As the mail communication has been suspended between North
and South, and the Express Companies are ordered not to carry letters, I sent
off my packet of despatches to-day, by Mr. Ewell, of the house of Dennistoun
& Co.; and resumed my excursions through New Orleans.
The young artist, who is stopping at the St. Charles Hotel,
came to me in great agitation to say his life was in danger, in consequence of
his former connection with an abolition paper of New York, and that he had been
threatened with death by a man with whom he had had a quarrel in Washington.
Mr. Mure, to calm his apprehensions, offered to take him to the authorities of
the town, who would, no doubt, protect him, as he was merely engaged in making
sketches for an English periodical, but the young man declared he was in danger
of assassination. He entreated Mr. Mure to give him despatches which would
serve to protect him, on his way northward; and the Consul, moved by his mental
distress, promised that if he had any letters of an official character for
Washington he would send them by him, in default of other opportunities.
I dined with Major Ranney, the president of one of the
railways, with whom Mr. Ward was stopping. Among the company were Mr. Eustis,
son-in-law of Mr. Slidell; Mr. Morse, the Attorney-General of the State; Mr.
Moise, a Jew, supposed to have considerable influence with the Governor, and a
vehement politician; Messrs. Hunt, and others. The table was excellent, and the
wines were worthy of the reputation which our host enjoys, in a city where
Sallusts and Luculli are said to abound. One of the slave servants who waited
at table, an intelligent yellow “boy,” was pointed out to me as a son of
General Andrew Jackson.
We had a full account of the attack of the British troops on
the city, and their repulse. Mr. Morse denied emphatically that there was any
cotton bag fortification in front of the lines, where our troops were defeated;
he asserted that there were only a few bales, I think seventy-five, used in the
construction of one battery, and that they and some sugar hogsheads,
constituted the sole defences of the American trench. Only one citizen applied
to the State for compensation, on account of the cotton used by Jackson's
troops, and he owned the whole of the bales so appropriated.
None of the Southern gentlemen have the smallest
apprehension of a servile insurrection. They use the univeral formula “our
negroes are the happiest, most contented, and most comfortable people on the
face of the earth.” I admit I have been struck by well-clad and good-humored
negroes in the streets, but they are in the minority; many look morose, ill-clad,
and discontented. The patrols I know have been strengthened, and I heard a young
lady the other night, say, “I shall not be a bit afraid to go back to the
plantation, though mamma says the negroes are after mischief.”
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 232-3
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