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.
_May Day._--Not unworthy of the best effort of English fine weather
before the change in the kalendar robbed the poets of twelve days,
but still a little warm for choice. The young American artist
Moses, who was to have called our party to meet the officers who
were going to Fort Pulaski, for some reason known to himself
remained on board the Camilla, and when at last we got down to the
river-side I found Commodore Tatnall and Brigadier Lawton in full
uniform waiting for me.
The river is about the width of the Thames below Gravesend, very
muddy, with a strong current, and rather fetid. That effect might
have been produced from the rice-swamps at the other side of it,
where the land is quite low, and stretches away as far as the sea
in one level green, smooth as a billiard-cloth. The bank at the
city side is higher, so that the houses stand on a little eminence
over the stream, affording convenient wharfage and slips for
merchant vessels.
Of these there were few indeed visible--nearly all had cleared out
for fear of the blockade; some coasting vessels were lying idle at
the quayside, and in the middle of the stream near a floating dock
the Camilla was moored, with her club ensign flying. These are the
times for bold ventures, and if Uncle Sam is not very quick with
his blockades, there will be plenty of privateers and the like
under C. S. A. colours looking out for his fat merchantmen all over
the world.
I have been trying to persuade my friends here they will find very
few Englishmen willing to take letters of marque and reprisal.
The steamer which was waiting to receive us had the Confederate
flag flying, and Commodore Tatnall, pointing to a young officer
in a naval uniform, told me he had just “come over from the other
side,” and that he had pressed hard to be allowed to hoist a
Commodore or flag-officer’s ensign in honour of the visit and of
the occasion. I was much interested in the fine white-headed,
blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked old man--who suddenly found himself blown
into the air by a great political explosion, and in doubt and
wonderment was floating to shore, under a strange flag in unknown
waters. He was full of anecdote too, as to strange flags in distant
waters and well-known names. The gentry of Savannah had a sort of
Celtic feeling towards him in regard of his old name, and seemed
determined to support him.
He has served the Stars and Stripes for three-fourths of a long
life--his friends are in the North, his wife’s kindred are there,
and so are all his best associations--but his State has gone out.
How could he fight against the country that gave him birth! The
United States is no country, in the sense we understand the words.
It is a corporation or a body corporate for certain purposes, and
a man might as well call himself a native of the common council
of the city of London, or a native of the Swiss Diet, in the
estimation of our Americans, as say he is a citizen of the United
States; though it answers very well to say so when he is abroad, or
for purposes of a legal character.
Of Fort Pulaski itself I wrote on my return a long account to the
“Times.”
When I was venturing to point out to General Lawton the weakness of
Fort Pulaski, placed as it is in low land, accessible to boats, and
quite open enough for approaches from the city side, he said, “Oh,
that is true enough. All our sea-coast works are liable to that
remark, but the Commodore will take care of the Yankees at sea, and
we shall manage them on land.” These people all make a mistake in
referring to the events of the old war. “We beat off the British
fleet at Charleston by the militia--ergo, we’ll sink the Yankees
now.” They do not understand the nature of the new shell and heavy
vertical fire, or the effect of projectiles from great distances
falling into open works. The Commodore afterwards, smiling,
remarked, “I have no fleet. Long before the Southern Confederacy
has a fleet that can cope with the Stars and Stripes my bones will
be white in the grave.”
We got back by eight o’clock P.M., after a pleasant day. What I saw
did not satisfy me that Pulaski was strong, or Savannah very safe.
At Bonaventure yesterday I saw a poor fort called “Thunderbolt,”
on an inlet from which the city was quite accessible. It could be
easily menaced from that point, while attempts at landing were
made elsewhere as soon as Pulaski was reduced. At dinner met a very
strong and very well-informed Southerner--there are some who are
neither--or either--whose name was spelled Gourdin and pronounced
Go-dine--just as Huger is called Hugée--and Tagliaferro, Telfer in
these parts.
_May 2nd._--Breakfasted with Mr. Hodgson, where I met Mr. Locke,
Mr. Ward, Mr. Green and Mrs. Hodgson and her sister. There were in
attendance some good-looking little negro boys and men dressed in
liveries, which smacked of our host’s Orientalism, and they must
have heard our discussion, or rather allusion, to the question
which would decide whether we thought they are human beings or
black two-legged cattle, with some interest, unless indeed the
boast of their masters, that slavery elevates the character and
civilises the mind of a negro, is another of the false pretences
on which the institution is rested by its advocates. The native
African, poor wretch, avoids being carried into slavery _totis
viribus_, and it would argue ill for the effect on his mind of
becoming a slave if he prefers a piece of gaudy calico even to his
loin-cloth and feather head-dress. This question of civilising
the African in slavery is answered in the assertion of the
slave-owners themselves, that if the negroes were left to their
own devices by emancipation, they would become the worst sort of
barbarians--a veritable Quasheedom, the like of which was never
thought of by Mr. Thomas Carlyle. I doubt if the aboriginal is
not as civilised, in the true sense of the word, as any negro,
after three degrees of descent in servitude, whom I have seen on
any of the plantations--even though the latter have leather shoes
and fustian or cloth raiment, and felt hat, and sings about the
Jordan. He is exempted from any bloody raid indeed, but he is
liable to be carried from his village and borne from one captivity
to another, and his family are exposed to the same exile in America
as in Africa. The extreme anger with which any unfavourable comment
is met publicly, shows the sensitiveness of the slave-owners.
Privately, they affect philosophy; and the blue books, and reports
of Education Commissions and Mining Committees, furnish them with
an inexhaustible source of argument if you once admit that the
_summum bonum_ lies in a certain rotundity of person, and a regular
supply of coarse food. A long conversation on the old topics--old
to me, but of only a few weeks’ birth. People are swimming with the
tide. Here are many men who would willingly stand aside if they
could, and see the battle between the Yankees, whom they hate, and
the Secessionists. But there are no women in this party. Woe betide
the Northern Pyrrhus whose head is within reach of a Southern tile
and a Southern woman’s arm!
I re-visited some of the big houses afterwards, and found the
merchants not cheerful, but fierce and resolute. There is a
considerable population of Irish and Germans in Savannah, who
to a man are in favour of the Confederacy, and will fight to
support it. Indeed, it is expected they will do so, and there is
a pressure brought to bear on them by their employers which they
cannot well resist. The negroes will be forced into the place the
whites hitherto occupied as labourers--only a few useful mechanics
will be kept, and the white population will be obliged by a moral
force draughting to go to the wars. The kingdom of cotton is most
essentially of this world, and it will be fought for vigorously.
On the quays of Savannah, and in the warehouses, there is not a
man who doubts that he ought to strike his hardest for it, or
apprehends failure. And then, what a career is before them! All
the world asking for cotton, and England dependent on it. What a
change since Whitney first set his cotton gin to work in this state
close by us! Georgia, as a vast country only partially reclaimed,
yet looks to a magnificent future. In her past history the Florida
wars, and the treatment of the unfortunate Cherokee Indians, who
were expelled from their lands as late as 1838, show the people who
descended from old Oglethorpe’s band were fierce and tyrannical,
and apt at aggression, nor will slavery improve them. I do not
speak of the cultivated and hospitable citizens of the large towns,
but of the bulk of the slaveless whites.
_May 3rd._--I bade good-by to Mr. Green, who with several of his
friends came down to see me off, at the terminus or “depôt” of
the Central Railway, on my way to Montgomery--and looked my last
on Savannah, its squares and leafy streets, its churches, and
institutes with a feeling of regret that I could not see more of
them, and that I was forced to be content with the outer aspect
of the public buildings. I had been serenaded and invited out in
all directions, asked to visit plantations and big trees, to make
excursions to famous or beautiful spots, and specially warned not
to leave the State without visiting the mountain district in the
northern and western portion; but the march of events called me to
Montgomery.
From Savannah to Macon, 191 miles, the road passes through level
country only partially cleared. That is, there are patches of
forest still intruding on the green fields, where the jagged black
teeth of the destroyed trees rise from above the maize and cotton.
There were but few negroes visible at work, nor did the land appear
rich, but I was told the rail was laid along the most barren part
of the country. The Indians had roamed in these woods little more
than twenty years ago--now the wooden huts of the planters’ slaves
and the larger edifice with its verandah and timber colonnade stood
in the place of their wigwam.
Among the passengers to whom I was introduced was the Bishop of
Georgia, the Rev. Mr. Elliott, a man of exceeding fine presence, of
great stature, and handsome face, with a manner easy and graceful,
but we got on the unfortunate subject of slavery, and I rather
revolted at hearing a Christian prelate advocating the institution
on scriptural grounds.
This affectation of Biblical sanction and ordinance as the basis of
slavery was not new to me, though it is not much known at the other
side of the Atlantic. I had read in a work on slavery, that it was
permitted by both the Scriptures and the Constitution of the United
States, and that it must, therefore, be doubly right. A nation that
could approve of such interpretations of the Scriptures and at the
same time read the “New York Herald,” seemed ripe for destruction
as a corporate existence. The _malum prohibitum_ was the only evil
its crass senses could detect, and the _malum per se_ was its good,
if it only came covered with cotton or gold. The miserable sophists
who expose themselves to the contempt of the world by their paltry
thesicles on the divine origin and uses of slavery, are infinitely
more contemptible than the wretched bigots who published themes
long ago on the propriety of burning witches, or on the necessity
for the offices of the Inquisition.
Whenever the Southern Confederacy shall achieve its
independence--no matter what its resources, its allies, or its
aims--it will have to stand face to face with civilized Europe
on this question of slavery, and the strength which it derived
from the ægis of the Constitution--“the league with the devil and
covenant with Hell”--will be withered and gone.
I am well aware of the danger of drawing summary conclusions
off-hand from the windows of a railway, but there is also a
right of sight which exists under all circumstances, and so one
can determine if a man’s face be dirty as well from a glance as
if he inspected it for half an hour. For instance, no one can
doubt the evidence of his senses, when he sees from the windows
of the carriages that the children are barefooted, shoeless,
stockingless--that the people who congregate at the wooden huts and
grog-shops of the stations are rude, unkempt, but great fighting
material too--that the villages are miserable places, compared
with the trim, snug settlements one saw in New Jersey from the
carriage-windows. Slaves in the fields looked happy enough--but
their masters certainly were rough-looking and uncivilised--and the
land was but badly cleared. But then we were traversing the least
fertile portions of the State--a recent acquirement--gained only
one generation since.
The train halted at a snug little wood-embowered restaurant,
surrounded by trellis and lattice-work, and in the midst of
a pretty garden, which presented a marked contrast to the
“surroundings” we had seen. The dinner, served by slaves, was good
of its kind, and the charge not high. On tendering the landlord a
piece of gold for payment, he looked at it with disgust, and asked,
“Have you no Charleston money? No Confederate notes?” “Well, no!
Why do you object to gold?” “Well, do you see, I’d rather have our
own paper! I don’t care to take any of the United States’ gold. I
don’t want their stars and their eagles; I hate the sight of them.”
The man was quite sincere--my companion gave him notes of some
South Carolina bank.
It was dark when the train reached Macon, one of the principal
cities of the State. We drove to the best hotel, but the regular
time for dinner hour was over, and that for supper not yet come.
The landlord directed us to a subterranean restaurant, in which
were a series of crypts closed in by dirty curtains, where we
made a very extraordinary repast, served by a half-clad little
negress, who watched us at the meal with great interest through the
curtains--the service was of the coarsest description; thick French
earthenware, the spoons of pewter, the knives and forks steel or
iron, with scarce a pretext of being cleaned. On the doors were
the usual warnings against pickpockets, and the customary internal
police regulations and ukases. Pickpockets and gamblers abound in
American cities, and thrive greatly at the large hotels and the
lines of railways.