 | Life in the open air |  |
FORTRESS MONROE.
[The sketches of the campaign in Virginia, which
Winthrop had commenced in the “Atlantic Monthly,”
would have been continued, had he lived.
Immediately upon his arrival at Fort Monroe he
had commenced a third article. It is inserted here
just as he left it, with one brief addition only to
make his known meaning more clear. The part
called “Voices of the Contraband” was written
previously, and is not paged in the manuscript. It
was to have been introduced into the article; but
it is placed first here, that the sequence of the
paper, as far as the author had written it, may
remain undisturbed.]
VOICES OF THE CONTRABAND.
Solvuntur risu tabulœ. An epigram abolished
slavery in the United States. Large wisdom, stated
in fine wit, was the decision, “Negroes are contraband
of war.” “They are property,” claim the
owners. Very well! As General Butler takes
contraband horses used in transport of munitions
tote the powder to the carts and flagellate the
steeds. As he takes a spade used in hostile earth-works,
so he goes a little farther off and takes the
black muscle that wields the spade. As he takes
the rations of the foe, so he takes the sable Soyer
whose skilful hand makes those rations savory to
the palates and digestible by the stomachs of the
foe, and so puts blood and nerve into them. As he
took the steam-gun, so he now takes what might
become the stoker of the steam part of that machine
and the aimer of its gun part. As he takes
the musket, so he seizes the object who in the Virginia
army carries that musket on its shoulder
until its master is ready to reach out a lazy hand,
nonchalantly lift the piece, and carelessly pop a
Yankee.
[The third number of the author's Sketches of
the Campaign in Virginia begins here.]
PHYSIOGNOMY OF FORTRESS MONROE.
The “Adelaide” is a steamer plying between
Baltimore and Norfolk. But as Norfolk has ceased
to be a part of the United States, and is nowhere,
the “Adelaide” goes no farther than Fortress
Monroe, Old Point Comfort, the chief somewhere
of this region. A lady, no doubt Adelaide herself,
appears in alto rilievo on the paddle-box. She has
a short waist, long skirt sans crinoline, leg-of-mutton
on an island of pedestal size, surrounded by two or
more pre-Raphaelite trees. In the offing comes
or goes a steamboat, also pre-Raphaelite; and if
Ariadne Adelaide's Bacchus is on board, he is out
of sight at the bar.
Such an Adelaide brought me in sight of Fortress
Monroe at sunrise, May 29, 1861. The fort, though
old enough to be full-grown, has not grown very
tall upon the low sands of Old Point Comfort. It
is a big house with a basement story and a garret.
The roof is left off, and stories between basement
and garret have never been inserted.
But why not be technical? For basement read
a tier of casemates, each with a black Cyclops of a
big gun peering out; while above in the open air,
with not even a parasol over their backs, lie the
barbette guns, staring without a wink over sea and
shore.
In peace, with a hundred or so soldiers here and
there, this vast enclosure might seem a solitude.
Now it is a busy city, — a city of one idea. I
seem to recollect that D'Israeli said somewhere
that every great city was founded on one idea and
existed to develop it. This city, into which we
have improvised a population, has its idea, — a unit
of an idea with two halves. The east half is the
recovery of Norfolk, — the west half the occupation
of Richmond; and the idea complete is the
education of Virginia's unmannerly and disloyal
sons.
Why Secession did not take this great place
when its defenders numbered a squad of officers
and three hundred men, is mysterious. Floyd and
his gang were treacherous enough. What was
it? Were they imbecile? Were they timid? Was
there, till too late, a doubt whether the traitors at
home in Virginia would sustain them in an overt
act of such big overture as an attempt here?
But they lost the chance, and with it lost the key
of Virginia, which General Butler now holds, this
30th day of May, and will presently begin to turn
in the lock.
Three hundred men to guard a mile and a half of
ramparts! Three hundred to protect some sixty-five
broad acres within the walls! But the place
was a Thermopylæ, and there was a fine old Leonidas
at the head of its three hundred. He was
enough to make Spartans of them. Colonel Dimmick
was the man, — a quiet, modest, shrewd, faithful,
Christian gentleman; and he held all Virginia
at bay. The traitors knew, that, so long as the
Colonel was here, these black muzzles with their
white tompions, like a black eye with a white pupil,
meant mischief. To him and his guns, flanking
the approaches and ready to pile the moat full
of Seceders, the country owes the safety of Fortress
Monroe.
Within the walls are sundry nice old brick houses
for officers' barracks. The jolly bachelors live in
the casemates and the men in long barracks, now
not so new or so convenient as they might be. In
neat, well-shorn, and elegant as a grand military
post should be. Perhaps our Floyds, and the like,
thought, if they kept everything in perfect order
here, they, as Virginians, accustomed to general
seediness, would not find themselves at home.
But the new régime must change all this, and make
this the biggest, the best equipped, and the model
garrison of the country. For, of course, this must
be strongly held for many, many years to come.
It is idle to suppose that the dull louts we find here,
not enlightened even enough to know that loyalty
is the best policy, can be allowed the highest privilege
of the moral, the intelligent, and the progressive,
— self-government. Mind is said to march
fast in our time; but mind must put on steam hereabouts
to think and act for itself, without stern
schooling, in half a century.
But no digressing! I have looked far away from
the physiognomy of the fortress. Let us turn to
the
PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE COUNTRY.
The face of this county, Elizabeth City by name,
is as flat as a Chinaman's. I can hardly wonder
that the people here have retrograded, or rather,
not advanced. This dull flat would make anybody
dull and flat. I am no longer surprised at John
Tyler. He has had a bare blank brick house, entitled
sweetly Margarita Cottage, or some such tender
fort. A summer in this site would make any man
a bore. And as something has done this favor for
His Accidency, I am willing to attribute it to the
influence of locality.
The country is flat; the soil is fine sifted loam
running to dust, as the air of England runs to fog;
the woods are dense and beautiful, and full of trees
unknown to the parallel of New York; the roads
are miserable cart-paths; the cattle are scalawags;
so are the horses, not run away; so are the people,
black and white, not run away; the crops are tolerable,
where the invaders have not trampled them.
Altogether the whole concern strikes me as a
failure. Captain John Smith & Co. might as well
have stayed at home, if this is the result of the two
hundred and thirty years' occupation. Apparently
the colonists picked out a poor spot; and the
longer they stayed, the worse fist they made of it.
Powhattan, Pocahontas, and the others without
pantaloons and petticoats, were really more serviceable
colonists.
The farm-houses are mostly miserably mean habitations.
I don't wonder the tenants were glad to
make our arrival the excuse for running off. Here
are men claiming to have been worth forty thousand
dollars, half in biped property, half in all
other kinds, and they lived in dens such as a drayman
would have disdained and a hod-carrier only
accepted on compulsion.
PHYSIOGNOMY OF WATER.
Always beautiful! the sea cannot be spoilt. Our
fleet enlivens it greatly. Here is the flag-ship
“Cumberland” vis-à-vis the fort. Off to the left
are the prizes, unlucky schooners, which ought to
be carrying pine wood to the kitchens of New York,
and new potatoes and green peas for the wood to
operate upon. This region, by the way, is New
York's watermelon patch for early melons; and if
we do not conquer a peace here pretty soon, the
Jersey fruit will have the market to itself.
Besides stately flag-ships and poor little bumboat
schooners, transports are coming and going with
regiments or provisions for the same. Here, too,
are old acquaintances from the bay of New York, —
the “Yankee,” a lively tug, — the “Harriet Lane,”
coquettish and plucky, — the “Catiline,” ready to
reverse her name and put down conspiracy.
On the dock are munitions of war in heaps. Volunteer
armies load themselves with things they do
not need, and forget the essentials. The unlucky
army-quartermaster's people, accustomed to the
slow and systematic methods of the by-gone days
at Fortress Monroe, fume terribly over these cargoes.
The new men and the new manners of the
new army do not altogether suit the actual men and
manners of the obsolete army. The old men and
the new must recombine. What we want now is the
vigor of fresh people to utilize the experience of
the experts. The Silver-Gray Army needs a frisky
army needs to be taught a lesson in method by the
old; and the two combined will make the grand
army of civilization.
THE FORCES.
When I arrived, Fort Monroe and the neighborhood
were occupied by two armies.
1. General Butler.
2. About six thousand men, here and at Newport's
News.
Making together more than twelve thousand
men.
Of the first army, consisting of the General, I
will not speak. Let his past supreme services
speak for him, as I doubt not the future will.
Next to the army of a man comes the army of
men. Regulars a few, with many post officers,
among them some very fine and efficient fellows.
These are within the post. Also within is the
Third Regiment of Massachusetts, under Colonel
Wardrop, the right kind of man to have, and commanding
a capital regiment of three months' men,
neatly uniformed in gray, with cocked felt hats.
Without the fort, across the moat, and across the
bridge connecting this peninsula of sand with the
nearest side of the mainland, are encamped three
New York regiments. Each is in a wheat-field, up
to its eyes in dust. In order of precedence they
come One, Two, and Five; in order of personal
in order of exploits they are all in the same negative
position at present; and the Second has done
rather the most robbing of hen-roosts.
The Fifth, Duryea's Zouaves, lighten up the
woods brilliantly with their scarlet legs and scarlet
head-pieces.
[These last words were written upon the day
that the attack in which the author fell was arranged.]
| Life in the open air | |