University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXIX.

May 18th.—An exceedingly hot day, which gives bad
promise of comfort for the Federal soldiers, who are coming,
as the Washington Government asserts, to put down rebellion
in these quarters. The mosquitoes are advancing in numbers
and force. The day I first came I asked the waiter if they
were numerous. "I wish they were a hundred times as many,"
said he. On my inquiring if he had any possible reason for such
an extraordinary aspiration, he said, "because we would get
rid of these darned black republicans out of Fort Pickens all
the sooner." The man seemed to infer that they would not
bite the Confederate soldiers.

I dined at Dr. Nott's, and met Judge Campbell, who has
resigned his high post as one of the Judges of the Supreme
Court of the United States, and explained his reasons for doing
so in a letter, charging Mr. Seward with treachery, dissimulation,
and falsehood. He seemed to me a great casuist
rather than a profound lawyer, and to delight in subtle distinctions
and technical abstractions; but I had the advantage
of hearing from him at great length the whole history of the
Dred Scott case, and a recapitulation of the arguments used
on both sides, the force of which, in his opinion, was irresistibly
in favor of the decision of the Court. Mr. Forsyth, Colonel
Hardee, and others were of the company.

To me it was very painful to hear a sweet ringing silvery
voice, issuing from a very pretty mouth, "I'm so delighted to
hear that the Yankees in Fortress Monroe have got typhus
fever. I hope it may kill them all." This was said by one
of the most charming young persons possible, and uttered with

unmistakable sincerity, just as if she had said, "I hear all the
snakes in Virginia are dying of poison." I fear the young
lady did not think very highly of me for refusing to sympathize
with her wishes in that particular form. But all the
ladies in Mobile belong to "The Yankee Emancipation Society."
They spend their days sewing cartridges, carding lint,
preparing bandages, and I'm not quite sure that they don't
fill shells and fuses as well. Their zeal and energy will go
far to sustain the South in the forthcoming struggle, and nowhere
is the influence of women greater than in America.

As to Dr. Nott, his studies have induced him to take a
purely materialist view of the question of slavery, and, according
to him, questions of morals and ethics, pertaining to its
consideration, ought to be referred to the cubic capacity of the
human cranium—the head that can take the largest charge
of snipe shot will eventually dominate in some form or other
over the head of inferior capacity. Dr. Nott detests slavery,
but he does not see what is to be done with the slaves, and
how the four millions of negroes are to be prevented from becoming
six, eight, or ten millions, if their growth is stimulated
by high prices for Southern produce.

There is a good deal of force in the observation which I
have heard more than once down here, that Great Britain
could not have emancipated her negroes had they been dwelling
within her border, say in Lancashire or Yorkshire. No
inconvenience was experienced by the English people per se
in consequence of the emancipation, which for the time destroyed
industry and shook society to pieces in Jamaica.
Whilst the States were colonies, Great Britain viewed the
introduction of slaves to such remote dependencies with satisfaction,
and when the United States had established their
sovereignty they found the institution of slavery established
within their own borders, and an important, if not essential,
stratum in their social system. The work of emancipation
would have then been comparatively easy; it now is a stupendous
problem which no human being has offered to solve.

May 19th.—The heat out of doors was so great that I felt
little tempted to stir out, but at two o'clock Mr. Magee drove
me to a pretty place, call Spring Hill, where Mr. Stein, a
German merchant of the city, has his country residence. The
houses of Mobile merchants are scattered around the rising
ground in that vicinity; they look like marble at a distance,
but a nearer approach resolves them into painted wood.

Stone is almost unknown on all this seaboard region. The
worthy German was very hospitable, and I enjoyed a cool
walk before dinner under the shade of his grapes, which
formed pleasant walks in his garden. The Scuppernung
grape, which grew in profusion—a native of North Carolina
—has a remarkable appearance. The stalk, which is smooth,
and covered with a close-grained gray bark, has not the character
of a vine, but grows straight and stiff like the branch of
a tree, and is crowded with delicious grapes. Cherokee plum
and rose-trees, and magnificent magnolias, clustered round his
house, and beneath their shadow I listened to the worthy German
comparing the Fatherland to his adopted country, and
now and then letting out the secret love of his heart for the
old place. He, like all of the better classes in the South, has
the utmost dread of universal suffrage, and would restrict the
franchise largely to-morrow if he could.

May 20.—I left Mobile in the steamer Florida for New
Orleans this morning at eight o'clock. She was crowded with
passengers, in uniform. In my cabin was a notice of the rules
and regulations of the steamer. No. 6 was as follows: "All
slave servants must be cleared at the Custom House. Passengers
having slaves will please report as soon as they come
on board."

A few miles from Mobile the steamer, turning to the right,
entered one of the narrow channels which perforate the whole
of the coast, called "Grant's Pass." An ingenious person
has rendered it navigable by an artificial cut; but as he was
not an universal philanthropist, and possibly may have come
from north of the Tweed, he further erected a series of barriers,
which can only be cleared by means of a little pepper-castor
iron lighthouse; and he charges toll on all passing vessels.
A small island at the pass, just above water-level, about
twenty yards broad and one hundred and fifty yards long, was
being fortified. Some of our military friends landed here; and
it required a good deal of patriotism to look cheerfully at the
prospect of remaining cooped up among the mosquitoes in a
box, on this miserable sand-bank, which a shell would suffice
to blow into atoms.

Having passed this channel, our steamer proceeded up a kind
of internal sea, formed by the shore, on the right hand and on
the left, by a chain almost uninterrupted of reefs covered with
sand, and exceedingly narrow, so that the surf of the ocean
rollers at the other side could be seen through the foliage of the

pine-trees which line them. On our right the endless pines
closed up the land view of the horizon; the beach was pierced
by creeks without number, called bayous; and it was curious
to watch the white sails of the little schooners gliding in and
out among the trees along the green meadows that seemed to
stretch as an impassable barrier to their exit. Immense troops
of pelicans flapped over the sea, dropping incessantly on the
fish which abounded in the inner water; and long rows of the
same birds stood digesting their plentiful meals on the white
beach by the ocean foam.

There was some anxiety in the passengers' minds, as it was
reported that the United States cruisers had been seen inside, and
that they had even burned the batteries on Ship Island. We
saw nothing of a character more formidable than coasting
craft and a return steamer from New Orleans till we approached
the entrance to Pontchartrain, when a large schooner,
which sailed like a witch and was crammed with men, attracted
our attention. Through the glass I could make out two guns
on her deck, and quite reason enough for any well-filled merchantman
sailing under the Stars and Stripes to avoid her close
companionship.

The approach to New Orleans is indicated by large hamlets
and scattered towns along the seashore, hid in the piney woods,
which offer a retreat to the merchants and their families from
the fervid heat of the unwholesome city in summer time.
As seen from the sea, these sanitary settlements have a picturesque
effect, and an air of charming freshness and lightness.
There are detached villas of every variety of architecture in
which timber can be constructed, painted in the brightest hues
—greens, and blues, and rose tints—each embowered in
magnolias and rhododendrons. From every garden a very long
and slender pier, terminated by a bathing-box, stretches into
the shallow sea; and the general aspect of these houses, with
the light domes and spires of churches rising above the lines
of white railings set in the dark green of the pines, is light and
novel. To each of these cities there is a jetty, at two of
which we touched, and landed newspapers, received or discharged
a few bales of goods, and were off again.

Of the little crowd assembled on each, the majority were
blacks—the whites, almost without exception, in uniform, and
armed. A near approach did not induce me to think that any
agencies less powerful than epidemics and summer-heats could
render Pascagoula, Passchristian, Mississippi City, and the

rest of these settlements very eligible residences for people of
an active turn of mind.

The livelong day my fellow-passengers never ceased talking
politics, except when they were eating and drinking,
because the horrible chewing and spitting are not at all incompatible
with the maintenance of active discussion. The
fiercest of them all was a thin, fiery-eyed little woman, who at
dinner expressed a fervid desire for bits of "Old Abe"—his
ear, his hair; but whether for the purpose of eating or as
curious relics, she did not enlighten the company.

After dinner there was some slight difficulty among the military
gentlemen, though whether of a political or personal
character, I could not determine; but it was much aggravated
by the appearance of a six-shooter on the scene, which, to my
no small perturbation, was presented in a right line with my
berth, out of the window of which I was looking at the combatants.
I am happy to say the immediate delivery of the
fire was averted by an amicable arrangement that the disputants
should meet at the St. Charles Hotel at twelve o'clock on the
second day after their arrival, in order, to fix time, place, and
conditions of a more orthodox and regular encounter.

At night the steamer entered a dismal canal, through a
swamp which is infamous as the most mosquito haunted place
along the infested shore; the mouths of the Mississippi themselves
being quite innocent, compared to the entrance of Lake
Pontchartrain. When I woke up at daylight, I found the
vessel lying alongside a wharf with a railway train alongside,
which is to take us to the city of New Orleans, six miles distant.

A village of restaurants or "restaurats," as they are called
here, and of bathing boxes has grown up around the terminus;
all the names of the owners, the notices and sign-boards being
French. Outside the settlement the railroad passes through a
swamp, like an Indian jungle, through which the overflowings
of the Mississippi creep in black currents. The spires of New
Orleans rise above the underwood and semi-tropical vegetation
of this swamp. Nearer to the city lies a marshy plain,
in which flocks of cattle, up to the belly in the soft earth are
floundering among the clumps of vegetation. The nearer
approach to New Orleans by rail lies through a suburb of
exceedingly broad lanes, lined on each side by rows of miserable
mean one-storied houses, inhabited, if I am to judge from
the specimens I saw, by a miserable and sickly population.

A great number of the men and women had evident traces
of negro blood in their veins, and of the purer blooded whites
many had the peculiar look of the fishy-fleshy population of
the Levantine towns, and all were pale and lean. The railway
terminus is marked by a dirty, barrack-like shed in the
city. Selecting one of the numerous tumble-down hackney
carriages which crowded the street outside the station, I
directed the man to drive me to the house of Mr. Mure, the
British consul, who had been kind enough to invite me as his
guest for the period of my stay in New Orleans.

The streets are badly paved, as those of most of the American
cities, if not all that I have ever been in, but in other respects
they are more worthy of a great city than are those of
New York There is an air thoroughly French about the
people—cafés, restaurants, billiard-rooms abound, with oyster
and lager-bier saloons interspersed. The shops are all magazins;
the people in the streets are speaking French, particularly
the negroes, who are going out shopping with their masters
and mistresses, exceedingly well dressed, noisy, and not
unhappy looking. The extent of the drive gave an imposing
idea of the size of New Orleans—the richness of some of the
shops, the vehicles in the streets, and the multitude of well-dressed
people on the pavements, an impression of its wealth
and the comfort of the inhabitants. The Confederate flag was
flying from the public buildings and from many private houses.
Military companies paraded through the streets, and a large
proportion of men were in uniform.

In the day I drove through the city, delivered letters of introduction,
paid visits, and examined the shops and the public
places; but there is such a whirl of secession and politics surrounding
one it is impossible to discern much of the outer
world.

Whatever may be the number of the Unionists or of the
non-secessionists, a pressure to be potent to be resisted has been
directed by the popular party against the friends of the
Federal government. The agent of Brown Brothers, of
Liverpool and New York, has closed their office and is going
away in consequence of the intimidation of the mob, or as
the phrase is here, the "excitement of the citizens," on hearing
of the subscription made by the firm to the New York
fund, after Sumter had been fired upon. Their agent in
Mobile has been compelled to adopt the same course. Other
houses follow their example, but as most business transactions

are over for the season, the mercantile community hope the
contest will be ended before the next season, by the recognition
of Southern Independence.

The streets are full of Turcos, Zouaves, Chasseurs; walls
are covered with placards of volunteer companies; there are
Pickwick rifles, La Fayette, Beauregard, MacMahon guards,
Irish, German, Italian and Spanish and native volunteers,
among whom the Meagher rifles, indignant with the gentleman
from whom they took their name, because of his adhesion
to the North, are going to rebaptize themselves and to
seek glory under one more auspicious. In fact, New Orleans
looks like a suburb of the camp at Châlons. Tailors are busy
night and day making uniforms. I went into a shop with the
consul for some shirts—the mistress and all her seamstresses
were busy preparing flags as hard as the sewing-machine
could stitch them, and could attend to no business for the
present. The Irish population, finding themselves unable to
migrate northwards, and being without work, have rushed to
arms with enthusiasm to support Southern institutions, and
Mr. John Mitchell and Mr. Meagher stand opposed to each
other in hostile camps.

May 22d.—The thermometer to-day marked 95° in the
shade. It is not to be wondered at that New Orleans suffers
from terrible epidemics. At the side of each street a filthy
open sewer flows to and fro with the tide in the blazing sun,
and Mr. Mure tells me the city lies so low that he has been
obliged to go to his office in a boat along the streets.

I sat for some time listening to the opinions of the various
merchants who came in to talk over the news and politics in
general. They were all persuaded that Great Britain would
speedily recognize the South, but I cannot find that any of
them had examined into the effects of such a recognition. One
gentleman seemed to think to-day that recognition meant forcing
the blockade; whereas it must, as I endeavored to show him,
merely lead to the recognition of the rights of the United States
to establish a blockade of ports belonging to an independent
and hostile nation. There are some who maintain there will be
no war after all; that the North will not fight, and that the
friends of the Southern cause will recover their courage when
this tyranny is over. No one imagines the South will ever
go back to the Union voluntarily, or that the North has power
to thrust it back at the point of the bayonet.

The South has commenced preparations for the contest by

sowing grain instead of planting cotton, to compensate for the
loss of supplies from the North. The payment of debts to
Northern creditors is declared to be illegal, and "stay laws"
have been adopted in most of the seceding States, by which the
ordinary laws for the recovery of debts in the States themselves
are for the time suspended, which may lead one into
the belief that the legislators themselves belong to the debtor
instead of the creditor class.

May 23d.—As the mail communication has been suspended
between North and South, and the Express Companies are
ordered not to carry letters, I sent off my packet of despatches
to-day, by Mr. Ewell, of the house of Dennistoun & Co.;
and resumed my excursions through New Orleans.

The young artist, who is stopping at the St. Charles Hotel,
came to me in great agitation to say his life was in danger, in
consequence of his former connection with an abolition paper
of New York, and that he had been threatened with death by
a man with whom he had had a quarrel in Washington. Mr.
Mure, to calm his apprehensions, offered to take him to the
authorities of the town, who would, no doubt, protect him, as
he was merely engaged in making sketches for an English
periodical, but the young man declared he was in danger of
assassination. He entreated Mr. Mure to give him despatches
which would serve to protect him, on his way northward; and
the Consul, moved by his mental distress, promised that if he
had any letters of an official character for Washington he
would send them by him, in default of other opportunities.

I dined with Major Ranney, the president of one of the
railways, with whom Mr. Ward was stopping. Among the
company were Mr. Eustis, son-in-law of Mr. Slidell; Mr.
Morse, the Attorney-General of the State; Mr. Moise, a Jew,
supposed to have considerable influence with the Governor,
and a vehement politician; Messrs. Hunt, and others. The
table was excellent, and the wines were worthy of the reputation
which our host enjoys, in a city where Sallusts and Luculli are
said to abound. One of the slave servants who waited at
table, an intelligent yellow "boy," was pointed out to me as a
son of General Andrew Jackson.

We had a full account of the attack of the British troops
on the city, and their repulse. Mr. Morse denied emphatically
that there was any cotton bag fortification in front of the
lines, where our troops were defeated; he asserted that there
were only a few bales, I think seventy-five, used in the construction

of one battery, and that they and some sugar hogsheads,
constituted the sole defences of the American trench.
Only one citizen applied to the State for compensation, on
account of the cotton used by Jackson's troops, and he owned
the whole of the bales so appropriated.

None of the Southern gentlemen have the smallest apprehension
of a servile insurrection. They use the univeral formula
"our negroes are the happiest, most contented, and most
comfortable people on the face of the earth." I admit I have
been struck by well-clad and good-humored negroes in the
streets, but they are in the minority; many look morose, ill-clad,
and discontented. The patrols I know have been strengthened,
and I heard a young lady the other night, say, "I shall
not be a bit afraid to go back to the plantation, though mamma
says the negroes are after mischief."