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.
_May 18th._--An exceedingly hot day, which gives bad promise of
comfort for the Federal soldiers, who are coming, as the Washington
Government asserts, to put down rebellion in these quarters. The
mosquitos are advancing in numbers and force. The day I first
came I asked the waiter if they were numerous. “I wish they were
a hundred times as many,” said he. On inquiring if he had any
possible reason for such an extraordinary aspiration, he said,
“because we would get rid of these darned black republicans out of
Fort Pickens all the sooner.” The man seemed to infer they would
not bite the Confederate soldiers.
I dined at Dr. Nott’s, and met Judge Campbell, who has resigned
his high post as one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the
United States, and explained his reasons for doing so in a letter,
charging Mr. Seward with treachery, dissimulation, and falsehood.
He seemed to me a great casuist rather than a profound lawyer,
and to delight in subtle distinctions and technical abstractions;
but I had the advantage of hearing from him at great length the
whole history of the Dred Scot case, and a recapitulation of the
arguments used on both sides, the force of which, in his opinion,
was irresistibly in favour of the decision of the Court. Mr.
Forsyth, Colonel Hardee, and others were of the company.
To me it was very painful to hear a sweet ringing silvery voice,
issuing from a very pretty mouth, “I’m so delighted to hear that
the Yankees in Fortress Monroe have got typhus fever. I hope it may
kill them all.” This was said by one of the most charming young
persons possible, and uttered with unmistakeable sincerity, just
as if she had said, “I hear all the snakes in Virginia are dying
of poison.” I fear the young lady did not think very highly of me
for refusing to sympathise with her wishes in that particular form.
But all the ladies in Mobile belong to “The Yankee Emancipation
Society.” They spend their days sewing cartridges, carding lint,
preparing bandages, and I’m not quite sure that they don’t fill
shells and fuses as well. Their zeal and energy will go far to
sustain the South in the forthcoming struggle, and nowhere is the
influence of women greater than in America.
As to Dr. Nott, his studies have induced him to take a purely
materialist view of the question of slavery, and, according
to him, questions of morals and ethics, pertaining to its
consideration, ought to be referred to the cubic capacity of
the human cranium--the head that can take the largest charge of
snipe shot will eventually dominate in some form or other over
the head of inferior capacity. Dr. Nott detests slavery, but he
does not see what is to be done with the slaves, and how the four
millions of negroes are to be prevented from becoming six, eight,
or ten millions, if their growth is stimulated by high prices for
Southern produce.
There is a good deal of force in the observation which I have
heard more than once down here, that Great Britain could not have
emancipated her negroes had they been dwelling within her border,
say in Lancashire or Yorkshire. No inconvenience was experienced
by the English people _per se_ in consequence of the emancipation,
which for the time destroyed industry and shook society to pieces
in Jamaica. Whilst the States were colonies, Great Britain viewed
the introduction of slaves to such remote dependencies with
satisfaction, and when the United States had established their
sovereignty they found the institution of slavery established
within their own borders, and an important, if not essential,
stratum in their social system. The work of emancipation would have
then been comparatively easy, it now is a stupendous problem which
no human being has offered to solve.
_May 19th._--The heat out of doors was so great that I felt
little tempted to stir out, but at 2 o’clock Mr. Magee drove me
to a pretty place, called Spring Hill, where Mr. Stein, a German
merchant of the city, has his country residence. The houses of
Mobile merchants are scattered around the rising ground in that
vicinity; they look like marble at a distance, but a nearer
approach resolves them into painted wood. Stone is almost unknown
on all this seaboard region. The worthy German was very hospitable,
and I enjoyed a cool walk before dinner under the shade of his
grapes, which formed pleasant walks in his garden. The Scuppernung
grape, which grew in profusion--a native of North Carolina--has
a remarkable appearance. The stalk, which is smooth, and covered
with a close grained grey bark, has not the character of a vine,
but grows straight and stiff like the branch of a tree, and is
crowded with delicious grapes. Cherokee plum and rose-trees, and
magnificent magnolias, clustered round his house, and beneath their
shadow I listened to the worthy German comparing the Fatherland to
his adopted country, and now and then letting out the secret love
of his heart for the old place. He, like all of the better classes
in the South, has the utmost dread of universal suffrage, and would
restrict the franchise largely to-morrow if he could.
_May 20._--I left Mobile in the steamer Florida for New Orleans
this morning at eight o’clock. She was crowded with passengers,
in uniform. In my cabin was a notice of the rules and regulations
of the steamer. No. 6 was as follows: “All slave servants must be
cleared at the Custom House. Passengers having slaves will please
report as soon as they come on board.”
A few miles from Mobile the steamer, turning to the right, entered
one of the narrow channels which perforate the whole of the
coast, called “Grant’s Pass.” An ingenious person has rendered it
navigable by an artificial cut; but as he was not an universal
philanthropist, and possibly may have come from north of the
Tweed, he further erected a series of barriers, which can only be
cleared by means of a little pepper-castor iron lighthouse; and he
charges toll on all passing vessels. A small island at the pass,
just above water-level, about twenty yards broad and one hundred
and fifty yards long, was being fortified. Some of our military
friends landed here; and it required a good deal of patriotism to
look cheerfully at the prospect of remaining cooped up among the
mosquitos in a box, on this miserable sand-bank, which a shell
would suffice to blow into atoms.
Having passed this channel, our steamer proceeded up a kind of
internal sea, formed by the shore, on the right hand and on the
left by a chain almost uninterrupted of reefs covered with sand,
and exceedingly narrow, so that the surf of the ocean rollers at
the other side could be seen through the foliage of the pine trees
which line them. On our right the endless pines closed up the
land view of the horizon; the beach was pierced by creeks without
number, called bayous; and it was curious to watch the white sails
of the little schooners gliding in and out among the trees along
the green meadows that seemed to stretch as an impassable barrier
to their exit. Immense troops of pelicans flapped over the sea,
dropping incessantly on the fish which abounded in the inner water;
and long rows of the same birds stood digesting their plentiful
meals on the white beach by the ocean foam.
There was some anxiety in the passengers’ minds, as it was reported
that the United States’ cruisers had been seen inside, and that
they had even burned the batteries on Ship Island. We saw nothing
of a character more formidable than coasting craft and a return
steamer from New Orleans till we approached the entrance to
Pontchartrain, when a large schooner, which sailed like a witch and
was crammed with men, attracted our attention. Through the glass I
could make out two guns on her deck, and quite reason enough for
any well-filled merchantman sailing under the Stars and Stripes to
avoid her close companionship.
The approach to New Orleans is indicated by large hamlets and
scattered towns along the sea-shore, hid in the piney woods, which
offer a retreat to the merchants and their families from the fervid
heat of the unwholesome city in summer time. As seen from the sea,
these sanitary settlements have a picturesque effect, and an air
of charming freshness and lightness. There are detached villas of
every variety of architecture in which timber can be constructed,
painted in the brightest hues--greens, and blues, and rose
tints--each embowered in magnolias and rhododendrons. From every
garden a very long and slender pier, terminated by a bathing-box,
stretches into the shallow sea; and the general aspect of these
houses, with the light domes and spires of churches rising above
the lines of white railings set in the dark green of the pines, is
light and novel. To each of these cities there is a jetty, at two
of which we touched, and landed newspapers, received or discharged
a few bales of goods, and were off again.
Of the little crowd assembled on each, the majority were
blacks--the whites, almost without exception, in uniform, and
armed. A nearer approach did not induce me to think that any
agencies less powerful than epidemics and summer-heats could render
Pascagoula, Passchristian, Mississippi City, and the rest of these
settlements very eligible residences for people of an active turn
of mind.
The live-long day my fellow-passengers never ceased talking
politics, except when they were eating and drinking, because the
horrible chewing and spitting are not at all incompatible with
the maintenance of active discussion. The fiercest of them all was
a thin, fiery-eyed little woman, who at dinner expressed a fervid
desire for bits of “Old Abe”--his ear, his hair; but whether for
the purpose of eating or as curious reliques, she did not enlighten
the company.
After dinner there was some slight difficulty among the military
gentlemen, though whether of a political or personal character, I
could not determine; but it was much aggravated by the appearance
of a six-shooter on the scene, which, to my no small perturbation,
was presented in a right line with my berth, out of the window
of which I was looking at the combatants. I am happy to say
the immediate delivery of the fire was averted by an amicable
arrangement that the disputants should meet at the St. Charles
Hotel at 12 o’clock on the second day after their arrival, in order
to fix time, place, and conditions of a more orthodox and regular
encounter.
At night the steamer entered a dismal canal, through a swamp which
is infamous as the most mosquito haunted place along the infested
shore; the mouths of the Mississippi themselves being quite
innocent, compared to the entrance of Lake Pontchartrain. When I
woke up at daylight, I found the vessel lying alongside a wharf
with a railway train alongside, which is to take us to the city of
New Orleans, six miles distant.
A village of restaurants or “restaurats,” as they are called here,
and of bathing boxes has grown up around the terminus; all the
names of the owners, the notices and sign-boards being French.
Outside the settlement the railroad passes through a swamp,
like an Indian jungle, through which the overflowings of the
Mississippi creep in black currents. The spires of New Orleans
rise above the underwood and semi-tropical vegetation of this
swamp. Nearer to the city lies a marshy plain, in which flocks of
cattle, up to the belly in the soft earth are floundering among the
clumps of vegetation. The nearer approach to New Orleans by rail
lies through a suburb of exceedingly broad lanes, lined on each
side by rows of miserable mean one-storied houses, inhabited, if
I am to judge from the specimens I saw, by a miserable and sickly
population.
A great number of the men and women had evident traces of negro
blood in their veins, and of the purer blooded whites many had
the peculiar look of the fishy-fleshy population of the Levantine
towns, and all were pale and lean. The railway terminus is marked
by a dirty, barrack-like shed in the city. Selecting one of the
numerous tumble-down hackney carriages which crowded the street
outside the station, I directed the man to drive me to the house of
Mr. Mure, the British consul, who had been kind enough to invite me
as his guest for the period of my stay in New Orleans.
The streets are badly paved, as those of most of the American
cities, if not all that I have ever been in, but in other respects
they are more worthy of a great city than are those of New York.
There is an air thoroughly French about the people--cafés,
restaurants, billiard-rooms abound, with oyster and lager-bier
saloons interspersed. The shops are all _magazins_; the people in
the streets are speaking French, particularly the negroes, who are
going out shopping with their masters and mistresses, exceedingly
well dressed, noisy, and not unhappy looking. The extent of the
drive gave an imposing idea of the size of New Orleans--the
richness of some of the shops, the vehicles in the streets and the
multitude of well-dressed people on the pavements, an impression
of its wealth and the comfort of the inhabitants. The Confederate
flag was flying from the public buildings and from many private
houses. Military companies paraded through the streets, and a large
proportion of men were in uniform.
In the day I drove through the city, delivered letters of
introduction, paid visits, and examined the shops and the public
places; but there is such a whirl of secession and politics
surrounding one it is impossible to discern much of the outer world.
Whatever may be the number of the unionists or of the
non-secessionists, a pressure too potent to be resisted has been
directed by the popular party against the friends of the Federal
government. The agent of Brown Brothers, of Liverpool and New York,
has closed their office and is going away in consequence of the
intimidation of the mob, or as the phrase is here, the “excitement
of the citizens,” on hearing of the subscription made by the firm
to the New York fund, after Sumter had been fired upon. Their agent
in Mobile has been compelled to adopt the same course. Other houses
follow their example, but as most business transactions are over
for the season, the mercantile community hope the contest will
be ended before the next season, by the recognition of Southern
independence.
The streets are full of Turcos, Zouaves, Chasseurs; walls are
covered with placards of volunteer companies there are Pickwick
rifles, La Fayette, Beauregard, MacMahon guards, Irish, German,
Italian and Spanish and native volunteers, among whom the Meagher
rifles, indignant with the gentleman from whom they took their
name, because of his adhesion to the North, are going to rebaptise
themselves and to seek glory under one more auspicious. In fact,
New Orleans looks like a suburb of the camp at Châlons. Tailors are
busy night and day making uniforms. I went into a shop with the
consul for some shirts--the mistress and all her seamstresses were
busy preparing flags as hard as the sewing machine could stitch
them, and could attend to no business for the present. The Irish
population, finding themselves unable to migrate Northwards, and
being without work, have rushed to arms with enthusiasm to support
Southern institutions, and Mr. John Mitchell and Mr. Meagher stand
opposed to each other in hostile camps.
_May 22nd._--The thermometer to-day marked 95° in the shade. It
is not to be wondered at that New Orleans suffers from terrible
epidemics. At the side of each street a filthy open sewer flows to
and fro with the tide in the blazing sun, and Mr. Mure tells me the
city lies so low that he has been obliged to go to his office in a
boat along the streets.
I sat for some time listening to the opinions of the various
merchants who came in to talk over the news and politics in
general. They were all persuaded that Great Britain would speedily
recognise the South, but I cannot find that any of them had
examined into the effects of such a recognition. One gentleman
seemed to think to-day that recognition meant forcing the blockade;
whereas it must, as I endeavoured to show him, merely lead to the
recognition of the rights of the United States to establish a
blockade of ports belonging to an independent and hostile nation.
There are some who maintain there will be no war after all; that
the North will not fight, and that the friends of the Southern
cause will recover their courage when this tyranny is over. No one
imagines the South will ever go back to the Union voluntarily, or
that the North has power to thrust it back at the point of the
bayonet.
The South has commenced preparations for the contest by sowing
grain instead of planting cotton, to compensate for the loss of
supplies from the North. The payment of debts to Northern creditors
is declared to be illegal, and “stay laws” have been adopted
in most of the seceding states, by which the ordinal laws for
the recovery of debts in the States themselves are for the time
suspended, which may lead one into the belief that the legislators
themselves belong to the debtor instead of the creditor class.
_May 23rd._--As the mail communication has been suspended between
North and South, and the Express Companies are ordered not to carry
letters, I sent off my packet of despatches to-day, by Mr. Ewell,
of the house of Dennistoun & Co.; and resumed my excursions through
New Orleans.
The young artist who is stopping at the St. Charles Hotel, came to
me in great agitation to say his life was in danger, in consequence
of his former connexion with an abolition paper of New York, and
that he had been threatened with death by a man with whom he had
had a quarrel in Washington. Mr. Mure, to calm his apprehensions,
offered to take him to the authorities of the town, who would, no
doubt, protect him, as he was merely engaged in making sketches
for an English periodical, but the young man declared he was
in danger of assassination. He entreated Mr. Mure to give him
despatches which would serve to protect him, on his way Northward;
and the Consul, moved by his mental distress, promised that if he
had any letters of an official character for Washington he would
send them by him, in default of other opportunities.
I dined with Major Ranney, the president of one of the railways,
with whom Mr. Ward was stopping. Among the company were Mr. Eustis,
son-in-law of Mr. Slidell; Mr. Morse, the attorney-general of the
State; Mr. Moise, a jew, supposed to have considerable influence
with the governor, and a vehement politician; Messrs. Hunt, and
others. The table was excellent, and the wines were worthy of the
reputation which our host enjoys, in a city where Sallusts and
Luculli are said to abound. One of the slave servants who waited at
table, an intelligent yellow “boy,” was pointed out to me as a son
of General Andrew Jackson.
We had a full account of the attack of the British troops on the
city, and their repulse. Mr. Morse denied emphatically that there
was any cotton bag fortification in front of the lines, where our
troops were defeated; he asserted that there were only a few bales,
I think seventy-five, used in the construction of one battery, and
that they and some sugar hogsheads, constituted the sole defences
of the American trench. Only one citizen applied to the state for
compensation, on account of the cotton used by Jackson’s troops,
and he owned the whole of the bales so appropriated.
None of the Southern gentlemen have the smallest apprehension of a
servile insurrection. They use the universal formula “our negroes
are the happiest, most contented, and most comfortable people on
the face of the earth.” I admit I have been struck by well-clad and
good-humoured negroes in the streets, but they are in the minority;
many look morose, ill-clad, and discontented. The patrols I know
have been strengthened, and I heard a young lady the other night,
say, “I shall not be a bit afraid to go back to the plantation,
though mamma says the negroes are after mischief.”