Verily I would be sooner in the Coptic Cairo, narrow
streeted, dark bazaared, many flied, much vexed by donkeys and by overland
route passengers, than the horrid tongue of land which licks the muddy margin
of the Ohio and the Mississippi. The thermometer at 100° in the shade before
noon indicates nowhere else such an amount of heat and suffering, and yet
prostrate as I was, it was my fate to argue that England was justified in
conceding belligerent, rights to the South, and that the attitude of neutrality
we had assumed in this terrible quarrel is not in effect an aggression on the
United States; and here is a difference to be perceived between the North and
the South.
The people of the seceding States, aware in their
consciences that they have been most active in their hostility to Great
Britain, and whilst they were in power were mainly responsible for the defiant,
irritating, and insulting tone commonly used to us by American statesmen, are
anxious at the present moment when so much depends on the action of foreign
countries, to remove all unfavorable impressions from our minds by declarations
of good will, respect, and admiration, not quite compatible with the language
of their leaders in times not long gone by. The North, as yet unconscious of
the loss of power, and reared in a school of menace and violent assertion of
their rights, regarding themselves as the whole of the United States, and
animated by their own feeling of commercial and political opposition to Great
Britain, maintain the high tone of a people who have never known let or
hindrance in their passions, and consider it an outrage that
the whole world does not join in active sympathy for a
government which in its brief career has contrived to affront every nation in
Europe with which it had any dealings.
If the United States have astonished France by their
ingratitude, they have certainly accustomed England to their petulance, and one
can fancy the satisfaction with which the Austrian Statesmen who remember Mr.
Webster's despatch to Mr. Hulsemann, contemplate the present condition of the
United States in the face of an insurrection of these sovereign and independent
States which the Cabinet at Washington stigmatizes as an outbreak of rebels and
traitors to the royalty of the Union.
During my short sojourn in this country I have never yet met
any person who could show me where the sovereignty of the Union resides.
General Prentiss, however, and his Illinois volunteers, are quite ready to
fight for it.
In the afternoon the General drove me round the camps in
company with Mr. Washburne, Member of Congress, from Illinois, his staff and a
party of officers, among whom was Mr. Oglesby, colonel of a regiment of State
Volunteers, who struck me by his shrewdness, simple honesty, and zeal,* He told
me that he had begun life in the utmost obscurity, but that somehow or other he
got into a lawyer's office and there, by hard drudgery, by mother wit, and
industry, notwithstanding a defective education, he had raised himself not only
to independence, but to such a position that 1000 men had gathered at his call
and selected one who had never led a company in his life to be their colonel;
in fact, he is an excellent orator of the western school, and made good homely,
telling speeches to his men.
“I'm not as good as your Frenchmen of the schools of Paris,
nor am I equal to the Russian colonels I met at St. Petersburg, who sketched me
out how they had beaten you Britishers at Sebastopol,” said he; “but I know I
can do good straight fighting with my boys when I get a chance. There is a good
deal in training, to be sure, but nature tells too. Why I believe I would make
a good artillery officer if I was put to it. General, you heard how I laid one
of them guns the other day and touched her off with my own hand and sent the
ball right into a tree half-a-mile away.” The Colonel evidently thought he had
by that feat proved his fitness for the command of a field battery. One of the
German officers who was listening to the lively old man's talk, whispered to
me, “Dere is a good many of tese colonels in dis camp.”
At each station the officers came out of their tents, shook
hands all round, and gave an unfailing invitation to get down and take a drink,
and the guns on the General's approach fired salutes, as though it was a time
of profoundest peace. Powder was certainly more plentiful than in the
Confederate camps, where salutes are not permitted unless by special order on
great occasions.
The General remained for some time in the camp of the
Chicago light artillery, which was commanded by a fine young Scotchman of the
Saxon genus Smith, who told me that the privates of his company represented a
million and a half of dollars in property. Their guns, horses, carriages, and
accoutrements were all in the most creditable order, and there was an air about
the men and about their camp which showed they did not belong to the same class
as the better disciplined Hungarians of Milotzky close at hand.
Whilst we were seated in Captain Smith's tent, a number of
the privates came forward, and sang the “Star-spangled banner,” and a patriotic
song, to the air of “God save the Queen!” and the rest of the artillery-men,
and a number of stragglers from the other camps, assembled and then formed line
behind the singers. When the chorus was over there arose a great shout for
Washburne, and the honorable congressman was fain to come forward and make a
speech, in which he assured his hearers of a very speedy victory and the advent
of liberty all over the land. Then “General Prentiss” was called for; and as
citizen soldiers command their Generals on such occasions, he too was obliged
to speak, and to tell his audience "the world had never seen any men more
devoted, gallant, or patriotic than themselves.” “Oglesby” was next summoned,
and the tall, portly, good-humored old man stepped to the front, and with
excellent tact and good sense, dished up in the Buncombe style, told them the
time for making speeches had passed, indeed it had lasted too long; and
although it was said there was very little fighting when there was much
talking, he believed too much talking was likely to lead to a great deal more
fighting than any one desired to see between citizens of the United States of
America, except their enemies, who, no doubt, were much better pleased to see
Americans fighting each other than to find them engaged in any other
employment. Great as the mischief of too much talking had been, too much
writing had far more of the mischief to answer for. The pen was keener than the
tongue, hit harder, and left a more incurable wound; but the pen was better
than the tongue, because it was able to cure the mischief it had inflicted,”
And so by a series of sentences the Colonel got round to me, and to my
consternation, remembering how I had fared with my speech at the little private
dinner on St. Patrick's Day in New York, I was called upon by stentorian lungs,
and hustled to the stump by a friendly circle, till I escaped by uttering a few
sentences as to “mighty struggle,” “Europe gazing,” “the world anxious,” “the
virtues of discipline,” “the admirable lessons of a soldier's life,” and the “aspiration
that in a quarrel wherein a British subject was ordered, by an authority he was
bound to respect, to remain neutral, God might preserve the right.”
Colonel, General, and all addressed the soldiers as “gentlemen,”
and their auditory did not on their part refrain from expressing their
sentiments in the most unmistakable manner. “Bully for you, General!” “Bravo,
Washburne!” “That's so, Colonel!” and the like, interrupted the harangues; and
when the oratorical exercises were over the men crowded round the staff,
cheered and hurrahed, and tossed up their caps in the greatest delight.
With the exception of the foreign officers, and some of the
Staff, there are very few of the colonels, majors, captains, or lieutenants who
know anything of their business. The men do not care for them, and never think
of saluting them. A regiment of Germans was sent across from Bird's Point this
evening for plundering and robbing the houses in the district in which they
were quartered.
It may be readily imagined that the scoundrels who had to
fly from every city in Europe before the face of the police will not stay their
hands when they find themselves masters of the situation in the so-called
country of an enemy. In such matters the officers have little or no control,
and discipline is exceedingly lax, and punishments but sparingly inflicted, the
use of the lash being forbidden altogether. Fine as the men are, incomparably
better armed, clad — and doubtless better fed — than the Southern troops, they
will scarcely meet them man to man in the field with any chance of success.
Among the officers are bar-room keepers, persons little above the position of
potmen in England, grocers' apprentices, and such like — often inferior
socially, and in every other respect, to the men whom they are supposed to
command. General Prentiss has seen service, I believe, in Mexico; but he
appears to me to be rather an ardent politician, embittered against
slaveholders and the South, than a judicious or skilful military leader.
The principles on which these isolated commanders carry on
the war are eminently defective. They apply their whole minds to petty
expeditions, which go out from the camps, attack some Secessionist gathering, and
then return, plundering, as they go and come, exasperating enemies, converting
neutrals into opponents, disgusting friends, and leaving it to the
Secessionists to boast that they have repulsed them. Instead of encouraging the
men and improving their discipline these ill-conducted expeditions have an
opposite result.
_______________
* Since died of wounds received in action.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, Vol. 1, p. 337-41
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