Chapter II: Part 2

One word more as to a fleet. The English owners of several large steamers are already in correspondence with government here for the purchase of their vessels. The intelligence which had reached the government that their commissioners have gone on to Paris is regarded as unfavorable to their claims, and as a proof that as yet England is not disposed to recognize them. It is amusing to hear the tone used on both sides toward Great Britain. Both are most anxious for her countenance and support, although the North blusters rather more about its independence than the South, which professes a warm regard for the mother country. “But,” say the North, “if Great Britain recognizes the South, we shall certainly look on it as a declaration of war.” “And,” say the South, “if Great Britain does not recognize our privateers’ flag, we shall regard it as proof of hostility and of alliance with the enemy.” The government at Washington seeks to obtain promises from Lord Lyons that our government will not recognize the Southern Confederacy, but at the same time refuses any guaranties in reference to the rights of neutrals. The blockade of the Southern ports would not occasion us any great inconvenience at present, because the cotton-loading season is over; but if it be enforced in October, there is a prospect of very serious and embarrassing questions arising in reference to the rights of neutrals, treaty obligations with the United States government, the trade and commerce of England, and the law of blockade in reference to the distinctions to be drawn between measures of war and means of annoyance.

As I write, the guns in front of the State Department are firing a salute, and each report marks a state of the Confederacy. They are now ten, as Arkansas and Tennessee are now out of the Union.

MONTGOMERY, Monday, _May_ 6, 1861.

Although I have written two letters since my arrival at Charleston, I have not been able to give an account of many things which have come under my notice, and which appeared to be noteworthy; and now that I am fairly on my travels once more, it seems only too probable that I shall be obliged to pass them over altogether. The rolling fire of the revolution is fast sweeping over the prairie, and one must fly before it or burn. I am obliged to see all that can be seen of the South at once, and then, armed with such safeguards as I can procure, to make an effort to recover my communications. Bridges broken, rails torn up, telegraphs pulled down--I am quite in the air, and air charged with powder and fire. One of the most extraordinary books in the world could be made out of the cuttings and parings of the newspapers which have been published within the last few days. The judgments, statements, asseverations of the press, everywhere necessarily hasty, ill-sifted and off-hand, do not aspire to even an ephemeral existence here. They are of use if they serve the purpose of the moment, and of the little boys who commence their childhood in deceit, and continue to adolescence in iniquity, by giving vocal utterance to the “sensation” headings of the journals they retail so sharply and so curtly. Talk of the superstition of the middle ages; or of the credulity of the more advanced periods of rural life; laugh at the Holy Coat of Treves, or groan over the Lady of Salette; deplore the faith in winking pictures, or in a _communiqué_ of the _Moniteur_; moralize on the superstition which discovers more in the liquefaction of the ichor of St. Gennaro than a chemical trick, but if you desire to understand how far faith can see and trust among the people who consider themselves the most civilized and intelligent in the world, you will study the American journals, and read the telegrams which appear in them. One day the Seventh New York regiment is destroyed for the edification of the South, and is cut up into such small pieces that none of it is ever seen afterward. The next day it marches into Washington or Annapolis all the better for the process. Another, in order to encourage the North, it is said that hecatombs of dead were carried out of Fort Moultrie, packed up, for easy travelling, in boxes. Again, to irritate both, it is credibly stated that Lord Lyons is going to interfere, or that an Anglo-French fleet is coming to watch the ports, and so on, through a wild play of fancy, inexact in line as though the batteries were charged with the _aurora borealis_ or summer lightning, instead of the respectable, steady, manageable offspring of acid and metal, to whose staid deportment we are accustomed at a moderate price for entrance. As is usual in such periods, the contending parties accuse each other of inveterate falsehood, perfidy, oppression and local tyranny and persecution. “Madness rules the hour.” The exultation of the South when the flag of the United States was lowered at Sumter has been answered by a shout of indignation and battle-cry from the North, and the excitement at Charleston has produced a reflex action there, the energy of which cannot be described. The apathy which struck me at New York, when I landed, has been succeeded by violent popular enthusiasm, before which all Laodicean policy has melted into fervent activity. The truth must be that the New York population did not believe in the strength and unanimity of the South, and that they thought the Union safe, or did not care about it. I can put down the names of gentlemen who expressed the strongest opinions that the government of the United States had no power to coerce the South, and who have since put down their names and their money to support the government in the attempt to recover the forts which have been taken. As to the change of opinion in other quarters, which has been effected so rapidly and miraculously that it has the ludicrous air of a vulgar juggler’s trick at a fair, the public regard it so little that it would be unbecoming to waste a word about it.

I expressed a belief in a letter, written a few days after my arrival, that the South would never go back into the Union. The North thinks that it can coerce the South, and I am not prepared to say they are right or wrong; but I am convinced that the South can only be forced back by such a conquest as that which laid Poland prostrate at the feet of Russia. It may be that such a conquest can be made by the North, but success must destroy the Union as it has been constituted in times past. A strong government must be the logical consequence of victory, and the triumph of the South will be attended by a similar result, for which, indeed, many Southerners are very well disposed. To the people of the Confederate States there would be no terror in such an issue, for it appears to me they are pining for a strong government exceedingly. The North must accept it whether they like it or not. Neither party, if such a term can be applied to the rest of the United States, and to those states which disclaim the authority of the Federal government, was prepared for the aggressive or resisting power of the other. Already the Confederate States perceive that they cannot carry all before them with a rush, while the North have learnt that they must put forth all their strength to make good a tithe of their lately uttered threats. But the Montgomery government are now, they say, anxious to gain time, and to prepare a regular army. The North, distracted by apprehensions of vast disturbance in its complicated relations, is clamoring for instant action and speedy consummation. The counsels of moderate men, as they were called, have been utterly overruled.

I am now, however, dealing with South Carolina, which has been the _fons et origo_ of the secession doctrines and their development into the full life of the Confederate States. The whole foundation on which South Carolina rests is cotton and a certain amount of rice; or rather she bases her whole fabric on the necessity which exists in Europe for those products of her soil, believing and asserting, as she does, that England and France cannot and will not do without them. Cotton, without a market, is so much flocculent matter encumbering the ground. Rice, without demand for it, is unsalable grain in store and on the field. Cotton at ten cents a pound is boundless prosperity, empire and superiority, and rice or grain need no longer be regarded. In the matter of slave labor, South Carolina argues pretty much in this way: England and France require our products. In order to meet their wants, we must cultivate our soil. There is only one way of doing so. The white man cannot live on our land at certain seasons of the year; he cannot work in the manner required by the crops. He must, therefore, employ a race suited to the labor, and that is a race which will only work when it is obliged to do so. That race was imported from Africa, under the sanction of the law, by our ancestors, when we were a British colony, and it has been fostered by us, so that its increase here has been as great as that of the most flourishing people in the world. In other places, where its labor was not productive or imperatively essential, that race has been made free, sometimes with disastrous consequences to itself and to industry. But we will not make it free. We cannot do so. We hold that slavery is essential to our existence as producers of what Europe requires, nay more, we maintain it is in the abstract right in principle; and some of us go so far as to maintain that the only proper form of society, according to the law of God and the exigencies of man, is that which has slavery as its basis. As to the slave, he is happier far in his state of servitude, more civilized and religious, than he is or could be if free or in his native Africa.

I have already endeavored to describe the aspect of Charleston, and I will now make a few observations on matters which struck me during my visit to one or two of the planters of the many who were kind enough to give me invitations to their residences in the state. Early one morning I started in a steamer to visit a plantation in the Pedee and Maccamaw district, in the island coast of the state, north of Charleston. Passing Sumter, on which men are busily engaged, under the Confederate flag, in making good damages and mounting guns, we put out a few miles to sea, and with the low sandy shore, dotted with soldiers, and guard-houses, and clumps of trees, on our left, in a few hours pass the Santee River, and enter an estuary into which the Pedee and Maccamaw Rivers run a few miles further to the north-west. The steamer ran alongside a jetty and pier, which was crowded by men in uniform waiting for the news and for supplies of creature comforts. Ladies were cantering along the fine hard beach, and some gigs and tax-carts fully laden rolled along very much as one sees them at Scarborough. The soldiers on the pier were all gentlemen of the county. Some, dressed in gray tunics and yellow facings, in high felt hats and plumes and jack-boots, would have done no discredit in face, figure and bearing to the gayest cavaliers who ever thundered at the heels of Prince Rupert. Their horses, full of Carolinian fire and mettle, stood picketed under the trees along the margin of the beach. Among these men, who had been doing the duty of common troopers in patrolling the sea-coast, were gentlemen possessed of large estates and princely fortunes; and one who stood among them was pointed out to me as captain of a company, for whose uses his liberality provided unbounded daily libations of champagne, and the best luxuries which French ingenuity can safely imprison in those well-known caskets with which Crimean warriors were not unacquainted at the close of the campaign. They were eager for news, which was shouted out to them by their friends in the steamer, and one was struck by the intimate personal cordiality and familiar acquaintance which existed among them. Three heavy guns mounted in an earthwork defended by palisades, covered the beach and the landing-place, and the garrison was to have been reinforced by a regiment from Charleston, which, however, had not got in readiness to go up on our steamer, owing to some little difficulties between the volunteers, their officers, and the quartermaster-general’s department.

As the Nina approaches the tumble-down wharf, two or three citizens advance from the shade of shaky sheds to welcome us, and a few country vehicles and light phaetons are drawn forth from the same shelter to receive the passengers, while the negro boys and girls who have been playing upon the bales of cotton and barrels of rice, which represent the trade of the place on the wharf, take up commanding positions for the better observation of our proceedings. There is an air of quaint simplicity and old-fashioned quiet about Georgetown, refreshingly antagonistic to the bustle and tumult of most American cities. While waiting for our vehicle we enjoyed the hospitality of one of our friends, who took us into an old-fashioned angular wooden mansion, more than a century old, still sound in every timber, and testifying, in its quaint wainscotings, and the rigid framework of door and window, to the durability of its cypress timbers and the preservative character of the atmosphere. In early days it was the crack house of the old settlement, and the residence of the founder of the female branch of the family of our host, who now only makes it his halting place when passing to and fro between Charleston and his plantation, leaving it the year round in charge of an old servant and her grandchild. Rose-trees and flowering shrubs clustered before the porch and filled the garden in front, and the establishment gave one a good idea of a London merchant’s retreat about Chelsea a hundred and fifty years ago.

At length we were ready for our journey, and, mounted in two light covered vehicles, proceeded along the sandy track which, after a while, led us to a cut deep in the bosom of the woods, where silence was only broken by the cry of a woodpecker, the boom of a crane, or the sharp challenge of the jay. For miles we passed through the shades of this forest, meeting only two or three vehicles containing female planterdom on little excursions of pleasure or business, who smiled their welcome as we passed. Arrived at a deep chocolate-colored stream, called Black River, full of fish and alligators, we find a flat large enough to accommodate vehicles and passengers, and propelled by two negroes pulling upon a stretched rope, in the manner usual in the ferry-boats of Switzerland, ready for our reception. Another drive through a more open country, and we reach a fine grove of pine and live-oak, which melts away into a shrubbery guarded by a rustic gateway, passing through which, we are brought by a sudden turn into the planter’s house, buried in trees, which dispute with the green sward and with wild flower-beds every yard of the space which lies between the hall-door and the waters of the Pedee; and in a few minutes, as we gaze over the expanse of fields just tinged with green by the first life of the early rice crops, marked by the deep water-cuts, and bounded by a fringe of unceasing forest, the chimneys of the steamer we had left at Georgetown gliding as it were through the fields, indicate the existence of another navigable river still beyond. Leaving with regret the verandah which commanded so enchanting a foreground, we enter the house, and are reminded by its low-browed, old-fashioned rooms, of the country houses yet to be found in parts of Ireland or on the Scottish border, with additions, made by the luxury and love of foreign travel, of more than one generation of educated Southern planters. Paintings from Italy illustrate the walls, in juxtaposition with interesting portraits of early colonial governors and their lovely womankind, limned with no uncertain hand, and full of the vigor of touch and naturalness of drapery, of which Copley has left us too few exemplars; and one portrait of Benjamin West claims for itself such honor as his own pencil can give. An excellent library--filled with collections of French and English classics, and with those ponderous editions of Voltaire, Rousseau, the _Mémoires pour Servir_, books of travel and history such as delighted our forefathers in the last century, and many works of American and general history--affords ample occupation for a rainy day. But alas! these, and all things good which else the house affords, can be enjoyed but for a brief season. Just as nature has expanded every charm, developed every grace, and clothed the scene with all the beauty of opened flower, of ripening grain, and of mature vegetation, on the wings of the wind the poisoned breath comes, borne to the home of the white man, and he must fly before it or perish. The books lie unopened on their shelves, the flower blooms and dies unheeded, and, pity ’tis true, the old Madeira garnered ’neath the roof, settles down for a fresh lease of life, and sets about its solitary task of acquiring a finer flavor for the infrequent lips of its banished master and his welcome visitors. This is the story, at least, that we hear on all sides, and such is the tale repeated to us beneath the porch, when the moon enhances while softening the loveliness of the scene, and the rich melody of mocking-birds fills the grove.

Within these hospitable doors Horace might banquet better than he did with Nasidienus, and drink such wine as can be only found among the descendants of the ancestry who, improvident enough in all else, learnt the wisdom of bottling up choice old Bual and Sercial ere the demon of oidium had dried up their generous sources forever. To these must be added excellent bread, ingenious varieties of the _galette_, compounded now of rice and now of Indian meal, delicious butter and fruits, all good of their kind. And is there any thing bitter rising up from the bottom of the social bowl? My black friends who attend on me are grave as Mussulman Khitmutgars. They are attired in liveries and wear white cravats and Berlin gloves. At night when we retire, off they go to their outer darkness in the small settlement of negro-hood, which is separated from our house by a wooden palisade. Their fidelity is undoubted. The house breathes an air of security. The doors and windows are unlocked. There is but one gun, a fowling-piece, on the premises. No planter hereabouts has any dread of his slaves. But I have seen, within the short time I have been in this part of the world, several dreadful accounts of murder and violence, in which masters suffered at the hands of their slaves. There is something suspicious in the constant never-ending statement that “we are not afraid of our slaves.” The curfew and the night patrol in the streets, the prisons and watch-houses, and the police regulations, prove that strict supervision, at all events, is needed and necessary. My host is a kind man and a good master. If slaves are happy anywhere, they should be so with him.

These people are fed by their master. They have upwards of half a pound per diem of fat pork, and corn in abundance. They rear poultry and sell their chickens and eggs to the house. They are clothed by their master. He keeps them in sickness as in health. Now and then there are gifts of tobacco and molasses for the deserving. There was little labor going on in the fields, for the rice has been just exerting itself to get its head above water. These fields yield plentifully; for the waters of the river are fat, and they are let in whenever the planter requires it, by means of floodgates and small canals, through which the flats can carry their loads of grain to the river for loading the steamers.

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MOBILE, ALA., _Saturday, May_ 11, 1861.

The wayfarer who confides in the maps of a strange country, or who should rely upon even the guide-books of the United States, which still lack a Murray or a Bradshaw, may be at times embarrassed by insuperable hills and innavigable rivers. When, however, I saw the three towering stories of the high-pressure steamer Southern Republic, on board of which we tumbled down the steep bank of the Alabama river at Montgomery, any such misgivings vanished from my mind. So colossal an ark could have ascended no mythical stream, and the existence and capabilities of the Alabama were demonstrated by its presence.

Punctuality is reputed a rare virtue in the river steamers of the West and South, and seldom leave their wharves until they have bagged a fair complement of passengers, although steaming up and ringing gongs and bells every afternoon for a week or more before their departure, as if travelers were to be swarmed like bees. Whether stimulated by the infectious activity of these “war times,” or convinced that the “politeness of kings” is the best steamboat policy, the grandson of Erin who owns and commands the Southern Republic, casts off his fastenings but half an hour after his promised start, and the short puff of the engine is enlivened by the wild strains of a steam-organ called a “caliope,” which gladdens us with the assurance that we are in the incomparable “land of Dixie.”

Reserving for a cooler hour the attractions of the lower floor, a Hades consecrated to machinery, freight and negroes, we betake ourselves to the second landing, where we find a long dining hall, surrounded by two tiers of state-rooms, the upper one accessible by a stair-way leading to a gallery, which divides the “saloon” between floor and roof. We are shown our quarters, which leave much to be desired and nothing to spare, and rush from their suffocating atmosphere to the outer balcony, where a faint breeze stirs the air. There is a roofed balcony above us that corresponds to the second tier of state-rooms, from which a party of excited secessionists are discharging revolvers at the dippers on the surface, and the cranes on the banks of the river.

After we have dropped down five or six miles from Montgomery, the steam-whistle announces our approach to a landing, and, as there is no wharf in view, we watch curiously the process by which our top-heavy craft, under the sway of a four-knot current, is to swing round to her invisible moorings. As we draw nigh to a wagon-worn indenture in the bank, the “scream” softens into the dulcet pipes of the “caliope,” and the steamer doubles upon her track, like an elephant turning at bay, her two engines being as independent of each other as seceding states, and slowly stemming the stream, lays her nose upon the bank, and holds it there with the judicious aid of her paddles until a long plank is run ashore from her bow, over which three passengers with valises make way for a planter and his family, who come on board. The gang plank is hauled in, the steamer turns her head down stream with the expertness of a whale in a canal, and we resume our voyage. We renew these stoppages various times before dark, landing here a barrel and there a box, and occasionally picking up a passenger.

After supper, which is served on a series of parallel tables running athwart the saloon, we return to enjoy from the balcony the cool obscurity of the evening in this climate, where light means heat. As we cleave the glassy surface of the black water the timber-clad banks seem to hem us in more closely, and to shut up the vista before us, and while we glide down with a rapidity which would need but the roar of the rapids to prefigure a cataract beyond, we yield to the caprice of fancy, instituting comparisons between the dark perspective ahead and the mystery of the future.

Again a scream, and a ruddy light flashes from our prow and deepens the shades around us. This proceeds from the burning of “light-wood”--a highly resinous pine--in a wire basket hung on gimbals, and held like a landing-net below the bow of the steamer, so as to guide without blinding the pilot, who is ensconced like a Hansom cabman upon its roof. The torch-bearer raises his cresset as we steam up to the bank, and plants it in a socket, when a hawser is seized round a tree, and the crew turn ashore to “wood up.” There is a steep high bank above us, and while dusky forms are flitting to and fro with food for our furnace, we survey a long stair-way ascending the bank at a sharp angle in a cut, which is lost in the sheds that crown the eminence over-head. This stair is flanked on either side by the bars of an iron tram-way, up which freight is hauled when landed, and parallel to it is a wooden slide, down which bales of cotton and sacks of corn are shot upon the steamer. One or two passengers slowly ascend, and a voice in the air notifies us that a team is at hand with a load of ladies, who shortly after are seen picking their way down the flight of steps. The cresset is constantly replenished with fresh light-wood, and the shadows cast by its flickering flame make us regret that we have not with us a Turner to preserve this scene, which would have been a study for Rembrandt or Salvator Rosa.

At midnight we halt for a couple of hours at Selma, a “rising town,” which has taken a start of late, owing to the arrival of a branch railway that connects it with Tennessee and the Mississippi River. Here a huge _embarcadère_, several stories high, seems fastened to the side of the bank, and affords us an opportunity of stepping out from either story of the Southern Republic upon a corresponding landing. Upon one of these floors there are hackmen and hotel runners, competing for those who land, and indicating the proximity of a town, if not a city. Our captain had resolved upon making but a short stay, in lieu of tying up until morning--his usual practice--when an acquaintance comes on board and begs him to wait an hour for a couple of ladies and some children whom he will hunt up a mile or so out of town. Times are hard, and the captain very cheerfully consents, not insensable to the flattering insinuation, “You know our folks never go with any one but you, if they can help it.”

The next day and evening are a repetition of the foregoing scenes, with more plantations in view, and a general air of tillage and prosperity. We are struck by the uniformity of the soil, which everywhere seems of inexhaustible fertility, and by the unvarying breadth of the stream, which, but for its constantly recurring sinuosities, might pass for a broad ship-canal. We also remark that the bluffs rarely sink into bottoms susceptible of overflow, and admire the verdure of the primitive forest, a tangle of mangolias in full flower, of laurels, and of various oaks peculiar to this region, and which, though never rising to the dignity of that noble tree in higher latitudes, are many of them extremely graceful. All this sylva of moderate stature is intertwined with creepers, and at intervals we see the Spanish moss, indicating the malarious exhalations of the soil beneath. The Indian corn, upon which the Southerners rely principally for food, has attained a height of two feet, and we are told that, in consequence of the war, it is sown in greater breadth than usual. The cotton plant has but just peeped above the earth, and, alluding to its tenderness, those around us express anxieties about that crop, which, it seems, are never allayed until it has been picked, bagged and pressed, shipped and sold.

As I am not engaged upon an itinerary, let these sketches suffice to convey an idea of the 417 miles of winding river which connect Montgomery with Mobile, to which place the Southern Republic conveyed us in thirty-five hours, stoppings included.

One of the Egyptian pyramids owes its origin to the strange caprice of a princess, and the Southern Republic is said to have been built with the proceeds of an accidental “haul” of Gold Coast natives, who fell into the net of her enterprising proprietor. This worthy, born of Irish parents in Milk street, is too striking a type of what the late Mr. Webster was wont to call “a Northern man with Southern principles,” not to deserve something more than a passing notice.

For out-and-out Southern notions there is nothing in Dixie’s Land like the successful emigrant from the North and East. Captain Meagher had at his fingers’ ends all the politico-economical facts and figures of the Southern side of the question, and rested his reason solely upon the more sordid and material calculations of the secessionists. It was a question of tariffs. The North had, no doubt, provided the protection of a navy, the facilities of mails, the construction of forts, custom-houses, and post-offices, in the South, and placed countless well-paid offices at the disposal of gentlemen fond of elegant leisure; but for all these the South had been paying more than their value, and when abolitionists were allowed to elect a sectional president, and the system of forced labor, which is the basis of Southern prosperity, was threatened, the South were but too happy to take a “snap judgment,” as in a _pie poudre_ court, and declare the federal compact forfeited and annulled forever.

During the long second day of our voyage we examined the faces of the proletarians, whose color and constitutions so well adapt them for the Cyclopian realm of the main deck. Among them we detect several physiognomies which strike us as resembling seedlings from the Gold Coast, rather than the second or third fruits of ancient transplantation. A fellow-traveller gratifies, at the same time, our curiosity and our penetration. There are several native Africans, or, as they are called in Cuba, _bonzes_, on board. They are the property of the argumentative captain, and were acquired by a _coup de main_, at which I have already hinted in this letter. It seems that a club of planters in this state and one or two others resolved, little more than a year ago, to import a cargo of Africans. They were influenced partly by cupidity and partly by a fancy to set the United States laws at defiance, and to evince their contempt for New England philanthropy. The job was accepted by an Eastern house, which engaged to deliver the cargo at a certain point on the coast within certain limits of time.

Whether the shipment arrived earlier than anticipated, or whether Captain Meagher was originally designated as the person to whom the bold and delicate manœuvre of landing them should be intrusted, it is certain that on a certain Sunday in last July he took a little coasting trip in his steamer Czar, and appeared at Mobile on the following morning in season to make his regular voyage up river. It is no less certain that he ran the dusky strangers in at night by an unfrequented pass, and landed them among the cane-brakes of his own plantation with sufficient celerity to be back at the moorings of the Czar without his absence having been noticed. The vessel from which the _bonzes_ were delivered were scuttled and sunk, and her master and crew found their way North by rail.

But the parties in interest soon claimed to divide the spoils, when, to their infinite disgust, the enterprising captain very coolly professed to ignore the whole business, and defied them to seek to recover by suit at law property the importation of which was regarded and would be punished as felony, if not as piracy, by the judicial tribunals. A case was made, and issue joined, when the captain proved a circumstantial _alibi_, and, having cast the claimants, doled them out a few _bonzes_, perhaps to escape assassination, as shells, while he kept the oyster in the shape of the pick of the importation, which he still holds, reconciling his conscience to the transaction by interpreting it as _salvage_.

All this is told us by our interlocutor, who was one of the losers by the affair, and who stigmatized the conduct of its hero as having been treacherous. The latter, after repeated jocular inquiries, suffers his vanity to subdue his reticence, and finishes by “acknowledging the corn.”

In the afternoon of the second day we meet two steamers ascending the river with heavy cargoes, and are told that they are the Keyes and the Lewis, recently warned off and _not seized_ by the blockading squadron off Pensacola. They are deep with provisions for the forces of the Confederate States army before Pickens, which must now be dispatched from Montgomery by rail.

In Mobile, for the first time since leaving Washington, “we realize” the entire stagnation of business. There are but five vessels in port, chiefly English, which will suffice to carry away the _debris_ of the cotton crop. Exchange on the North is unsalable, owing to the impossibility of importing coin through the unsettled country. And bills on London are of slow sale at par, which would leave a profit of seven per cent. upon the importation of gold from your side.

* * * * *

MOBILE, _Sunday, May_ 12.

The heat of the city rendered an excursion to which I was invited, for the purpose of visiting the forts at the entrance of the bay, exceedingly agreeable, and I was glad to get out from the smell of warm bricks to the breezy waters of the sea. The party comprised many of the leading merchants and politicians of this city, which is the third in importance as a port of exportation in the United States of America. There was not a man among them who did not express, with more or less determination, the resolve never to submit to the rule of the accursed North. Let there be no mistake whatever as to the unanimity which exists at present in the South to fight for what it calls its independence, and to carry on a war to the knife with the government of the United States. I have frequently had occasion to remark the curious operation of the doctrine of state rights on the minds of the people; but an examination of the institutions of the country as they actually exist leads to the inference that, where the tyranny of the majority is at once irresponsible and cruel, it is impossible for any man, where the doctrine prevails, to resist it with safety or success. It is the inevitable result of the action of this majority, as it operates in America, first to demoralize and finally to absorb the minority; and even those who have maintained what are called “Union doctrines,” and who are opposed to secession or revolution, have bowed their heads before the majesty of the mass, and have hastened to signify their acquiescence in the decisions which they have hitherto opposed. The minority, cowardly in consequence of the arbitrary and vindictive character of the overwhelming power against which it has struggled, and disheartened by defeat, of which the penalties are tremendous in such conflicts as these, hastens to lick the feet of the conqueror, and rushes with frantic cheers after the chariot in the triumph which celebrates its own humiliation. If there be a minority at all on this great question of secession in the Southern states, it hides in holes and corners inaccessible to the light of day, and sits there in darkness and in sorrow, silent and fearful, if not dumb and hopeless. There were officers who had served with distinction under the flag of the United States, now anxious to declare that it was not their flag, and that they had no affection for it, although they were ready to admit they would have continued to serve under it if their states had not gone out. A man’s state, in fact, under the operation of these majority doctrines to which I have adverted, holds hostages for his fidelity to the majority, not only in such land or fortune as he may possess within her bounds, but in his family, his relatives and kin, and if the state revolts, the officer who remains faithful to the flag of the United States is considered by the authorities of the revolting state a traitor, and, what is worse, he is treated in the persons of those he leaves behind him as the worst kind of political renegade. General Scott, but a few months ago the most honored of men in a republic which sets such store on military success, is now reviled and abused because, being a Virginian by birth, he did not immediately violate his oath, abandon his post, and turn to fight against the flag which he has illustrated by repeated successes, during a career of half a century, the moment his state passed an ordinance of secession.

An intelligent and accomplished officer, who accompanied me to-day around the forts under his command, told me that he had all along resisted secession, but that when his state went out he felt it was necessary to resign his commission in the United States army, and to take service with the confederates. Among the most determined opponents of the North, and the most vehement friends of what are called here “domestic institutions,” are the British residents, English, Irish and Scotch, who have settled here for trading purposes, and who are frequently slave-holders. These men have no state rights to uphold, but they are convinced of the excellence of things as they are, or find it their interest to be so.

The waters of two rivers fall into the head of the Bay of Mobile, which is, in fact, a narrow sea-creek, between low sandy banks covered with pine and forest trees, broken here and there into islands, extending some thirty miles inland, with a breadth varying from three to seven miles. No attempt has been made, apparently, to improve the waters, or to provide docks or wharfage for the numerous cotton ships which lie out at the mouth of the bay, more than twenty five miles from Mobile. All the cotton has to be sent down to them in lighters, and the number of men thus employed in the cotton season in loading the barges, navigating, and transferring the cargoes to the ships, is very considerable, and their rate of wages is high.

The horror entertained by a merchant captain of the shore is well known, and the skippers are delighted at an anchorage so far from land, which at the same time detains the crews in the ships and prevents “running.” At present there are but seven ships at the anchorage, nearly all British, and one of the latter appears in the distance hard and fast ashore, though whether she got there in consequence of the lights not being burning or from neglect it is impossible to say. Fort Gaines, on the right bank of the channel, near the entrance, is an unfinished shell of a fort, which was commenced by the United States engineers some time ago, and which it would not be easy to finish without a large outlay of money and labor. It is not well placed to resist either a land attack or an assault by boats. A high sand-bank in front of one of the faces screens the fire, and a wood on another side, if occupied by riflemen, would render it difficult to work the barbette guns. It is not likely, however, that the fort will be attacked. The channel it commands is only fit for light vessels. From this fort to the other side of the channel, where Fort Morgan stands, the distance is over three miles, and the deep-water channel is close to the latter fort. The position of the Gaines is held by a strong body of Alabama troops--stout, sturdy men, who have volunteered from farm, field, or desk. They are armed with ordinary muskets of the old pattern, and their uniform is by no means uniform; but the men look fit for service. The fort would take a garrison of five hundred men if fully mounted, but the parapets are mere partition walls of brickwork crenellated; the bomb-proofs are unfinished, and, but for a few guns mounted on the sand-hills, the place is a defenceless shell-trap. There are no guns in the casemates, and there is no position ready to bear the weight of a gun in barbette. The guns which are on the beach are protected by sand-bag traverses, and are more formidable than the whole fortress. The steamer proceeded across the channel to Fort Morgan, which is a work of considerable importance, and is assuming a formidable character under the superintendence of Colonel Hardee, formerly of the United States army. It has a regular trace, bastion and curtain, with a dry ditch and drawbridge, well-made casemates and bomb-proofs, and a tolerable armament of columbiads, forty-two and thirty-two pounders, a few ten-inch mortars, and light guns in the external works at the salients. The store of ammunition seems ample. Some of the fuses are antiquated, and the gun-carriages are old-fashioned. The open parade and the unprotected gorges of the casemates would render the work extremely unpleasant under a shell fire, and the buildings and barracks inside are at present open to the influences of heat. The magazines are badly traversed and inadequately protected. A very simple and apparently effective contrivance for dispensing with the use of the sabot in shells was shown to me by Colonel Maury, the inventor. It consists of two circular grummets of rope, one at the base and the other at the upper circumference of the shell, made by a simple machinery to fit tightly to the sphere, and bound together by thin copper wire. The grummets fit the bore of the gun exactly, and act as wads, allowing the base of the shell to rest in close contact with the charge, and breaking into oakum on leaving the muzzle. Those who know what mischief can be done by the fragments of the sabot when fired over the heads of troops, will appreciate this simple invention, which is said to give increased range to the horizontal shell. There must be about sixty guns in this work; it is over-garrisoned, and, indeed, it seems to be the difficulty here to know what to do with the home volunteers. Rope mantlets are used on the breeches of some of the barbette guns. At night the harbor is in perfect darkness. Notwithstanding the defences I have indicated, it would be quite possible to take Fort Morgan with a moderate force, well supplied with the means of vertical fire.

“Are there many mosquitos here?” inquired I of the waiter on the day of my arrival. “Well, there’s a few, I guess; but I wish there were ten times as many.” “In the name of goodness, why do you say so?” asked I, with some surprise and indignation. “Because we’d get rid of the ---- Black Republicans out of Fort Pickens all the sooner,” replied he. There is a strange unilateral tendency in the minds of men in judging of the operation of causes and results in such a contest as that which now prevails between the North and the South. The waiter reasoned and spoke like many of his betters. The mosquitos, for whose aid he was so anxious, were regarded by him as true Southerners, who would only torture his enemies. The idea of these persecuting little fiends being so unpatriotic as to vex the Confederates in their sandy camp never entered into his mind for a moment. In the same way, a gentleman of intelligence, who was speaking to me of the terrible sufferings which would be inflicted on the troops at Tortugas and at Pickens by fever, dysentery, and summer heats, looked quite surprised when I asked him, “whether these agencies would not prove equally terrible to the troops of the Confederates?”

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MOBILE, _May_ 18, 1861.

I avail myself of the departure of a gentleman who is going to New York by the shortest route he can find, to send you the accompanying letters. The mails are stopped; so are the telegraphs; and it is doubtful whether I can get to New Orleans by water. Of what I saw at Fort Pickens and Pensacola here is an account, written in a very hurried manner, and under very peculiar circumstances.

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_Tuesday, May_ 14, 1861.

Two New Orleans gentlemen, who came overland from Pensacola yesterday, give such an account of their miseries from heat, dust, sand, and want of accommodation, in the dreary waste through which they passed for more than seventeen hours, that I sought out some other way of going there, and at last heard of a small schooner, called the Diana, which would gladly undertake to run round by sea, if permitted to enter by the blockading squadron.

She was neither clean nor neat looking; her captain, a tall, wild-haired young man, had more the air of a mechanic than of a sailor, but he knew his business well, as the result of the voyage showed. His crew consisted of three men and a negro cook. Three gentlemen of Mobile, who were anxious to visit General Bragg’s camp, agreed to join me, but before I sailed I obtained a promise that they would not violate the character of neutrals as long as they were with me, and an assurance that they were not in any way engaged in or employed by the Confederate States forces. “Surely you will not have Mr. R---- hanged, sir?” said the mayor of Mobile to me when I told him I could not consent to pass off the gentleman in question as a private friend. “No, I shall do nothing to get Mr. R---- hanged. It will be his own act which causes it, but I will not allow Mr. R---- to accompany me under false pretences.” Having concluded our bargain with the skipper at a tolerably fair rate, and laid in a stock of stores and provisions, the party sailed from Mobile at five in the evening of Tuesday, May 14, with the flag of the Confederate States flying; but, as a precautionary measure, I borrowed from our acting consul, Mr. Magee, a British ensign, which, with a flag of truce, would win the favorable consideration of the United States squadron. Our craft, the somewhat Dutch build of which gave no great promise of speed, came, to our surprise and pleasure, up with the lights of Fort Morgan at nine o’clock, and we were allowed to pass unchallenged through a “swash,” as a narrow channel over the bar is called, which, despite the absence of beacons and buoys, our skipper shot through under the guidance of a sounding-pole, which gave, at various plunges, but a few inches to spare.

The shore is as flat as a pancake--a belt of white sand, covered with drift-logs and timber, and with a pine forest; not a home or human habitation of any sort to be seen for forty miles, from Fort Morgan to the entrance of the harbor of Pensacola; cheerless, miserable, full of swamps, the haunts of alligators, cranes, snakes, and pelicans; with lagoons, such as the Perdida, swelling into inland seas; deep buried in pine woods, and known only to wild creatures, and to the old filibusters--swarming with mosquitos. As the Diana rushed along within a quarter of a mile of this grim shore, great fish flew off from the shallows, and once a shining gleam flashed along the waters, and winged its way alongside the little craft--a monster shark, which ploughed through the sea _pari passu_ for some hundred yards leeward at the craft, and distinctly visible in the wonderful phosphorescence around it, and then dashed away with a trail of light seaward, on some errand of voracity, with tremendous force and vigor. The wretched Spaniards who came to this ill-named Florida, must often have cursed their stars. How rejoiced were they when the government of the United States relieved them from their dominion! Once during the night some lights were seen on shore, as if from a camp-fire. The skipper proposed to load an old iron carronade and blaze away at them, and one of the party actually got out his revolver to fire, but I objected very strongly to these valorous proceedings, and suggesting that they might be friends who were there, and that, friends or foes, they were sure to return our fire, succeeded in calming the martial ardor on board the Diana. The fires were very probably made by some of the horsemen lately sent out by General Bragg to patrol the coast, but the skipper said that in all his life-long experience he had never seen a human creature or a light on that shore before. The wind was so favorable, and the Diana so fast, that she would have run into the midst of the United States squadron off Fort Pickens had she pursued her course. Therefore, when she was within about ten miles of the station she hove to, and lay off and on for about two hours. Before dawn the sails were filled, and off she went once more, bowling along merrily, till with the first blush of day there came in sight Fort M’Rae, Fort Pickens, and the masts of the squadron, just rising above the blended horizon of low shore and sea. The former, which is on the western shore of the mainland, is in the hands of the Confederate troops. The latter is just opposite to it, on the extremity of the sand-bank, called Santa Rosa Island, which, for forty-five miles runs in a belt parallel to the shore of Florida, at a distance varying from one and a quarter to four miles. To make smooth water of it, the schooner made several tacks shoreward. In the second of these tacks the subtle entrance of Perdida Creek is pointed out, which, after several serpentine and re-entering undulations of channel, one of which is only separated from the sea for a mile or more by a thin wall of sand-bank, widens to meet the discharge of a tolerably spacious inland lake. The Perdida is the dividing line between the states of Alabama and Florida.

The flagstaff of Fort M’Rae soon became visible, and in fainter outline beyond it that of Fort Pickens, and the hulls of the fleet, in which one can make out three war-steamers, a frigate, and a sloop-of-war, and then the sharpset canvas of a schooner, the police craft of this beat, bearing down upon us. The skipper, with some uneasiness, announces the small schooner that is sailing in the wind’s eye as the “Oriental,” and confesses to having already been challenged and warned off by her sentinel master. We promised him immunity for the past and safety for the future, and, easing off the main sheet, he lays the Diana on her course for the fleet.

Fort M’Rae, one of the obsolete school of fastnesses, rounds up on our left. Beyond it, on the shore, is Barrancas, a square-faced work, half a mile further up the channel, and more immediately facing Fort Pickens. A thick wood crowns the low shore, which trends away to the eastward, but amid the sand the glass can trace the outlines of the batteries. Pretty-looking detached houses line the beach; some loftier edifices gather close up to the shelter of a tall chimney which is vomiting out clouds of smoke, and a few masts and spars checker the white fronts of the large buildings and sheds, which, with a big shears, indicate the position of the navy-yard of Warrington, commonly called that of Pensacola, although the place of that name lies several miles higher up the creek. Fort M’Rae seems to have sunk at the foundations; the crowns of many of the casemates are cracked, and the water-face is poor looking. Fort Pickens, on the contrary, is a solid, substantial-looking work, and reminds one something of Fort Paul at Sebastopol, as seen from the sea, except that it has only one tier of casemates, and is not so high.