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