The Civil War in America Part 9

Policeman (inspired by a bright aspiration of patriotism)--"It's a West country boat; why _don't_ the citizens seize it? And whiskey rising from 17 cents to 35 cents a gallon!" Citizens murmur approval, and I feel the whiskey part of the cargo is not safe. "Yes, Sir," says Citizen Three, "they seize all our property at Cairey (Cairo), and I'm for making an example of this cargo." Further reasons for the seizure of the article were adduced, and it is probable they were as strong as the whiskey, which has, no doubt, been drunk long ago on the very purest principles.

In course of conversation with the Committee of Taste which had a.s.sembled, it was revealed to me that there was a strict watch kept over those boats which are freighted with whiskey forbidden to the slaves, and with principles, when they come from the West country, equally objectionable. "Did you hear, Sir, of the chap over at Duncan Kenner's as was caught the other day?" "No, Sir, what was it?" "Well, Sir, he was a man that came here and went over among the n.i.g.g.e.rs at Kenner's to buy their chickens from them. He was took up, and they found he'd a lot of money about him." "Well, of course, he had money to buy the chickens."

"Yes, Sir, but it looked suspic-ious. He was a West country fellow, tew, and he might have meant tamperin' with 'em. Lucky he was not taken in the arternoon." "Why so?" "Because if the citizens had been drunk they'd have hung him on the spot." The Acadia was now alongside, and in the early morning Donaldsonville receded rapidly into trees and clouds. To bed, and make amends for mosquito visits. On awaking, find that I am in the same place I started from; at least, the river looks just the same.

It is difficult to believe that we have been going eleven miles an hour against the turbid river, which is of the same appearance as it was below, the same banks, bends, driftwood and trees.

Beyond the levees there were occasionally large clearings and plantations of corn and cane, of which the former predominated. The houses of the planters were not so large or so good as those on the lower banks. Large timber rafts, navigated by a couple of men, who stood in the shade of a couple of upright boards, were encountered at long intervals. The river was otherwise dead. White egrets and blue herons rose from the marshes where the banks had been bored through by crayfish, or creva.s.ses had been formed by the waters. The fields were not much more lively, but at every landing the whites who came down were in some sort of uniform, and a few negroes were in attendance to take in or deliver goods. There were two blacks on board in irons--captured runaways--and very miserable they looked at the thought of being restored to the bosom of the patriarchal family from which they had, no doubt, so prodigally eloped. I feared the fatted calf-skin would not be applied to their backs. The river is about half a mile wide here and is upward of one hundred feet deep. The planters' houses in groves of pecan and magnolias, with verandah and belvedere, became more frequent as the steamer approached Baton Rouge, already visible in the distance over a high bank or bluff on the right-hand side.

Before noon the steamer hauled alongside a stationary hulk, which once "walked the waters" by the aid of machinery, but which was now used as a floating hotel, depot, and storehouse--three hundred and fifteen feet long, and fully thirty feet on the upper deck above the level of the river. Here were my quarters till the boat for Natchez should arrive.

The proprietor was somewhat excited on my arrival because my servants was away. "Where have you been, you ----?" "Away to buy de newspaper, Ma.s.sa." "For who, you ----?" "Me buy 'em for no one, Ma.s.sa; me sell 'um agin, Ma.s.sa." "See now, you ----, if ever you goes aboard to meddle with newspapers, I'm ---- but I'll kill you, mind that!" Baton Rouge is the capital of the State of Louisiana, and the State House is a quaint and very new example of bad taste. The Deaf and Dumb Asylum near it is in a much better style. It was my intention to visit the State Prison and Penitentiary, but the day was too hot, and the distance too great, and so I dined at the oddest little Creole restaurant, with the funniest old hostess and the strangest company in the world. On returning to the boat hotel, Mr. Conrad, one of the citizens of the place, and Mr. W. Avery, a Judge of the Court, were good enough to call to invite me to visit them, but I was obliged to decline. The old gentlemen were both members of the Home Guard, and drilled a.s.siduously every evening. Of the one thousand three hundred voters at Baton Rouge, more than seven hundred and fifty are already off to the wars, and another company is being formed to follow them. Mr. Conrad has three sons in the field already. The waiter who served our drinks in the bar wore a uniform, and his musket lay in the corner among the brandy bottles. At night a patriotic meeting of citizen soldiery took place in the bow, in which song and whiskey had much to do, so that sleep was difficult; but at seven o'clock on Wednesday morning the Mary T. came alongside, and soon afterward bore me on to Natchez through scenery which became wilder and less cultivated as she got upward. Of the one thousand five hundred steamers on the river not a t.i.the are now in employment, and the owners are in a bad way. It was late at night when the steamer arrived at Natchez, and next morning early I took shelter in another engineless steamer, which was thought to be an hotel by its owners. Old negress on board, however, said, "There was nothing for breakfast; go to Curry's on sh.o.r.e. Walk up hill to Curry's--a bar-room, a waiter and flies." "Can I have any breakfast?"

"No, Sir-ree; it's over half an hour ago." "Nothing to eat at all?" "No, Sir." "Can I get something anywhere else?" "I guess not." It had been my belief that a man with money in his pocket could not starve in any country _soi-disant_ civilized life. Exceptions prove rules, but they are disagreeable things. I chewed the cud of fancy _faute de mieux_, and became the centre of attraction to citizens, from whose conversation I learned that this was "Jeff. Davis's fast day." Observed one, "It quite puts me in mind of Sunday: all the stores closed." Said another, "We'll soon have Sunday every day, then, for I 'spect it won't be worth while for most shops to keep open any longer." Natchez, a place of much trade and cotton export in the season, is now as dull--let us say as Harwich without a regatta. But it is ultra-Secessionist, _nil obstante_. My hunger was a.s.suaged by a friend who drove me up to his comfortable mansion through a country not unlike the wooded parts of Suss.e.x, abounding in fine trees, and in the only lawns and park-like fields I have yet seen in America. In the evening, after dinner, my host drove me over to visit a small encampment under a wealthy planter, who has raised, equipped, and armed his company at his own expense.

We were obliged to get out at a narrow lane and walk toward the encampment on foot; a sentry stopped us, and we observed that there was a semblance of military method in the camp. The captain was walking up and down in the verandah of the poor, deserted hut for which he had abandoned his splendid home. _A Book of Tactics_ (Hardee's)--which is, in part, a translation of the French _Manual_--lay on the table. Our friend was full of fight, and said he would give all he had in the world to the cause. But the day before, and a party of horse, composed of sixty gentlemen in the district, with from 20,000 to 50,000 each, had started for the war in Virginia. Everything to be seen or heard testifies to the great zeal and resolution with which the South have entered upon the quarrel. But they hold the power of the United States and the loyalty of the North to the Union at far too cheap a rate. Next day was pa.s.sed in a delightful drive through cotton fields, Indian corn, and undulating woodlands, amid which were some charming residences. I crossed the river at Natchez, and saw one fine plantation in which the corn, however, was by no means so fine as I have often seen. The cotton looks well, and some had already burst into flower--bloom, as it is called--which had turned to a flagrant pink, and seemed saucily conscious that its boll would play an important part in the world. In this part of Mississippi the Secessionist feeling was not so overpowering at first as it has been since the majority declared itself, but the expression of feeling is now all one way. The rage of Southern sentiment is to me inexplicable, making every allowance for Southern exaggeration. It is sudden, hot, and apparently causeless as summer lightning. From every place I touched at along the Mississippi, a large proportion of the population has gone forth to fight, or is preparing to do so. The whispers which rise through the storm are few and feeble.

Some there are who sigh for the peace and happiness they have seen in England. But they cannot seek those things; they must look after their property. Each man maddens his neighbor by desperate resolves, and threats, and vows. Their faith is in Jefferson Davis's strength, and in the necessities and weakness of France and England. The inhabitants of the tracts which lie on the banks of the Mississippi, and on the inland regions hereabout, ought to be, in the natural order of things, a people almost nomadic, living by the chase and by a spa.r.s.e agriculture, in the freedom which tempted their ancestors to leave Europe. But the Old World has been working for them. All its trials have been theirs; the fruits of its experience, its labors, its research, its discoveries, are theirs. Steam has enabled them to turn their rivers into highways, to open primeval forests to the light of day and to man. All these, however, would have availed them little had not the demands of manufacture abroad, and the increasing luxury and population of the North and West at home, enabled them to find in these swamps and uplands sources of wealth richer and more certain than all the gold mines of the world. But there must be gnomes to work those mines. Slavery was an inst.i.tution ready to their hands. In its development there lay every material means for securing the prosperity which Manchester opened to them, and in supplying their own countrymen with sugar. The small, struggling, deeply mortgaged proprietors of swamp and forest set their negroes to work to raise levees, to cut down trees, to plant and sow. As the negro became valuable by his produce, the Irish emigrant took his place in the severer labors of the plantation, and ditched and dug, and cut into the waste land. Cotton at ten cents a pound gave a nugget in every boll. Land could be had for a few dollars an acre. Negroes were cheap in proportion. Men who made a few thousand dollars, invested them in more negroes and more land, and borrowed as much again for the same purpose. They waxed fat and rich--there seemed no bounds to their fortune. But threatening voices came from the North--the echoes of the sentiments of the civilized world repenting of its evil pierced their ears, and they found their feet were of clay, and that they were nodding to their fall in the midst of their power. Ruin inevitable awaited them if they did not shut out these sounds and stop the fatal utterances. The issue is to them one of life and death. Whoever raises it hereafter, if it be not decided now, must expect to meet the deadly animosity which is displayed toward the North. The success of the South--if it can succeed--must lead to complications and results in other parts of the world for which neither it nor Europe is now prepared. Of one thing there can be no doubt--a Slave State cannot long exist without a slave-trade. The poor whites who will have won the fight will demand their share of the spoils. The land is abundant, and all that is wanted to give them fortunes is a supply of slaves. They will have them in spite of their masters, unless a stronger power prevents the accomplishment of their wishes.

LETTER XIV.

CAIRO, Ill., June 20, 1861.

MY last letter was dated from Natchez, but it will probably accompany this communication, as there are no mails now between the North and the South, or _vice versa_. Tolerably confident in my calculations that nothing of much importance could take place in the field till some time after I had reached my post, it appeared to me desirable to see as much of the South as I could, and to form an estimate of the strength of the Confederation, although it could not be done at this time of the year without considerable inconvenience, arising from the heat, which renders it almost impossible to write in the day, and from the mosquitoes, which come out when the sun goes down, and raise a blister at every stroke of the pen. On several days lately the thermometer has risen to ninety-eight degrees--on one day to one hundred and five degrees--in the shade.

On Friday evening, June 14, I started from Natchez for Vicksburg on board the steamer General Quitman, up the Mississippi. These long yellow rivers are very fine for patriots to talk about, for poets to write about, for buffalo fish to live in, and for steamers to navigate when there are no snags, but I confess the Father of Waters is extremely tiresome. Even the good cheer and the comfort of the General Quitman could not reconcile me to the eternal beating of steam drums, blowing whistles, b.u.mpings at landings, and the general oppression of levees, clearings, and plantations, which marked the course of the river, and I was not sorry next morning when Vicksburg came in sight on the left bank of the giant stream--a city on a hill, not very large, besteepled, becupolaed, large-hoteled. Here lives a man who has been the pioneer of hotels in the West, and who has now established himself in a big caravanserai, which he rules in a curious fas.h.i.+on. M'Makin has, he tells us, been rendered famous by Sir Charles Lyell. The large dining room--a stall, _a manger_, as a friend of mine called it--is filled with small tables covered with particolored cloths. At the end is a long deal table, heavy with dishes of meat and vegetables, presided over by negresses and gentlemen of uncertain hue. In the centre of the room stood my host, shouting out at the top of his voice the names of the joints, and recommending his guests to particular dishes, very much as the chronicler tells us was the wont of the taverners in old London.

Many little negroes ran about in attendance, driven hither and thither by the command of their white Soulouque--white-teethed, pensive-eyed, but sad as memory. "Are you happy here!" asked I of one of them who stood by my chair. He looked uneasy and frightened. "Why don't you answer?" "I'se feared to tell dat to ma.s.sa." "Why, your master is kind to you?" "Berry good man, sir, when he not angry wid me!" And the little fellow's eyes filled with tears at some recollection which pained him. I asked no more. Vicksburg is Secessionist. There were hundreds of soldiers in the streets, many in the hotel, and my host said some hundreds of Irish had gone off to the wars, to fight for the good cause.

If Mr. O'Connell were alive, he would surely be pained to see the course taken by so many of his countrymen on this question. After dinner I was invited to attend a meeting of some of the citizens at the railway station, where the time pa.s.sed very agreeably till four o'clock, when the train started for Jackson, the capital of Mississippi; and after a pa.s.sage of two hours through a poor, clay country, seared with water-courses and gullies, with scanty crops of Indian corn and very backward cotton, we were deposited in that city. It must be called a City. It is the State capital, but otherwise there is no reason why, in strict nomenclature, it should be designated by any such t.i.tle. It is in the usual style of the "cities" which spring up in the course of a few years amid the stumps of half-cleared fields in the wilderness--wooden houses, stores kept by Germans, French, Irish, Italians; a large hotel swarming with people, with a noisy billiard-room and a noisier bar, the arena and the cause of "difficulties;" wooden houses, with portentous and pretentious white porticoes, and pillars of all the Grecian orders: a cupola or two, and two or three steeples, too large for the feeble bodies beneath--hydrocephalic architecture; a State house, looking well at a distance, ragged, dirty, and mean within; groups of idlers in front of "Exchange," where the business transacted consists of a barter between money or credit and "drinks" of various stimulants; a secluded telegraph office round a corner; a forward newspaper office in the street, and a population of negroes shuffling through the thick dust which forms the streets. I called on Mr. Pettus, the Governor of the State of Mississippi, according to invitation, and found him in the State House in a very poor room, with broken windows and ragged carpets and dilapidated furniture. He is a grim, silent man, tobacco-ruminant, abrupt-speeched, firmly believing that the state of society in which he exists, wherein there are monthly foul murders perpetrated at the very seat of Government, is the most free and civilized in the world. He is easy of access to all, and men sauntered in and out of his office just as they would walk into a public house. Once on a time, indeed, the Governor was a deer hunter in the forest, and lived far away from the haunts of men, and he is proud of the fact. He is a strenuous Seceder, and has done high-handed things in his way--simple apparently, honest probably, fierce certainly--and he lives, while he is Governor, on his salary of $4,000 a year in the house provided for him by the State.

There was not much to say on either side. I can answer for one. Next day being Sunday I remained at rest in the house of a friend listening to local stories--not _couleur de rose_, but of a deeper tint--blood-red--how such a man shot another, and was afterwards stabbed by a third; how this fellow and his friends hunted down in broad day and murdered one obnoxious to them--tale after tale such as I have heard through the South and seen daily narratives of in the papers. Aceldama!

No security for life! Property is quite safe. Its proprietor is in imminent danger, were it only from stray bullets when he turns a corner.

The "bar," the "drink," the savage practice of walking about with pistol and poniard--ungovernable pa.s.sions ungoverned because there is no law to punish the deeds to which they lead--these are the causes of acts which would not be tolerated in the worst days of Corsican _vendette_, and which must be put down, or the countries in which they are unpunished will become as barbarous as jungles of wild beasts. In the evening I started by railroad for the city of Memphis, in Mississippi. There was a sleeping car on the train, but the flying bug and the creature less volatile, more pungent and persistent, which bears its name, murdered sleep, and when Monday morning came I was glad to arise and get into one of the carriages, although it was full of noisy soldiers bound to the camp at Corinth, in the State of Mississippi, who had been drinking whiskey all night, and were now screaming for water and howling like demons. At Holly Spring, where a rude breakfast awaited us, the warriors got out on the top of the carriages and performed a war dance to the music of their band, which was highly creditable to the carriage-maker's workmans.h.i.+p. Along the road at all the settlements and clearings the white people cheered, and the women waved white things, and Secession flags floated. There is no doubt of the state of feeling in this part of the country; and yet it does not look much worth fighting for--an arid soil, dry water-courses, clay ravines, light crops. Perhaps it will be better a month hence, and negroes may make it pay. There were many in the fields, and it struck me they looked better than those who work in gangs on the larger and richer plantations. Among our pa.s.sengers were gentlemen from Texas going to Richmond to offer services to Mr. Davis.

They declared the feeling in their State was almost without exception in favor of Secession. It is as astonis.h.i.+ng how positive all these people are that England is in absolute dependence on cotton for her national existence. They are at once savage and childish. If England does not recognize the Southern Confederacy pretty quick, they will pa.s.s a resolution not to let her have any cotton, except, &c. Suppose England does ever recognize a Confederation based on the principles of the South, what guarantee is there that in her absolute dependence, if it exists, similar coercive steps may not be taken against her? "Oh! we shall be friends, you know;" and so on.

On the train before us there had just pa.s.sed on a company armed with large bowie-knives and rifled pistols, who called themselves the "Toothpick Company." They carried a coffin along with them, on which was a plate with "Abe Lincoln" inscribed on it, and they amused themselves with the childish conceit of telling the people as they went along that "they were bound" to bring his body back in it. At Grand Junction Station the troops got out and were mustered preparatory to their transfer to a train for Richmond, in Virginia. The first company, about seventy strong, consisted exclusively of Irish, who were armed with rifles without bayonets. The second consisted of fifty-six Irish, armed mostly with muskets; the third were of Americans, who were well uniformed, but had no arms with them. The fourth, clad in green, were nearly all Irish; they wore all sorts of clothing, and had no pretensions to be regarded as disciplined soldiers. I am led to believe that the great number of Irish who have enlisted for service indicates a total suspension of all the works on which they are ordinarily engaged in the South. They were not very orderly. "Fix bayonets," elicited a wonderful amount of controversy in the ranks. "Whar are yer dhrivin to?"

"Sullivan, don't yer hear we're to fix beenits." "Ayse the strap of mee baynit, sargint, jewel!" "If ye prod me wid that agin, I'll let dayloite into ye." Officer, reading muster--"No. 23, James Phelan." No reply.

Voice from the ranks--"Faith Phelan's gone; sure he wint at the last dipot." Old men and boys were mixed together, but the ma.s.s of the rank and file were strong, full-grown men. In one of the carriages were some women dressed as "vivandieres," minus the coquet air and the trousers and boots of those ladies. They looked sad, sorry, dirty, and foolish.

There was a great want of water along the line, and the dust and heat were very great and disagreeable. When they have to march many of the men will break down, owing to bad shoes and the weight of clothes and trash of various kinds they sling on their shoulders. They moved off amid much whooping, and our journey was continued through a country in which the railroad engineer had made the only opening for miles at a time. When a clearing was reached, however, there were signs that the soil was not without richness, and all the wheat was already cut and in sheaf. The pa.s.sengers said it was fine and early, and that it averaged from forty to sixty bushels to the acre (more than it looked). Very little ground here is under cotton. It was past one o'clock on Monday when the train reached Memphis, in Tennessee, which is situated on a high bluff overhanging the Mississippi. Here is one of the strategic positions of the Confederates. It is now occupied by a force of the Tennesseeans, which is commanded by Major-General Pillow, whom I found quartered in Gayoso House, a large hotel, named after one of the old Spanish rulers here, and as he was just starting to inspect his batteries and the camp at Randolph, sixty odd miles higher up the river, I could not resist his pressing invitations, tired as I was, to accompany him and his staff on board the Ingomar, to see what they were really like. First we visited the bluff on the edge of which is constructed a breastwork of cotton bales, which no infantry could get at, and which would offer no resistance to vertical and but little to horizontal fire. It is placed so close to the edge of the bluff at various places that sh.e.l.l and shot would knock away the bank from under it. The river rolls below deep and strong, and across the roads or water-courses leading to it are feeble barricades of plank, which a howitzer would s.h.i.+ver to pieces in a few rounds. Higher up the bank, on a commanding plateau, there is a breastwork and parapet, within which are six guns, and the General informed me he intended to mount thirteen guns at this part of the river which would certainly prove very formidable to such steamers as they had on these waters, if any attempt were made to move from Cairo.

In the course of the day I was introduced to exactly seventeen colonels and one captain. My happiness was further increased by an introduction to a youth of some twenty-three years of age, with tender feet if I may judge from prunella slippers, dressed in a green cutaway, jean pants, and a tremendous sombrero with a plume of ostrich feathers, and gold ta.s.sels looped at the side, who had the air and look of an apothecary's errand boy. This was "General" Maggles (let us say) of Arkansas.

Freighted deeply with the brave, the Ingomar started for her voyage, and we came alongside the bank at Chickasaw Bluffs, too late to visit the camp, as it was near midnight before we arrived. I forgot to say that a large number of steamers were lying at Memphis, which had been seized by General Pillow, and he has forbidden all traffic in boats to Cairo.

Pa.s.sengers must go round by rail to Columbus.

JUNE 18.--I have just returned from a visit to the works and batteries at the intrenched camp at Randolph's Point, sixty miles above Memphis, by which it is intended to destroy any flotilla coming down the river from Cairo, and to oppose any force coming by land to cover its flank, and clear the left bank of the Mississippi. The Ingomar is lying under the rugged bank, or bluff, about 150 feet high, which recedes in rugged tumuli and watercourses filled with brushwood from the margin of the river, some half mile up and down the stream at this point, and Brigadier-General Pillow is still riding round his well-beloved earthworks and his quaint battalions, while I, anxious to make the most of my time now that I am fairly on the run for my base of operations, have come on board, and am now writing in the cabin, a long-roofed room, with berths on each side, which runs from stem to stern of the American boats over the main deck. This saloon presents a curious scene. Over the bow, at one side, there is an office for the sale of tickets, now dest.i.tute of business, for the Ingomar belongs to the State of Tennessee; at the other side is a bar, where thirsty souls, who have hastened on board from the camp for a julep, a smash, or a c.o.c.ktail, learn with disgust that the only article to be had is fine Mississippi water with ice in it. Lying on the deck in all att.i.tudes are numbers of men asleep, whose plumed felt hats are the only indications that they are soldiers, except in the rare case of those who have rude uniforms, and b.u.t.tons and stripes of colored cloth on the legs of their pantaloons. A sentry is sitting on a chair smoking a cigar. He is on guard over the after part of the deck, called the ladies' saloon, and sacred to the General and his staff and attendants. He is a tall, good-looking young fellow, in a gray flannel s.h.i.+rt, a black wide-awake, gray trowsers, fastened by a belt, on which is a bra.s.s buckle inscribed "U. S." His rifle is an Enfield, and the bayonet-sheath is fastened to the belt by a thong of leather. That youthful patriot is intent on the ups and downs of fortune as exemplified in the pleasing game of euchre, or euker, which is exercising the faculties of several of his comrades, who, in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, are employing the finest faculties of their nature in that national inst.i.tution; but he is not indifferent to his duties, and he forbids your correspondent's entrance until he has explained what he wants, and who he is, and the second is more easy to do than the first. The sentry tells his captain, who is an euchreist, that "It's all right," and resumes his seat and his cigar, and the work goes bravely on. Indeed, it went on last night at the same table, which is within a few yards of the General's chair; and now that I have got a sc.r.a.p of paper and a moment of quiet, let me say what I have to say of this position, and of what I saw--pleasant things they would be to the Federalist General up at Cairo, if he could hear them in time, unless he is as little prepared as his antagonist. On looking out of my cabin this morning, I saw the high and rugged bluff of which I have spoken on the left bank of the river. A few ridge-poled tents, pitched under the shade of some trees, on a small spur of the slope, was the only indication immediately visible of a martial character. But a close inspection in front enabled me to detect two earthworks mounted with guns, on the side of the bank, considerably higher than the river, and three heavy guns, possibly 42-pounders, lay in the dust close to the landing-place, with very rude carriages and bullock-poles to carry them to the batteries. A few men, ten or twelve in number, were digging at an encampment on the face of the slope. Others were lounging about the beach, and others, under the same infatuation as that which makes little boys disport in the Thames under the notion that they are was.h.i.+ng themselves, were bathing in the Mississippi. A dusty cart track wound up to the brow of the bluff, and there disappeared. Some carts toiled up and down between the boat and the crest of the hill. We went on sh.o.r.e. There was no ostentation of any kind about the reception of the General and his staff. A few horses were waiting impatiently in the sun, for the flies will have their way, and heavy men are not so unbearable as small mosquitoes. With a cloud of colonels--one late United Statesman, who was readily distinguishable by his air from the volunteers--the General proceded to visit his batteries and his men. The first work inspected was a plain parapet of earth, placed some fifty feet above the river, and protected very slightly by two small flanking parapets. Six guns, 32-pounders, and howitzers of an old pattern were mounted _en barbette_, without any traverses whatever. The carriages rested on rough platforms, and the wheels ran on a traversing semicircle of plank, as the iron rails were not yet ready. The gunners, a plain looking body of men, very like railway laborers and mechanics without uniform, were engaged at drill. It was neither quick nor good work--about equal to the average of a squad after a couple of days' exercise; but the men worked earnestly, and I have no doubt, if the Federalists give them time, they will prove artillerymen in the end. The General ordered practice to be made with round shot. After some delay, a kind of hybrid s.h.i.+p's carronade was loaded. The target was a tree, about two thousand five hundred yards distant, I was told. It appeared to me about one thousand seven hundred yards off. Every one was desirous of seeing the shot; but we were at the wrong side for the wind, and I ventured to say so. However, the General thought and said otherwise. The word "Fire!" was given. Alas? the friction-tube would not explode. It was one of a new sort, which the Tennesseeans are trying their 'prentice hand at. A second ball answered better. The gun went off, but where the ball went to no one could say, as the smoke came into our eyes. The party moved to windward, and, after another fuse had missed, the gun was again discharged at some five degrees elevation, and the shot fell in good line, two hundred yards short of the target, and did not ricochet. Gun No. 2 was then discharged, and off went the ball, at no particular mark, down the river; but if it did go off, so did the gun also, for it gave a frantic leap and jumped with the carriage off the platform; nor was this wonderful, for it was an old-fas.h.i.+oned chamber carronade or howitzer, which had been loaded with a full charge, and solid shot enough to make it burst with indignation. Turning from this battery, we visited another nearer the water, with four guns (32-pounders), which were well placed to sweep the channel with greater chance of ricochet; and higher on the bank, toward a high peak commanding the Mississippi, here about seven hundred yards broad, and a small confluent which runs into it, was another battery of two guns, with a very great command, but only fit for sh.e.l.l, as the fire must be plunging. All these batteries were very ill constructed, and in only one was the magazine under decent cover. In the first it was in rear of the battery, up the hill behind it. The parapets were of sand or soft earth, unprovided with merlons. The last had a few sand-bags between the guns. Riding up a steep road, we came to the camps of the men on the wooded and undulating plateau over the river, which is broken by water-courses into ravines covered with brushwood and forest trees. For five weeks the Tennessee troops under General Pillow, who is at the head of the forces of the State, have been working at a series of curious intrenchments which are supposed to represent an intrenched camp, and which look like an a.s.semblage of mud beaver dams. In a word, they are so complicated that they would prove exceedingly troublesome to the troops engaged in their defence, and it would require very steady, experienced regulars to man them so as to give proper support to each other. The maze of breastworks, of flanking parapets, of parapets for field-pieces, is overdone. Several of them might prove useful to an attacking force. In some places the wood was cut down in front, so as to form a formidable natural abattis; but generally here, as in the batteries below, timber and brushwood were left uncut up to easy musket shot of the works, so as to screen an advance of riflemen, and to expose the defending force to considerable annoyance. In small camps of fifteen or twenty tents each the Tennessee troops were scattered, for health sake, over the plateau, and on the level ground a few companies were engaged at drill. The men were dressed and looked like laboring people--small farmers, mechanics, with some small, undersized lads. The majority were in their s.h.i.+rt sleeves, and the awkwardness with which they handled their arms showed that, however good they might be as shots, they were by no means proficients in manual exercise. Indeed, they could not be, as they have been only five weeks in the service of the State called out in antic.i.p.ation of the Secession vote, and since then they have been employed by General Pillow on his fortifications.

They have complained more than once of their hard work, particularly when it was accompanied by hard fare, and one end of General Pillow's visit, was to inform them that they would soon be relieved from their labors by negroes and hired laborers. Their tents, small ridge-poles, are very bad, but suited, perhaps, to the transport. Each contains six men. I could get no accurate account of their rations even from the Quartermaster-General, and Commissary-General there was none present; but I was told that they had "a sufficiency--from lb. to 1 lb. of meat, of bread, of sugar, coffee, and rice, daily." Neither spirits nor tobacco is served out to these terrible chewers and not unaccomplished drinkers. Their pay "will be" the same as in the United States Army or the Confederate States Army--probably paid in the circulating medium of the latter. Seven or eight hundred men were formed in line for inspection. There were few of the soldiers in any kind of uniform, and such uniforms as I saw were in very bad taste, and consisted of gaudy facings and stripes on very strange garments. They were armed with old-pattern percussion muskets, and their ammunition pouches were of diverse sorts. Shoes often bad, knapsacks scarce, head-pieces of every kind of shape--badges worked on the front or sides, tinsel in much request. Every man had a tin water-flask and a blanket. The General addressed the men, who were in line two deep (many of them unmistakably Irishmen), and said what Generals usually say on such occasions--compliments for the past, encouragement for the future. "When the hour of danger comes I will be with you." They did not seem to care much whether he was or not; and, indeed, General Pillow, in a round hat, dusty black frock coat, and ordinary "unstriped" trowsers, did not look like one who could give any great material accession to the physical means of resistance, although he is a very energetic man. The Major-General, in fact, is an attorney-at-law, or has been so, and was partner with Mr. Polk, who, probably from some of the reasons which determine the actions of partners to each other, sent Mr. Pillow to the Mexican war, where he nearly lost him, owing to severe wounds received in action. The General has made his entrenchments as if he were framing an indictment. There is not a flaw for an enemy to get through, but he has bound up his own men in inexorable lines also. At one of the works a proof of the freedom of "citizen soldiery" was afforded in a little hilarity on the part of one of the privates. The men had lined the parapet, and had listened to the pleasant a.s.surances of their commander, that they would knock off the shovel and the hoe very soon, and be replaced by the eternal gentlemen of color. "Three cheers for General Pillow" were called for, and were responded to by the whooping and screeching sounds that pa.s.s muster in this part of the world for cheers.

As they ended, a stentorian voice shouted out, "Who cares for General Pillow?" and, as no one answered, it might be unfairly inferred that gallant officer was not the object of the favor or solicitude of his troops; probably a temporary unpopularity connected with the hard work, found expression in the daring question.

Randolph's Point is, no doubt, a very strong position. The edges of the plateau command the rear of the batteries below; the ravines in the bluff would give cover to a large force of riflemen, who could render the batteries untenable if taken from the river face, unless the camp in their rear on the top of the plateau was carried. Great loss of life, and probable failure, would result from any attack on the works from the river merely. But a flotilla might get past the guns without any serious loss in the present state of their service and equipment; and there is nothing I saw to prevent the landing of a force on the banks of the river, which, with a combined action on the part of an adequate force of gunboats, could carry the position. As the river falls the round-shot fire from the guns will be even less effective. The General is providing water for the camps by means of large cisterns dug in the ground, which will be filled with water from the river by steam power. The officers of the army of Tennessee with whom I spoke were plain, farmerly planters, merchants, and lawyers; and the heads of the department were in no respect better than their inferiors by reason of any military acquirements, but were shrewd, energetic, common-sense men. The officer in command of the works, however, understood his business, apparently, and was well supported by the artillery officer. There were, I was told, eight pieces of field artillery disposable for the defence of the camp.

Having returned to the steamer, the party proceeded up the river to another small camp in defence of a battery of four guns, or rather of a small parallelogram of soft sand covering a man a little higher than the knee, with four guns mounted in it on the river face. No communication exists through the woods between the two camps, which must be six or seven miles apart. The force stationed here was composed princ.i.p.ally of gentlemen. They were all in uniform. A detachment worked one of the guns, which the General wished to see fired with round shot. In five or six minutes after the order was given the gun was loaded, and the word given, "Fire." The gunner pulled the lanyard hard, but the tube did not explode. Another was tried. A strong jerk pulled it out bent and incombustible. A third was inserted, which came out broken. The fourth time was the charm, and the ball was projected about 60 yards to the right, and 100 yards short of the mark--a stump, some 1,200 yards distant, in the river. It must be remembered that there are no disparts, tangents, or elevating screws to the guns; the officer was obliged to lay it by the eye with a plain chock of wood. The General explained that the friction tubes were the results of an experiment he was making to manufacture them; but I agreed with one of the officers, who muttered in my ear, "The old linstock and portfire are a darned deal better." There were no sh.e.l.ls, I could see, in the battery, and, on inquiry, I learned the fuses were made of wood at Memphis, and were not considered by the officers at all trustworthy. Powder is so scarce that all salutes are inderdicted, except to the Governor of the State. In the two camps there were, I was informed, about 4,000 men. My eyesight, so far as I went, confirmed me of the existence of some 1,800, but I did not visit all the outlying tents. On landing the band had played "G.o.d Save the Queen" and "Dixie's Land;" on returning we had the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" and the national anthem of the Southern Confederation; and, by way of parenthesis, it may be added, if you do not already know the fact, that "Dixie's Land" is a synonym for Heaven. It appears that there was once a good planter, named "Dixie," who died at some period unknown, to the intense grief of his animated property. They found expression for their sorrow in song, and consoled themselves by clamoring in verse for their removal to the land to which Dixie had departed, and where probably the revered spirit would be greatly surprised to find himself in their company. Whether they were ill-treated after he died, and thus had reason to deplore his removal, or merely desired Heaven in the abstract, nothing known enables me to a.s.sert. But Dixie's Land is now generally taken to mean the Seceded States, where Mr. Dixie certainly is not at this present writing. The song and air are the composition of the organized African a.s.sociation for the advancement of music and their own profit, which sings in New York, and it may be as well to add, that in all my tour in the South I heard little melody from lips black or white, and only once heard negroes singing in the fields.

Several sick men were put on board the steamer, and were laid on mattresses on deck. I spoke to them, and found they were nearly all suffering from diarrha, and that they had no medical attendance in camp. All the doctors went to fight, and the Medical Service of the Tennessee troops is very defective. As I was going down the river I had some interesting conversation with General Clark, who commands about 5,000 troops of the Confederate States, at present quartered in two camps at Tennessee on these points. He told me the Commissariat and the Medical Service had given him great annoyance, and confesses some desertions and courts-martial had occurred. Guard-mounting and its accessory duties were performed in a most slovenly manner, and the German troops from the Southern parts were particularly disorderly. It was late in the afternoon when I reached Memphis. I may mention, _obiter_, that the captain of the steamer, talking of arms, gave me a notion of the sense of security he felt on board his vessel. From under his pillow he pulled one of his two Derringer pistols, and out of his clothes-press he produced a long heavy rifle and a double gun, which was, he said, capital with ball and buckshot.

JUNE 19.--Up at 3 o'clock, A. M., to get ready for the train at 5, which will take me out of Dixie's Land to Cairo. If the owners of the old hostelries in the Egyptian city were at all like their Tennesseean fellow craftsmen in the upstart inst.i.tution which takes its name, I wonder how Herodotus managed to pay his way. My sable attendant quite entered into our feelings, and was rewarded accordingly. At 5 A. M., covered with dust, contracted in a drive through the streets which seem "paved with waves of mud," to use the phrase of a Hibernian gentlemen connected with the baggage department of the omnibus, "only the mud was all dust," to use my own, I started in the cars along with some Confederate officers and several bottles of whiskey, which at that early hour was considered by my unknown companions as a highly efficient prophylactic against the morning dews; but it appeared that these dews are of such a deadly character that, in order to guard against their effects, one must become dead drunk. The same remedy, I am a.s.sured, is sovereign against rattlesnake bites. I can a.s.sure the friends of these gentlemen that they were amply fortified against any amount of dew or of rattlesnake poison before they got to the end of their whiskey, so great was the supply. By the Memphis papers it seems as if the inst.i.tution of blood prevailed there as in New Orleans, for I read in my paper as I went along of two murders and one shooting as the incidents of the previous day, contributed by "the local." To contrast with this low state of social existence, there must be a high condition of moral feeling, for the journal I was reading contained a very elaborate article to show the wickedness of any one paying his debts, and of any State acknowledging its liabilities, which would const.i.tute an invaluable _vade mec.u.m_ for Basinghall Street. At Humboldt, there was what was called a change of cars--a process that all the philosophy of the Baron could not have enabled him to endure without some loss of temper, for there was a whole Kosmos of Southern patriotism a.s.sembled at the station, burning with the fires of Liberty, and bent on going to the camp at Union City, forty-six miles away, where the Confederate forces of Tennessee, aided by Mississippi regiments, are out under the greenwood tree. Their force was irresistible, particularly as there were numbers of relentless citizenesses--what the American papers call "quite a crowd"--as the advanced guard of the invading army. While the original occupants were being compressed or expelled by crinoline--that all-absorbing, defensive, and aggressive article of feminine war reigns here in wide-spread, iron-bound circles--I took refuge on the platform, where I made, in an involuntary way, a good many acquaintances in this sort: "Sir, my name is Jones--Judge Jones of Pumpkin County. I am happy to know you, Sir." We shake hands affectionately. "Colonel," (Jones _loquitur_) "allow me to introduce you to my friend Mr. Scribble!

Colonel Maggs, Mr. Scribble." The Colonel shakes hands, and immediately darts off to a circle of his friends, whom he introduces, and they each introduce some one else to me, and, finally, I am introduced to the engine-driver, who is really an acquaintance of value, for he is good enough to give me a seat on his engine, and the bell tolls, the steam-trumpet bellows, and we move from the station an hour behind time, and with twice the number of pa.s.sengers the cars were meant to contain.

Our engineer did his best to overcome his difficulties, and we rushed rapidly, if not steadily, through a wilderness of forest and tangled brakes, through which the rail, without the smallest justification, performed curves and twists, indicative of a desire on the part of the engineer to consume the greatest amount of rail on the shortest extent of line. My companion was a very intelligent Southern gentlemen, formerly editor of a newspaper. We talked of the crime of the country, of the brutal shootings and stabbings which disgraced it. He admitted their existence with regret, but he could advise and suggest no remedy.

"The rowdies have rushed in upon us, so that we can't master them." "Is the law powerless?" "Well, Sir, you see these men got hold of those who should administer the law, or they are too powerful or too reckless to be kept down." "That is a reign of terror--of mob-ruffianism!" "It don't hurt respectable people much, but I agree with you it must be put down.?"

"When--how?" "Well, Sir, when things are settled we'll just take the law into our own hands. Not a man shall have a vote unless he's American born, and by degrees we'll get rid of these men who disgrace us.?" "Are not many of your regiments composed of Germans and Irish--of foreigners, in fact?" "Yes, Sir.?" I did not suggest to him the thought which rose in my mind, that these gentlemen, if successful, would be very little inclined to abandon their rights while they had arms in their hands, but it occurred to me as well that this would be rather a poor reward for the men who were engaged in establis.h.i.+ng the Southern Confederacy. The attempt may fail, but a.s.suredly I have heard it expressed too often to doubt that there is a determination on the part of the leaders in the movement to take away the suffrage from the men whom they do not scruple to employ in fighting their battles. If they cut the throats of the enemy they will stifle their own sweet voices at the same time, or soon afterward--a capital recompense to their emigrant soldiers!

The portion of Tennessee traversed by the railroad is not very attractive, for it is nearly uncleared. In the spa.r.s.e clearings were fields of Indian corn, growing amid blackened stumps of trees and rude log shanties, and the white population which looked out on us was poorly housed, at least, if not badly clad. At last we reached Corinth. It would have been scarcely recognizable by Mummius--even if he had ruined his old handiwork over again. This proudly-named spot consisted apparently of a grog-shop in wood, and three shanties of a similar material, with out-offices to match, and the Acro-Corinth was a grocery store, of which the proprietors had no doubt gone to the wars, as it was shut up, and their names were suspiciously Milesian. But, if Corinth was not imposing, Troy, which we reached after a long run through a forest of virgin timber, was still simpler in architecture and general design.

It was too new for "_Troja fuit_," and the general "fixins" would scarcely authorize one to say to hope _Troja fuerit_.

The Dardanian Towers were represented by a timber-house, and Helen the Second--whom we may take on this occasion to have been simulated by an old lady smoking a pipe, whom I saw in the verandah--could have set them on fire much more readily than did her interesting prototype ignite the City of Priam. The rest of the place and of the inhabitants, as I saw it and them, might be considered as an agglomerate of three or four sheds, a few log huts, a saw-mill, and some twenty negroes sitting on a log and looking at the train. From Troy the road led to a cypress swamp, over which the engines bustled, rattled, tumbled, and hopped at a perilous rate along a high trestlework, and at last we came to "Union City,"

which seemed to be formed by great aggregate meetings of discontented shavings which had been whiled into heaps out of the forest hard by. But here was the camp of the Confederates, which so many of our fellow-pa.s.sengers were coming out into the wilderness to see. Their white tents and plank huts gleamed through the green of oak and elm, and hundreds of men came out to the platform to greet their friends, and to inquire for baskets, boxes, and hampers, which put me in mind of the Quartermaster's store at Balaklava. We have all heard of the unhappy medical officer who exhausted his resources to get up a large chest from that store to the camp, and who on opening it, in the hope of finding inside the articles he was most in need of, discovered that it contained an elegant a.s.sortment of wooden legs; but he could not have been so much disgusted as a youthful warrior here who was handed a wicker-covered jar from the luggage van, which he "tapped" on the spot, expecting to find it full of Bourbon whiskey, or something equally good. He raised the ponderous vessel aloft, and took a long pull, to the envy of his comrades, and then spirting out the fluid, with a hideous face, exclaimed, "D----, &c. Why, if the old woman has not sent me sirup!"

Evidently no joke, for the crowd around him never laughed and gravely dispersed.

It was fully two hours before the train got away from the camp, leaving a vast quant.i.ty of good things and many ladies, who had come on in the excursion train, behind them. There were about 6,600 men there, it was said--rude, big, rough fellows, with sprinklings of odd companies, composed of gentlemen of fortune exclusively. The soldiers who were only ent.i.tled to the name in virtue of their carrying arms, their duty, and possibly their fighting qualities, lay under the trees playing cards, cooking, smoking, or reading the papers; but the camp was guarded by sentries, some of whom carried their firelocks under their arms like umbrellas, others by the muzzle with the b.u.t.t over the shoulder; one for ease, had stuck his, with the bayonet in the ground, upright before him; others laid their arms against the trees, and preferred a sitting to an upright posture. In front of one camp there were two bra.s.s fieldpieces, seemingly in good order. Many of the men had sporting rifles or plain muskets. There were several boys of fifteen and sixteen years of age among the men, who could scarcely carry their arms for a long day's march; but the Tennessee and Mississippi infantry were generally the materials of good soldiers. The camps were not regularly pitched, with one exception; the tents were too close together; the water is bad, and the result that a good deal of measles, fever, diarrha, and dysentery prevailed. One man who came on the train was a specimen of many of the cla.s.ses which fill the ranks--a tall, very muscular, handsome man, with a hunter's eye, about thirty-five years of age, brawny-shouldered, brown-faced, black-bearded, hairy-handed; he had once owned one hundred and ten negroes--equal, say, to 20,000--but he had been a patriot, a lover of freedom, a fillibuster. First, he had gone off with Lopez to Cuba, where he was taken, put in prison, and included among the number who received grace; next he had gone off with Walker to Nicaragua, but in his last expedition he fell into the hands of the enemy, and was only restored to liberty by the British officer who was afterward a.s.saulted in New Orleans for the part he took in the affair. These little adventures had reduced his stock to five negroes, and to defend them he took up arms, and he looked like one who could use them. When he came from Nicaragua he weighed only one hundred and ten pounds--now he was over two hundred pounds--a splendid _bete fauve_; and, without wis.h.i.+ng him harm, may I be permitted to congratulate American society on its chance of getting rid of a considerable number of those of whom he is a representative man. We learned incidentally that the district wherein these troops are quartered was distinguished by its attachment to the Union. By its last vote Tennessee proved that there are at least forty thousand voters in the State who are attached to the United States Government. At Columbus the pa.s.sengers were transferred to a steamer, which in an hour and a half made its way against the stream of the Mississippi to Cairo. There, in the clear light of the summer's eve, were floating the Stars and Stripes--the first time I had seen the flag, with the exception of a glimpse of it at Fort Pickens, for two months.

Cairo is in Illinois, on the spur of land which is formed by the junction of the Ohio River with the Mississippi, and its name is probably well known to certain speculators in England, who believed in the fortunes of a place so appropriately named and situated. Here is the camp of Illinois troops under General Prentiss, which watches the sh.o.r.es of the Missouri on the one hand, and of Kentucky on the other. Of them, and of what may be interesting to readers in England, I shall speak in my next letter. I find there is a general expression of satisfaction at the sentiments expressed by Lord John Russell, in the speech which has just been made down here, and that the animosity excited by what a portion of the American press called the hostility of the Foreign Minister to the United States has been considerably abated, although much has been done to fan the anger of the people into a flame, because England had acknowledged the Confederate States have _limited_ belligerent rights.

THE END.