Chapter VI

----My business in this State Made me a looker-on here in
Vienna.--MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

I whipped me behind the arras, and there heard it agreed
upon.--MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

JACKSON, MISS., _April 1, 1861_.

[Sidenote: THE MISSISSIPPI STATE HOUSE.]

The Mississippi State House, upon a shaded square in front of my window, is a faded, sober edifice, of the style in vogue fifty years ago, with the representative hall at one end, the senate chamber at the other, an Ionic portico in front, and an immense dome upon the top. Above this is a miniature dome, like an infinitesimal parasol upon a gigantic umbrella. The whole is crowned by a small gilded pinnacle, which has relapsed from its original perpendicular to an angle of forty-five degrees, and looks like a little jockey-cap, worn jantily upon the head of a plethoric quaker, to whom it imparts a rowdyish air, at variance with his general gravity.

The first story is of cracked free-stone, the front and end walls of stucco, and the rear of brick. As you enter the vestibule two musty cannon stand gaping at you, and upon one of them you may see, almost any day, a little "darkey" sound asleep. Whether he guards the gun, or the gun guards him, opens a wide field for conjecture.

Ascending a spiral stairway, and passing along the balustrade which surrounds the open space under the dome, you turn to the left, through a narrow passage into the representative hall. Here is the Mississippi Convention.

[Sidenote: VIEW OF THE REPRESENTATIVE HALL.]

At the north end of the apartment sits the president, upon a high platform occupying a recess in the wall, with two Ionic columns upon each side of him. Before him is a little, old-fashioned mahogany pulpit, concealing all but his head and shoulders from the vulgar gaze. In front of this, and three or four feet lower, at a long wooden desk, sit two clerks, one smoking a cigar.

Before them, and still lower, at a shorter desk, an unhappy Celtic reporter, with dark shaggy hair and eyebrows, is taking down the speech of the honorable member from something or other county. In front of his desk, standing rheumatically upon the floor, is a little table, which looks as if called into existence by a drunken carpenter on a dark night, from the relics of a superannuated dry-goods box.

Upon one of the columns at the president's right, hangs a faded portrait of George Poindexter, once a senator from this State. Further to the right is an open fire-place, upon whose mantel stand a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence, now sadly faded and blurred, a lithographic view of the Medical College of Louisiana, and a pitcher and glass. On the hearth is a pair of ancient andirons, upon which a genial wood fire is burning.

[Sidenote: GENERAL AIR OF DILAPIDATION.]

The hypocritical plastering which coated the fireplace has peeled off, leaving bare the honest, worn faces of the original bricks. Some peculiar non-adhesive influence must affect plastering in Jackson. In whole rooms of the hotel it has seceded from the lath. Judge Gholson says that once, in the old State House, a few hundred yards distant, when Seargeant S. Prentiss was making a speech, he saw "an acre or two" of the plastering fall upon his head, and quite overwhelm him for the time. The Judge is what Count Fosco would call the Man of Brains; he is deemed the ablest member of the Convention. He was a colleague in Congress of the lamented Prentiss, whom he pronounces the most brilliant orator that ever addressed a Mississippi audience.

On the left of the president is another fire-place, also with a sadly blurred copy of the great Declaration standing upon its mantel. The members' desks, in rows like the curved line of the letter D, are of plain wood, painted black. Their chairs are great, square, faded mahogany frames, stuffed and covered with haircloth. As you stand beside the clerk's desk, facing them, you see behind the farthest row a semi-circle of ten pillars, and beyond them a narrow, crescent shaped lobby. Half-way up the pillars is a little gallery, inhabited just now by two ladies in faded mourning.

In the middle of the hall, a tarnished brass chandelier, with pendants of glass, is suspended from the ceiling by a rod festooned with cobwebs. This medieval relic is purely ornamental, for the room is lighted with gas. The walls are high, pierced with small windows, whose faded blue curtains, flowered and bordered with white, are suspended from a triple bar of gilded Indian arrows.

Chairs of cane, rush, wood and leather seats--chairs with backs, and chairs without backs, are scattered through the hall and lobby, in pleasing illustration of that variety which is the spice of life. The walls are faded, cracked, and dingy, pervaded by the general air of mustiness, and going to "the demnition bow-wows" prevalent about the building.

The members are in all sorts of social democratic positions. In the open spaces about the clerk's desk and fire-places, some sit with chairs tilted against the wall, some upon stools, and three slowly vibrate to and fro in pre-Raphaelite rocking-chairs. These portions of the hall present quite the appearance of a Kentucky bar-room on a winter evening.

[Sidenote: A FREE AND EASY CONVENTION.]

Two or three members are eating apples, three or four smoking cigars, and a dozen inspect their feet, resting upon the desks before them. Contemplating the spectacle yesterday, I found myself involuntarily repeating the couplet of an old temperance ditty:

"The rumseller sat by his bar-room fire,
With his feet as high as his head, and higher,"

and a moment after I was strongly tempted to give the prolonged, stentorian shout of "B-O-O-T-S!" familiar to ears theatrical. Pardon the irreverence, O decorous _Tribune_! for there is such a woful dearth of amusement in this solemn, funereal city, that one waxes desperate. To complete my inventory, many members are reading this morning's _Mississippian_, or _The New Orleans Picayune_ or _Delta_, and the rest listen to the one who is addressing the Chair.

They impress you by their pastoral aspect--the absence of urban costumes and postures. Their general bucolic appearance would assure you, if you did not know it before, that there are not many large cities in the State of Mississippi. Your next impression is one of wonder at their immense size and stature. Of them the future historian may well say: "There were giants in those days."

All around you are broad-shouldered, herculean-framed, well-proportioned men, who look as if a laugh from them would bring this crazy old capitol down about their ears, and a sneeze, shake the great globe itself. The largest of these Mississippi Anakim is a gigantic planter, clothed throughout in blue homespun.

You might select a dozen out of the ninety-nine delegates, each of whom could personate the Original Scotch Giant in a traveling exhibition. They have large, fine heads, and a profusion of straight brown hair, though here and there is a crown smooth, bald, and shining. Taken for all in all, they are fine specimens of physical development, with frank, genial, jovial faces.

[Sidenote: SOUTHERN ORATORS--ANGLO-AFRICAN DIALECT.]

The speaking is generally good, and commands respectful attention. There is little _badinage_ or satire, a good deal of directness and coming right to the point, qualified by the strong southern proclivity for adjectives. The pungent French proverb, that the adjective is the most deadly enemy of the substantive, has never journeyed south of Mason & Dixon's line.

The members, like all deliberative bodies in this latitude, are mutual admirationists. Every speaker has the most profound respect for the honest motives, the pure patriotism, the transcendent abilities of the honorable gentleman upon the other side. It excites his regret and self-distrust to differ from such an array of learning and eloquence; and nothing could impel him to but a sense of imperious duty.

He speaks fluently, and with grammatical correctness, but in the Anglo-African dialect. His violent denunciations of the Black Republicans are as nothing to the gross indignities which he offers to the letter _r_. His "_mo's_," "_befo's_," and "_hea's_" convey reminiscences of the negress who nursed him in infancy, and the little "pickaninnies" with whom he played in boyhood.

The custom of stump-speaking, universal through the South and West, is a capital factory for converting the raw material into orators. Of course there are strong exceptions. This very morning we had an address from one member--Mr. D. B. Moore, of Tuppah county--which is worthy of more particular notice. I wish I could give you a literal report. Pickwick would be solemn in comparison.

[Sidenote: A SPEECH WORTH PRESERVATION.]

Mr. Moore conceives himself an orator, as Brutus was; but in attempting to cover the whole subject (the Montgomery Constitution), he spread himself out "very thin." I will "back" him in a given time to quote more Scripture, incorrectly, irreverently, and irrelevantly, than any other man on the North American continent.

His "like we" was peculiarly refreshing, and his history and classics had a strong flavor of originality. He quoted Patrick Henry, "_Let_ Cæsar have his Brutus;" piled "Pelion upon _Pelion_!" and made Sampson kill Goliah!! He thought submitting the Secession ordinance to the people in Texas had produced an excellent effect. Previous to it, the _New York Tribune_ said: "Secession is but a scheme of demagogues--a move on the political chess-board--the people oppose it." But afterward it began to ask: "How is this? What does it all mean? The people seem to have a hand in it, and to be in earnest, too." The tone of Mr. Seward also changed radically, he observed, after that election.

Mr. Moore spoke an hour and a half, and the other members, though listening courteously, betrayed a lurking suspicion that he was a bore. In person he resembles Henry S. Lane, the zealous United States Senator-elect from Indiana. The sergeant-at-arms, who, in a gray coat, and without a neckerchief, walks to and fro, with hands in his pockets, looks like the unlovely James H. Lane, Senator-expectant from Kansas.

Shall I give you a little familiar conversation of the members, as they smoke their post-prandial cigars in the hall, waiting for the Convention to be called to order? Every mother's son of them has a title.

[Sidenote: FAMILIAR CONVERSATION OF MEMBERS.]

JUDGE.--Toombs is a great blusterer. When speaking, he seems determined to force, to drive you into agreeing with him. Howell Cobb is another blusterer, much like him, but immensely fond of good dinners. Aleck Stephens is very different. When _he_ speaks, you feel that he desires to carry you with him only by the power of reason and argument.

COLONEL.--I knew him when he used to be a mail-carrier in Georgia. He was a poor orphan boy, but a charitable society of ladies educated him. He is a very small man, with a hand no wider than my three fingers, and as transparent as any lady's who has been sick for a year. He always looked like an invalid. If you were to cut his head off, I don't believe he would bleed a pint.[4]

[4] He never weighed over ninety-six pounds, and, to see his attenuated figure bent over his desk, the shoulders contracted, and the shape of his slender limbs visible through his garments, a stranger would select him as the John Randolph of our time. He has the appearance of having undergone great bodily anguish.--_Newspaper Biography of Alexander H. Stephens._

MAJOR.--Do you know what frightened Abe Lincoln out of Baltimore? Somebody told him that Aleck Stephens was lying in wait for him on a street corner, with a six-pounder strapped to his back. When he heard that, he _sloped_. [Loud laughter from the group.]

JUDGE.--Well, Lincoln has been abused immensely about his flight through Baltimore; but I believe the man acted from good motives. He knew that his partisans there meant to make a demonstration when he arrived, and that they were very obnoxious to the people; he had good reason to believe that it would produce trouble, and perhaps bloodshed; so he went through, secretly, to avoid it.

[Sidenote: NEW ORLEANS AGAIN--REVIEWING TROOPS.]

NEW ORLEANS, _April 5, 1861_.

The Second Louisiana Zouaves were reviewed on Lafayette Square last evening, before leaving for Pensacola. They are boyish-looking, and handle their muskets as if a little afraid of them, but seem to be the raw material of good soldiers. They are luridly grotesque, in closely-fitting, blue-tasseled, red fez caps, blue flannel jackets and frocks, faced with red, baggy red breeches, like galvanized corn-sacks, and gutta-percha greaves about their ankles.

_April 6._

All the Secession leaders except Senator Benjamin declare there will be no war. He asserts that war is sure to come; and in a recent speech characterized it as "by no means an unmixed evil."

The Fire-Eaters are intensely bitter upon the border States for refusing to plunge into the whirlpool of Secession. They are bent on persuading or driving all the slave States into their ranks. Otherwise they fear--indeed, predict frankly--that the border will gradually become Abolitionized, and extend free territory to the Gulf itself. They are quite willing to devote Kentucky and Virginia to the devastation of civil war, or the embarrassment of a contiguous hostile republic, which would not return their run-away negroes.[5] But they will move heaven and earth to save themselves from any such possible contingency.

[5] By the last census report, the whole number of escaping fugitives in the United States, in the year 1860, was eight hundred and three, being a trifle over _one-fiftieth of one per cent._ upon the whole number of slaves. Of these, it is probable that the greater part fled to places of refuge in the South, the Dismal Swamp, everglades of Florida, southern mountain regions, and the northern States of Mexico.--_Everett's New York Oration, July 4, 1861._

_April 8._

The recent warlike movements of the National Government cause excitement and surprise. At last, the people begin to suspect that they have invoked grim-visaged war. The newspapers descant upon the injury to commerce and industry. Why did they not think of all this before?

[Sidenote: THREE OBNOXIOUS NORTHERNERS.]

It is vouchsafed to few mortals to learn, before death, exactly what their associates think of them; but your correspondent is among the favored few. The other evening, I was sitting with a Secession acquaintance, in the great exchange of the St. Charles Hotel, when conversation turned upon the southern habit of lynching people who do not happen to agree with the majority. He presumed enough upon my ignorance to insist that any moderate, gentlemanly Republican might come here with impunity.

"But," he added, "there are three men whose safety I would not guarantee."

"Who are they?"

"Governor Dennison, of Ohio, is one. Since he refused to return that fugitive slave to Kentucky, he would hardly be permitted to stay in New Orleans; at all events, I should oppose it. Then there is Andy Johnson. He ought to be shot, or hanged, wherever found. But for him, Kentucky and Tennessee would have been with us long ago. He could not remain here unharmed for a single hour."

"And the third?"

"Some infernal scoundrel, who is writing abusive letters about us to _The New York Tribune_."

"Is it possible?"

"Yes, sir, and he has been at it for more than a month."

"Can't you find him out?"

"Some think it is a Kentuckian, who pretends to be engaged in cattle-trading, but only makes that a subterfuge. I suspect, however, that it is an editor of _The Picayune_, which is a Yankee concern through and through. If he is caught, I don't think he will write many more letters."

I ventured a few words in palliation of the Governor and the Senator, but quite agreed that this audacious scribbler ought to be suppressed.

[Sidenote: ATTACK ON SUMTER--REBEL BOASTING.]

_April 12._

Telegraphic intelligence to-day of the attack upon Fort Sumter causes intense excitement. _The Delta_ office is besieged by a crowd hungry for news. The universal expectation of the easy capture of the fort is not stronger than the belief that it will be followed by an immediate and successful movement against the city of Washington. The politicians and newspapers have persuaded the masses that the Yankees (a phrase which they no longer apply distinctively to New Englanders, but to every person born in the North) mean to subjugate them, but are arrant cowards, who may easily be frightened away. Leading men seldom express this opinion; yet _The Crescent_, giving the report that eight thousand Massachusetts troops have been called into the field, adds, that if they would come down to Pensacola, eighteen hundred Confederates would easily "whip them out."

"God help them if the tempest swings
The pine against the palm!"