CHARGES OFABOLITIONISM.—Mayor Monroe has disposed of some of the cases brought before him on charges of this kind by sending the accused to the workhouse.A Mexican named Bernard Cruz, born in Tampico, and living here with an Irish wife, was brought before the Mayor this morning charged with uttering Abolition sentiments. After a full investigation, it was found from the utterance of his incendiary language, that Cruz’s education was not yet perfect in Southern classics, and his Honor therefore directed that he be sent for six months to the Humane Institution for the Amelioration of the Condition of Northern Barbarians and Abolition Fanatics, presided over by Professor Henry Mitchell, keeper of the workhouse, who will put him through a course of study on Southern ethics and institutions.The testimony before him Saturday, however, in the case of a man named David O’Keefe, was such as to induce him to commit the accused for trial before the Criminal Court. One of the witnesses testified positively that he heard him make his children shout for Lincoln; another, that the accused said, “I am an abolitionist,” &c. The witnesses, the neighbors of the accused, gave their evidence reluctantly, saying that they had warned him of the folly and danger of his conduct. O’Keefe says he has been a United States soldier, and came here from St. Louis and Kansas.John White was arraigned before Recorder Emerson on Saturday for uttering incendiary language while traveling in the baggage car of a train of the New Orleans, Ohio, and Great Western Railroad, intimating that the decapitator of Jefferson Davis would get $10,000 for his trouble, and the last man of us would be whipped like dogs by the Lincolnites. He was held under bonds of $500 to answer the charge on the 8th of June.Nicholas Gento, charged with declaring himself an Abolitionist, and acting very much like he was one, by harboring a runaway slave, was sent to prison in default of bail, to await examination before the recorder.
CHARGES OFABOLITIONISM.—Mayor Monroe has disposed of some of the cases brought before him on charges of this kind by sending the accused to the workhouse.
A Mexican named Bernard Cruz, born in Tampico, and living here with an Irish wife, was brought before the Mayor this morning charged with uttering Abolition sentiments. After a full investigation, it was found from the utterance of his incendiary language, that Cruz’s education was not yet perfect in Southern classics, and his Honor therefore directed that he be sent for six months to the Humane Institution for the Amelioration of the Condition of Northern Barbarians and Abolition Fanatics, presided over by Professor Henry Mitchell, keeper of the workhouse, who will put him through a course of study on Southern ethics and institutions.
The testimony before him Saturday, however, in the case of a man named David O’Keefe, was such as to induce him to commit the accused for trial before the Criminal Court. One of the witnesses testified positively that he heard him make his children shout for Lincoln; another, that the accused said, “I am an abolitionist,” &c. The witnesses, the neighbors of the accused, gave their evidence reluctantly, saying that they had warned him of the folly and danger of his conduct. O’Keefe says he has been a United States soldier, and came here from St. Louis and Kansas.
John White was arraigned before Recorder Emerson on Saturday for uttering incendiary language while traveling in the baggage car of a train of the New Orleans, Ohio, and Great Western Railroad, intimating that the decapitator of Jefferson Davis would get $10,000 for his trouble, and the last man of us would be whipped like dogs by the Lincolnites. He was held under bonds of $500 to answer the charge on the 8th of June.
Nicholas Gento, charged with declaring himself an Abolitionist, and acting very much like he was one, by harboring a runaway slave, was sent to prison in default of bail, to await examination before the recorder.
Such is “freedom of speech” in Louisiana! But in Texas the machinery for the production of “unanimity” is less complicated, and there are no insulting legal formalities connected with the working of the simple appliances which a primitive agricultural people have devised for their own purposes. Hear the Texan correspondent of one of the journals of this city on the subject. He says:
It is to us astonishing, that such unmitigated lies as those Northern papers disseminate of anarchy and disorder here in Texas, dissension among ourselves, and especially from our German, &c., population, with dangers and anxieties from the fear of insurrection among the negroes, &c., should be deemed anywhere South worthy of a moment’s thought. It is surely notorious enough that in no part of the South are Abolitionists, or other disturbers of the public peace, so very unsafe as in Texas. Thelassois soveryconvenient!
It is to us astonishing, that such unmitigated lies as those Northern papers disseminate of anarchy and disorder here in Texas, dissension among ourselves, and especially from our German, &c., population, with dangers and anxieties from the fear of insurrection among the negroes, &c., should be deemed anywhere South worthy of a moment’s thought. It is surely notorious enough that in no part of the South are Abolitionists, or other disturbers of the public peace, so very unsafe as in Texas. Thelassois soveryconvenient!
Here is an excellent method of preventing dissension described by a stroke of the pen; and, as such, an ingenious people are not likely to lose sight of the uses of a revolution in developing peculiar principles to their own advantage, repudiation of debts to the North has been proclaimed and acted on. One gentleman has found it convenient to inform Major Anderson that he does not intend to meet certain bills which he had given the major for some slaves. Another declares he won’t pay any one at all, as he has discovered it is immoral and contrary to the law of nations to do so. A third feels himself bound to obey the commands of the governor of his state, who has ordered that debts due to the North shall not be liquidated. As anaïvespecimen of the way in which the whole case is treated, take this article and the correspondence of “one of the most prominent mercantile houses in New Orleans:”
SOUTHERN DEBTS TO THE NORTH.TheCincinnati Gazettecopies the following paragraph fromThe New York Evening Post:“BADFAITH.—The bad faith of the Southern merchants in their transactions with their Northern correspondents is becoming more evident daily. We have heard of several recent cases where parties in this city, retired from active business, have, nevertheless, stepped forward to protect the credit of their Southern friends. They are now coolly informed that they cannot be reimbursed for these advances until the war is over. We know of a retired merchant who in this way has lost $100,000”—and adds:“The same here. Men who have done most for the South are the chief sufferers. Debts are coolly repudiated by Southern merchants, who have heretofore enjoyed a first-class reputation. Men who have grown rich upon the trade furnished by the West are among the first to pocket the money of their correspondents, asking, with all the impudence and assurance of a highwayman, “What are you going to do about it?” There is honor among thieves, it is said, but there is not a spark of honor among these repudiating merchants. People who have aided and trustedthem to the last moment, are the greatest losers. There is a future, however. This war will be over, and the Southern merchants will desire a resumption of their connections with the West. As the repudiators—such as Goodrich & Co., of New Orleans—will be spurned, there will be a grand opening for honest men.“There are many honorable exceptions in the South, but dishonesty is the rule. The latter is but the development of latent rascality. The rebellion has afforded a pretext merely for the swindling operations. The parties previously acted honestly, only because that was the best policy. The sifting process that may now be conducted will be of advantage to Northern merchants in the future. The present losses will be fully made up by subsequent gains.”We have been requested to copy the following reply to this tirade from one of our most prominent mercantile houses, Messrs. Goodrich & Co.:NEWORLEANS,May 24, 1861.Cincinnati Gazette.—We were handed, through a friend of ours, your issue of the 18th inst., and attention directed to an article contained therein, in which you are pleased to particularize us out of a large number of highly respectable merchants of this and other Southern cities as repudiators, swindlers, and other epithets, better suited to the mouths of the Wilson regiment of New York than from a once respectable sheet, but which now has sunk so low in the depths of niggerdom that it would take all the soap in Porkopolis and the Ohio River to cleanse it from its foul pollution.We are greatly indebted to you for using our name in the above article, as we deem it the best card you could publish for us, and may add greatly to our business relations in the Confederate States, which will enable us in the end to pay our indebtedness to those who propose cutting our throats, destroying our property, stealing our negroes, and starving our wives and children, to pay such men in times of war. You may term it rascally, but we beg leave to call it patriotism.“Giving the sinews of war to your enemies has ever been considered treason.”—Kent.Now for “repudiating.” We have never, nor do we ever expect to repudiate any debt owing by our firm. But this much we will say, never will we pay a debt due by us to a man, or any company of men, who is a known Black Republican, and marching in battle array to invade our homes and firesides, until every such person shall be driven back and their polluted footsteps shall, now on our once happy soil, be entirely obliterated.We have been in business in this city for twenty years, have passed through every crisis with our names untarnished or credit impaired, and would at present sacrifice all we have made, were it necessary, to sustain our credit in the Confederacy, but care nothing for the opinions of such as are open and avowed enemies. We are sufficiently known in this city not to require the indorsement ofThe Cincinnati Gazette, or any such sheet, for a character.The day is coming, and not far distant, when there will be an awful reckoning, and we are willing and determined to stand by our Confederate flag, sink or swim, and would like to meet some ofThe Gazette’seditorsvis-à-vison the field of blood, and see who would be the first to flinch.Our senior partner has already contributed one darkey this year to your population, and she is anxious to return, but we have a few more left which you can have, provided you will come and take them yourselves.We have said more than we intended, and hope you will give this a place in your paper.GOODRICH & CO.
SOUTHERN DEBTS TO THE NORTH.
TheCincinnati Gazettecopies the following paragraph fromThe New York Evening Post:
“BADFAITH.—The bad faith of the Southern merchants in their transactions with their Northern correspondents is becoming more evident daily. We have heard of several recent cases where parties in this city, retired from active business, have, nevertheless, stepped forward to protect the credit of their Southern friends. They are now coolly informed that they cannot be reimbursed for these advances until the war is over. We know of a retired merchant who in this way has lost $100,000”—and adds:
“The same here. Men who have done most for the South are the chief sufferers. Debts are coolly repudiated by Southern merchants, who have heretofore enjoyed a first-class reputation. Men who have grown rich upon the trade furnished by the West are among the first to pocket the money of their correspondents, asking, with all the impudence and assurance of a highwayman, “What are you going to do about it?” There is honor among thieves, it is said, but there is not a spark of honor among these repudiating merchants. People who have aided and trustedthem to the last moment, are the greatest losers. There is a future, however. This war will be over, and the Southern merchants will desire a resumption of their connections with the West. As the repudiators—such as Goodrich & Co., of New Orleans—will be spurned, there will be a grand opening for honest men.
“There are many honorable exceptions in the South, but dishonesty is the rule. The latter is but the development of latent rascality. The rebellion has afforded a pretext merely for the swindling operations. The parties previously acted honestly, only because that was the best policy. The sifting process that may now be conducted will be of advantage to Northern merchants in the future. The present losses will be fully made up by subsequent gains.”
We have been requested to copy the following reply to this tirade from one of our most prominent mercantile houses, Messrs. Goodrich & Co.:
NEWORLEANS,May 24, 1861.
Cincinnati Gazette.—We were handed, through a friend of ours, your issue of the 18th inst., and attention directed to an article contained therein, in which you are pleased to particularize us out of a large number of highly respectable merchants of this and other Southern cities as repudiators, swindlers, and other epithets, better suited to the mouths of the Wilson regiment of New York than from a once respectable sheet, but which now has sunk so low in the depths of niggerdom that it would take all the soap in Porkopolis and the Ohio River to cleanse it from its foul pollution.
We are greatly indebted to you for using our name in the above article, as we deem it the best card you could publish for us, and may add greatly to our business relations in the Confederate States, which will enable us in the end to pay our indebtedness to those who propose cutting our throats, destroying our property, stealing our negroes, and starving our wives and children, to pay such men in times of war. You may term it rascally, but we beg leave to call it patriotism.
“Giving the sinews of war to your enemies has ever been considered treason.”—Kent.
Now for “repudiating.” We have never, nor do we ever expect to repudiate any debt owing by our firm. But this much we will say, never will we pay a debt due by us to a man, or any company of men, who is a known Black Republican, and marching in battle array to invade our homes and firesides, until every such person shall be driven back and their polluted footsteps shall, now on our once happy soil, be entirely obliterated.
We have been in business in this city for twenty years, have passed through every crisis with our names untarnished or credit impaired, and would at present sacrifice all we have made, were it necessary, to sustain our credit in the Confederacy, but care nothing for the opinions of such as are open and avowed enemies. We are sufficiently known in this city not to require the indorsement ofThe Cincinnati Gazette, or any such sheet, for a character.
The day is coming, and not far distant, when there will be an awful reckoning, and we are willing and determined to stand by our Confederate flag, sink or swim, and would like to meet some ofThe Gazette’seditorsvis-à-vison the field of blood, and see who would be the first to flinch.
Our senior partner has already contributed one darkey this year to your population, and she is anxious to return, but we have a few more left which you can have, provided you will come and take them yourselves.
We have said more than we intended, and hope you will give this a place in your paper.
GOODRICH & CO.
There is some little soreness felt here about the use of the word “repudiation,” and it will do the hearts of some people good, and will carry comfort to the ghost of the Rev. Sydney Smith, if it can hear the tidings, to know I have been assured, over and over again, by eminent mercantile people and statesmen, that there is a “general desire” on the part of the repudiating states to pay their bonds, and that no doubt, at some future period, not very clearly ascertainable or plainly indicated, that general desire will cause some active steps to be taken to satisfy its intensity, of a character very unexpected, and very gratifying to those interested. The tariff of the Southern Confederation has just been promulgated, and I send herewith a copy of the rates. Simultaneously, however, with this document, the United States steam-frigates Brooklyn and Niagara have made their appearance off the Pass à l’Outre, and the Mississippi is closed, and with it the port of New Orleans. The steam-tugs refuse to tow out vessels for fear of capture, and British ships are in jeopardy.
May 25.—A visit to the camp at Tangipao, about fifty miles from New Orleans, gave an occasion for obtaining a clearer view of the internal military condition of those forces of which one reads much and sees so little than any other way. Major-General Lewis of the State Militia, and staff, and General Labuzan, a Creole officer, attended by Major Ranney, President of the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railway, and by many officers in uniform, started with that purpose at half-past four this evening in a railway carriage, carefully and comfortably fitted for their reception. The militia of Louisiana has not been called out for many years, and its officers have no military experience and the men have no drill or discipline.
Emerging from the swampy suburbs, we soon pass between white clover pastures, which we are told invariably salivate the herds of small but plump cattle browsing upon them. Soon cornfields “in tassel,” alternate with long narrow rows of growing sugar-cane, which, though scarcely a fourth of the height of the maize, will soon overshadow it; and the cane-stalks grow up so densely together that nothing larger than a rattlesnake can pass between them.
From Kennersville, an ancient sugar plantation cut up into “town lots,” our first halt, ten miles out, we shoot through a cypress swamp, the primitive forest of this region, and note a greater affluence of Spanish moss than in the woods of Georgia or Carolina. There it hung, like a hermit’s beard, from the pensile branch. Here, to onewho should venture to thread the snake and alligator haunted mazes of the jungle, its matted profusion must resemble clusters of stalactites pendent from the roof of some vast cavern; for the gloom of an endless night appears to pervade the deeper recesses, at the entrance of which stand, like outlying skeleton pickets, the unfelled and leafless patriarchs of the clearing, that for a breadth of perhaps fifty yards on either side seems to have furnished the road with its sleepers.
The gray swamp yields to an open savanna, beyond which, upon the left, a straggling line of sparse trees skirts the left bank of the Mississippi, and soon after the broad expanse of Lake Pontchartrain appears within gunshot of our right, only separated from the road by a hundred yards or more of rush-covered prairie, which seems but a feeble barrier against the caprices of so extensive a sheet of water, subject to the influences of wind and tide. In fact, ruined shanties and out-houses, fields laid waste, and prostrate fences, remain evidences of the ravages of the “wash” which a year ago inundated and rendered the railroad impassable save for boats. The down train’s first notice of the disaster was the presence of a two-story frame building, which the waves had transported to the road, and its passengers, detained a couple of days in what now strikes us as a most grateful combination of timber-skirted meadow and lake scenery, were rendered insensible to its beauties by the torments of hungry mosquitos. Had its engineers given the road but eighteen inches more elevation its patrons would have been spared this suffering, and its stockholders might have rejoiced in a dividend. Many of the settlers have abandoned their improvements. Others, chiefly what are here called Dutchmen, have resumed their tillage with unabated zeal, and large fields of cabbages, one of them embracing not less than sixty acres, testify to their energy.
Again, through miles of cypress swamps the train passes on to what is called the “trembling prairie,” where the sleepers are laid upon a tressel-work of heavier logs, so that the rails are raised by “cribs” of timber nearly a yard above the morass. Three species of rail, one of them as large as a curlew, and the summer-duck, seem the chief occupants of the marsh, but white cranes and brown bitterns take the alarm, and falcons and long-tailed “blackbirds” sail in the distance.
Toward sunset a halt took place upon the long bridge that divides Lake Maurepas, a picturesque sheet of water which blends with the horizon on our left, from Pass Manchac, an arm of Lake Pontchartrain, which disappears in the forest on our right. Half-a-dozen wherries and a small fishing-smack are moored in front of a ricketty cabin, crowded by the jungle to the margin of the cove. It is the first tokenof a settlement that has occurred for miles, and when we have sufficiently admired the scene, rendered picturesque in the sunset by the dense copse, the water and the bright colors of the boats at rest upon it, a commotion at the head of the train arises from the unexpected arrival upon the “switch” of a long string of cars filled with half a regiment of volunteers, who had been enlisted for twelve months’ service, and now refused to be mustered in for the war, as required by the recent enactment of the Montgomery Congress. The new-comers are at length safely lodged on the “turn-off,” and our train continues its journey. As we pass the row of cars, most of them freight wagons, we are hailed with shouts and yells in every key by the disbanded volunteers, who seem a youngish, poorly-clad, and undersized lot, though noisy as a street mob.
After Manchac, the road begins to creep up towardterra firma, and before nightfall there was a change from cypresses and swamp laurels to pines and beeches, and we inhale the purer atmosphere of dry land, with an occasional whiff of resinous fragrance, that dispels the fever-tainted suggestions of the swamp below. There we only breathed to live. Here we seem to live to breathe. The rise of the road is a grade of but a foot to the mile, and yet at the camp an elevation of not more than eighty feet in as many miles suffices to establish all the climatic difference between the malarious marshes and a much higher mountain region.
But during our journey the hampers have not been neglected. The younger members of the party astonish the night-owls with patriotic songs, chiefly French, and the French chiefly with the “Marseillaise,” which, however inappropriate as the slogan of the Confederate states, they persist in quavering, forgetful, perhaps, that not three-quarters of a century ago Toussaint l’Ouverture caught the words and air of his masters, and awoke the lugubrious notes of the insurrection.
Toward nineP. M., the special car rests in the woods, and is flanked on one side by the tents and watch-fires of a small encampment, chiefly of navvy and cotton-handling Milesian volunteers, called “the Tigers,” from their prehensile powers and predatory habits. A guard is stationed around the car; a couple of Ethiopians who have attended us from town are left to answer the query,quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, and we make our way to the hotel, which looms up in the moonlight in a two-storied dignity. Here, alas! there have been no preparations made to sleep or feed us. The scapegoat “nobody” announced our coming. Some of the guests are club men, used to the small hours, who engage a room, a table, half a dozen chairs, and a brace of bottlesto serve as candlesticks. They have brought stearine and pasteboards with them, and are soon deep in the finesses of “Euchre.” We quietly stroll back to the car, our only hope of shelter. At the entrance we are challenged by a sentry, apparently ignorant that he has a percussion cap on his brown rifle, which he levels at us cocked. From this unpleasant vision of an armed and reckless Tiger rampant we are relieved by one of the dusky squires, who assures the sentinel that we are “all right,” and proceeds to turn over a seat and arrange what might be called a sedan-chair bed, in which we prepare to make a night of it. Our party is soon joined by others in quest of repose, and in half an hour breathings, some of them so deep as to seem subterranean, indicate that all have attained their object—like Manfred’s—forgetfulness.
An early breakfast of rashers and eggs was prepared at thetable d’hôte, which we were told would be replenished half-hourly until noon, when a respite of an hour was allowed to the “help,” in which to make ready a dinner, to be served in the same progression.
Through a shady dingle a winding path led to the camp, and, after trudging a pleasant half-mile, a bridge of boards, resting on a couple of trees laid across a pool, was passed, and, above a slight embankment, tents and soldiers are revealed upon a “clearing” of some thirty acres in the midst of a pine forest. Turning to the left, we reach a double row of tents, only distinguished from the rest by their “fly roofs” and boarded floors, and, in the centre, halt opposite to one which a poster of capitals on a planed deal marks as “Head-quarters.” Major-General Tracy commands the camp. The white tents crouching close to the shade of the pines, the parade alive with groups and colors as various as those of Joseph’s coat, arms stacked here and there, and occasionally the march of a double file in green, or in mazarine blue, up an alley from the interior of the wood, to be dismissed in the open, resembles a militia muster, or a holiday experiment at soldiering, rather than the dark shadow of forthcoming battle. The cordon of sentinels suffer no volunteer to leave the precincts of the camp, even to bathe, without a pass or the word. There are neither wagons nor ambulances, and the men are rolling in barrels of bacon and bread and shouldering bags of pulse—good picnic practice and campaigning gymnastics in fair weather.
The arms of these volunteers are the old United States smooth-bore musket, altered from flint to percussion, with bayonet—a heavy and obsolete copy of Brown Bess in bright barrels. All are in creditable order. Most of them have never been used, even to fire a parade volley, for powder is scarce in the Confederated States, and must notbe wasted. Except in their material, the shoes of the troops are as varied as their clothing. None have as yet been served out, and each still wears the boots, the brogans, the patent leathers, or the Oxford ties in which he enlisted. The tents have mostly no other floor than the earth, and that rarely swept; while blankets, boxes, and utensils are stowed in corners with a disregard of symmetry that would drive a martinet mad. Camp-stools are rare and tables invisible, save here and there in an officer’s tent. Still the men look well, and, we are told, would doubtless present a more cheerful appearance, but for some little demoralization occasioned by discontent at the repeated changes in the organic structure of the regiments, arising from misapprehensions between the state and federal authorities, as well as from some favoritism toward certain officers, elected by political wire-pulling in the governing councils. The system of electing officers by ballot has made the camp as thoroughly a political arena as the poll-districts in New Orleans before an election, and thus many heroes, seemingly ambitious of epaulettes, are in reality only “laying pipes” for the attainment of civil power or distinction after the war.
The volunteers we met at Manchac the previous evening had been enlisted by the state to serve for twelve months, and had refused to extend their engagement for the war—a condition now made precedent at Montgomery to their being mustered into the army of the Confederate States. Another company, a majority of whom persist in the same refusal, were disbanded while we were patrolling the camp, and an officer told one of the party he had suffered a loss of 600 volunteers by this disintegrating process within the last twenty-four hours. Some of these country companies were skilled in the use of the rifle, and most of them had made pecuniary sacrifices in the way of time, journeys, and equipments. Our informant deplored this reduction of volunteers, as tending to engender disaffection in the parishes to which they will return, and comfort, when known, to the Abolitionists of the North. He added that the war will not perhaps last a twelvemonth, and if unhappily prolonged beyond that period, the probabilities are in favor of the short-term recruits willingly consenting to a re-enlistment.
The encampment of the “Perrit Guards” was worthy of a visit. Here was a company ofprofessional gamblers, 112 strong, recruited for the war in a moment of banter by one of the patriarchs of the fraternity, who, upon hearing at the St. Charles Hotel one evening that the vanity or the patriotism of a citizen, not famed for liberality, had endowed with $1,000 a company which was to bear his name, exclaimed that “he would give $1,500 to any one who should be fool enough toform a company and call it after him.” In less than an hour after the utterance of this caprice, Mr. Perrit was waited upon by fifty-six “professionals,” who had enrolled their names as the “Perrit Guards,” and unhesitatingly produced from his wallet the sum so sportively pledged. The Guards are uniformed in mazarine-blue flannel with red facings, and the captain, a youngish-looking fellow, with a hawk’s eye, who had seen service with Scott in Mexico and Walker in Nicaragua, informed us that there is not a pair of shoes in the company that cost less than $6, and that no money has been spared to perfect their other appointments. A sack of ice and half a dozen silver goblets enforced his invitation “to take a drink at his quarters,” and we were served by an African in uniform, who afterward offered us cigars received by the last Havana steamer. Looking at the sable attendant, one of the party observed that if these “experts of fortune win the present fight, it will be a case ofcouleur gagne.”
It would be difficult to find in the same number of men taken at hazard greater diversities of age, stature, and physiognomy; but in keenness of eye and imperturbability of demeanor they exhibit a family likeness, and there is not an unintelligent face in the company. The gamblers, or, as they are termed, the “sports,” of the United States have an air of higher breeding and education than the dice-throwers and card-turners of Ascot or Newmarket—nay, they may be considered the Anglo-Saxon equals, minus the title, of thoseâmes damnéesof the continental nobility who are styled Greeks by their Parisian victims. They are the Pariahs of American civilization, who are, nevertheless, in daily and familiar intercourse with their patrons, and not restricted, as in England, to a betting-ring toleration by the higher orders. The Guards are the model company of Camp Moore, and I should have felt disposed to admire the spirit of gallantry with which they have volunteered in this war as a purification by fire of their maculated lives were it not hinted that the “Oglethorpe Guards” and more than one other company of volunteers are youths of large private fortunes, and that in the Secession as in the Mexican War, these patriots will doubtless pursue their old calling with as much profit as they may their new one with valor.
From the lower camp we wind through tents, which diminish in neatness and cleanliness as we advance deeper, to the upper division, which is styled “Camp Tracy,” a newer formation, whose brooms have been employed with corresponding success. The adjutant’s report for the day sums up 1,073 rank and file, and but two on the sick list. On a platform, a desk, beneath the shade of the grove, holds a Bible andPrayer-book, that await the arrival, at ten o’clock, of the Methodist preacher, who is to perform Divine service. The green uniforms of the “Hibernian Guards,” and the gray and light-blue dress of other companies, appertain to a better appointed sort of men than the lower division.
There may be 2,000 men in Camp Moore—not more, and yet every authority gives us a different figure. The lowest estimate acknowledged for the two camps is 3,500 men, andThe Picayuneand other New Orleans papers still speak in glowing terms of the 5,000 heroes assembled in Tangipao. Although the muster there presents a tolerable show of ball-stoppers, it would require months of discipline to enable them to pass for soldiers, even at the North; and besides that General Tracy has never had other experience than in militia duty, there is not, I think, a single West-Point officer in his whole command. The only hope of shaping such raw material to the purposes of war would naturally be by the admixture of a proper allowance of military experience, and until those possessing it shall be awarded to Camp Moore we must sigh over the delusion which pictures its denizens to the good people of New Orleans as “fellows ready for the fray.”
While the hampers are being ransacked, an express locomotive arrives from town with dispatches for General Tracy, who exclaims, when reading them, “Always too late!” from which expression it is inferred that orders have been received to accept the just disbanded volunteers. The locomotive was hitched to the car and drew it back to the city. Our car was built in Massachusetts, the engine in Philadelphia, and the magnifier of its lamp in Cincinnati. What will the South do for such articles in future?
May 26.—In the evening, as I was sitting in the house of a gentleman in the city, it was related, as a topic of conversation, that a very respectable citizen named Bibb had had a difficulty with three gentlemen, who insisted on his reading out the news for them from his paper, as he went to market in the early morning. Mr. Bibb had a revolver, “casually,” in his pocket, and he shot one citizen dead on the spot and wounded the other two severely, if not mortally. “Great sympathy,” I am told, “is felt for Mr. Bibb.” There has been a skirmish somewhere on the Potomac, but Bibb has done more business “on his own hook” than any of the belligerents up to this date; and though I can scarcely say I sympathize with him, far be it from me to say that I do not respect him.
One curious result of the civil war in its effects on the South will, probably, extend itself as the conflict continues—I mean the refusal ofthe employers to pay their workmen, on the ground of inability. The natural consequence is much distress and misery. The English consul is harrassed by applications for assistance from mechanics and skilled laborers who are in a state bordering on destitution and starvation. They desire nothing better than to leave the country and return to their homes. All business, except tailoring for soldiers and cognate labors, is suspended. Money is not to be had. Bills on New York are worth little more than the paper, and the exchange against London is enormous—eighteen per cent. discount from the par value of the gold in bank, good drafts on England having been negotiated yesterday at ninety-two per cent. One house has been compelled to accept four per cent. on a draft on the North, where the rate was usually from one-fourth per cent. to one-half per cent. There is some fear that the police force will be completely broken up, and the imagination refuses to guess at the result. The city schools will probably be closed—altogether things do not look well at New Orleans. When all their present difficulties are over, a struggle between the mob and the oligarchy, or those who have no property and those who have, is inevitable; for one of the first acts of the legislature will probably be directed to establish some sort of qualification for the right of suffrage, relying on the force which will be at their disposal on the close of the war. As at New York, so at New Orleans. Universal suffrage is denounced as a curse, as corruption legalized, confiscation organized. As I sat in a well-furnished clubroom last night, listening to a most respectable, well-educated, intelligent gentleman descanting on the practices of “the Thugs”—an organized band who coolly and deliberately committed murder for the purpose of intimidating Irish and German voters, and were only put down by a vigilance committee, of which he was a member—I had almost to pinch myself to see that I was not the victim of a horrid nightmare.
Monday, May 27.—The Washington Artillery went off to-day to the wars—quo fas et gloria ducunt; but I saw a good many of them in the streets after the body had departed—spirits who were disembodied. Their uniform is very becoming, not unlike that of our own foot artillery, and they have one battery of guns in good order. I looked in vain for any account of Mr. Bibb’s little affair yesterday in the papers. Perhaps, as he is so very respectable, there will not be any reference to it at all. Indeed, in some conversation on the subject last night, it was admitted that when men were very rich they might find judges and jurymen as tender as Danae, and policemen as permeable as the walls of her dungeon. The whole question now is, “What will be done with the blockade?” The Confederate authorities are acting with a highhand. An American vessel, the Ariel, which had cleared out of port with British subjects on board, has been overtaken, captured, and her crew have been put in prison. The ground is that she is owned in main by Black Republicans. The British subjects have received protection from the consul. Prizes have been made within a league of shore, and in one instance, when the captain protested, his ship was taken out to sea, and was then recaptured formally. I went round to several merchants to-day; they were all gloomy and fierce. In fact, the blockade of Mobile is announced, and that of New Orleans has commenced, and men-of-war have been reported off the Pas-à-l’outre. The South is beginning to feel that it is being bottled up, all fermenting and frothing, and is somewhat surprised and angry at the natural results of its own acts, or, at least, of the proceedings which have brought about a state of war. Mr. Slidell did not seem at all contented with the telegrams from the North, and confessed that “if they had been received by way of Montgomery he should be alarmed.” The names of persons liable for military service have been taken down in several districts, and British subjects have been included. Several applications have been made to Mr. Mure, the consul, to interfere in behalf of men who, having enlisted, are now under orders to march, and who must leave their families destitute if they go away; but he has, of course, no power to exercise any influence in such cases. The English journals to the 4th of May have arrived here to-day. It is curious to see how quaint in their absurdity the telegrams become when they have reached the age of three weeks. I am in the hapless position of knowing, without being able to remedy, the evils from this source, for there is no means of sending through to New York political information of any sort by telegraph. The electric fluid may be the means of blasting and blighting many reputations, as there can be no doubt the revelations which the government at Washington will be able to obtain through the files of the dispatches it has seized at the various offices, will compromise some whose views have recently undergone remarkable changes. It is a hint which may not be lost on governments in Europe when it is desirable to know friends and foes hereafter, and despotic rulers will not be slow to take a hint from “the land of liberty.”
Orders have been issued by the governor to the tow-boats to take out the English vessels by the south-west passage, and it is probable they will all get through without any interruption on the part of the blockading force. It may be imagined that the owners and consignees of cargoes from England, China, and India, which are on their way here, are not at all easy in their minds. Two of the Washington artillerydied in the train on their way to that undefinable region called “the seat of war.”
May 28.—The Southern states have already received the assistance of several thousands of savages, or red men, and “the warriors” are actually engaged in pursuing the United States troops in Texas, in conjunction with the state volunteers. A few days ago a deputation of the chiefs of the Five Nations, Creeks, Choctaws, Seminoles, Comanches, and others, passed through New Orleans on their way to Montgomery, where they hoped to enter into terms with the government for the transfer of their pension list and other responsibilities from Washington, and to make such arrangements for their property and their rights as would justify them in committing their fortunes to the issue of war. These tribes can turn out twenty thousand warriors, scalping-knives, tomahawks, and all. The chiefs and principal men are all slave-holders.
May 29.—A new “affair” occurred this afternoon. The servants of the house in which I am staying were alarmed by violent screams in a house in the adjoining street, and by the discharge of firearms—an occurrence which, like the cry of “murder” in the streets of Havana, clears the streets of all wayfarers, if they be wise, and do not wish to stop stray bullets. The cause is thus stated in the journals:
SADFAMILYAFFAIR.—Last evening, at the residence of Mr. A. P. Withers, in Nayades street, near Thalia, Mr. Withers shot and dangerously wounded his stepson, Mr. A. F. W. Mather. As the police tell it, the nature of the affair was this: The two men were in the parlor, and talking about the Washington artillery, which left on Monday for Virginia. Mather denounced the artillerists in strong language, and his stepfather denied what he said. Violent language followed, and, as Withers says, Mather drew a pistol and shot at him once, not hitting him. He snatched up a Sharp’s revolver that was lying near and fired four times at his stepson. The latter fell at the third fire, and as he was falling Withers fired a fourth time, the bullet wounding the hand of Mrs. Withers, wife of one and mother of the other, she having rushed in to interfere, and she being the only witness of the affair. Withers immediately went out into the street and voluntarily surrendered himself to Officer Casson, the first officer he met. He was locked up. Three of his shots hit Mather, two of them in the breast. Last night Mather was not expected to live.
SADFAMILYAFFAIR.—Last evening, at the residence of Mr. A. P. Withers, in Nayades street, near Thalia, Mr. Withers shot and dangerously wounded his stepson, Mr. A. F. W. Mather. As the police tell it, the nature of the affair was this: The two men were in the parlor, and talking about the Washington artillery, which left on Monday for Virginia. Mather denounced the artillerists in strong language, and his stepfather denied what he said. Violent language followed, and, as Withers says, Mather drew a pistol and shot at him once, not hitting him. He snatched up a Sharp’s revolver that was lying near and fired four times at his stepson. The latter fell at the third fire, and as he was falling Withers fired a fourth time, the bullet wounding the hand of Mrs. Withers, wife of one and mother of the other, she having rushed in to interfere, and she being the only witness of the affair. Withers immediately went out into the street and voluntarily surrendered himself to Officer Casson, the first officer he met. He was locked up. Three of his shots hit Mather, two of them in the breast. Last night Mather was not expected to live.
Another difficulty is connected with the free colored people who may be found in prize ships. Read and judge of the conclusion:
What shall be done with them? On the 28th inst., Captain G. W. Gregor, of the privateer Calhoun, brought to the station of this district about ten negro sailors, claiming to be free, found on board the brigs Panama, John Adams, and Mermaid.The recorder sent word to the marshal of the confederate states that said negroeswere at his disposition. The marshal refused to receive them or have any thing to do with them, whereupon the recorder gave the following decision:Though I have no authority to act in the case, I think it is my duty as a magistrate and good citizen to take upon myself, in this critical moment, the responsibility of keeping the prisoners in custody, firmly believing it would not only be bad policy, but a dangerous one, to let them loose upon the community.
What shall be done with them? On the 28th inst., Captain G. W. Gregor, of the privateer Calhoun, brought to the station of this district about ten negro sailors, claiming to be free, found on board the brigs Panama, John Adams, and Mermaid.
The recorder sent word to the marshal of the confederate states that said negroeswere at his disposition. The marshal refused to receive them or have any thing to do with them, whereupon the recorder gave the following decision:
Though I have no authority to act in the case, I think it is my duty as a magistrate and good citizen to take upon myself, in this critical moment, the responsibility of keeping the prisoners in custody, firmly believing it would not only be bad policy, but a dangerous one, to let them loose upon the community.
The following dispatch was sent by the recorder to the Hon. J. P. Benjamin:
NEWORLEANS, May 29.To J. P. Benjamin, Richmond—Sir: Ten free negroes taken by a privateer from on board three vessels returning to Boston, from a whaling voyage, have been delivered to me. The marshal refuses to take charge of them. What shall I do with them?Respectfully,A. BLACHE,Recorder, Second District.
NEWORLEANS, May 29.
To J. P. Benjamin, Richmond—Sir: Ten free negroes taken by a privateer from on board three vessels returning to Boston, from a whaling voyage, have been delivered to me. The marshal refuses to take charge of them. What shall I do with them?
Respectfully,A. BLACHE,Recorder, Second District.
The monthly statement I inclose of the condition of the New Orleans banks on the 25th inst., must be regarded as a more satisfactory exhibit to their depositors and shareholders, though of no greater benefit to the commercial community in this its hour of need than the tempting show of a pastrycook’s window to the famished street poor. These institutions show assets estimated at $54,000,000, of which $20,000,000 are in specie and sterling exchange, to meet $25,000,000 of liabilities, or more than two for one. But, with this apparent amplitude of resources, the New Orleans banks are at a dead-lock, affording no discounts and buying no exchange—the latter usually their greatest source of profit in a mart which ships so largely of cotton, sugar, and flour, and the commercial movement of which for not over nine months of the year is the second in magnitude among the cities of the old Union.
As an instance of the caution of their proceedings, I have only to state that a gentleman of wealth and the highest respectability, who needed a day or two since some money for the expenses of an unexpected journey, was compelled, in order to borrow of these banks the sum of $1,500, to hypothecate, as security for his bill at sixty days, $10,000 of bonds of the Confederate states, and for which a month ago he paid par in coin—a circumstance which reflects more credit upon the prudence of the banks than upon the security pledged for this loan.
NATCHEZ, MISS.,June 14, 1861.
On the morning of the 3d of June I left New Orleans, in one of the steamers proceeding up the Mississippi, along that fertile but uninteresting region of reclaimed swamp lands, called “the coast,” which extendsalong both banks for one hundred and twenty miles above the city. It is so called from the name given to it, “La Côte,” by the early French settlers. Here is the favored land—alas! it is a fever-land, too—of sugar-cane and Indian corn. To those who have very magnificent conceptions of the Mississippi, founded on mere arithmetical computations of leagues, or vague geographical data, it may be astonishing, but it is nevertheless true, the Mississippi is artificial for many hundreds of miles. Nature has, of course, poured out the waters, but man has made the banks. By a vast system of raised embankments, called levees, the river is constrained to abstain from overflowing the swamps, now drained, and green with wealth-producing crops. At the present moment the surface of the river is several feet higher than the land at each side, and the steamer moves on a level with the upper stories, or even the roofs of the houses, reminding one of such scenery as could be witnessed in the old days of treckshuyt in Holland. The river is not broader than the Thames at Gravesend, and is quite as richly colored. But then it is one hundred and eighty feet deep, and for hundreds of miles it has not less that one hundred feet of water. Thus deeply has it scooped into the rich clay and marl in its course; but as it flows out to join the sea, it throws down the vast precipitates which render the bars so shifting and difficult, and bring the mighty river to such a poor exit. A few miles above the wharfs and large levees of the city, the country really appears to be a sea of light green, with shores of forest in the distance, about two miles away from the bank. This forest is the uncleared land, extending for a considerable way back, which each planter hopes to take into culture one day or other, and which he now uses to provide timber for his farm. Near the banks are houses of wood, with porticoes, pillars, verandahs, and sun-shades, generally painted white and green. There is a great uniformity of style, but the idea aimed at seems to be that of the old French chateau, with the addition of a colonnade around the ground story. These dwellings are generally in the midst of small gardens, rich in semi-tropical vegetation, with glorious magnolias, now in full bloom, rising in their midst, and groves of live-oak interspersed. The levee is as hard and dry as the bank of a canal. Here and there it is propped up by wooden revetements. Between it and the uniform line of palings, which guards the river face of the plantations, there is a carriage-road. In the enclosure, near each residence, there is a row of small wooden huts, whitewashed, in which live the negroes attached to the service of the family. Outside the negroes who labor in the fields are quartered, in similar constructions, which are like the small single huts, called “Maltese,” which were plentiful in theCrimea. They are rarely furnished with windows; a wooden slide or a grated space admits such light and air as they want. One of the most striking features of the landscape is, its utter want of life. There were a few horsemen exercising in a field, some gigs and buggies along the levee roads, and the little groups at the numerous watering-places, generally containing a few children in tom-fool costumes, as zouaves, chasseurs, or some sort of infantry; but the slaves who were there had come down to look after luggage or their masters. There were no merry, laughing, chattering gatherings of black faces and white teeth, such as we hear about. Indeed, the negroes are not allowed hereabouts to stir out of their respective plantations, or to go along the road without passes from their owners. The steamer J. L. Cotton, which was not the less popular, perhaps, because she had the words “low pressure” conspicuous on her paddle-boxes, carried a fair load of passengers, most of whom were members of creole families living on the coast. The proper meaning of the word “creole” is very different from that which we attach to it. It signifies a person of Spanish or French descent, born in Louisiana or in the southern or tropical countries. The great majority of the planters here are French creoles, and it is said they are kinder and better masters than Americans or Scotch, the latter being considered the most severe. Intelligent on most subjects, they are resolute in the belief that England must take their cotton or perish. Even the keenest of their financiers, Mr. Forstall, an Irish creole, who is representative of the house of Baring, seems inclined to this faith, though he is prepared with many ingenious propositions, which would rejoice Mr. Gladstone’s inmost heart, to raise money for the Southern Confederacy and make them rich exceedingly. One thing has rather puzzled him. M. Baroche, who is in New Orleans, either as a looker-on or as an accreditedemployeof his father or of the French government, suggested to him that it would not be possible for all the disposable mercantile marine of England and France together to carry the cotton crop, which hitherto gave employment to a great number of American vessels, now tabooed by the South, and the calculations seem to bear out the truth of the remark. Be that as it may, Mr. Forstall is quite prepared to show that the South can raise a prodigious revenue by a small direct taxation, for which the machinery already exists in every parish of the state, and that the North must be prodigiously damaged in the struggle, if not ruined outright. One great source of strength in the South is, its readiness—at least, its professed alacrity—to yield any thing that is asked. There is unbounded confidence in Mr. Jefferson Davis. Whereever I go, the same question is asked:“Well, sir, what do you think of our President? Does he not strike you as being a very able man?” In finance he is trusted as much as in war. When he sent orders to the New Orleans banks, some time ago, to suspend specie payment, he exercised a power which could not be justified by any reading of the Southern constitution. All men applauded. The President of the United States is far from receiving any such support or confidence, and it need not be said any act of his, of the same nature as that of Mr. Davis, would have created an immense outcry against him. But the South has all the unanimity of a conspiracy, and its unanimity is not greater than its confidence. One is rather tired of endless questions, “Who can conquer such men?” But the question should be, “Can the North conquer us?” Of the fustian about dying in their tracks and fighting till every man, woman and child is exterminated, there is a great deal too much, but they really believe that the fate which Poland could not avert, to which France, as well as the nations she overran, bowed the head, can never reach them. With their faithful negroes to raise their corn, sugar and cotton while they are at the wars, and England and France to take the latter and pay them for it, they believe they can meet the American world in arms. A glorious future opens before them. Illimitable fields, tilled by multitudinous negroes, open on their vision, and prostrate at the base of the mountain of cotton, from which they rule the kings of the earth, the empires of Europe shall lie, with all their gold, their manufactures, and their industry, crying out, “Pray give us more cotton! All we ask is more!”
But here is the boat stopping opposite Mr. Roman’s—ex-governor of the state of Louisiana, and ex-commissioner of the Confederate government at Montgomery to the government of the United States at Washington. Not very long ago he could boast of a very handsome garden—the French creoles love gardens—Americans and English do not much affect them; when the Mississippi was low one fine day, levee and all slid down the bank into the maw of the river, and were carried off. This is what is called the “caving in” of a bank; when the levee is broken through at high water it is said that a “crevasse” has taken place. The governor, as he is called—once a captain always a captain—has still a handsome garden, however, though his house has been brought unpleasantly near the river. His mansion and the out-offices stand in the shade of magnolias, green oaks, and other Southern trees. To the last Governor Roman was a Unionist, but when his state went he followed her, and now he is a Secessionist for life and for death, not extravagant in his hopes, but calm and resolute, and fully persuaded that in the end the South must win. As he does not raise any cotton,the consequences for him will be extremely serious should sugar be greatly depreciated; but the consumption of that article in America is very large, and, though the markets in the North and West are cut off, it is hoped, as no imported sugar can find its way into the states, that the South will consume all its own produce at a fair rate. The governor is a very good type of the race, which is giving way a little before the encroachments of the Anglo-Saxons, and he possesses all the ease, candid manner, and suavity of the old French gentleman—of that school in which there are now few masters or scholars. He invited me to visit the negro quarters. “Go where you like, do what you please, ask any questions. There is nothing we desire to conceal.” As we passed the house, two or three young women flitted past in snow-white dresses with pink sashes, and no doubtful crinolines, but their head-dresses were noten règle—handkerchiefs of a gay color. They were slaves going off to a dance at the sugar-house; but they were indoor servants, and therefore better off, in the way of clothes than their fellow slaves who labor in the field. On approaching a high paling at the rear of the house the scraping of fiddles was audible. It was Sunday, and Mr. Roman informed me that he gave his negroes leave to have a dance on that day. The planters who are not Catholics rarely give any such indulgence to their slaves, though they do not always make them work on that day, and sometimes let them enjoy themselves on the Saturday afternoon. Entering a wicket gate, a quadrangular enclosure, lined with negro huts, lay before us. The bare ground was covered with litter of various kinds, amid which pigs and poultry were pasturing. Dogs, puppies, and curs of low degree scampered about on all sides; and deep in a pond, swinking in the sun, stood some thirty or forty mules, enjoying their day of rest. The huts of the negroes belonging to the personal service of the house were separated from the negroes engaged in field labor by a close wooden paling; but there was no difference in the shape and size of their dwellings, which consisted generally of one large room, divided by a partition occasionally into two bedrooms. Outside the whitewash gave them a cleanly appearance; inside they were dingy and squalid—no glass in the windows, swarms of flies, some clothes hanging on nails in the boards, dressers with broken crockery, a bedstead of rough carpentry; a fireplace in which, hot as was the day, a log lay in embers; a couple of tin cooking utensils; in the obscure, the occupant, male or female, awkward and shy before strangers, and silent till spoken to. Of course there were no books, for the slaves do not read. They all seemed respectful to their master. We saw very old men and very old women, who were the canker-worms of the estate, and weredozing away into eternity mindful only of hominy, and pig, and molasses. Two negro fiddlers were working their bows with energy in front of one of the huts, and a crowd of little children were listening to the music, and a few grown-up persons of color—some of them from the adjoining plantations. The children are generally dressed in a little sack of coarse calico, which answers all reasonable purposes, even if it be not very clean. It might be an interesting subject of inquiry to the natural philosophers who follow crinology to determine why it is that the hair of the infant negro, or of the child up to six or seven years of age, is generally a fine red russet, or even gamboge color, and gradually darkens into dull ebon. These little bodies were mostly large-stomached, well fed, and not less happy than freeborn children, although much more valuable—for once they get over juvenile dangers, and advance toward nine or ten years of age, they rise in value to £100 or more, even in times when the market is low and money is scarce. The women were not very well-favored, except one yellow girl, whose child was quite white, with fair hair and light eyes; and the men were disguised in such strangely cut clothes, their hats and shoes and coats were so wonderfully made, that one could not tell what they were like. On all faces there was a gravity which must be the index to serene contentment and perfect comfort, for those who ought to know best declare they are the happiest race in the world. It struck me more and more, as I examined the expression of the faces of the slaves all over the South, that deep dejection is the prevailing, if not universal, characteristic of the race. Let a physiognomist go and see. Here there were abundant evidences that they were well treated, for they had good clothing of its kind, good food, and a master who wittingly could do them no injustice, as he is, I am sure, incapable of it. Still, they all looked exceedingly sad, and even the old woman who boasted that she had held her old master in her arms when he was an infant, did not look cheerful, as the nurse at home would have done, at the sight of her ancient charge. The precincts of the huts were not clean, and the enclosure was full of weeds, in which poultry—the perquisites of the slaves—were in full possession. The negroes rear domestic birds of all kinds, and sell eggs and poultry to their masters. The money they spend in purchasing tobacco, molasses, clothes and flour—whisky, their great delight, they must not have. Some seventy or eighty hands were quartered in this part of the estate. The silence which reigned in the huts as soon as the fiddlers had gone off to the sugar-house was profound. Before leaving the quarter I was taken to the hospital, which was in charge of an old negress. The naked rooms contained severalflock beds on rough stands, and five patients, three of whom were women. They sat listlessly on the beds, looking out into space; no books to amuse them, no conversation—nothing but their own dull thoughts, if they had any. They were suffering from pneumonia and swellings of the glands of the neck; one man had fever. Their medical attendant visits them regularly, and each plantation has a practitioner, who is engaged by the term for his services. Negroes have now only a nominal value in the market—that is, the price of a good field hand is as high as ever, but there is no one to buy him at present, and no money to pay for him, and the trade of the slave-dealers is very bad. The menageries of the “Virginia negroes constantly on sale. Money advanced on all descriptions of property,” etc., must be full—their pockets empty. This question of price is introduced incidentally in reference to the treatment of negroes. It has often been said to me that no one will ill-use a creature worth £300 or £400, but that is not a universal rule. Much depends on temper, and many a hunting-field could show that if value be a guarantee for good usage, the slave is more fortunate than his fellow chattel, the horse. If the growth of sugar-cane, cotton and corn, be the great end of man’s mission on earth, and if all masters were like Governor Roman, slavery might be defended as a natural and innocuous institution. Sugar and cotton are, assuredly, two great agencies in this latter world. The older got on well enough without them.
The scraping of the fiddles attracted us to the sugar-house, a large brick building with a factory-looking chimney, where the juice of the cane is expressed, boiled, granulated, and prepared for the refiner. In a space of the floor unoccupied by machinery some fifteen women and as many men were assembled, and four couples were dancing a kind of Irish jig to the music of the negro musicians—a double shuffle and a thumping ecstasy, with loose elbows, pendulous paws, and angulated knees, heads thrown back, and backs arched inwards—a glazed eye, intense solemnity of mien, worthy of the minuet inDon Giovanni. At this time of year there is no work done in the sugar-house, but when the crushing and boiling are going on the labor is intense, and all the hands work in gangs night and day; and, if the heat of the fires be superadded to the temperature in September, it may be conceded that nothing but “involuntary servitude” could go through the toil and suffering required to produce sugar for us. This is not the place for an account of the processes and machinery used in the manufacture, which is a scientific operation, greatly improved by recent discoveries and apparatus.
In the afternoon the governor’s son came in from the companywhich he commands. He has been camping out with them to accustom them to the duties of actual war, and he told me that all his men were most zealous and exceedingly proficient. They are all of the best families around—planters, large and small, their sons and relatives, and a few of the creole population, who are engaged as hoopers and stavemakers. One of the latter had just stained his hands with blood. He had reason to believe a culpable intimacy existed between his wife and his foreman. A circumstance occurred which appeared to confirm his worst suspicions. He took out his firelock, and, meeting the man, he shot him dead without uttering a word, and then delivered himself up to the authorities. It is probable his punishment will be exceedingly light, as divorce suits and actions for damages are not in favor in this part of the world. Although the people are Roman Catholics, it is by no means unusual to permit relations within the degree of consanguinity forbidden by the church to intermarry, and the elastic nature of the rules which are laid down by the priesthood in that respect would greatly astonish the orthodox in Ireland or Bavaria. The whole of the planters and their dependents along “the coast” are in arms. There is but one sentiment, as far as I can see, among them, and that is, “We will never submit to the North.” In the evening, several officers of M. Alfred Roman’s company and neighbors came in, and out under the shade of the trees, in the twilight, illuminated by the flashing fireflies, politics were discussed—all on one side, of course, with general conversation of a more agreeable character. The customary language of the creoles is French, and several newspapers in French are published in the districts around us; but they speak English fluently.
Next morning, early, the governor was in the saddle and took me round to see his plantation. We rode through alleys formed by the tall stalks of the maize, out to the wide, unbroken fields—hedgeless, unwalled, where the green cane was just learning to wave its long shoots in the wind. Along the margin in the distance there is an unbroken boundary of forest extending all along the swamp lands, and two miles in depth. From the river to the forest there is about a mile and a half or more of land of the very highest quality—unfathomable, and producing from one to one and a half hogshead an acre. Away in the midst of the crops were white-looking masses, reminding me of sepoys and sowars as seen in Indian fields in the morning sun on many a march. As we rode toward them we overtook a cart with a large cask, a number of tin vessels, a bucket of molasses, a pail of milk, and a tub full of hominy or boiled Indian corn. The cask contained waterfor the use of the negroes, and the other vessels held the materials for their breakfast, in addition to which they generally have each a dried fish. The food looked ample and wholesome, such as any laboring man would be well content with every day. There were three gangs at work in the fields. One of men, with twenty mules and ploughs, was engaged in running through the furrows between the canes, cutting up the weeds and clearing away the grass, which is the enemy of the growing shoot. The mules are of a fine, large, good-tempered kind, and understand their work almost as well as the drivers, who are usually the more intelligent hands on the plantation. The overseer, a sharp-looking Creole, on a lanky pony, whip in hand, superintends their labors, and, after a few directions and a salutation to the governor, rode off to another part of the farm. The negroes when spoken to saluted us, and came forward to shake hands—a civility which must not be refused. With the exception of crying to their mules, however, they kept silence when at work. Another gang consisted of forty men, who were hoeing out the grass in Indian corn—easy work enough. The third gang was of thirty-six or thirty-seven women, who were engaged in hoeing out cane. Their clothing seemed heavy for the climate, their shoes ponderous and ill-made, so as to wear away the feet of their thick stockings. Coarse straw hats and bright cotton handkerchiefs protected their heads from the sun. The silence which I have already alluded to prevailed among these gangs also—not a sound could be heard but the blows of the hoe on the heavy clods. In the rear of each gang stood a black overseer, with a heavy-thonged whip over his shoulder. If “Alcibiades” or “Pompey,” were called out he came with outstretched hand to ask “how do you do,” and then returned to his labor; but the ladies were coy, and scarcely looked up from under their flappingchapeaux de pailleat their visitors. Those who are mothers leave their children in the charge of certain old women, unfit for any thing else, and “suckers,” as they are called, are permitted to go home to give the infants the breast at appointed periods in the day. I returned homemulta mecum revolens. After breakfast, in spite of a very fine sun, which was not unworthy of a January noon in Cawnpore, we drove forth to visit some planter friends of M. Roman, a few miles down the river. The levee road is dusty, but the gardens, white railings and neat houses of the planters looked fresh and clean enough. There is a great difference in the appearance of the slaves’ quarters. Some are neat, others are dilapidated and mean. As a general rule, it might be said that the goodness of the cottages was in proportion to the frontage of each plantation towardthe river, which is a fair index to the size of the estate wherever the river bank is straight. The lines of the estates are drawn perpendicularly to the banks, so that the convexity or concavity of the bends determines the frontage of the plantation.
The absence of human beings in the fields and on the roads was remarkable. The gangs at work were hidden in the deep corn, and not a soul met us on the road for many miles except one planter in his gig. At one place we visited a very handsome garden, laid out with hothouses and conservatories, ponds full of magnificent Victoria Regia in flower, orange-trees, and many tropical plants, native and foreign, date and other palms. The proprietor owns an extensive sugar refinery. We visited his factory and mills, but the heat from the boilers, which seemed too much even for the all but naked negroes who were at work, did not tempt us to make a very long sojourn inside. The ebony faces and polished black backs of the slaves were streaming with perspiration as they toiled over boiler, vat and centrifugal driers. The good refiner was not gaining much at present, for sugar has been falling rapidly in New Orleans, and the 300,000 barrels produced annually in the South will fall short in the yield of profit, which, on an average, may be taken at £11 a hogshead, without counting the molasses, for the planter. All the planters hereabouts have sown an unusual quantity of Indian corn, so as to have food for the negroes if the war lasts, without any distress from inland or sea blockade. The absurdity of supposing that a blockade can injure them in the way of supply is a favorite theme to descant upon. They may find out, however, that it is no contemptible means of warfare. At night, after our return, a large bonfire was lighted on the bank to attract the steamer to call for my luggage, which she was to leave at a point on the opposite shore, fourteen miles higher up, and I perceived that there are regular patrols and watchmen at night who look after levees and the negroes; a number of dogs are also loosed, but I am assured by a gentleman who has written me a long letter on the subject from Montgomery, that these dogs do not tear the negroes; they are taught merely to catch and mumble them, to treat them as a retriever well broken uses a wild duck. Next day I left the hospitable house of Governor Roman, full of regard for his personal character and of his wishes for his happiness and prosperity, but assuredly in no degree satisfied that even with his care and kindness the “domestic institution” can be rendered tolerable or defensible, if it be once conceded that the negro is a human being with a soul—or with the feelings of a man. On those points there are ingenious hypotheses and subtle argumentations inprint “down South” which do much to comfort the consciences of the anthropropietors. The negro skull wont hold as many ounces of shot as the white man’s. Can there be a more potent proof that the white man has a right to sell and to own a creature who carries a smaller charge of snipe-dust in his head? He is plantigrade, and curved as to the tibia! Cogent demonstration that he was made expressly to work for the arch-footed, straight-tibiaed Caucasian. He has arete mucosumand a colored pigment. Surely, he cannot have a soul of the same color as that of an Italian or a Spaniard, far less of a flaxen-haired Saxon! See these peculiarities in the frontal sinus—in sinciput or occiput! Can you doubt that the being with a head of that nature was made only to till, hoe, and dig for another race? Besides, the Bible says that he is a son of Ham, and prophecy must be carried out in the rice-swamps, sugar-canes, and maize-fields of the Southern Confederation. It’s flat blasphemy to set yourself against it. Our Saviour sanctions slavery because he does not say a word against it, and it’s very likely that St. Paul was a slave-owner. Had cotton and sugar been known, he might have been a planter! Besides, the negro is civilized by being carried away from Africa and set to work, instead of idling in native inutility. What hope is there of Christianizing the African races except by the agency of the apostles from New Orleans, Mobile or Charleston, who sing the sweet songs of Zion with such vehemence and clamor so fervently for baptism in the waters of the “Jawdam?” If these high physical, metaphysical, moral and religious reasonings do not satisfy you, and you venture to be unconvinced and to say so, then I advise you not come within reach of a mass meeting of our citizens, who may be able to find a rope and a tree in the neighborhood.
As we jog along in an easy rolling carriage drawn by a pair of stout horses, a number of white people meet us coming from the Catholic chapel of the parish, where they had been attending a service for the repose of the soul of a lady much beloved in the neighborhood. The black people are supposed to have very happy souls, or to be as utterly lost as Mr. Shandy’s homuncule was under certain circumstances, for I have failed to find that any such services are ever considered necessary in their case, although they may have been very good—or where it would be most desirable—very bad Catholics. My good young friend, clever, amiable, accomplished, who had a dark cloud of sorrow weighing down his young life that softened him to almost feminine tenderness, saw none of these things. He talked of foreign travel in days gone by—of Paris and poetry, of England and London hotels, of thegreatCarême, and of Alexis Soyer, of pictures, of politics—de omni scibili. The storm gathered overhead, and the rain fell in torrents—the Mississippi flowed lifelessly by—not a boat on its broad surface. The road passed by plantations smaller and poorer than I have yet seen, belonging to small planters, with only some ten or twelve slaves all told. The houses were poor and ragged. At last we reached Governor Manning’s place, and drove to the overseer’s—a large heavy-eyed old man, who asked us into his house from out of the rain till the boat was ready—and the river did not look inviting—full of drift trees, swirls and mighty eddies. In the plain room in which we sat there was a volume ofSpurgeon’s Sermonsand of Baxter’s works. “This rain will do good to the corn,” said the overseer. “The niggers has had sceerce nothin’ to do leetly, as they ’eve clearied out the fields pretty well.” We drove down to a poor shed on the levee called the ferry-house, attended by one stout young slave who was to row me over. Two flat-bottomed skiffs lay on the bank. The negro groped under the shed and pulled out a piece of wood like a large spatula, some four feet long, and a small round pole a little longer. “What are those?” quoth I, “Dem’s oars, Massa,” was my sable ferryman’s brisk reply. “I’m very sure they are not; if they were spliced they might make an oar between them.” “Golly, and dat’s the trute, Massa.” “There, go and get oars, will you?” While he was hunting about we entered the shed for shelter from the rain. We found “a solitary woman sitting” smoking a pipe by the ashes on the hearth, blear-eyed, low-browed, and morose—young as she was. She never said a word nor moved as we came in, sat and smoked, and looked through her gummy eyes at chickens about the size of sparrows, and at a cat not larger than a rat which ran about on the dirty floor. A little girl some four years of age, not over-dressed—indeed, half-naked, “not to put too fine a point upon it”—crawled out from under the bed, where she had hid on our approach. As she seemed incapable of appreciating the use of a small piece of silver presented to her—having no precise ideas on coinage or toffy—her parent took the obolus in charge with unmistakable decision; but still she would not stir a step to aid our Charon, who now insisted on the “key ov de oarhouse.” The little thing sidled off and hunted it out from the top of the bedstead, and I was not sorry to quit the company of the silent woman in black. Charon pushed his skiff into the water—there was a good deal of rain it—in shape a snuffer-dish, some ten feet long and a foot deep. I got in, and the conscious waters immediately began vigorously spurting through the cotton wadding wherewith the craft wascaulked. Had we gone out into the stream we should have had a swim for it, and they do say that the Mississippi is the most dangerous river for that healthful exercise in the known world. “Why! deuce take you” (I said, at least that, in my wrath), “don’t you see the boat is leaky?” “See it now for true, Massa. Nobody able to tell dat till Massa get in, tho’.” Another skiff proved to be staunch. I bade good-bye to my friend, and sat down in my boat, which was soon forced up along the stream close to the bank, in order to get a good start across to the other side. The view, from my lonely position, was curious, but not at all picturesque. The landscape had disappeared at once. The world was bounded on both sides by a high bank, and was constituted by a broad river—just as if one were sailing down an open sewer of enormous length and breadth. Above the bank rose, however, the tops of tall trees and the chimneys of sugar-houses. A row of a quarter of an hour brought us to the levee on the other side. I ascended the bank, and directly in front of me, across the road, appeared a carriage gateway and wickets of wood, painted white in a line of park palings of the same material, which extended up and down the road far as the eye could follow, and guarded wide-spread fields of maize and sugar-cane. An avenue of trees, with branches close set, drooping and overarching a walk paved with red brick, led to the house, the porch of which was just visible at the extremity of the lawn, with clustering flowers, rose, jessamine and creepers clinging to the pillars supporting the verandah. The proprietor, who had espied my approach, issued forth with a section of sable attendants in his rear, and gave me a hearty welcome. The house was larger and better than the residences even of the richest planters, though it was in need of some little repair, and had been built perhaps fifty years ago, in the old Irish fashion, and who built well, ate well, drank well, and, finally, paid very well. The view from the belvedere was one of the most striking of its kind in the world. If an English agriculturist could see six thousand acres of the finest land in one field, unbroken by hedge or boundary, and covered with the most magnificent crops of tasselling Indian corn and sprouting sugar-cane, as level as a billiard-table, he would surely doubt his senses. But here is literally such a sight. Six thousand acres, better tilled than the finest patch in all the Lothians, green as Meath pastures, which can be cultivated for a hundred years to come without requiring manure, of depth practically unlimited, and yielding an average profit on what is sold off it of at least £20 an acre at the old prices and usual yield of sugar. Rising up in the midst of the verdure are the white lines of the negro cottages andthe plantation offices and sugar-houses, which look like large public edifices in the distance. And who is the lord of all this fair domain? The proprietor of Houmas and Orange-grove is a man, a self-made one, who has attained his apogee on the bright side of half a century, after twenty-five years of successful business.
When my eyes “uncurtained the early morning,” I might have imagined myself in the magic garden of Cherry and Fair Star, so incessant and multifarious were the carols of the birds, which were the only happy colored people I saw in my Southern tour, notwithstanding the assurances of the many ingenious and candid gentlemen who attempted to prove to me that the palm of terrestrial felicity must be awarded to their negroes. As I stepped through my window upon the verandah, a sharp chirp called my attention to a mocking-bird perched upon a rose-bush beneath, whom my presence seemed to annoy to such a degree that I retreated behind my curtain, whence I observed her flight to a nest, cunningly hid in a creeping-rose trailed around a neighboring column of the house, where she imparted a breakfast of spiders and grasshoppers to her gaping and clamorous offspring. While I was admiring the motherly grace of this melodious fly-catcher, a servant brought coffee, and announced that the horses were ready, and that I might have a three hours’ ride before breakfast. At Houmasles jours se suivent et se ressemblent, and an epitome of the first will serve as a type for all, with the exception of such variations in the kitchen and produce as the ingenuity and exhaustless hospitality of my host were never tired of framing.
If I regretted the absence of our English agriculturist when I beheld the 6,000 acres of cane and 1,600 of maize unfolded from the belvedere the day previous, I longed for his presence still more when I saw those evidences of luxuriant fertility attained without the aid of phosphates or guano. The rich Mississippi bottoms need no manure; a rotation of maize with cane affords them the necessary recuperative action. The cane of last year’s plant is left in stubble, and renews its growth this spring under the title ofratoons. When the maize is in tassel, cow-peas are dropped between the rows; and when the lordly stalk, of which I measured many twelve and even fifteen feet in height, bearing three and sometimes four ears, is topped to admit the ripening sun, the pea-vine twines itself around the trunk, with a profusion of leaf and tendril that supplies the planter with the most desirable fodder for his mules in “rolling-time,” which is their season of trial. Besides this, the corn-blades are culled and cured. These are the best meals of the Southern race-horse, and constitute nutritious hay without dust.The cow-pea is said to strengthen the system of the earth for the digestion of a new crop of sugar-cane. A sufficient quantity of the cane of last season is reserved from the mill, and laid in pits, where the ends of the stalk are carefully closed with earth until spring. After the ground has been plowed into ridges, these canes are laid in the endless tumuli, and not long after their interment, a fresh sprout springs at each joint of these interminable flutes.
As we ride through the wagon roads, of which there are not less than thirty miles in this confederation of four plantations, held together by the purse and the life of our host—the unwavering exactitude of the rows of cane, which run without deviation at right angles with the river down to the cane-brake, two miles off, proves that the negro would be a formidable rival in a ploughing match. The cane has been “laid by,” that is, it requires no more labor, and will soon “lap,” or close up, though the rows are seven feet apart. It feathers like a palm-top; a stalk which was cut measured six feet, although from the ridges it was but waist high. On dissecting it near the root, we find five nascent joints not a quarter of an inch apart. In a few weeks more, these will shoot up like a spy-glass pulled out to its focus.
There are four lordly sugar-houses, as the grinding-mills and boiling and crystalizing buildings are called, and near each is to be found the negro village, or “quarter,” of that section of the plantation. A wide avenue, generally lined with trees, runs through these hamlets, which consist of twenty or thirty white cottages, single storied, and divided into four rooms. They are whitewashed, and at no great distance might be mistaken for New-England villages, with a town-hall which often serves in the latter for a “meeting-house,” with occasionally a row of stores on the ground floor.
The people, or “hands,” are in the field, and the only inhabitants of the settlements are scores of “picaninnies,” who seem a jolly congregation, under the care of crones, who here, as in an Indian village, act as nurses of the rising generation, destined from their births to the limits of a social Procrustean bed. The increase of property on the estate is about five per cent. per annum by the birth of children.
We ride an hour before coming upon any “hands” at work in the fields. There is an air of fertile desolation that prevails in no other cultivated land. The regularity of the cane, its gardenlike freedom from grass or weeds, and thead unguemfinish and evenness of the furrows, would seem the work of nocturnal fairies, did we not realize the system of “gang labor” exemplified in a field we at length reach, where some thirty men and women were giving with the hoe the last polishto the earth around the cane, which would not be molested again until gathered for the autumnal banquet of the rolling-mills.