An exceedingly hot day, which gives bad promise of comfort
for the Federal soldiers, who are coming, as the Washington Government asserts,
to put down rebellion in these quarters. The mosquitoes are advancing in
numbers and force. The day I first came I asked the waiter if they were
numerous. “I wish they were a hundred times as many,” said he. On my inquiring
if he had any possible reason for such an extraordinary aspiration, he said, “because
we would get rid of these darned black republicans out of Fort Pickens all the
sooner.” The man seemed to infer that they would not bite the Confederate
soldiers.
I dined at Dr. Nott's, and met Judge Campbell, who has
resigned his high post as one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United
States, and explained his reasons for doing so in a letter, charging Mr. Seward
with treachery, dissimulation, and falsehood. He seemed to me a great casuist
rather than a profound lawyer, and to delight in subtle distinctions and
technical abstractions; but I had the advantage of hearing from him at great
length the whole history of the Dred Scott case, and a recapitulation of the
arguments used on both sides, the force of which, in his opinion, was
irresistibly in favor of the decision of the Court. Mr. Forsyth, Colonel Hardee,
and others were of the company.
To me it was very painful to hear a sweet ringing silvery
voice, issuing from a very pretty mouth, “I'm so delighted to hear that the
Yankees in Fortress Monroe have got typhus fever. I hope it may kill them all.”
This was said by one of the most charming young persons possible, and uttered
with unmistakable sincerity, just as if she had said, “I hear all the snakes in
Virginia are dying of poison.” I fear the young lady did not think very highly
of me for refusing to sympathize with her wishes in that particular form. But
all the ladies in Mobile belong to “The Yankee Emancipation Society.” They
spend their days sewing cartridges, carding lint, preparing bandages, and I'm
not quite sure that they don't fill shells and fuses as well. Their zeal and
energy will go far to sustain the South in the forthcoming struggle, and no
where is the influence of women greater than in America.
As to Dr. Nott, his studies have induced him to take a
purely materialist view of the question of slavery, and, according to him,
questions of morals and ethics, pertaining to its consideration, ought to be
referred to the cubic capacity of the human cranium — the head that can take the
largest charge of snipe shot will eventually dominate in some form or other
over the head of inferior capacity. Dr. Nott detests slavery, but he does not
see what is to be done with the slaves, and how the four millions of negroes
are to be prevented from becoming six, eight, or ten millions, if their growth
is stimulated by high prices for Southern produce.
There is a good deal of force in the observation which I have
heard more than once down here, that Great Britain could not have emancipated
her negroes had they been dwelling within her border, say in Lancashire or Yorkshire.
No inconvenience was experienced by the English people per se in
consequence of the emancipation, which for the time destroyed industry and
shook society to pieces in Jamaica. Whilst the States were colonies, Great
Britain viewed the introduction of slaves to such remote dependencies with
satisfaction, and when the United States had established their sovereignty they
found the institution of slavery established within their own borders, and an
important, if not essential, stratum in their social system. The work of
emancipation would have then been comparatively easy; it now is a stupendous
problem which no human being has offered to solve.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 225-6
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