University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXII.

May 4th.—In the morning I took a drive about the city,
which is loosely built in detached houses over a very pretty
undulating country covered with wood and fruit-trees. Many
good houses of dazzling white, with bright green blinds, verandas,
and doors, stand in their own grounds or gardens. In
the course of the drive I saw two or three signboards and
placards announcing that "Smith & Co. advanced money on
slaves, and had constant supplies of Virginian negroes on sale
or hire."These establishments were surrounded by high
walls enclosing the slave-pens or large rooms, in which the
slaves are kept for inspection. The train for Montgomery
started at 9.45 a.m., but I had no time to stop and visit them.

It is evident we are approaching the Confederate capital,
for the candidates for office begin to show, and I detected a
printed testimonial in my room in the hotel. The country,
from Macon, in Georgia, to Montgomery, in Alabama, offers no
features to interest the traveller which are not common to the
districts already described. It is, indeed, more undulating,
and somewhat more picturesque, or less unattractive, but, on
the whole, there is little to recommend it, except the natural
fertility of the soil. The people are rawer, ruder, bigger—
there is the same amount of tobacco chewing and its consequences
—and as much swearing or use of expletives. The
men are tall, lean, uncouth, but they are not peasants. There
are, so far as I have seen, no rustics, no peasantry in America;
men dress after the same type, differing only in finer or coarser
material; every man would wear, if he could, a black satin
waistcoat and a large diamond pin stuck in the front of his

shirt, as he certainly has a watch and a gilt or gold chain of
some sort or other. The Irish laborer, or the German husbandman
is the nearest approach to our Giles Jolter or the
Jacques Bonhomme to be found in the States. The mean
white affects the style of the large proprietor of slaves or capital
as closely as he can; he reads his papers—and, by the
by, they are becoming smaller and more whitey-brown as we
proceed—and takes his drink with the same air—takes up
as much room, and speaks a good deal in the same fashion.

The people are all hearty Secessionists here—the Bars and
Stars are flying at the road-stations and from the pine-tops,
and there are lusty cheers for Jeff Davis and the Southern
Confederacy. Troops are flocking towards Virginia from the
Southern States in reply to the march of Volunteers from
Northern States to Washington; but it is felt that the steps
taken by the Federal Government to secure Baltimore have
obviated any chance of successfully opposing the "Lincolnites"
going through that city. There is a strong disposition on the
part of the Southerners to believe they have many friends in
the North, and they endeavor to attach a factious character
to the actions of the Government by calling the Volunteers
and the war party in the North "Lincolnites," "Lincoln's
Mercenaries," "Black Republicans," "Abolitionists," and the
like. The report of an armistice, now denied by Mr. Seward
officially, was for some time current, but it is plain that the South
must make good its words, and justify its acts by the sword.
General Scott would, it was fondly believed, retire from the
United States army, and either remain neutral or take command
under the Confederate flag, but now that it is certain he
will not follow any of these courses, he is assailed in the foulest
manner by the press and in private conversation. Heaven
help the idol of a democracy!

At one of the junctions General Beauregard, attended by
Mr. Manning, and others of his staff, got into the car, and
tried to elude observation, but the conductors take great pleasure
in unearthing distinguished passengers for the public, and
the General was called on for a speech by the crowd of idlers.
The General hates speech-making, he told me, and he had
besides been bored to death at every station by similar demands.
But a man must be popular or he is nothing. So,
as next best thing, Governor Manning made a speech in the
General's name, in which he dwelt on Southern Rights, Sumter,
victory, and abolitiondom, and was carried off from the cheers

of his auditors by the train in the midst of an unfinished
sentence. There were a number of blacks listening to the
Governor, who were appreciative.

Towards evening, having thrown out some slight outworks,
against accidental sallies of my fellow-passengers' saliva, I
went to sleep, and woke up at eleven p. m., to hear we were in
Montgomery. A very rickety omnibus took the party to the
hotel, which was crowded to excess. The General and his
friends had one room to themselves. Three gentlemen and
myself were crammed into a filthy room which already contained
two strangers, and as there were only three beds in the
apartment it was apparent that we were intended to "double
up considerably;" but after strenuous efforts, a little bribery
and cajoling, we succeeded in procuring mattresses to put on
the floor, which was regarded by our neighbors as a proof of
miserable aristocratic fastidiousness. Had it not been for the
flies, the fleas would have been intolerable, but one nuisance
neutralized the other. Then, as to food—nothing could be
had in the hotel—but one of the waiters led us to a restaurant,
where we selected from a choice bill of fare, which contained,
I think, as many odd dishes as ever I saw, some unknown
fishes, oyster-plants, 'possums, raccoons, frogs, and other
delicacies, and, eschewing toads and the like, really made a
good meal off dirty plates on a vile table-cloth, our appetites
being sharpened by the best of condiments.

Colonel Pickett has turned up here, having made his escape
from Washington just in time to escape arrest—travelling
in disguise on foot through out-of-the-way places till he got
among friends.

I was glad when bedtime approached, that I was not among
the mattress men. One of the gentlemen in the bed next
the door was a tremendous projector in the tobacco juice line:
his final rumination ere he sank to repose was a masterpiece
of art—a perfect liquid pyrotechny, Roman candles and
falling stars. A horrid thought occurred as I gazed and wondered.
In case he should in a supreme moment turn his
attention my way!—I was only seven or eight yards off,
and that might be nothing to him!—I hauled down my mosquito
curtain at once, and watched him till, completely satiated,
he slept.

May 5th.—Very warm, and no cold water, unless one went
to the river. The hotel baths were not promising. This
hotel is worse than the Mills House or Willard's. The feeding

and the flies are intolerable. One of our party comes in to
say that he could scarce get down to the hall on account of
the crowd, and that all the people who passed him had very
hard, sharp bones. He remarks thereupon to the clerk at the
bar, who tells him that the particular projections he alludes to
are implements of defence or offence, as the case may be, and
adds, "I suppose you and your friends are the only people
in the house who haven't a bowie-knife, or a six-shooter, or
Derringer about them." The house is full of Confederate
congressmen, politicians, colonels, and place-men with or
without places, and a vast number of speculators, contractors,
and the like, attracted by the embryo government. Among
the visitors are many filibusters, such as Henningsen, Pickett,
Tochman, Wheat.[1] I hear a good deal about the association
called the Knights of the Golden Circle, a Protestant
association for securing the Gulf provinces and States, including
—which has been largely developed by recent events—
them in the Southern Confederacy, and creating them into an
independent government.

Montgomery has little claims to be called a capital. The
streets are very hot, unpleasant, and uninteresting. I have
rarely seen a more dull, lifeless place; it looks like a small
Russian town in the interior. The names of the shopkeepers
indicate German and French origin. I looked in at one or
two of the slave magazines, which are not unlike similar establishments
in Cairo and Smyrna. A certain degree of freedom
is enjoyed by some of the men, who lounge about the
doors, and are careless of escape or liberty, knowing too well
the difficulties of either.

It is not in its external aspects generally that slavery is so
painful. The observer must go with Sterne, and gaze in on
the captives' dungeons through the bars. The condition of a
pig in a sty is not, in an animal sense, anything but good.
Well fed, over fed, covered from the winds and storms of
heaven, with clothing, food, medicine, provided, children taken
care of, aged relatives and old age itself succored and guarded
—is not this—? Get thee behind us, slave philosopher!
The hour comes when the butcher steals to the sty, and the
knife leaps from the sheath.

Now there is this one thing in being an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, that
be the race of men bad as it may, a kind of grandiose character
is given to their leader. The stag which sweeps his rivals

from his course is the largest of the herd; but a man who
drives the largest drove of sheep is no better than he who
drives the smallest. The flock he compels, must consist of
human beings to develop the property of which I speak, and
so the very superiority of the slave master in the ways and
habits of command proves that the negro is a man. But, at
the same time the law which regulates all these relations between
man and his fellows, asserts itself here. The dominant
race becomes dependent on some other body of men, less martial,
arrogant, and wealthy, for its elegances, luxuries, and
necessaries. The poor villeins round the Norman castle forge
the armor, make the furniture, and exercise the mechanical
arts which the baron and his followers are too ignorant and
too proud to pursue; if there is no population to serve this
purpose, some energetic race comes in their place, and the
Yankee does the part of the little hungry Greek to the
Roman patrician.

The South has at present little or no manufactures, takes
everything from the Yankee outside or the mean white within
her gates, and despises both. Both are reconciled by interest.
The one gets a good price for his manufacture and the fruit
of his ingenuity from a careless, spendthrift proprietor; the
other hopes to be as good as his master some day, and sees
the beginning of his fortune in the possession of a negro. It
is fortunate for our great British Catherine-wheel, which is
continually throwing off light and heat to the remotest parts
of the world—I hope not burning down to a dull red cinder
in the centre at last—that it had not to send its emigrants to
the Southern States, as assuredly the emigration would soon
have been checked. The United States has been represented
to the British and Irish emigrants by the Free States—the
Northern States and the great West—and the British and
German emigrant, who finds himself in the South, has drifted
there through the Northern States, and either is a migratory
laborer, or hopes to return with a little money to the North
and West, if he does not see his way to the possession of land
and negroes.

After dinner at the hotel table, which was crowded with
officers, and where I met Mr. Howell Cobb and several senators
of the new Congress, I spent the evening with Colonel
Deas, Quartermaster-General, and a number of his staff, in
their quarters. As I was walking over to the house, one of
the detached villa-like residences so common in Southern cities,

I perceived a crowd of very well-dressed negroes, men and
women, in front of a plain brick building which I was inform
ed was their Baptist meeting-house, into which white people
rarely or never intrude. These were domestic servants, or
persons employed in stores, and their general appearance indicated
much comfort and even luxury. I doubted if they all
were slaves. One of my companions went up to a young
woman in a straw-hat, with bright red-and-green ribbon trimmings
and artificial flowers, a gaudy Paisley shawl, and a rainbow-like
gown, blown out over her yellow boots by a prodigious
crinoline, and asked her "Whom do you belong to?" She
replied, "I b'long to Massa Smith, sar." Well, we have men
who "belong" to horses in England. I am not sure if
Americans, North and South, do not consider their superiority
to all Englishmen so thoroughly established, that they can
speak of them as if they were talking of inferior animals.
To-night, for example, a gallant young South Carolinian,
one Ransome Calhoun,[2] was good enough to say that" Great
Britain was in mortal fear of France, and was abjectly subdued
by her great rival." Hence came controversy, short and acrimonious.

May 6th.—I forgot to say that yesterday before dinner I
drove out with some gentlemen and the ladies of the family of
Mr. George N. Sanders, once United States consul at Liverpool,
now a doubtful man here, seeking some office from the
Government, and accused by a portion of the press of being
a Confederate spy—Porcus de grege epicuri—but a learned
pig withal, and weatherwise, and mindful of the signs of the
times, catching straws and whisking them upwards to detect
the currents. Well, in this great moment I am bound to say
there was much talk of ice. The North owns the frozen climates;
but it was hoped that Great Britain, to whom belongs
the North Pole, might force the blockade and send aid.

The environs of Montgomery are agreeable—well-wooded,
undulating, villas abounding, public gardens, and a large negro
and mulatto suburb. It is not usual, as far as I can judge, to
see women riding on horseback in the South, but on the road
here we encountered several.

After breakfast I walked down with Senator Wigfall to the
capitol of Montgomery—one of the true Athenian Yankee-ized
structures of this novo-classic land, erected on a site
worthy of a better fate and edifice. By an open cistern, on

our way, I came on a gentleman engaged in disposing of some
living ebony carvings to a small circle, who had more curiosity
than cash, for they did not at all respond to the energetic
appeals of the auctioneer.

The sight was a bad preparation for an introduction to the
legislative assembly of a Confederacy which rests on the Institution
as the corner-stone of the social and political arch
which maintains it. But there they were, the legislators or
conspirators, in a large room provided with benches and seats,
and listening to such a sermon as a Balfour of Burley might have
preached to his Covenanters—resolute and massive heads,
and large frames—such men as must have a faith to inspire
them. And that is so. Assaulted by reason, by logic, argument,
philanthropy, progress directed against his peculiar institutions,
the Southerner at last is driven to a fanaticism—a
sacred faith which is above all reason or logical attack in the
propriety, righteousness, and divinity of slavery.

The chaplain, a venerable old man, loudly invoked curses
on the heads of the enemy, and blessings on the arms and
councils of the New State. When he was done, Mr. Howell
Cobb, a fat, double-chinned, mellow-eyed man, rapped with
his hammer on the desk before the chair on which he sat
as speaker of the assembly, and the house proceeded to business.
I could fancy that, in all but garments, they were
like the men who first conceived the great rebellion which led
to the independence of this wonderful country—so earnest,
so grave, so sober, and so vindictive—at least, so embittered
against the power which they consider tyrannical and insulting.

The word "liberty" was used repeatedly in the short time
allotted to the public transaction of business and the reading
of documents; the Congress was anxious to get to its work,
and Mr. Howell Cobb again thumped his desk and announced
that the house was going into "secret session," which intimated
that all persons who were not members should leave. I
was introduced to what is called the floor of the house, and had
a delegate's chair, and of course I moved away with the others,
and with the disappointed ladies and men from the galleries;
but one of the members, Mr. Rhett, I believe, said jokingly:
"I think you ought to retain your seat. If the 'Times' will
support the South, we'll accept you as a delegate." I replied
that I was afraid I could not act as a delegate to a Congress
of Slave States. And, indeed, I had been much affected at
the slave auction held just outside the hotel, on the steps of

the public fountain, which I had witnessed on my way to the
capitol. The auctioneer, who was an ill-favored, dissipated-looking
rascal, had his "article" beside him, on, not in, a deal
packing-case—a stout young negro badly dressed and ill-shod,
who stood with all his goods fastened in a small bundle in his
hand, looking out at the small and listless gathering of men,
who, whittling and chewing, had moved out from the shady side
of the street as they saw the man put up. The chattel character
of slavery in the States renders it most repulsive. What a
pity the nigger is not polypoid—so that he could be cut up
in junks, and each junk should reproduce itself.

A man in a cart, some volunteers in coarse uniforms, a few
Irish laborers in a long van, and four or five men in the usual
black coat, satin waistcoat, and black hat, constituted the audience,
whom the auctioneer addressed volubly: "A prime field
hand! Just look at him—good-natered, well-tempered; no
marks, nary sign of bad about him! En-i-ne hunthered—
only nine hun-ther-ed and fifty dol'rs for 'em! Why, it's quite
rad-aklous! Nine hundred and fifty dol'rs! I can't raly—
That's good. Thank you, sir. Twenty-five bid—nine hun-therd
and seventy-five dol'rs for this most useful hand. The
price rose to one thousand dollars, at which the useful
hand was knocked down to one of the black hats near me.
The auctioneer and the negro and his buyer all walked off together
to settle the transaction, and the crowd moved away.

"That nigger went cheap," said one of them to a companion,
as he walked towards the shade. "Yes, Sirr! Niggers
is cheap now—that's a fact." I must admit that I felt myself
indulging in a sort of reflection whether it would not be
nice to own a man as absolutely as one might possess a horse
—to hold him subject to my will and pleasure, as if he were
a brute beast without the power of kicking or biting—to
make him work for me—to hold his fate in my hands: but
the thought was for a moment. It was followed by disgust.

I have seen slave markets in the East, where the traditions
of the race, the condition of family and social relations divest
slavery of the most odious characteristics which pertain to it
in the States; but the use of the English tongue in such a
transaction, and the idea of its taking place among a civilized
Christian people, produced in me a feeling of inexpressible
loathing and indignation. Yesterday I was much struck by
the intelligence, activity, and desire to please of a good-looking
colored waiter, who seemed so light-hearted and light-colored

I could not imagine he was a slave. So one of our
party, who was an American, asked him: "What are you,
boy—a free nigger?" Of course he knew that in Alabama
it was most unlikely he could reply in the affirmative. The
young man's smile died away from his lips, a flush of blood
embrowned the face for a moment, and he answered in a sad,
low tone: "No, sir! I b'long to Massa Jackson," and left the
room at once. As I stood at an upper window of the capitol,
and looked on the wide expanse of richly-wooded, well-cultivated
land which sweeps round the hill-side away to the horizon,
I could not help thinking of the misery and cruelty which
must have been borne in tilling the land and raising the
houses and streets of the dominant race before whom one nationality
of colored people has perished within the memory of
man. The misery and cruelty of the system are established
by the advertisements for runaway negroes, and by the description
of the stigmata on their persons—whippings and
brandings, scars and cuts—though these, indeed, are less
frequent here than in the border States.

On my return, the Hon. W. M. Browne, Assistant-Secretary
of State, came to visit me—a cadet of an Irish family,
who came to America some years ago, and having lost his
money in land speculations, turned his pen to good account
as a journalist, and gained Mr. Buchanan's patronage and
support as a newspaper editor in Washington. There he became
intimate with the Southern gentlemen, with whom he
naturally associated in preference to the Northern members;
and when they went out, he walked over along with them.
He told me the Government had already received numerous
—I think he said 400—letters from ship-owners applying
for letters of marque and reprisal. Many of these applications
were from merchants in Boston, and other maritime
cities in the New England States. He further stated that
the President was determined to take the whole control of the
army, and the appointments to command in all ranks of officers
into his own hands.

There is now no possible chance of preserving the peace or
of averting the horrors of war from these great and prosperous
communities. The Southern people, right or wrong, are
bent on independence and on separation, and they will fight
to the last for their object.

The press is fanning the flame on both sides: it would be
difficult to say whether it or the telegraphs circulate lies most

largely; but that as the papers print the telegrams they must
have the palm. The Southerners are told there is a reign of terror
in New York—that the 7th New York Regiment has been
captured by the Baltimore people—that Abe Lincoln is
always drunk—that General Lee has seized Arlington Heights,
and is bombarding Washington. The New York people are
regaled with similar stories from the South. The coincidence
between the date of the skirmish at Lexington and of the attack
on the 6th Massachusetts Regiment at Baltimore is not
so remarkable as the fact, that the first man who was killed at
the latter place, 86 years ago, was a direct descendant of the
first of the colonists who was killed by the royal soldiery.
Baltimore may do the same for the South which Lexington
did for all the Colonies. Head-shaving, forcible deportations,
tarring and feathering are recommended and adopted as specifics
to produce conversion from erroneous opinions. The
President of the United States has called into service of the
Federal Government 42,000 volunteers, and increased the regular
army by 22,000 men, and the navy by 18,000 men. If
the South secede, they ought certainly to take over with them
some Yankee hotel keepers. This "Exchange" is in a frightful
state—nothing but noise, dirt, drinking, wrangling.