University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XL.

June 21st.—Verily I would be sooner in the Coptic Cairo,
narrow streeted, dark bazaared, many flied, much vexed by
donkeys and by overland route passengers, than the horrid
tongue of land which licks the muddy margin of the Ohio
and the Mississippi. The thermometer at 100° in the shade
before noon indicates nowhere else such an amount of heat
and suffering, and yet prostrate as I was, it was my fate to
argue that England was justified in conceding belligerent
rights to the South, and that the attitude of neutrality we had
assumed in this terrible quarrel is not in effect an aggression
on the United States; and here is a difference to be perceived
between the North and the South.

The people of the seceding States, aware in their consciences
that they have been most active in their hostility to
Great Britain, and whilst they were in power were mainly
responsible for the defiant, irritating, and insulting tone commonly
used to us by American statesmen, are anxious at the
present moment when so much depends on the action of foreign
countries, to remove all unfavorable impressions from
our minds by declarations of good will, respect, and admiration,
not quite compatible with the language of their leaders
in times not long gone by. The North, as yet unconscious of
the loss of power, and reared in a school of menace and violent
assertion of their rights, regarding themselves as the whole
of the United States, and animated by their own feeling of
commercial and political opposition to Great Britain, maintain
the high tone of a people who have never known let or
hindrance in their passions, and consider it an outrage that

the whole world does not join in active sympathy for a government
which in its brief career has contrived to affront
every nation in Europe with which it had any dealings.

If the United States have astonished France by their ingratitude,
they have certainly accustomed England to their
petulance, and one can fancy the satisfaction with which the
Austrian Statesmen who remember Mr. Webster's despatch
to Mr. Hulsemann, contemplate the present condition of the
United States in the face of an insurrection of these sovereign
and independent States which the Cabinet at Washington
stigmatizes as an outbreak of rebels and traitors to the
royalty of the Union.

During my short sojourn in this country I have never yet
met any person who could show me where the sovereignty of
the Union resides. General Prentiss, however, and his Illinois
volunteers, are quite ready to fight for it.

In the afternoon the General drove me round the camps in
company with Mr. Washburne, Member of Congress, from
Illinois, his staff and a party of officers, among whom was Mr.
Oglesby, colonel of a regiment of State Volunteers, who struck
me by his shrewdness, simple honesty, and zeal.[1] He told
me that be had begun life in the utmost obscurity, but that
somehow or other he got into a lawyer's office, and there, by
hard drudgery, by mother wit, and industry, notwithstanding
a defective education, he had raised himself not only to independence,
but to such a position that 1000 men had gathered
at his call and selected one who had never led a company in
his life to be their colonel; in fact, he is an excellent orator
of the western school, and made good homely, telling speeches
to his men.

"I'm not as good as your Frenchmen of the schools of
Paris, nor am I equal to the Russian colonels I met at St.
Petersburg, who sketched me out how they had beaten you
Britishers at Sebastopol," said he; "but I know I can do
good straight fighting with my boys when I get a chance.
There is a good deal in training, to be sure, but nature tells
too. Why I believe I would make a good artillery officer if
I was put to it. General, you heard how I laid one of them
guns the other day and touched her off with my own hand
and sent the ball right into a tree half-a-mile away." The
Colonel evidently thought he had by that feat proved his fitness
for the command of a field battery. One of the German

officers who was listening to the lively old man's talk, whispered
to me, "Dere is a good many of tese colonels in dis
camp."

At each station the officers came out of their tents, shook
hands all round, and gave an unfailing invitation to get down
and take a drink, and the guns on the General's approach
fired salutes, as though it was a time of profoundest peace.
Powder was certainly more plentiful than in the Confederate
camps, where salutes are not permitted unless by special order
on great occasions.

The General remained for some time in the camp of the
Chicago light artillery, which was commanded by a fine young
Scotchman of the Saxon genus Smith, who told me that the
privates of his company represented a million and a half of
dollars in property. Their guns, horses, carriages, and accoutrements
were all in the most creditable order, and there
was an air about the men and about their camp which showed
they did not belong to the same class as the better disciplined
Hungarians of Milotzky close at hand.

Whilst we were seated in Captain Smith's tent, a number
of the privates came forward, and sang the "Star-spangled
banner," and a patriotic song, to the air of "God save the
Queen!" and the rest of the artillery-men, and a number of
stragglers from the other camps, assembled and then formed
line behind the singers. When the chorus was over there
arose a great shout for Washburne, and the honorable congressman
was fain to come forward and make a speech, in
which he assured his hearers of a very speedy victory and the
advent of liberty all over the land. Then "General Prentiss"
was called for; and as citizen soldiers command their Generals
on such occasions, he too was obliged to speak, and to tell his
audience "the world had never seen any men more devoted,
gallant, or patriotic than themselves." "Oglesby" was next
summoned, and the tall, portly, good-humored old man stepped
to the front, and with excellent tact and good sense, dished up
in the Buncombe style, told them the time for making speeches
had passed, indeed it had lasted too long; and although it was
said there was very little fighting when there was much talking,
he believed too much talking was likely to lead to a great
deal more fighting than any one desired to see between citizens
of the United States of America, except their enemies,
who, no doubt, were much better pleased to see Americans
fighting each other than to find them engaged in any other

employment. Great as the mischief of too much talking had
been, too much writing had far more of the mischief to answer
for. The Pen was keener than the tongue, hit harder,
and left a more incurable wound; but the pen was better than
the tongue, because it was able to cure the mischief it had inflicted."
And so by a series of sentences the Colonel got round
to me, and to my consternation, remembering how I had fared
with my speech at the little private dinner on St. Patrick's
Day in New York, I was called upon by stentorian lungs, and
hustled to the stump by a friendly circle, till I escaped by uttering
a few sentences as to "mighty struggle," "Europe gazing,"
"the world anxious," "the virtues of discipline," "the
admirable lessons of a soldier's life," and the "aspiration that
in a quarrel wherein a British subject was ordered, by an authority
he was bound to respect, to remain neutral, God might
preserve the right."

Colonel, General, and all addressed the soldiers as "gentlemen,"
and their auditory did not on their part refrain from
expressing their sentiments in the most unmistakable manner.
" Bully for you, General!" "Bravo, Washburne!" "That's
so, Colonel!" and the like, interrupted the harangues; and
when the oratorical exercises were over the men crowded
round the staff, cheered and hurrahed, and tossed up their
caps in the greatest delight.

With the exception of the foreign officers, and some of the
Staff, there are very few of the colonels, majors, captains, or
lieutenants who know anything of their business. The men
do not care for them, and never think of saluting them. A
regiment of Germans was sent across from Bird's Point this
evening for plundering and robbing the houses in the district
in which they were quartered.

It may be readily imagined that the scoundrels who had to
fly from every city in Europe before the face of the police
will not stay their hands when they find themselves masters
of the situation in the so-called country of an enemy. In
such matters the officers have little or no control, and discipline
is exceedingly lax, and punishments but sparingly inflicted,
the use of the lash being forbidden altogether. Fine
as the men are, incomparably better armed, clad—and doubtless
better fed—than the Southern troops, they will scarcely
meet them man to man in the field with any chance of success.
Among the officers are bar-room keepers, persons little
above the position of potmen in England, grocers' apprentices,

and such like—often inferior socially, and in every other respect,
to the men whom they are supposed to command.
General Prentiss has seen service, I believe, in Mexico; but
he appears to me to be rather an ardent politician, embittered
against slaveholders and the South, than a judicious or skilful
military leader.

The principles on which these isolated commanders carry
on the war are eminently defective. They apply their whole
minds to petty expeditions, which go out from the camps, attack
some Secessionist gathering, and then return, plundering,
as they go and come, exasperating enemies, converting neutrals
into opponents, disgusting friends, and leaving it to the
Secessionists to boast that they have repulsed them. Instead
of encouraging the men and improving their discipline these
ill-conducted expeditions have an opposite result.

June 22d.—An active man would soon go mad if he were
confined in Cairo. A mudbank stretching along the course of
a muddy river is not attractive to a pedestrian; and, as is the
case in most of the Southern cities, there is no place round
Cairo where a man can stretch his legs, or take an honest walk
in the country. A walk in the country! The Americans
have not an idea of what the thing means. I speak now only
of the inhabitants of the towns of the States through which I
have passed, as far as I have seen of them. The roads are
either impassable in mud or knee-deep in dust. There are no
green shady lanes, no sheltering groves, no quiet paths through
green meadows beneath umbrageous trees. Off the rail there
is a morass—or, at best, a clearing—full of stumps. No
temptations to take a stroll. Down away South the planters
ride or drive; indeed in many places the saunterer by the
wayside would probably encounter an alligator, or disturb a
society of rattlesnakes.

To-day I managed to struggle along the levee in a kind of
sirocco, and visited the works at the extremity, which were
constructed by an Hungarian named Waagner, one of the
emigrés who came with Kossuth to the United States. I found
him in a hut full of flies, suffering from camp diarrhoea, and
waited on by Mr. O'Leary, who was formerly petty officer in
our navy, served in the Furious in the Black Sea, and in the
Shannon Brigade in India, now a lieutenant in the United
States' army, where I should say he feels himself very much
out of place. The Hungarian and the Milesian were, however,
quite agreed about the utter incompetence of their military

friends around them, and the great merits of heavy artillery.
"When I tell them here the way poor Sir William
made us rattle about them sixty-eight-pounder guns, the poor
ignorant creatures laugh at me—not one of them believes it,"
"It is most astonishing," says the colonel, "how ignorant they
are; there is not one of these men who can trace a regular
work. Of West Point men I speak not, but of the people about
here, and they will not learn of me—from me who know."
However, the works were well enough, strongly covered, commanded
both rivers, and not to be reduced without trouble.

The heat drove me in among the flies of the crowded hotel,
where Brigadier Prentiss is planning one of those absurd expeditions
against a Secessionist camp at Commerce, in the
State of Missouri, about two hours steaming up the river, and
some twelve or fourteen miles inland. Cairo abounds in Secessionists
and spies, and it is needful to take great precautions
lest the expedition be known; but, after all, stores must be got
ready, and put on board the steamers, and preparations must
be made which cannot be concealed from the world. At dusk
700 men, supported by a six-pounder field-piece, were put on
board the "City of Alton," on which they clustered like bees
in a swarm, and as the huge engine labored up and down
against the stream, and the boat swayed from side to side, I
felt a considerable desire to see General Prentiss chucked into
the stream for his utter recklessness in cramming on board one
huge tinder-box, all fire and touchwood, so many human beings,
who, in event of an explosion, or a shot in the boiler, or of a
heavy musketry fire on the banks, would have been converted
into a great slaughter-house. One small boat hung from her
stern, and although there were plenty of river flats and numerous
steamers, even the horses belonging to the field-piece
were crammed in among the men along the deck.

In my letter to Europe I made, at the time, some remarks
by which the belligerents might have profited, and which at
the time these pages are reproduced may strike them as possessing
some value, illustrated as they have been by many
events in the war." A handful of horsemen would have been
admirable to move in advance, feel the covers, and make prisoners
for political or other purposes in case of flight; but the
Americans persist in ignoring the use of horsemen, or at least
in depreciating it, though they will at last find that they may
shed much blood, and lose much more, before they can gain a
victory without the aid of artillery and charges after the retreating

enemy. From the want of cavalry, I suppose it is, the
unmilitary practice of 'scouting,' as it is called here, has arisen.
It is all very well in the days of Indian wars for footmen to
creep about in the bushes, and shoot or be shot by sentries and
pickets; but no civilized war recognizes such means of annoyance
as firing upon sentinels, unless in case of an actual advance
or feigned attack on the line. No camp can be safe
without cavalry videttes and pickets; for the enemy can pour
in impetuously after the alarm has been given, as fast as the
outlying footmen can run in. In feeling the way for a column,
cavalry are invaluable, and there can be little chance of ambuscades
or surprises where they are judiciously employed;
but 'scouting' on foot, or adventurous private expeditions on
horseback, to have a look at the enemy, can do, and will do,
nothing but harm. Every day the papers contain accounts of
'scouts' being killed, and sentries being picked off. The latter
is a very barbarous and savage practice; and the Russian, in
his most angry moments, abstained from it. If any officer
wishes to obtain information as to his enemy, he has two ways
of doing it. He can employ spies, who carry their lives in
their hands, or he can beat up their quarters by a proper reconnoissance
on his own responsibility, in which, however, it
would be advisable not to trust his force to a railway train."

At night there was a kind of émeute in camp. The day, as
I have said, was excessively hot, and on returning to their
tents and huts from evening parade the men found the contractor
who supplies them with water had not filled the barrels;
so they forced the sentries, broke barracks after hours, mobbed
their officers, and streamed up to the hotel, which they surrounded,
calling out, "Water, water," in chorus. The General
came out, and got up on a rail: "Gentlemen," said he,
"it is not my fault you are without water. It's your officers
who are to blame; not me." ("Groans for the Quartermaster,"
from the men.) "If it is the fault of the contractor, I'll
see that he is punished. I'll take steps at once to see that the
matter is remedied. And now, gentlemen, I hope you'll go
back to your quarters;" and the gentlemen took it into their
heads very good-humoredly to obey the suggestion, fell in, and
marched back two deep to their huts.

As the General was smoking his cigar before going to bed,
I asked him why the officers had not more control over the
men. "Well," said he, "the officers are to blame for all this.
The truth is, the term for which these volunteers enlisted is
drawing to a close; and they have not as yet enrolled themselves

in the United States army. They are merely volunteer
regiments of the State of Illinois. If they were displeased
with anything, therefore, they might refuse to enter the
service or to take fresh engagements; and the officers would
find themselves suddenly left without any men; they therefore
curry favor with the privates, many of them, too, having an eye
to the votes of the men when the elections of officers in the new
regiments are to take place."

The contractors have commenced plunder on a gigantic
scale; and their influence with the authorities of the State is
so powerful, there is little chance of punishing them. Besides,
it is not considered expedient to deter contractors, by too scrupulous
an exactitude, in corming forward at such a trying
period; and the Quartermaster's department, which ought to
be the most perfect, considering the number of persons connected
with transport and carriage, is in a most disgraceful and
inefficient condition. I told the General that one of the
Southern leaders proposed to hang any contractor who was
found out in cheating the men, and that the press cordially approved
of the suggestion. "I am afraid," said he, if any such
proposal was carried out here, there would scarcely be a contractor
left throughout the States." Equal ignorance is shown
by the medical authorities of the requirements of an army.
There is not an ambulance or cacolet of any kind attached to
this camp; and, as far as I could see, not even a litter was
sent on board the steamer which has started with the expedition.

Although there has scarcely been a fought field or anything
more serious than the miserable skirmishes of Shenck and
Butler, the pressure of war has already told upon the people.
The Cairo paper makes an urgent appeal to the authorities to
relieve the distress and pauperism which the sudden interruption
of trade has brought upon so many respectable citizens.
And when I was at Memphis the other day, I observed a public
notice in the journals, that the magistrates of the city would
issue orders for money to families left in distress by the enrolment
of the male members for military service. When
General Scott, sorely against his will, was urged to make
preparations for an armed invasion of the seceded States in
case it became necessary, he said it would need some hundreds
of thousands of men and many millions of money to effect that
object. Mr. Seward, Mr. Chase, and Mr. Lincoln laughed
pleasantly at this exaggeration, but they have begun to find by
this time the old general was not quite so much in the wrong.

In reference to the discipline maintained in the camp, I must
admit that proper precautions are used to prevent spies entering
the lines. The sentries are posted closely and permit no one
to go in without a pass in the day and a countersign at night.
A conversation with General Prentiss in the front of the hotel
was interrupted this evening by an Irishman, who ran past us
towards the camp, hotly pursued by two policemen. The sentry
on duty at the point of the lines close to us brought him up
by the point of the bayonet, "Who goes tere?" "A friend,
shure your honor; I'm a friend." "Advance three paces and
give the countersign." "I don't know it, I tell you. Let me
in, let me in." But the German was resolute, and the policemen
now coming up in hot pursuit, seized the culprit, who
resisted violently, till General Prentiss rose from his chair and
ordered the guard, who had turned out, to make a prisoner of
the soldier and hand him over to the civil power, for which the
man seemed to be most deeply grateful. As the policemen
were walking him off, he exclaimed, "Be quiet wid ye, till I
spake a word to the Giniral," and then bowing and chuckling
with drunken gravity, he said, "an' indeed, Giniral, I'm much
obleeged to ye altogither for this kindness. Long life to ye.
We've got the better of that dirty German. Hoora' for Giniral
Prentiss." He preferred a chance of more whiskey in the police
office and a light punishment to the work in camp and a heavy
drill in the morning. An officer who was challenged by a sentry
the other evening, asked him, "Do you know the countersign
yourself?" "No, sir, it's not nine o'clock, and they have
not given it out yet." "Another sentry stopped a man because
he did not know the countersign. The fellow said, "I
dare say you don't know it yourself." "That's a lie," he exclaimed;
"it's Plattsburgh." "Plattsburgh it is, sure enough,"
said the other, and walked on without further parley.

The Americans, Irish, and Germans, do not always coincide
in the phonetic value of each letter in the passwords, and
several difficulties have occurred in consequence. An incautious
approach towards the posts at night is attended with
risk; for the raw sentries are very quick on the trigger.
More fatal and serious injuries have been inflicted on the
Federals by themselves than by the enemy. "I declare to
you, sir, the way the boys touched off their irons at me going
home to my camp last night, was just like a running fight
with the Ingins. I was a little 'tight,' and didn't mind it a
cuss."