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