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.
_May 8th._ I tried to write, as I have taken my place in the
steamer to Mobile to-morrow, and I was obliged to do my best in
a room full of people, constantly disturbed by visitors. Early
this morning, as usual, my faithful Wigfall comes in and sits by
my bedside, and passing his hands through his locks, pours out
his ideas with wonderful lucidity and odd affectation of logic
all his own. “We are a peculiar people, sir! You don’t understand
us, and you can’t understand us, because we are known to you
only by Northern writers and Northern papers, who know nothing
of us themselves, or misrepresent what they do know. We are an
agricultural people; we are a primitive but a civilised people.
We have no cities--we don’t want them. We have no literature--we
don’t need any yet. We have no press--we are glad of it. We do
not require a press, because we go out and discuss all public
questions from the stump with our people. We have no commercial
marine--no navy--we don’t want them. We are better without them.
Your ships carry our produce, and you can protect your own vessels.
We want no manufactures: we desire no trading, no mechanical or
manufacturing classes. As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our
tobacco, and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we
want from those nations with which we are in amity, and to lay up
money besides. But with the Yankees we will never trade--never.
Not one pound of cotton shall ever go from the South to their
accursed cities; not one ounce of their steel or their manufactures
shall ever cross our border.” And so on. What the Senator who is
preparing a bill for drafting the people into the army fears is,
that the North will begin active operations before the South is
ready for resistance. “Give us till November to drill our men, and
we shall be irresistible.” He deprecates any offensive movement,
and is opposed to an attack on Washington, which many journals here
advocate.
Mr. Walker sent me over a letter recommending me to all officers
of the Confederate States, and I received an invitation from the
President to dine with him to-morrow, which I was much chagrined
to be obliged to refuse. In fact, it is most important to complete
my Southern tour speedily, as all mail communication will soon be
suspended from the South, and the blockade effectually cuts off any
communication by sea. Rails torn up, bridges broken, telegraphs
down--trains searched--the war is begun. The North is pouring its
hosts to the battle, and it has met the pæans of the conquering
Charlestonians with a universal yell of indignation and an oath of
vengeance.
I expressed a belief in a letter, written a few days after my
arrival (March 27th), that the South would never go back into the
Union. The North think that they can coerce the South, and I am
not prepared to say they are right or wrong; but I am convinced
that the South can only be forced back by such a conquest as that
which laid Poland prostrate at the feet of Russia. It may be
that such a conquest can be made by the North, but success must
destroy the Union as it has been constituted in times past. A
strong Government must be the logical consequence of victory, and
the triumph of the South will be attended by a similar result,
for which, indeed, many Southerners are very well-disposed. To
the people of the Confederate States there would be no terror in
such an issue, for it appears to me they are pining for a strong
Government exceedingly. The North must accept it, whether they like
it or not.
Neither party--if such a term can be applied to the rest of the
United States, and to those States which disclaim the authority
of the Federal Government--was prepared for the aggressive or
resisting power of the other. Already the Confederate States
perceive that they cannot carry all before them with a rush, while
the North have learnt that they must put forth all their strength
to make good a tithe of their lately uttered threats. But the
Montgomery Government are anxious to gain time, and to prepare
a regular army. The North, distracted by apprehensions of vast
disturbance in their complicated relations, are clamouring for
instant action and speedy consummation. The counsels of moderate
men, as they were called, have been utterly overruled.
The whole foundation on which South Carolina rests is cotton and
a certain amount of rice; or rather she bases her whole fabric on
the necessity which exists in Europe for those products of her
soil, believing and asserting, as she does, that England and France
cannot and will not do without them. Cotton, without a market, is
so much flocculent matter encumbering the ground. Rice, without
demand for it, is unsaleable grain in store and on the field.
Cotton at ten cents a pound is boundless prosperity, empire and
superiority, and rice or grain need no longer be regarded.
In the matter of slave-labour, South Carolina argues pretty much
in the following manner: England and France (she says) require
our products. In order to meet their wants, we must cultivate our
soil. There is only one way of doing so. The white man cannot live
on our land at certain seasons of the year; he cannot work in the
manner required by the crops. He must, therefore, employ a race
suited to the labour, and that is a race which will only work when
it is obliged to do so. That race was imported from Africa, under
the sanction of the law, by our ancestors, when we were a British
colony, and it has been fostered by us, so that its increase here
has been as great as that of the most flourishing people in the
world. In other places, where its labour was not productive or
imperatively essential, that race has been made free, sometimes
with disastrous consequences to itself and to industry. But we
will not make it free. We cannot do so. We hold that slavery is
essential to our existence as producers of what Europe requires;
nay more, we maintain it is in the abstract right in principle; and
some of us go so far as to maintain that the only proper form of
society, according to the law of God and the exigencies of man, is
that which has slavery as its basis. As to the slave, he is happier
far in his state of servitude, more civilised and religious, than
he is or could be if free or in his native Africa. For this system
we will fight to the end.
In the evening I paid farewell visits, and spent an hour with Mr.
Toombs, who is unquestionably one of the most original, quaint, and
earnest of the Southern leaders, and whose eloquence and power as
a debater are greatly esteemed by his countrymen. He is something
of an Anglo-maniac, and an Anglo-phobist--a combination not
unusual in America--that is, he is proud of being connected with
and descended from respectable English families, and admires our
mixed constitution, whilst he is an enemy to what is called English
policy, and is a strong pro-slavery champion. Wigfall and he are
very uneasy about the scant supply of gunpowder in the Southern
States, and the difficulty of obtaining it.
In the evening had a little reunion in the bed-room as before.--Mr.
Wigfall, Mr. Keitt, an eminent Southern politician, Col. Pickett,
Mr. Browne, Mr. Benjamin, Mr. George Sanders, and others. The
last-named gentleman was dismissed or recalled from his post at
Liverpool, because he fraternised with Mazzini and other Red
Republicans _à ce qu’ on dit_. Here he is a slavery man, and a
friend of an oligarchy. Your “Rights of Man” man is often most
inconsistent with himself, and is generally found associated with
the men of force and violence.
_May 9th._--My faithful Wigfall was good enough to come in early,
in order to show me some comments on my letters in the “New York
Times.” It appears the papers are angry because I said that New
York was apathetic when I landed, and they try to prove I was
wrong by showing there was a “glorious outburst of Union feeling,”
after the news of the fall of Sumter. But I now know that the very
apathy of which I spoke was felt by the Government of Washington,
and was most weakening and embarrassing to them. What would not
the value of “the glorious outburst” have been, had it taken place
_before_ the Charleston batteries had opened on Sumter--when the
Federal flag, for example, was fired on, flying from the ‘Star of
the West,’ or when Beauregard cut off supplies, or Bragg threatened
Pickens, or the first shovel of earth was thrown up in hostile
battery? But no! New York was then engaged in discussing State
rights, and in reading articles to prove the new Government would
be traitors if they endeavoured to reinforce the Federal forts, or
were perusing leaders in favour of the Southern Government. Haply,
they may remember one, not so many weeks old, in which the “New
York Herald” compared Jeff Davis and his Cabinet to the “Great
Rail Splitter,” and Seward, and Chase, and came to the conclusion
that the former “were gentlemen”--(a matter of which it is quite
incompetent to judge)--“and would, and ought to succeed.” The
glorious outburst of “Union feeling” which threatened to demolish
the “Herald” office, has created a most wonderful change in the
views of the proprietor, whose diverse-eyed vision is now directed
solely to the beauties of the Union, and whose faith is expressed
in “a hearty adhesion to the Government of our country.” New York
must pay the penalty of its indifference, and bear the consequences
of listening to such counsellors.
Mr. Deasy, much dilapidated, returned about twelve o’clock from
his planter, who was drunk when he went over, and would not let
him go to the beaver-dam. To console him, the planter stayed
up all night drinking, and waking him up at intervals, that he
might refresh him with a glass of whisky. This man was well off,
owned land, and a good stock of slaves, but he must have been a
“mean white,” who had raised himself in the world. He lived in a
three-roomed wooden cabin, and in one of the rooms he kept his wife
shut up from the strangers’ gaze. One of his negroes was unwell,
and he took Deasy to see him. The result of his examination was,
“Nigger! I guess you won’t live more than an hour.” His diagnosis
was quite correct.
Before my departure I had a little farewell levée--Mr. Toombs, Mr.
Browne, Mr. Benjamin, Mr. Walker, Major Deas, Colonel Pickett,
Major Calhoun, Captain Ripley, and others--who were exceedingly
kind with letters of introduction and offers of service. Dined as
usual on a composite dinner--Southern meat and poultry bad--at
three o’clock, and at four P.M. drove down to the steep banks of
the Alabama River, where the castle-like hulk of the “Southern
Republic” was waiting to receive us. I bade good-by to Montgomery
without regret. The native people were not very attractive, and the
city has nothing to make up for their deficiency, but of my friends
there I must always retain pleasant memories, and, indeed, I hope
some day I shall be able to keep my promise to return and see more
of the Confederate ministers and their chief.