University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXXII.

June 2d. My good friend the Consul was up early to see
me off; and we drove together to the steamer J. L. Cotten.
The people were going to mass as we passed through the
streets; and it was pitiable to see the children dressed out as
Zouaves, with tin swords and all sorts of pseudo-military
tomfoolery; streets crowded with military companies; bands
playing on all sides.

Before we left the door a poor black sailor came up to
entreat Mr. Mure's interference. He had been sent by Mr.
Magee, the Consul at Mobile, by land to New Orleans, in the
hope that Mr. Mure would be able to procure him a free
passage to some British port. He had served in the Royal
Navy, and had received a wound in the Russian war. The
moment he arrived in New Orleans he had been seized by the
police. On his stating that he was a free-born British subject,
the authorities ordered him to be taken to Mr. Mure; he could
not be allowed to go at liberty on account of his color; the
laws of the State forbade such dangerous experiments on the
feelings of the slave population; and if the Consul did not
provide for him, he would be arrested and kept in prison, if
no worse fate befell him. He was suffering from the effect
of his wound, and was evidently in ill health. Mr. Mure
gave him a letter to the Sailors' Hospital, and some relief out
of his own pocket. The police came as far as the door with
him, and remained outside to arrest him if the Consul did not
afford him protection and provide for him, so that he should not
be seen at large in the streets of the city. The other day a
New Orleans privateer captured three northern brigs, on board
which were ten free negroes. The captain handed them over
to the Recorder, who applied to the Confederate States Marshal

to take charge of them. The Marshal refused to receive
them, whereupon the Recorder, as a magistrate and a good
citizen, decided on keeping them in jail, as it would be a bad
and dangerous policy to let them loose upon the community.

I cannot help feeling that the position taken by England in
reference to the question of her colored subjects is humiliating
and degrading. People who live in London may esteem this
question a light matter; but it has not only been inconsistent
with the national honor; it has so degraded us in the opinion
of Americans themselves, that they are encouraged to indulge
in an insolent tone and in violent acts towards us, which will
some day leave Great Britain no alternative but an appeal to
arms. Free colored persons are liable to seizure by the police,
and to imprisonment, and may be sold into servitude under
certain circumstances.

On arriving at the steamer, I found a considerable party of
citizens assembled to see off their friends. Governor Roman's
son apologized to me for his inability to accompany me up the
river, as he was going to the drill of his company of volunteers.
Several other gentlemen were in uniform; and when
we had passed the houses of the city, I observed companies
and troops of horse exercising on both sides of the banks.
On board were Mr. Burnside, a very extensive proprietor,
and Mr. Forstall, agent to Messrs. Baring, who claims descent
from an Irish family near Rochestown, though he speaks our
vernacular with difficulty, and is much more French than
British. He is considered one of the ablest financiers and
economists in the United States, and is certainly very ingenious,
and well crammed with facts and figures.

The aspect of New Orleans from the river is marred by the
very poor houses lining the quays on the levee. Wide streets
open on long vistas bordered by the most paltry little domiciles;
and the great conceptions of those who planned them,
notwithstanding the prosperity of the city, have not been
realised.

As we were now floating nine feet higher than the level of
the streets, we could look down upon a sea of flat roofs, and
low wooden houses, painted white, pierced by the domes and
spires of churches and public buildings. Grass was growing
in many of these streets. At the other side of the river there
is a smaller city of shingle-roofed houses, with a background
of low timber.

The steamer stopped continually at various points along the

levee, discharging commissariat stores, parcels, and passengers;
and after a time glided up into the open country, which spread
beneath us for several miles at each side of the banks, with a
continuous background of forest. All this part of the river is
called the Coast, and the country adjacent is remarkable for
its fertility. The sugar plantations are bounded by lines
drawn at right angles to the banks of the river, and extending
through the forest. The villas of the proprietors are thickly
planted in the midst of the green fields, with the usual porticoes,
pillars, verandas, and green blinds; and in the vicinity
of each are rows of whitewashed huts, which are the slave
quarters. These fields, level as a billiard table, are of the
brightest green with crops of maize and sugar.

But few persons were visible; not a boat was to be seen;
and in the course of sixty-two miles we met only two steamers,
No shelving banks, no pebbly shoals, no rocky margins mark
the course or diversify the outline of the Mississippi. The
dead, uniform line of the levee compresses it at each side, and
the turbid waters flow without let in a current of uniform
breadth between the monotonous banks. The gables and
summit of one house resemble those of another; and but for
the enormous scale of river and banks, and the black faces of
the few negroes visible, a passenger might think he was on
board a Dutch "treckshuyt." In fact, the Mississippi is a
huge trench-like canal draining a continent.

At half past three p. m. the steamer ran along-side the
levee at the right bank, and discharged me at "Cahabanooze,"
in the Indian tongue, or "The ducks' sleeping-place," together
with an English merchant of New Orleans, M. La Ville
Beaufevre, son-in-law of Governor Roman, and his wife. The
Governor was waiting to receive us in the levee, and led the
way through a gate in the paling which separated his ground
from the roadside, towards the house, a substantial, square,
two-storied mansion, with a veranda all round it, embosomed
amid venerable trees, and surrounded by magnolias. By way
of explaining the proximity of his house to the river, M.
Roman told me that a considerable portion of the garden in
front had a short time ago been carried off by the Mississippi;
nor is he at all sure the house itself will not share the same
fate; I hope sincerely it may not. My quarters were in a
detached house, complete in itself, containing four bedrooms,
library, and sitting-room, close to the mansion, and surrounded,
like it, by fine trees.

After we had sat for some time in the shade of the finest
group, M. Roman, or, as he is called, the Governor—once a
captain always a captain—asked me whether I would like to
visit the slave quarters. I assented, and the Governor led the
way to a high paling at the back of the house, inside which the
scraping of fiddles was audible. As we passed the back of
the mansion some young women flitted past in snow-white
dresses, crinolines, pink sashes, and gaudily colored handkerchiefs
on their heads, who were, the Governor told me, the
domestic servants going off to a dance at the sugar-house; he
lets his slaves dance every Sunday. The American planters
who are not Catholics, although they do not make the slaves
work on Sunday except there is something to do, rarely grant
them the indulgence of a dance, but a few permit them some
hours of relaxation on each Saturday afternoon.

We entered, by a wicket-gate, a square enclosure, lined with
negro huts, built of wood, something like those which came
from Malta to the Crimea in the early part of the campaign.
They are not furnished with windows—a wooden slide or
grating admits all the air a negro desires. There is a partition
dividing the hut into two departments, one of which is
used as the sleeping-room, and contains a truckle bedstead and
a mattress stuffed with cotton wool, or the hair-like fibres of
dried Spanish moss. The wardrobes of the inmates hang from
nails or pegs driven into the wall. The other room is furnished
with a dresser, on which are arranged a few articles of
crockery and kitchen utensils. Sometimes there is a table in
addition to the plain wooden chairs, more or less dilapidated,
constituting the furniture—a hearth, in connection with a
brick chimney outside the cottage, in which, hot as the day
may be, some embers are sure to be found burning. The
ground round the huts was covered with litter and dust, heaps
of old shoes, fragments of clothing and feathers, amidst which
pigs and poultry were recreating. Curs of low degree
scampered in and out of the shade, or around two huge dogs,
chiens de garde, which are let loose at night to guard the precincts;
belly deep, in a pool of stagnant water, thirty or forty
mules were swinking in the sun and enjoying their day of rest.

The huts of the negroes engaged in the house are separated
from those of the slaves devoted to field labor out of doors by
a wooden paling. I looked into several of the houses, but
somehow or other felt a repugnance, I dare say unjustifiable,
to examine the penetralia, although invited—indeed, urged,

to do so by the Governor. It was not that I expected to come
upon anything dreadful, but I could not divest myself of some
regard for the feelings of the poor creatures, slaves though
they were, who stood by, shy, courtesying, and silent, as I broke
in upon their family circle, felt their beds, and turned over
their clothing. What right had I to do so?

Swarms of flies, tin cooking utensils attracting them by
remnants of molasses, crockery, broken and old, on the dressers,
more or less old clothes on the wall, these varied over and over
again, were found in all the huts; not a sign of ornament or
decoration was visible; not the most tawdry print, image of
Virgin or Saviour; not a prayer-book or printed volume. The
slaves are not encouraged, or indeed permitted to read, and
some communities of slave-owners punish heavily those attempting
to instruct them.

All the slaves seemed respectful to their master; dressed in
their best, they courtesied, and came up to shake hands with
him and with me. Among them were some very old men and
women, the canker-worms of the estate, who were dozing
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, together with 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 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 free born-children, although much more valuable
—for if 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; one yellow girl,
with fair hair and light eyes, whose child was quite white, excepted;
the men were disguised in such strangely-cut clothes,
their hats and shoes and coats so wonderfully made, that one
could not tell what their figures 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, however, as I examined the
expression of the faces of the slaves, that deep dejection is
the prevailing, if not universal, characteristic of the race.
Here there were abundant evidences that they were well
treated; they had good clothing of its kind, food, and a master
who wittingly could do them no injustice, as he is, I am
sure, incapable of it. Still, they all looked sad, and ever
the old woman who boasted that she had held her old owner
in her arms when he was an infant, did not smile cheerfully,
as the nurse at home would have done, at the sight of her ancient
charge.

The negroes rear domestic birds of all kinds, and sell eggs
and poultry to their masters. The money is spent in purchasing
tobacco, molasses, clothes, and flour; whiskey, their
great delight, they must not have. Some seventy or eighty
hands were quartered in this part of the estate.

Before leaving the enclosure I was taken to the hospital,
which was in charge of an old negress. The naked rooms
contained several flock 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. 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 one got on well enough
without them.

The scraping of the fiddles attracted us to the sugar-house,
where the juice of the cane is expressed, boiled, granulated,
and prepared for the refinery, a large brick building, with a
factory-looking chimney. 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 in a
thumping ecstasy, with loose elbows, pendulous paws, angulated

knees, heads thrown back, and backs arched inwards—
a glazed eye, intense solemnity of mien.

At this time of year there is no work done in the sugarhouse,
but when the crushing and boiling are going on, the
labor is intensely trying, and 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.

In the afternoon the Governor's son came in from the company
which he commands: his men are of the best families in
the country—planters and the like. We sauntered about the
gardens, diminished, as I have said, by a freak of the river.
The French creoles love gardens; the Anglo-Saxons hereabout
do not much affect them, and cultivate their crops up to
the very doorway.

It was curious to observe so far away from France so many
traces of the life of the old seigneur—the early meals, in
which supper took the place of dinner—frugal simplicity—
and yet a refinement of manner, kindliness and courtesy not
to be exceeded.

In the evening several officers of M. Alfred Roman's company
and neighboring planters dropped in, and we sat out in
the twilight, under the trees in the veranda, illuminated by
the flashing fireflies, and talking politics. I was struck by the
profound silence which reigned all around us, except a low
rushing sound, like that made by the wind blowing over cornfields,
which came from the mighty river before us. Nothing
else was audible but the sound of our own voices and the distant
bark of a dog. After the steamer which bore us had
passed on, I do not believe a single boat floated up or down
the stream, and but one solitary planter, in his gig or buggy,
traversed the road, which lay between the garden palings and
the bank of the great river.

Our friends were all creoles—that is, natives of Louisiana
—of French or Spanish descent. They are kinder and better
masters, according to universal repute, than native Americans
or Scotch; but the New England Yankee is reputed to
be the severest of all slave owners. All these gentlemen to a
man are resolute that England must get their cotton or perish.
She will take it, therefore, by force; but as the South is
determined never to let a Yankee vessel carry any of its produce,
a question has been raised by Monsieur Baroche, who is

at present looking around him in New Orleans, which causes
some difficulty to the astute and statistical Mr. Forstall. The
French economist has calculated that if the Yankee vessels be
excluded from the carrying trade, the commercial marine of
France and England together will be quite inadequate to carry
Southern produce to Europe.

But Southern faith is indomitable. With their faithful negroes
to raise their corn, sugar, and cotton, whilst their young
men are at the wars; with France and England to pour gold
into their lap with which to purchase all they need in the contest,
they believe they can beat all the powers of the Northern
world in arms. Illimitable fields, tilled by multitudinous negroes,
open on their sight, and they behold the empires of
Europe, with their manufactures, their industry, and their
wealth, prostrate at the base of their throne, crying out, "Cotton!
More cotton! That is all we ask!"

Mr. Forstall maintains the South can raise an enormous
revenue by a small direct taxation; whilst the North, deprived
of Southern resources, will refuse to pay taxes at all, and will
accumulate enormous debts, inevitably leading to its financial
ruin. He, like every Southern man I have as yet met, expresses
unbounded confidence in Mr. Jefferson Davis. I am
asked invariably, as the second question from a stranger,
"Have you seen our President, sir? don't you think him a
very able man?" This unanimity in the estimate of his character,
and universal confidence in the head of the State, will
prove of incalculable value in a civil war.