunteers--Unpopularity of the Press--Charleston--
Fort Sumter--Morris’ Island--Anti-union enthusiasm--Anecdote
of Colonel Wigfall--Interior view of the fort--North versus
South 146
CHAPTER XV.
Slaves, their masters and mistresses--Hotels--Attempted
boat-journey to Fort Moultrie--Excitement at Charleston against
New York-- Preparations for war--General Beauregard--Southern
opinion as to the policy of the North, and estimate of the effect
of the war on England, through the cotton market--Aristocratic
feeling in the South 162
CHAPTER XVI.
Charleston: the Market-place--Irishmen at Charleston--Governor
Pickens: his political economy and theories--Newspaper offices
and counting-houses--Rumours as to the war policy of the
South 173
CHAPTER XVII.
Visit to a plantation; hospitable reception--By steamer to
Georgetown--Description of the town--A country mansion--Masters
and slaves--Slave diet--Humming-birds--Land irrigation-- Negro
quarters--Back to Georgetown 180
CHAPTER XVIII.
Climate of the Southern States--General Beauregard--Risks of the
post-office--Hatred of New England--By railway to Sea Island
plantation--Sporting in South Carolina--An hour on board a
canoe in the dark 195
CHAPTER XIX.
Domestic negroes--Negro oarsmen--Off to the fishing-grounds--The
devil-fish--Bad sport--The drum-fish--Negro quarters--Want of
drainage--Thievish propensities of the blacks--A Southern
estimate of Southerners 204
CHAPTER XX.
By railway to Savannah--Description of the city--Rumours of the
last few days--State of affairs at Washington--Preparations
for war--Cemetery of Bonaventure--Road made of oyster
shells--Appropriate features of the cemetery--The Tatnall
family--Dinner-party at Mr. Green’s--Feeling in Georgia against
the North 216
CHAPTER XXI.
The river at Savannah--Commodore Tatnall--Fort Pulaski--Want of
a fleet to the Southerners--Strong feeling of the women--Slavery
considered in its results--Cotton and Georgia--Off for Montgomery--
The Bishop of Georgia--The Bible and slavery--Macon--Dislike
of United States’ gold 225
CHAPTER XXII.
Slave-pens: negroes on sale or hire--Popular feeling as
to secession--Beauregard and speech-making--Arrival at
Montgomery--Bad hotel accommodation--Knights of the Golden
Circle--Reflections on slavery--Slave auction--The Legislative
Assembly--A “live chattel” knocked down--Rumours from the
North (true and false) and prospects of war 234
CHAPTER XXIII.
Proclamation of war--Jefferson Davis--Interview with the President
of the Confederacy--Passport and safe-conduct--Messrs. Wigfall,
Walker, and Benjamin--Privateering and letters of marque--A
reception at Jefferson Davis’s--Dinner at Mr. Benjamin’s 248
CHAPTER XXIV.
Mr. Wigfall on the Confederacy--Intended departure from the
South--Northern apathy and Southern activity--Future prospects
of the Union--South Carolina and cotton--The theory of slavery--
Indifference at New York--Departure from Montgomery 258
CHAPTER XXV.
The River Alabama--Voyage by steamer--Selma--Our captain and
his slaves--“Running” slaves--Negro views of happiness--
Mobile--Hotel--The city--Mr. Forsyth 265
CHAPTER XXVI.
Visit to Forts Gaines and Morgan--War to the knife the cry of the
South--The “State” and the “States”--Bay of Mobile--The forts and
their inmates--Opinions as to an attack on Washington--Rumours
of actual war 277
CHAPTER XXVII.
Pensacola and Fort Pickens--Neutrals and their friends--Coasting--
Sharks--The blockading fleet--The stars and stripes, and stars
and bars--Domestic feuds caused by the war--Captain Adams and
General Bragg--Interior of Fort Pickens 284
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Bitters before breakfast--An old Crimean acquaintance--Earthworks
and batteries--Estimate of cannons--Magazines--Hospitality--
English and American introductions and leave-takings--Fort
Pickens: its interior--Return towards Mobile--Pursued by a
strange sail--Running the blockade--Landing at Mobile 303
CHAPTER XXIX.
Judge Campbell--Dr. Nott--Slavery--Departure for New
Orleans--Down the river--Fear of cruisers--Approach to New
Orleans--Duelling--Streets of New Orleans--Unhealthiness of
the city--Public opinion as to the war--Happy and contented
negroes 325
CHAPTER XXX.
The first blow struck--The St. Charles Hotel--Invasion of Virginia
by the Federals--Death of Col. Ellsworth--Evening at Mr.
Slidell’s--Public comments on the war--Richmond the capital of
the Confederacy--Military preparations--General society--Jewish
element--Visit to a battle-field of 1815 338
CHAPTER XXXI.
Carrying arms--New Orleans jail--Desperate characters--
Executions--Female maniacs and prisoners--The river and levee--
Climate of New Orleans--Population--General distress--Pressure
of the blockade--Money--Philosophy of abstract rights--The
doctrine of State Rights--Theoretical defect in the
constitution 353
CHAPTER XXXII.
Up the Mississippi--Free negroes and English policy--Monotony
of the river scenery--Visit to M. Roman--Slave quarters--
A slave-dance--Slave-children--Negro hospital--General
opinion--Confidence in Jefferson Davis 366
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Ride through the maize-fields--Sugar plantation; negroes at
work--Use of the lash--Feeling towards France--Silence of the
country--Negroes and dogs--Theory of slavery--Physical formation
of the negro--The defence of slavery--The masses for negro
souls--Convent of the Sacré Cœur--Ferry-house--A large
landowner 378
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Negroes--Sugar-cane plantations--The negro and cheap labour--
Mortality of blacks and whites--Irish labour in Louisiana--A
sugar-house--Negro children--Want of education--Negro diet--Negro
hospital--Spirits in the morning--Breakfast--More slaves--Creole
planters 391
CHAPTER XXXV.
War-rumours, and military movements--Governor Manning’s slave
plantations--Fortunes made by slave-labour--Frogs for the
table--The forest--Cotton and sugar--A thunderstorm 405
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Visit to Mr. M‘Call’s plantation--Irish and Spaniards--The
planter--A Southern sporting man--The creoles--Leave Houmas--
Donaldsonville--Description of the city--Baton Rouge--Steamer
to Natchez--Southern feeling; faith in Jefferson Davis--Rise
and progress of prosperity for the planters--Ultimate issue
of the war to both North and South 410
[Illustration: MAP TO ACCOMPANY “MY DIARY NORTH & SOUTH” WITH THE
AUTHOR’S ROUTE COLOURED]
MY DIARY NORTH AND SOUTH.
CHAPTER I.
Departure from Cork.--The Atlantic in March--Fellow-passengers--
American politics and parties--The Irish in New York--Approach
to New York.
On the evening of 3rd March, 1861, I was transferred from the
little steam-tender, which plies between Cork and the anchorage of
the Cunard steamers at the entrance of the harbour, to the deck of
the good steamship Arabia, Captain Stone; and at nightfall we were
breasting the long rolling waves of the Atlantic.
The voyage across the Atlantic has been done by so many able hands,
that it would be superfluous to describe mine, though it is certain
no one passage ever resembled another, and no crew or set of
passengers in one ship were ever identical with those in any other.
For thirteen days the Atlantic followed its usual course in the
month of March, and was true to the traditions which affix to it in
that month the character of violence and moody changes, from bad
to worse and back again. The wind was sometimes dead against us,
and then the infelix Arabia with iron energy set to work, storming
great Malakhofs of water, which rose above her like the side
of some sward-coated hill crested with snow-drifts; and having
gained the summit, and settled for an instant among the hissing
sea-horses, ran plunging headlong down to the encounter of another
wave, and thus went battling on with heart of fire and breath of
flame--_igneus est ollis vigor_--hour after hour.
The traveller for pleasure had better avoid the Atlantic in the
month of March. The wind was sometimes with us, and then the
sensations of the passengers and the conduct of the ship were
pretty much as they had been during the adverse breezes before,
varied by the performance of a very violent “yawing” from side to
side, and certain squashings of the paddle-boxes into the yeasty
waters, which now ran a race with us and each other, as if bent on
chasing us down, and rolling their boarding parties with foaming
crests down on our decks. The boss, which we represented in the
stormy shield around us, still moved on; day by day our microcosm
shifted its position in the ever-advancing circle of which it was
the centre, with all around and within it ever undergoing a sea
change.
The Americans on board were, of course, the most interesting
passengers to one like myself, who was going out to visit the
great Republic under very peculiar circumstances. There was,
first, Major Garnett, a Virginian, who was going back to his State
to follow her fortunes. He was an officer of the regular army of
the United States, who had served with distinction in Mexico; an
accomplished, well-read man; reserved, and rather gloomy; full of
the doctrine of States’ Rights, and animated with a considerable
feeling of contempt for the New Englanders, and with the strongest
prejudices in favour of the institution of slavery. He laughed to
scorn the doctrine that all men are born equal in the sense of all
men having equal rights. Some were born to be slaves--some to be
labourers in the lower strata above the slaves--others to follow
useful mechanical arts--the rest were born to rule and to own their
fellow-men. There was next a young Carolinian, who had left his
post as attaché at St. Petersburgh to return to his State: thus,
in all probability, avoiding the inevitable supercession which
awaited him at the hands of the new Government at Washington. He
represented, in an intensified form, all the Virginian’s opinions,
and held that Mr. Calhoun’s interpretation of the Constitution
was incontrovertibly right. There were difficulties in the way of
State sovereignty, he confessed; but they were only in detail--the
principle was unassailable.
To Mr. Mitchell, South Carolina represented a power quite
sufficient to meet all the Northern States in arms. “The North will
attempt to blockade our coast,” said he; “and in that case, the
South must march to the attack by land, and will probably act in
Virginia.” “But if the North attempts to do more than institute a
blockade?--for instance, if their fleet attack your seaport towns,
and land men to occupy them?” “Oh, in that case, we are quite
certain of beating them.” Mr. Julian Mitchell was indignant at the
idea of submitting to the rule of a “rail-splitter,” and of such
men as Seward and Cameron. “No gentleman could tolerate such a
Government.”
An American family from Nashville, consisting of a lady and her son
and daughter, were warm advocates of a “gentlemanly” government,
and derided the Yankees with great bitterness. But they were by
no means as ready to encounter the evils of war, or to break up
the Union, as the South Carolinian or the Virginian; and in that
respect they represented, I was told, the negative feelings of the
Border States, which are disposed to a temporising, moderate course
of action, most distasteful to the passionate seceders.
There were also two Louisiana sugar-planters on board--one owning
500 slaves, the other rich in some thousands of acres; they seemed
to care very little for the political aspects of the question of
Secession, and regarded it merely in reference to its bearing on
the sugar crop, and the security of slave property. Secession was
regarded by them as a very extreme and violent measure, to which
the State had resorted with reluctance; but it was obvious, at
the same time, that, in event of a general secession of the Slave
States from the North, Louisiana could neither have maintained her
connection with the North, nor have stood in isolation from her
sister States.
All these, and some others who were fellow-passengers, might be
termed Americans--_pur sang_. Garnett belonged to a very old family
in Virginia. Mitchell came from a stock of several generations’
residence in South Carolina. The Tennessee family were, in speech
and thought, types of what Europeans consider true Americans
to be. Now take the other side. First there was an exceedingly
intelligent, well-informed young merchant of New York--nephew of
an English county Member, known for his wealth, liberality, and
munificence. Educated at a university in the Northern States, he
had lived a good deal in England, and was returning to his father
from a course of book-keeping in the house of his uncle’s firm in
Liverpool. His father and uncle were born near Coleraine, and he
had just been to see the humble dwelling, close to the Giant’s
Causeway, which sheltered their youth, and where their race was
cradled. In the war of 1812, the brothers were about sailing in a
privateer fitted out to prey against the British, when accident
fixed one of them in Liverpool, where he founded the house which
has grown so greatly with the development of trade between New York
and Lancashire, whilst the other settled in the States. Without
being violent in tone, the young Northerner was very resolute in
temper, and determined to do all which lay in his power to prevent
the “glorious Union” being broken up.
The “Union” has thus founded on two continents a family of princely
wealth, whose originals had probably fought with bitterness in
their early youth against the union of Great Britain and Ireland.
But did Mr. Brown, or the other Americans who shared his views,
unreservedly approve of American institutions, and consider them
faultless? By no means. The New Yorkers especially were eloquent
on the evils of the suffrage, and of the licence of the Press in
their own city; and displayed much irritation on the subject of
naturalisation. The Irish were useful, in their way, making roads
and working hard, for there were few Americans who condescended
to manual labour, or who could not make far more money in higher
kinds of work; but it was absurd to give the Irish votes which
they used to destroy the influence of native-born citizens, and to
sustain a corporation and local bodies of unsurpassable turpitude,
corruption, and inefficiency.
Another young merchant, a college friend of the former, was just
returning from a tour in Europe with his amiable sister. His
father was the son of an Irish immigrant, but he did not at all
differ from the other gentlemen of his city in the estimate in
which he held the Irish element; and though he had no strong bias
one way or other, he was quite resolved to support the abstraction
called the Union, and its representative fact--the Federal
Government. Thus the agriculturist and the trader--the grower of
raw produce and the merchant who dealt in it--were at opposite
sides of the question--wide apart as the Northern and Southern
Poles. They sat apart, ate apart, talked apart--two distinct
nations, with intense antipathies on the part of the South, which
was active and aggressive in all its demonstrations.
The Southerners have got a strange charge de plus against the
Irish. It appears that the regular army of the United States is
mainly composed of Irish and Germans; very few Americans indeed
being low enough, or martially disposed enough, to “take the
shilling.” In case of a conflict, which these gentlemen think
inevitable, “low Irish mercenaries would,” they say, “be pitted
against the gentlemen of the South, and the best blood in the
States would be spilled by fellows whose lives are worth nothing
whatever.” Poor Paddy is regarded as a mere working machine, fit,
at best, to serve against Choctaws and Seminoles. His facility of
reproduction has to compensate for the waste which is caused by the
development in his unhappy head of the organs of combativeness and
destructiveness. Certainly, if the war is to be carried on by the
United States’ regulars, the Southern States will soon dispose of
them, for they do not number 20,000 men, and their officers are not
much in love with the new Government. But can it come to War? Mr.
Mitchell assures me I shall see some “pretty tall fighting.”
The most vehement Northerners in the steamer are Germans, who are
going to the States for the first time, or returning there. They
have become satisfied, no doubt, by long process of reasoning,
that there is some anomaly in the condition of a country which
calls itself the land of liberty, and is at the same time the
potent palladium of serfdom and human chattelry. When they are not
sea-sick, which is seldom, the Teutons rise up in all the might
of their misery and dirt, and, making spasmodic efforts to smoke,
blurt out between the puffs, or in moody intervals, sundry remarks
on American politics. “These are the swine,” quoth Garnett, “who
are swept out of German gutters as too foul for them, and who
come over to the States and presume to control the fate and the
wishes of our people. In their own country they proved they were
incapable of either earning a living, or exercising the duties of
citizenship; and they seek in our country a licence denied them in
their own, and the means of living which they could not acquire
anywhere else.”
And for myself I may truly say this, that no man ever set foot on
the soil of the United States with a stronger and sincerer desire
to ascertain and to tell the truth, as it appeared to him. I had
no theories to uphold, no prejudices to subserve, no interests to
advance, no instructions to fulfil; I was a free agent, bound to
communicate to the powerful organ of public opinion I represented,
my own daily impressions of the men, scenes, and actions around
me, without fear, favour, or affection of or for anything but that
which seemed to me to be the truth. As to the questions which were
distracting the States, my mind was a _tabula rasa_, or, rather,
_tabula non scripta_. I felt indisposed to view with favour a
rebellion against one of the established and recognised governments
of the world, which, though not friendly to Great Britain, nor
opposed to slavery, was without, so far as I could see, any
legitimate cause of revolt, or any injury or grievance, perpetrated
or imminent, assailed by States still less friendly to us, which
the slave States, pure and simple, certainly were and probably are.
At the same time, I knew that these were grounds which I could
justly take, whilst they would not be tenable by an American, who
is by the theory on which he revolted from us and created his own
system of government, bound to recognise the principle that the
discontent of the popular majority with its rulers, is ample ground
and justification for revolution.
It was on the morning of the fourteenth day that the shores of New
York loomed through the drift of a cold wintry sea, leaden-grey
and comfortless, and in a little time more the coast, covered with
snow, rose in sight. Towards the afternoon the sun came out and
brightened the waters and the sails of the pretty trim schooners
and coasters which were dancing around us. How different the
graceful, tautly-rigged, clean, white-sailed vessels from the
round-sterned, lumpish billyboys and nondescripts of the eastern
coast of our isle! Presently there came bowling down towards us a
lively little schooner-yacht, very like the once famed “America,”
brightly painted in green, sails dazzling white, lofty ponderous
masts, no tops. As she came nearer, we saw she was crowded with
men in chimney-pot black hats, and coats, and the like--perhaps a
party of citizens on pleasure, cold as the day was. Nothing of the
kind. The craft was our pilot-boat, and the hats and coats belonged
to the hardy mariners who act as guides to the port of New York.
Their boat was lowered, and was soon under our mainchains; and a
chimney-pot hat having duly come over the side, delivered a mass of
newspapers to the captain, which were distributed among the eager
passengers, when each at once became the centre of a spell-bound
circle.