Diary of John Hay: Monday, March 7, 1864

Key West. We steamed away as it grew light and arrived at Key West about noon. The Key lies bathed in the quiet ripples of the pale green water, whitened by the coral. So bright green that I cannot describe the gem-like shine of the distant waters. The sea-gulls that soar above the sea have their white breasts and inside wings splendidly stained with green by the reflection of the gleaming water.

I went ashore, and after several inquiries found that Gen'l W. lived half a mile from the dock. I went to a hotel to inquire about a carriage, and was referred to a Jew druggist, — who pointed to a bay rat hitched to a shay in front of his door, and implored me for pure love of God to be back by two. I drove out by the beach to the barracks; passed two black sentries, and found the General's Adjutant, Capt. Bowers, and soon thereafter Genl. W. I was expected, Gen. Banks’ orders having arrived some time ago. I arranged my matters in half an hour.

. . . . In the evening Stickney and I went out to see a “popular nigger” named Sandy. Some young “Knavies” were there. They chatted a moment, ordered some sapodillos (which tasted like Castile soap and rotten apples), and then went away saying they were going to see the ladies. Whereat Sandy chuckled and guffawed to the imminent danger of his supper, which he had been eating quietly, sensibly refusing to let our entrance disturb him.

Sandy talked mostly of his influential friends. “Captains and Colonels and them things,” and gingerly of the rebellious and fugacious. S. asked him if he were bothered much. “No! not sence I broke dat feller's jaw in tree pieces. I b’lieve he was a rebel — a passel of ’em, — a dozen, sah, come to debbil me; dey tore down my fence panels, and I went out to see. I ain’t feared o’ nobody. But a man got to be lively when he's fighting a passel, it's a busy time ob de year den. I hit one ob ’em and he straightened out like a log; broke his jaw in tree pieces; and de rest, dey run. I nebber complains; de officers, dey got dere hands full; mustn't trouble bout every little tittle. I's a darkey sort ob person. I takes off hat to everybody; but dey got to luff me alone.”

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 175-7. See, Michael Burlingame & John R. Turner Ettlinger, Editors, Inside Lincoln's White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 176-7 for the full diary entry.

Diary of William Howard Russell: June 10, 1861

At last venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus. I had seen as much as might be of the best phase of the great institution — less than I could desire of a most exemplary, kind-hearted, clear-headed, honest man. In the calm of a glorious summer evening we crossed the Father of Waters, waving an adieu to the good friend who stood on the shore, and turning our backs to the home we had left behind us. It was dark when the boat reached Donaldsonville on the opposite “coast.”

I should not be surprised to hear that the founder of this remarkable city, which once contained the archives of the State, now transferred to Baton Rouge, was a North Briton. There is a simplicity and economy in the plan of the place not unfavorable to that view, but the motives which induced Donaldson to found his Rome on the west of Bayou La Fourche from the Mississippi must be a secret to all time. Much must the worthy Scot have been perplexed by his neighbors, a long-reaching colony of Spanish Creoles, who toil not and spin nothing but fishing-nets, and who live better than Solomon, and are probably as well-dressed, minus the barbaric pearl and gold of the Hebrew potentate. Take the odd, little, retiring, modest houses which grow in the hollows of Scarborough, add to them the least imposing mansions in the town of Folkstone, cast these broad-sown over the surface of the Essex marshes, plant a few trees in front of them, then open a few cafés billard of the camp sort along the main street, and you have done a very good Donaldsonville.

A policeman welcomes us on the landing, and does the honors of the market, which has a beggarly account of empty benches, a Texan bull done into beef, and a coffee-shop. The policeman is a tall, lean, west-countryman; his story is simple, and he has it to tell. He was one of Dan Rice's company — a travelling Astley. He came to Donaldsonville, saw, and was conquered by one of the Spanish beauties, married her, became tavern-keeper, failed, learned French, and is now constable of the parish. There was, however, a weight on his mind. He had studied the matter profoundly, but he was not near the bottom. How did the friends, relatives, and tribe of his wife live? No one could say. They reared chickens, and they caught fish; when there was a pressure on the planters, they turned out to work for 6s. 6d. a-day, but those were rare occasions. The policeman had become quite gray with excogitating the matter, and he had “nary notion how they did it.”

Donaldsonville has done one fine thing. It has furnished two companies of soldiers — all Irishmen — to the wars, and the third is in the course of formation. Not much hedging, ditching, or hard work these times for Paddy! The blacksmith, a huge tower of muscle, claims exemption on the ground that “the divil a bit of him comes from Oireland: he nivir bird af it, barrin' from the buks he rid,” and is doing his best to remain behind, but popular opinion is against him.

As the steamer could not be up from New Orleans till dawn, it was a relief to saunter through Donaldsonville to see society, which consisted of several gentlemen and various Jews playing games unknown to Hoyle, in oaken bar-rooms flanked by billiard tables. Dr. Cotmann, who had crossed the river to see patients suffering from an attack of euchre, took us round to a little club, where I was introduced to a number of gentlemen, who expressed great pleasure at seeing me, shook hands violently, and walked away; and, finally, melted off into a cloud of mosquitoes by the river-bank, into a box prepared for them, which was called a bedroom.

These rooms were built of timber on the stage close by the river. “Why can't I have one of these rooms?” asked I, pointing to a larger mosquito box. "It is engaged by ladies.” “How do you know?” “Parceque elles ont envoyé leur butin.” It was delicious to meet the French “plunder” for baggage — the old phrase, so nicely rendered — in the mouth of the Mississippi boatman.

Having passed a night of discomfiture with the winged demons of my box, I was aroused by the booming of the steam drum of the boat, dipped my head in water among drowned mosquitoes, and went forth upon the landing. The policeman had just arrived. His eagle eye lighted upon a large flat moored alongside, on the stern of which was inscribed in chalk, “Pork, corn, butter, beef,” &c. Several spry “citizens were also on the platform. After salutations and compliments, policeman speaks — “When did she come in?” (meaning flat.) First citizen — “In the night, I guess.” Second citizen — “There's a lot of whiskey aboord, too.” Policeman (with pleased surprise) — “You never mean it?” First citizen — “Yes, sir; one hundred and twenty gallons!” Policeman (inspired by patriotism) — “It's a west-country boat; why don't the citizens seize it? And whiskey rising from 17c. to 35c. a gallon!” Citizens murmur approval, and I feel the whiskey part of the cargo is not safe. “Yes, sir,” says citizen three, “they seize all our property at Cairey (Cairo), and I'm making an example of this cargo.”

Further reasons for the seizure were adduced, and it is probable they were as strong as the whiskey, which has, no doubt, been drunk long ago on the very purest principles. In course of conversation with the committee of taste which had assembled, it was revealed to me that there was a strict watch kept over those boats which are freighted with whiskey forbidden to the slaves, and with principles, when they come from the west country, equally objectionable. “Did you hear, sir, of the chap over at Duncan Kenner's, as was caught the other day?” “No, sir; what was it?” “Well, sir, he was a man that came here and went over among the niggers at Kenner's to buy their chickens from them. He was took up, and they found he'd a lot of money about him.” 

“Well, of course, he had money to buy the chickens.” “Yes, sir, but it looked suspeecious. He was a west-country fellow, tew, and he might have been tamperin' with 'em. Lucky for him he was not taken in the arternoon.” “Why so?” “Because, if the citizens had been drunk, they'd have hung him on the spot.”

The Acadia was now along-side, and in the early morning Donaldsonville receded rapidly into trees and clouds. To bed, and make amends for mosquito visits, and after a long sleep look out again on the scene. It is difficult to believe that we have been going eleven miles an hour against the turbid river, which is of the same appearance as it was below — the same banks, bends, driftwood, and trees. Large timber rafts, navigated by a couple of men, who stood in the shade of a few upright boards, were encountered at long intervals. White egrets and blue herons rose from the marshes. At every landing the whites who came down were in some sort of uniform. There were two blacks placed on board at one of the landings in irons — captured runaways — and very miserable they looked at the thought of being restored to the bosom of the patriarchal family from which they had, no doubt, so prodigally eloped. I fear the fatted calf-skin would be applied to their backs.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 287-90

Reverend J. C. Fletcher to William Cullen Bryant, October 22, 1863

Rio De Janeiro, October 22d.

The two volumes of your poems, which I received from you last summer, I had the pleasure of putting into the hands of the Emperor of Brazil this morning. Your name and some of your works were already familiar to him, and for a long time he has had your likeness, and for some ten years the picture of your residence. He desires me to thank you for those volumes, and wishes you to know that he is ready to do all that is in his power for the advancement of human rights. He desires to see the day when Brazil (whose laws in regard to human rights, so far as the black man is concerned, have always been far in advance of yours) shall not have a single slave. He takes a deep interest in our struggle, and believes that the whole sentiment of Brazil, of planters as well as non-slaveholders, is against an institution which Portuguese cruelty and short-sightedness left as a heritage to Brazil, and which institution will perish in the mild process of law in a very few years, and, if the North is successful, in a much shorter period.

SOURCE: Parke Godwin, A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, Volume 1, p. 199

Diary of William Howard Russell: June 3, 1861

At five o'clock this morning, having been awakened an hour earlier by a wonderful chorus of riotous mocking-birds, my old negro attendant brought in my bath of Mississippi water, which, Nile-like, casts down a strong deposit, and becomes as clear, if not so sweet, after standing. “Le seigneur vous attend;” and already I saw, outside my window, the Governor mounted on a stout cob, and a nice chestnut horse waiting, led by a slave. Early as it was, the sun felt excessively hot, and I envied the Governor his slouched hat as we rode through the fields, crisp with dew. In a few minutes our horses were traversing narrow alleys between the tall fields of maize, which rose far above our heads. This corn, as it is called, is the principal food of the negroes; and every planter lays down a sufficient quantity to afford him, on an average, a supply all the year round. Outside this spread vast fields, hedgeless, wall-less, and unfenced, where the green cane was just learning to wave its long shoots in the wind — a lake of bright green sugar-sprouts, along the margin of which, in the distance, rose an unbroken boundary of forest, two miles in depth, up to the swampy morass, all to be cleared and turned into arable land in process of time. From the river front to this forest, the fields of rich loam, unfathomable, and yielding from one to one and a half hogsheads of sugar per acre under cultivation, extend for a mile and a half in depth. In the midst of this expanse white dots were visible like Sowers seen on the early march in Indian fields, many a time and oft. Those are the gangs of hands at work — we will see what they are at presently. This little reminiscence of Indian life was further heightened by the negroes who ran beside us to whisk flies from the horses, and to open the gates in the plantation boundary. When the Indian corn is not good, peas are sowed, alternately, between the stalks, and are considered to be of much benefit; and when the cane is bad, corn is sowed with it, for the same object. Before we came up to the gangs we passed a cart on the road containing a large cask, a bucket full of molasses, a pail of hominy, or boiled Indian corn, and a quantity of tin pannikins. The cask contained water for the negroes, and the other vessels held the materials for their breakfast; in addition to which, they generally have each a dried fish. The food was ample, and looked wholesome; such as any laboring man would be well content with. Passing along through maize on one side, and cane at another, we arrived at last at a patch of ground where thirty-six men and women were hoeing.

Three gangs of negroes were at work: one gang of men, with twenty mules and ploughs, was engaged in running through the furrows between the canes, cutting up the weeds, and clearing away the grass, which is the enemy of the growing shoot. The mules are of a fine, large, good-tempered kind, and understand their work almost as well as the drivers, who are usually the more intelligent hands on the plantation. The overseer, a sharp-looking creole, on a lanky pony, whip in hand, superintended their labors, and, after a salutation to the Governor, to whom he made some remarks on the condition of the crops, rode off to another part of the farm. With the exception of crying to their mules, the negroes kept silence at their work.

Another gang consisted of forty men, who were hoeing out the grass in Indian corn. The third gang, of thirty-six women, were engaged in hoeing out cane. Their clothing seemed heavy for the climate; their shoes, ponderous and ill-made, had worn away the feet of their thick stockings, which hung in fringes over the upper leathers. Coarse straw hats and bright cotton handkerchiefs protected their heads from the sun. The silence which I have already alluded to, prevailed among these gangs also — not a sound could be heard but the blows of the hoe on the heavy clods. In the rear of each gang stood a black overseer, with a heavy-thonged whip over his shoulder. If “Alcíbíades” or  “Pompée” were called out, he came with outstretched hand to ask “How do you do,” and then returned to his labor; but the ladies were coy, and scarcely looked up from under their flapping chapeaux de paille at their visitors.

Those who are mothers leave their children in the charge of certain old women, unfit for anything else, and “suckers,” as they are called, are permitted to go home, at appointed periods in the day, to give the infants the breast. The overseers have power to give ten lashes; but heavier punishment ought to be reported to the Governor; however, it is not likely a good overseer would be checked, in any way, by his master. The anxieties attending the cultivation of sugar are great, and so much depends upon the judicious employment of labor, it is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of experience in directing it, and of power to insist on its application. When the frost comes, the cane is rendered worthless — one touch destroys the sugar. But if frost is the enemy of the white planter, the sun is scarcely the friend of the black man. The sun condemns him to slavery, because it is the heat which is the barrier to the white man's labor. The Governor told me that, in August, when the crops are close, thick-set, and high, and the vertical sun beats down on the laborers, nothing but a black skin and head covered with wool can enable a man to walk out in the open field and live.

We returned to the house in time for breakfast, for which our early cup of coffee and biscuit and the ride had been good preparation. Here was old France again. One might imagine a lord of the seventeenth century in his hall, but for the black faces of the servitors and the strange dishes of tropical origin. There was the old French abundance, the numerous dishes and efflorescence of napkins, and the long-necked bottles of Bordeaux, with a steady current of pleasant small talk. I saw some numbers of a paper called "La Misachibée? which was the primitive Indian name of the grand river, not improved by the addition of sibilant Anglo-Saxon syllables.

The Americans, not unmindful of the aid to which, at the end of the War of Independence, their efforts were merely auxiliary, delight, even in the North, to exalt France above her ancient rival: but, as if to show the innate dissimilarity of the two races, the French Creoles exhibit towards the New Englanders and the North an animosity, mingled with contempt, which argues badly for a future amalgamation or reunion. As the South Carolinians declare, they would rather return to their allegiance under the English monarchy, so the Louisianians, although they have no sentiment in common with the people of republican and imperial France, assert they would far sooner seek a connection with the old country than submit to the yoke of the Yankees.

After breakfast, the Governor drove out by the ever-silent levee for some miles, passing estate after estate, where grove nodded to grove, each alley saw its brother. One could form no idea, from the small limited frontage of these plantations, that the proprietors were men of many thousands a year, because the estates extend on an average for three or four miles back to the forest. The absence of human beings on the road was a feature which impressed one more and more. But for the tall chimneys of the factories and the sugar-houses, one might believe that these villas had been erected by some pleasure-loving people who had all fled from the river banks for fear of pestilence. The gangs of negroes at work were hidden in the deep corn, and their quarters were silent and deserted. We met but one planter, in his gig, until we arrived at the estate of Monsieur Potier, the Governor's brother-in-law. The proprietor was at home, and received us very kindly, though suffering from the effects of a recent domestic calamity. He is a grave, earnest man with a face like Jerome Bonaparte, and a most devout Catholic; and any man more unfit to live in any sort of community with New England Puritans one cannot well conceive; for equal intensity of purpose and sincerity of conviction on their part could only lead them to mortal strife. His house was like a French chateau erected under tropical influences, and he led us through a handsome garden laid out with hot-houses, conservatories, orange-trees, and date-palms, and ponds full of the magnificent Victoria Regia in flower. We visited his refining factories and mills, but the heat from the boilers, which seemed too much even for the all-but-naked negroes who were at work, did not tempt us to make a very long sojourn inside. The ebony faces and polished black backs of the slaves were streaming with perspiration as they toiled over boilers, vat, and centrifugal driers. The good refiner was not gaining much money at present, for sugar has been rapidly falling in New Orleans, and the 300,000 barrels produced annually in the South will fall short in the yield of profits, which on an average may be taken at £11 a hogshead, without counting the molasses for the planter. With a most perfect faith in States' Rights, he seemed to combine either indifference or ignorance in respect to the power and determination of the North to resist secession to the last. All the planters hereabouts have sowed an unusual quantity of Indian corn, to have food for the negroes if the war lasts, without any distress from inland or sea blockade. The absurdity of supposing that a blockade can injure them in the way of supply is a favorite theme to descant upon. They may find out, however, that it is no contemptible means of warfare.

At night, there are regular patrols and watchmen, who look after the levee and the negroes. A number of dogs are also loosed, but I am assured that the creatures do not tear the negroes; they are taught “merely” to catch and mumble them, to treat them as a well-broken retriever uses a wounded wild duck.

At six, A. M., Morse came to ask me if I should like a glass of absinthe, or anything stomachic. At breakfast was Doctor Laporte, formerly a member of the Legislative Assembly of France, who was exiled by Louis Napoleon ; in other words, he was ordered to give in his adhesion to the new régime, or to take a passport for abroad. He preferred the latter course, and now, true Frenchman, finding the Emperor has aggrandized France and added to her military reputation, he admires the man on whom but a few years ago he lavished the bitterest hate.

The carriage is ready, and the word farewell is spoken at last. M. Alfred Roman, my companion, has travelled in Europe, and learned philosophy; is not so orthodox as many of the gentlemen I have met who indulge in ingenious hypotheses to comfort the consciences of the anthropo-proprietors. The negro skull won't hold as many ounces of shot as the white man's. Potent proof that the white man has a right to sell and to own the creature! He is plantigrade, and curved as to the tibia! Cogent demonstration that he was made expressly to work for the arch-footed, straight-tibiaed Caucasian. He has a rete mucosum and a colored pigment! Surely he cannot have a soul of the same color as that of an Italian or a Spaniard, far less of a flaxen-haired Saxon! See these peculiarities in the frontal sinus — in sinciput or occiput! Can you doubt that the being with a head of that shape was made only to till, hoe, and dig for another race? Besides, the Bible says that he is a son of Ham, and prophecy must be carried out in the rice-swamps, sugar-canes, and maize-fields of the Southern Confederation. It is flat blasphemy to set yourself against it. Our Saviour sanctions slavery because he does not say a word against it, and it is very likely that St. Paul was a slave-owner. Had cotton and sugar been known, the apostle might have been a planter! Furthermore, the negro is civilized by being carried away from Africa and set to work, instead of idling in native inutility. What hope is there of Christianizing the African races, except by the agency of the apostles from New Orleans, Mobile, or Charleston, who sing the sweet songs of Zion with such vehemence, and clamor so fervently for baptism in the waters of the “Jawdam”?

If these high physical, metaphysical, moral and religious reasonings do not satisfy you, and you are bold enough to venture still to be unconvinced and to say so, then I advise you not to come within reach of a mass meeting of our citizens, who may be able to find a rope and a tree in the neighborhood.

As we jog along in an easy rolling carriage drawn by a pair of stout horses, a number of white people meet us coming from the Catholic chapel of the parish, where they had been attending the service for the repose of the soul of a lady much beloved in the neighborhood. The black people must be supposed to have very happy souls, or to be as utterly lost as Mr. Shandy's homunculus was under certain circumstances, for I have failed to find that any such services are ever considered necessary in their case, although they may have been very good — or, where the service would be most desirable — very bad Catholics. The dead, leaden uniformity of the scenery forced one to converse, in order to escape profound melancholy: the levee on the right hand, above which nothing was visible but the sky; on the left plantations with cypress fences, whitewashed and pointed wooden gates leading to the planters' houses, and rugged gardens surrounded with shrubs, through which could be seen the slave quarters. Men making eighty or ninety hogsheads of sugar in a year lived in most wretched tumble-down wooden houses not much larger than ox sheds.

As we drove on, the storm gathered overhead, and the rain fell in torrents — the Mississippi flowed lifelessly by — not a boat on its broad surface.

At last we reached Governor Manning's place, and went to the house of the overseer, a large heavy-eyed old man.

“This rain will do good to the corn,” said the overseer. “The niggers has had sceerce nothin' to do leetly, as they 'eve cleaned out the fields pretty well.”

At the ferry-house I was attended by one stout young slave, who was to row me over. Two flat-bottomed skiffs lay on the bank. The negro groped under the shed, and pulled out a piece of wood like a large spatula, some four feet long, and a small round pole a little longer. “What are those?” quoth I. “Dem's oars, Massa,” was my sable ferryman's brisk reply. “I'm very sure they are not; if they were spliced they might make an oar between them.” “Golly, and dat's the trute, Massa.” “Then go and get oars, will you?” While he was hunting about we entered the shed at the ferry for shelter from the rain. We found “a solitary woman sitting” smoking a pipe by the ashes on the hearth, blear-eyed, low-browed and morose — young as she was. She never said a word nor moved as we came in, sat and smoked, and looked through her gummy eyes at chicked about the size of sparrows, and at a cat not larger than a rat which ran about on the dirty floor. A little girl, some four years of age, not overdressed — indeed, half-naked, “not to put too fine a point upon it” — crawled out from under the bed, where she had hid on our approach. As she seemed incapable of appreciating the use of a small piece of silver presented to her — having no precise ideas in coinage or toffy — her parent took the obolus in charge, with unmistakable decision; but still the lady would not stir a step to aid our guide, who now insisted on the “key ov de oar-house.” The little thing sidled off and hunted it out from the top of the bedstead, and when it was found, and the boat was ready, I was not sorry to quit the company of the silent woman in black. The boatman pushed his skiff, in shape a snuffer-dish, some ten feet long and a foot deep, into the water — there was a good deal of rain in it. I got in too, and the conscious waters immediately began vigorously spurting through the cotton wadding wherewith the craft was calked. Had we gone out into the stream we should have had a swim for it, and they do say that the Mississippi is the most dangerous river in the known world, for that healthful exercise. “Why! deuce take you” (I said at least that, in my wrath), “don't you see the boat is leaky?” “See it now for true, Massa. Nobody able to tell dat till Massa get in though.” Another skiff proved to be more stanch. I bade good-by to my friend Roman, and sat down in my boat, which was forced by the negro against the stream close to the bank, in order to get a good start across to the other side. The view from my lonely position was curious, but not at all picturesque. The world was bounded on both sides by a high bank, which constricted the broad river, just as if one were sailing down an open sewer of enormous length and breadth. Above the bank rose the tops of tall trees and the chimneys of sugarhouses, and that was all to be seen save the sky.

A quarter of an hour brought us to the levee on the other side. I ascended the bank, and across the road, directly in front appeared a carriage gateway and wickets of wood, painted white, in a line of park palings of the same material, which extended up and down the road far as the eye could see, and guarded wide-spread fields of maize and sugar-cane. An avenue lined with trees, with branches close set, drooping and overarching a walk paved with red brick, led to the house, the porch of which was visible at the extremity of the lawn, with clustering flowers, rose, jasmine, and Creepers, clinging to the pillars supporting the veranda. The view from the belvedere on the roof was one of the most striking of its kind in the world.

If an English agriculturist could see six thousand acres of the finest land in one field, unbroken by hedge or boundary, and covered with the most magnificent crops of tasselling Indian corn and sprouting sugar-cane, as level as a billiard-table, he would surely doubt his senses. But here is literally such a sight — six thousand acres, better tilled than the finest patch in all the Lothians, green as Meath pastures, which can be turned up for a hundred years to come without requiring manure, of depth practically unlimited, and yielding an average profit on what is sold off it of at least £20 an acre, at the old prices and usual yield of sugar. Rising up in the midst of the verdure are the white lines of the negro cottages and the plantation offices and sugarhouses, which look like large public edifices in the distance. My host was not ostentatiously proud in telling me that, in the year 1857, he had purchased this estate for £300,000 and an adjacent property, of 8000 acres, for £150,000, and that he had left Belfast in early youth, poor and unfriended, to seek his fortune, and indeed scarcely knowing what fortune meant, in the New World. In fact, he had invested in these purchases the geater part, but not all, of the profits arising from the business in New Orleans, which he inherited from his master; of which there still remained a solid nucleus in the shape of a great woollen magazine and country house. He is not yet fifty years of age, and his confidence in the great future of sugar induced him to embark this enormous fortune in an estate which the blockade has stricken with paralysis.

I cannot doubt, however, that he regrets he did not invest his money in a certain great estate in the North of Ireland, which he had nearly decided on buying; and, had he done so, he would now be in the position to which his unaffected good sense, modesty, kindliness, and benevolence, always adding the rental, entitle him. Six thousand acres on this one estate all covered with sugar-cane, and 16,000 acres more of Indian corn, to feed the slaves; — these were great possessions, but not less than 18,000 acres still remained, covered with brake and forest and swampy, to be reclaimed and turned into gold. As easy to persuade the owner of such wealth that slavery is indefensible as to have convinced the Norman baron that the Saxon churl who tilled his lands ought to be his equal.

I found Mr. Ward and a few merchants from New Orleans in possession of the bachelor's house. The service was performed by slaves, and the order and regularity of the attendants were worthy of a well-regulated English mansion. In Southern houses along the coast, as the Mississippi above New Orleans is termed, beef and mutton are rarely met with, and the more seldom the better. Fish, also, is scarce, but turkeys, geese, poultry, and preparations of pig, excellent vegetables, and wrine of the best quality, render the absence of the accustomed dishes little to be regretted.

The silence which struck me at Governor Roman's is not broken at Mr. Burnside's; and when the last thrill of the mocking-bird's song has died out through the grove, a stillness of Avernian profundity settles on hut, field, and river.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 261-9

Diary of William Howard Russell: June 2, 1861

My good friend the Consul was up early to see me off; and we drove together to the steamer J. L. Cotten. The people were going to mass as we passed through the streets; and it was pitiable to see the children dressed out as Zouaves, with tin swords and all sorts of pseudo-military tomfoolery; streets crowded with military companies; bands playing on all sides.

Before we left the door a poor black sailor came up to entreat Mr. Mure's interference. He had been sent by Mr. Magee, the Consul at Mobile, by land to New Orleans, in the hope that Mr. Mure would be able to procure him a free passage to some British port. He had served in the Royal Navy, and had received a wound in the Russian war. The moment he arrived in New Orleans he had been seized by the police. On his stating that he was a free-born British subject, the authorities ordered him to be taken to Mr. Mure; he could not be allowed to go at liberty on account of his color; the laws of the State forbade such dangerous experiments on the feelings of the slave population; and if the Consul did not provide for him, he would be arrested and kept in prison, if no worse fate befell him. He was suffering from the effect of his wound, and was evidently in ill health. Mr. Mure gave him a letter to the Sailors' Hospital, and some relief out of his own pocket. The police came as far as the door with him, and remained outside to arrest him if the Consul did not afford him protection and provide for him, so that he should not be seen at large in the streets of the city. The other day a New Orleans privateer captured three northern brigs, on board which were ten free negroes. The captain handed them over to the Recorder, who applied to the Confederate States Marshal to take charge of them. The Marshal refused to receive them, whereupon the Recorder, as a magistrate and a good citizen, decided on keeping them in jail, as it would be a bad and dangerous policy to let them loose upon the community.

I cannot help feeling that the position taken by England in reference to the question of her colored subjects is humiliating and degrading. People who live in London may esteem this question a light matter; but it has not only been inconsistent with the national honor; it has so degraded us in the opinion of Americans themselves, that they are encouraged to indulge in an insolent tone and in violent acts towards us, which will some day leave Great Britain no alternative but an appeal to arms. Free colored persons are liable to seizure by the police, and to imprisonment, and may be sold into servitude under certain circumstances.

On arriving at the steamer, I found a considerable party of citizens assembled to see off their friends. Governor Roman's son apologized to me for his inability to accompany me up the river, as he was going to the drill of his company of volunteers. Several other gentlemen were in uniform; and when we had passed the houses of the city, I observed companies and troops of horse exercising on both sides of the banks. On board were Mr. Burnside, a very extensive proprietor, and Mr. Forstall, agent to Messrs. Baring, who claims descent from an Irish family near Rochestown, though he speaks our vernacular with difficulty, and is much more French than British. He is considered one of the ablest financiers and economists in the United States, and is certainly very ingenious, and well crammed with facts and figures.

The aspect of New Orleans from the river is marred by the very poor houses lining the quays on the levee. Wide streets open on long vistas bordered by the most paltry little domiciles; and the great conceptions of those who planned them, notwithstanding the prosperity of the city, have not been realised.

As we were now floating nine feet higher than the level of the streets, we could look down upon a sea of flat roofs, and low wooden houses, painted white, pierced by the domes and spires of churches and public buildings. Grass was growing in many of these streets. At the other side of the river there is a smaller city of shingle-roofed houses, with a background of low timber.

The steamer stopped continually at various points along the levee, discharging commissariat stores, parcels, and passengers; and after a time glided up into the open country, which spread beneath us for several miles at each side of the banks, with a continuous background of forest. All this part of the river is called the Coast, and the country adjacent is remarkable for its fertility. The sugar plantations are bounded by lines drawn at right angles to the banks of the river, and extending through the forest. The villas of the proprietors are thickly planted in the midst of the green fields, with the usual porticoes, pillars, verandas, and green blinds; and in the vicinity of each are rows of whitewashed huts, which are the slave quarters. These fields, level as a billiard table, are of the brightest green with crops of maize and sugar.

But few persons were visible; not a boat was to be seen; and in the course of sixty-two miles we met only two steamers. No shelving banks, no pebbly shoals, no rocky margins mark the course or diversify the outline of the Mississippi. The dead, uniform line of the levee compresses it at each side, and the turbid waters flow without let in a current of uniform breadth between the monotonous banks. The gables and summit of one house resemble those of another; and but for the enormous scale of river and banks, and the black faces of the few negroes visible, a passenger might think he was on board a Dutch “treckshuyt.” In fact, the Mississippi is a huge trench-like canal draining a continent.

At half past three P. M. the steamer ran alongside the levee at the right bank, and discharged me at “Cahabanooze,” in the Indian tongue, or “The ducks' sleeping-place,” together with an English merchant of New Orleans, M. La Ville Beaufevre, son-in-law of Governor Roman, and his wife. The Governor was waiting to receive us in the levee, and led the way through a gate in the paling which separated his ground from the roadside, towards the house, a substantial, square, two-storied mansion, with a veranda all round it, embosomed amid venerable trees, and surrounded by magnolias. By way of explaining the proximity of his house to the river, M. Roman told me that a considerable portion of the garden, in front had a short time ago been carried off by the Mississippi; nor is he at all sure the house itself will not share the same fate; I hope sincerely it may not. My quarters were in a detached house, complete in itself, containing four bedrooms, library, and sitting-room, close to the mansion, and surrounded, like it, by fine trees.

After we had sat for some time in the shade of the finest group, M. Roman, or, as he is called, the Governor — once a captain always a captain — asked me whether I would like to visit the slave quarters. I assented, and the Governor led the way to a high paling at the back of the house, inside which the scraping of fiddles was audible. As we passed the back of the mansion some young women flitted past in snow-white dresses, crinolines, pink sashes, and gaudily colored handkerchiefs on their heads, who were, the Governor told me, the domestic servants going off to a dance at the sugar-house; he lets his slaves dance every Sunday. The American planter, who are not Catholics, although they do not make the slaves work on Sunday except there is something to do, rarely grant them the indulgence of a dance, but a few permit them some hours of relaxation on each Saturday afternoon.

We entered, by a wicket-gate, a square enclosure, lined with negro huts, built of wood, something like those which came from Malta to the Crimea in the early part of the campaign. They are not furnished with windows — a wooden slide or grating admits all the air a negro desires. There is a partition dividing the hut into two departments, one of which is used as the sleeping-room, and contains a truckle bedstead and a mattress stuffed with cotton wool, or the hair-like fibres of dried Spanish moss. The wardrobes of the inmates hang from nails or pegs driven into the wall. The other room is furnished with a dresser, on which are arranged a few articles of crockery and kitchen utensils. Sometimes there is a table in addition to the plain wooden chairs, more or less dilapidated, constituting the furniture — a hearth, in connection with a brick chimney outside the cottage, in which, hot as the day may be, some embers are sure to be found burning. The ground round the huts was covered with litter and dust, heaps of old shoes, fragments of clothing and feathers, amidst which pigs and poultry were recreating. Curs of low degree scampered in and out of the shade, or around two huge dogs, chiens de garde, which are let loose at night to guard the precincts; belly deep, in a pool of stagnant water, thirty or forty mules were swinking in the sun and enjoying their day of rest.

The huts of the negroes engaged in the house are separated from those of the slaves devoted to field labor out of doors by a wooden paling. I looked into several of the houses, but somehow or other felt a repugnance, I dare say unjustifiable, to examine the penetralia, although invited — indeed, urged, to do so by the Governor. It was not that I expected to come upon anything dreadful, but I could not divest myself of some regard for the feelings of the poor creatures, slaves though they were, who stood by, shy, courtesying, and silent, as I broke in upon their family circle, felt their beds, and turned over their clothing. What right had I to do so?

Swarms of flies, tin cooking utensils attracting them by remnants of molasses, crockery, broken and old, on the dressers, more or less old clothes on the wall, these varied over and over again, were found in all the huts , not a sign of ornament or decoration was visible; not the most tawdry print, image of Virgin or Saviour; not a prayer-book or printed volume. The slaves are not encouraged, or indeed permitted to read, and some communities of slave-owners punish heavily those attempting to instruct them.

All the slaves seemed respectful to their master; dressed in their best, they courtesied, and came up to shake hands with him and with me. Among them were some very old men and women, the canker-worms of the estate, who were dozing away into eternity, mindful only of hominy, and pig, and molasses. Two negro fiddlers were working their bows with energy in front of one of the huts, and a crowd of little children were listening to the music, together with a few grown-up persons of color, some of them from the adjoining plantations. The children are generally dressed in a little sack of coarse calico, which answers all reasonable purposes, even if it be not very clean.

It might be an interesting subject of inquiry to the natural philosophers who follow crinology to determine why it is that the hair of the infant negro, or child, up to six or seven years of age, is generally a fine red russet, or even gamboge color, and gradually darkens into dull ebon. These little bodies were mostly large-stomached, well fed, and not less happy than free born-children, although much more valuable — for if once they get over juvenile dangers, and advance toward nine or ten years of age, they rise in value to £100 or more, even in times when the market is low and money is scarce.

The women were not very well-favored; one yellow girl, with fair hair and light eyes, whose child was quite white, excepted; the men were disguised in such strangely-cut clothes, their hats and shoes and coats so wonderfully made, that one could not tell what their figures were like. On all faces there was a gravity which must be the index to serene contentment and perfect comfort; for those who ought to know best declare they are the happiest race in the world.

It struck me more and more, however, as I examined the expression of the faces of the slaves, that deep dejection is the prevailing, if not universal, characteristic of the race. Here there were abundant evidences that they were well treated; they had good clothing of its kind, food, and a master who wittingly could do them no injustice, as he is, I am sure, incapable of it. Still, they all looked sad, and ever the old woman who boasted that she had held her old owner in her arms when he was an infant, did not smile cheerfully, as the nurse at home would have done, at the sight of her ancient charge.

The negroes rear domestic birds of all kinds, and sell eggs and poultry to their masters. The money is spent in purchasing tobacco, molasses, clothes, and flour; whiskey, their great delight, they must not have. Some seventy or eighty hands were quartered in this part of the estate.

Before leaving the enclosure I was taken to the hospital, which was in charge of an old negress. The naked rooms contained several flock beds on rough stands, and five patients, three of whom were women. They sat listlessly on the beds, looking out into space; no books to amuse them, no conversation — nothing but their own dull thoughts, if they had any. They were suffering from pneumonia and swellings of the glands of the neck; one man had fever. Their medical attendant visits them regularly, and each plantation has a practitioner, who is engaged by the term for his services. If the growth of sugar-cane, cotton, and corn, be the great end of man's mission on earth, and if all masters were like Governor Roman, slavery might be defended as a natural and innocuous institution. Sugar and cotton are, assuredly, two great agencies in this latter world. The older one got on well enough without them.

The scraping of the fiddles attracted us to the sugar-house, where the juice of the cane is expressed, boiled, granulated, and prepared for the refinery, a large brick building, with a factory-looking chimney. In a space of the floor unoccupied by machinery some fifteen women and as many men were assembled, and four couples were dancing a kind of Irish jig to the music of the negro musicians — a double shuffle in a thumping ecstasy, with loose elbows, pendulous paws, angulated knees, heads thrown back, and backs arched inwards — a glazed eye, intense solemnity of mien.

At this time of year there is no work done in the sugarhouse, but when the crushing and boiling are going on, the labor is intensely trying, and the hands work in gangs night and day; and, if the heat of the fires be superadded to the temperature in September, it may be conceded that nothing but “involuntary servitude” could go through the toil and suffering required to produce sugar.

In the afternoon the Governor's son came in from the company which he commands: his men are of the best families in the country — planters and the like. We sauntered about the gardens, diminished, as I have said, by a freak of the river. The French Creoles love gardens; the Anglo-Saxons hereabout do not much affect them, and cultivate their crops up to the very doorway.

It was curious to observe so far away from France so many traces of the life of the old seigneur — the early meals, in which supper took the place of dinner — frugal simplicity — and yet a refinement of manner, kindliness and courtesy not to be exceeded.

In the evening several officers of M. Alfred Roman's company and neighboring planters dropped in, and we sat out, in the twilight, under the trees in the veranda, illuminated by the flashing fireflies, and talking politics. I was struck by the profound silence which reigned all around us, except a low rushing sound, like that made by the wind blowing over cornfields, which came from the mighty river before us. Nothing else was audible but the sound of our own voices and the distant bark of a dog. After the steamer which bore us had passed on, I do not believe a single boat floated up or down the stream, and but one solitary planter, in his gig or buggy traversed the road, which lay between the garden palings and the bank of the great river.

Our friends were all Creoles — that is, natives of Louisiana — of French or Spanish descent. They are kinder and better masters, according to universal repute, than native Americans or Scotch; but the New England Yankee is reputed to be the severest of all slave owners. All these gentlemen to a man are resolute that England must get their cotton or perish. She will take it, therefore, by force; but as the South is determined never to let a Yankee vessel carry any of its produce, a question has been raised by Monsieur Baroche, who is at present looking around him in New Orleans, which causes some difficulty to the astute and statistical Mr. Forstall. The French economist has calculated that if the Yankee vessels be excluded from the carrying trade, the commercial marine of France and England together will be quite inadequate to carry Southern produce to Europe.

But Southern faith is indomitable. With their faithful negroes to raise their corn, sugar, and cotton, whilst their young men are at the wars; with France and England to pour gold into their lap with which to purchase all they need in the contest, they believe they can beat all the powers of the Northern world in arms. Illimitable fields, tilled by multitudinous negroes, open on their sight, and they behold the empires of Europe, with their manufactures, their industry, and their wealth, prostrate at the base of their throne, crying out, “Cotton! More cotton! That is all we ask!”

Mr. Forstall maintains the South can raise an enormous revenue by a small direct taxation; whilst the North, deprived of Southern resources, will refuse to pay taxes at all, and will accumulate enormous debts, inevitably leading to its financial ruin. He, like every Southern man I have as yet met, expresses unbounded confidence in Mr. Jefferson Davis. I am asked invariably, as the second question from a stranger, “Have you seen our President, sir? don't you think him a very able man?” This unanimity in the estimate of his character, and universal confidence in the head of the State, will prove of incalculable value in a civil war.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 252-60

Abraham Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges [Draft], April 4, 1864

Executive Mansion,

Washington, April 4, 1864.

A. G. Hodges, Esq.

Frankfort, Ky.

My dear Sir:

You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other day, in yours presence, to Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon – It was about as follows:

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government – that nation – of which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together. When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure, They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, – no loss by it any how, or [any] where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. There are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling – We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure.

And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measures he condemns. If he can not face his case so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth.

I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein no new cause to question applaud attest and revere the justice [ or?] and goodness of God.

Yours truly

A. Lincoln

SOURCE: Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Gerry W. Cochrane and John M. Forbes to Abraham Lincoln, December 24, 1862

December 24. 1862

To Abraham Lincoln

President of the United States

Washington

Sir.

The undersigned, as Electors performed two years ago the pleasant duty of certifying to your appointment to the Chief Magistracy of this country by the choice of the People.

Believing that the approaching new year brings with it a crisis in the life of the Nation, they beg leave to congratulate you upon your having begun the greatest act in American history; the emancipation of three millions of blacks and of five millions of whites from the power of an aristocratic class.

It is admitted upon all sides that the transfer of three millions of Slaves, from the productive force of the Rebels to that of the loyal States would instantly end the Rebellion; it follows that each Slave so transferred will proportionately contribute to that end.

It is only a question of time when emancipation must take place, and it is believed, that no time can occur, so safe from violence as when the Slaves have the Strength of the Union to rally behind, and when a large army of the Rebels can & ought to be thus withdrawn, from opposing the laws to the more fitting work of keeping order around their own homes. For these & other reasons the undersigned believe that Emancipation is the weapon which, efficiently used can not only strike at the heart of the Rebellion but lay the foundation for a true & permanent republic; a consummation even more beneficent to the moral & material interests of the people of the South, than to those of the North.

They therefore earnestly pray you to complete now your great work, by taking every possible measure to carry into practical effect the promise of your proclamation of 22d September, and especially by demanding of every person in the Military Naval & civil service of your government to obey strictly the regulations by which you will enforce your now settled policy.

They believe that by so doing you will place yourself among the great benefactors of your country & of the human race, and that you will live in future ages by the side of the Father of his Country – George Washington.

Respectfully Submitted

J. M Forbes}
}	Electors
Gerry. W. Cochrane}

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 347-8; This letter can be located amongst the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

William Cullen Bryant to Dr. Dewey, August 17, 1862

August 17, 1862

 . . . I must answer your letter a little. Neither you nor I understand war nor medicine ; but of medicine we know enough not to employ a physician who regularly doses all his patients, nor one who proposes to cure an inflammation of the bowels by poulticing the little finger, I judge of the merits of military men in the same way. Again, I have a right to choose between the opinions of men well acquainted with the military art, and I know that officers of great merit hold that McClellan has mismanaged the campaign throughout. Pope, one of the most successful of them, does so. (I know this;) so does Wadsworth; so does General Hitchcock, a veteran officer personally kind toward McClellan, and disposed to judge him candidly (I speak from personal knowledge); so also, I have reason to believe, do hundreds of other officers.

What the “Evening Post” has said in regard to the course taken by the Government I said in still stronger terms to Mr. Lincoln himself ten days since, when I went to Washington for the purpose. With me was Mr. K—, a millionaire (or millionary — which?) of this city, who said to him that unless the war was prosecuted with greater energy — far greater — and the confiscation and emancipation act carried into vigorous execution, not sixty days would elapse before the Government securities would be so depressed that the administration would not have a dollar to carry on the war.

Mr. Lincoln knows that McClellan is wanting in some of the necessary qualities of a general officer. He said to Mr. Field: “McClellan is one of the most accomplished officers in all the army. No man organizes or prepares an army better, but when the time for action comes he is greatly deficient.”

As to emancipation, I have none of the fears which you entertain, and the conduct of the blacks already freed — more than fifty thousand of them — convinces me that there is no ground for them. Their peaceful and docile behavior assures me that we have neither “wild disorder nor massacre to dread.” The rebellion has buried its roots so firmly into the social system of the South that they must both be pulled up together.

You anticipate a bad effect upon the recruiting service from such criticisms on the conduct of the Government as the “Evening Post” had thought it necessary to make. The mischief was done before the “Evening Post” began to criticise. A gloomy and discouraged feeling prevailed, throughout this city and this State at least, which seemed to make the raising of the necessary number of volunteers hopeless. The only remedy that the case seemed to admit was the adoption by the press and by public speakers of a more vigorous style of animadversion on the conduct of the war, and the representations of disinterested persons made personally to the President. Mayor Opdyke, William Curtis Noyes, Dr. Charles King, and many others, singly or in pairs, have visited Washington for this purpose. There is not one of these men to whom such conclusions as you have reached would not be matter of exceeding surprise. They have all regarded the cause of the Union as drifting to ruin if instant and powerful means were not applied to give things a new direction. I believe their representations, and the language held in public meetings, and to some degree also the comments of the press, have had a certain effect. I hear this morning that it was Pope who recommended Halleek to the President as a fit person to force McClellan into action, and to push on the war with vigor. Other proceedings of the administration within a few days give token that it is waking to a sense of the danger we are in from causes very much like those of which you speak.

I have written thus largely because I had some things to say which I cannot print. If I could, I would have received your rebuke without a reply.

SOURCE: Parke Godwin, A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, Volume 1, p. 176-8

Salmon P. Chase to Joshua R. Giddings,* October 20, 1846

Oct. 20, 1846.

my Dear Sir My engagements have been such since I received your last letter with the resolutions that I have had no time to write or think as I could wish, — I saw by a letter from Mr. Atkins published in the Cleveland American that you read my letter to you at a meeting in Hartford and I have thought it a duty to those with whom I have acted for several years past to write to that paper stating my true position so as to prevent the dissemination among liberty men of misapprehensions under which Mr. Atkins labored and which it was natural enough he should receive from the letter unconnected with the whole correspondence.—I have faild. in expressing myself with as much clearness as I wish^d, if I have convey^d, the idea to yr. mind that I am prepar^d. to accede to any political union, wch. is not based upon the substantial principles & measures of the Liberty men. What I am willing to give up is names, separate organizations, what I am not willing to give up is Principle & Consistent action both with reference to men & measures in accordance with principle. — I have no objectⁿ, to the reading of my letter — no complaint to make on that score — for I do not wish to conceal any sentiments w^h. it contain^d, but I fear that it was not sufficiently explicit in its terms to be free from the risk of misapprehension, when read separate from the correspondence of w^h. it was a part. In relation to your resolutions I will say that in my judgm^t. they are good, so far as they go; but they do not go far enough if intended as a basis of a political organization separate from existing parties. If intended merely as resolutions to guide the action of those who adopt them in their existing political relations, they are certainly a great way in advance of any positions heretofore takⁿ by bodies of men in the old parties & it is very desirable to augment the number of adherents to them in those parties. I would except only to one of them, viz. the resolution relating to new states, & to this only so far as its phraseology is concern^d. It seems by implication to deny the right of Congress to admit new states if foreign at the time into the union. I have no doubt that this may be done constitutionally, perhaps not by joint resolution but certainly by the concurrent action of the treaty making & legislative powers of the government. My objection to the introduction of such states is founded entirely in other considerations than defect of power, indeed so far as any such introduction has yet taken place exclusively on the consideration of slavery. I enclose you a liberty creed w^h. was drawn up by me & has been widely circulated & everywhere endorsed by the Liberty presses. May I ask of you to consider the several articles of it attentively & give me your assent or dissent to them, severally with a brief statement of the reasons of your dissent why you do dissent — Let me state to you briefly my idea of the grounds w^h. in my judgm^t. sh^d. determine the course of an honest man in political action in reference to the subject of slavery. If I were a whig in the whig party & believed that by the action of that party the extinction of slavery & the overthrow of the slave power could be most speedily achieved I would act with & in that party supporting however for office only anti slavery men. If I were a Democrat in the democrtic party, & entertained the same belief as to that party as above stated in regard to the whig party I would act with & in the democratic party supporting however for office only anti slavery men.

If I were persuaded (as I am) that there is now no reasonable prospect that either the whig or democratic party constituted as both are of slaveholders & nonslaveholders & as national parties admitting no anti slavery article into their creed & much less any avowed anti slavery measures into their action can at present be relied on for cordial, inflexible, & uncompromising hostilities to slavery & the slave power, I could (& of course do) abstain from cooperation with either of those parties & act with & in the only party with w^h. I agree as to principle & action in relation to the paramount, political question before the country.—What is y^r. objection to this. — Recurring to your resolutions let me ask if you do not perceive a great practical difficulty growing out of the terms “satisfactory evidence” &c? You on the Reserve, Whigs, Liberty men, & democrats thought there was satisfactory evidence that Mr. Bebb was hostile to whole the black code.¹ The Cleveland American gave him full credit for such hostility & yet in Mercer Co. where of all places on earth Mr. Bebb should have been outspoken in denunciation of the cruel outrages on the blacks & of the laws which lead to such outrages we find him most materially changing his ground, stating as a ground for the repeal of the testimony clause the expectation of a slaveholder that he could then get at abolitionists who aided the escape of fugitive slaves by means of their testimony when recaptured, & actually proposing a law to prevent colonization of colored people in Ohio, & to that end, suggesting a law to prevent them from holding real estate! He reiterated these views at Dayton with additions. Would these speeches have been satisfactory evidence on the reserve of opposition to the Black laws?

Could he have been elected had he avowed these sentiments on the Reserve or in such time that authentic reports could have reached the Reserve? The effect of such a course as this upon the confidence of Liberty men &. others in Anti-Slavery men acting with the whigs, however honestly cannot fail to be appreciated by you.

_______________

* From letter book 6, pp. 42. Extracts from this letter were printed by Schuckers, p. 100.

¹ For an account of the Ohio black laws and the struggle for their repeal, see The Negro in Ohio, 1802-1872, by C. J. Hickok, A. M. Published by Western Reserve University, Cleveland, 1896.

SOURCE: Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902, Vol. 2, p. 108-11

John M. Forbes to Joshua Bates, of Baring Bros. & Co., London., November 11, 1862

Boston, November 11, 1862.

My Dear Mr. Bates, — Nothing from you lately; and I suppose even your steady nerves and heart are shaken by our long supineness. We have awaked at last, and if we had only a William Pitt to put over our cabinet, we should be all right.

Mr. Chase, I hear, shows some signs of returning sanity by inquiring (outside of the clique who had his ear) as to his future course. Our friend Hooper has a good deal to answer for in leading him into the legal tender labyrinth; it will take wiser heads to guide him out. We are not quite lost yet, and if the report due next month shows that he has sounded the depths of the currency issue as a resource, and is coming back to sound principles of finance, we may, with large revenues from our tax bill (reported to be very large), and with some military vigor, still save ourselves from utter ruin, — financially, I mean.

Somehow or other, in spite of weak-kneed friends and open traitors at home, and a sharp enemy outside, we can and will keep the old ship together.

To fail now is to establish the most dangerous military government for our neighbors that the world ever saw. Five or six millions of whites despising labor, and having a black slave race to work for them, while they fight! If we disarm, with such a neighbor unconquered, and our so-called democracy ready to ally itself with them, we may as well give up our government at once and return to feudalism.

I hope you will give me the benefit of a hint now and then from your deep stores of financial experience, and am, with best regards to Mrs. Bates,

Yours, very truly,

J. M. Forbes.

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 339-40

Diary of William Howard Russell: May 20, 1861

I left Mobile in the steamer Florida for New Orleans this morning at eight o'clock. She was crowded with passengers, in uniform. In my cabin was a notice of the rules and regulations of the steamer. No. 6 was as follows: “All slave servants must be cleared at the Custom House. Passengers having slaves will please report as soon as they come on board.”

A few miles from Mobile the steamer, turning to the right, entered one of the narrow channels which perforate the whole of the coast, called “Grant's Pass.” An ingenious person has rendered it navigable by an artificial cut; but as he was not an universal philanthropist, and possibly may have come from north of the Tweed, he further erected a series of barriers, which can only be cleared by means of a little pepper-castor iron lighthouse; and he charges toll on all passing vessels. A small island at the pass, just above water-level, about twenty yards broad and one hundred and fifty yards long, was being fortified. Some of our military friends landed here ; and it required a good deal of patriotism to look cheerfully at the prospect of remaining cooped up among the mosquitoes in a box, on this miserable sand-bank, which a shell would suffice to blow into atoms.

Having passed this channel, our steamer proceeded up a kind of internal sea, formed by the shore, on the right hand and on the left, by a chain almost uninterrupted of reefs covered with sand, and exceedingly narrow, so that the surf of the ocean rollers at the other side could be seen through the foliage of the pine-trees which line them. On our right the endless pines closed up the land view of the horizon; the beach was pierced by creeks without number, called bayous; and it was curious to watch the white sails of the little schooners gliding in and out among the trees along the green meadows that seemed to stretch as an impassable barrier to their exit. Immense troops of pelicans flapped over the sea, dropping incessantly on the fish which abounded in the inner water; and long rows of the same birds stood digesting their plentiful meals on the white beach by the ocean foam.

There was some anxiety in the passengers' minds, as it was reported that the United States cruisers had been seen inside, and that they had even burned the batteries on Ship Island. We saw nothing of a character more formidable than coasting craft and a return steamer from New Orleans till we approached the entrance to Pontchartrain, when a large schooner, which sailed like a witch and was crammed with men, attracted our attention. Through the glass I could make out two guns on her deck, and quite reason enough for any well-filled merchantman sailing under the Stars and Stripes to avoid her close companionship.

The approach to New Orleans is indicated by large hamlets and scattered towns along the seashore, hid in the piney woods, which offer a retreat to the merchants and their families from the fervid heat of the unwholesome city in summer time. As seen from the sea, these sanitary settlements have a picturesque effect, and an air of charming freshness and lightness. There are detached villas of every variety of architecture in which timber can be constructed, painted in the brightest hues — greens, and blues, and rose tints — each embowered in magnolias and rhododendrons. From every garden a very long and slender pier, terminated by a bathing-box, stretches into the shallow sea; and the general aspect of these houses, with the light domes and spires of churches rising above the lines of white railings set in the dark green of the pines, is light and novel. To each of these cities there is a jetty, at two of which we touched, and landed newspapers, received or discharged a few bales of goods, and were off again.

Of the little crowd assembled on each, the majority were blacks — the whites, almost without exception, in uniform, and armed. A near approach did not induce me to think that any agencies less powerful than epidemics and summer-heats could render Pascagoula, Passchristian, Mississippi City, and the rest of these settlements very eligible residences for people of an active turn of mind.

The livelong day my fellow-passengers never ceased talking politics, except when they were eating and drinking, because the horrible chewing and spitting are not at all incompatible with the maintenance of active discussion. The fiercest of them all was a thin, fiery-eyed little woman, who at dinner expressed a fervid desire for bits of “Old Abe” — his ear, his hair; but whether for the purpose of eating or as curious relics, she did not enlighten the company.

After dinner there was some slight difficulty among the military gentlemen, though whether of a political or personal character, I could not determine; but it was much aggravated by the appearance of a six-shooter on the scene, which, to my no small perturbation, was presented in a right line with my berth, out of the window of which I was looking at the combatants. I am happy to say the immediate delivery of the fire was averted by an amicable arrangement that the disputants should meet at the St. Charles Hotel at twelve o'clock on the second day after their arrival, in order to fix time, place, and conditions of a more orthodox and regular encounter.

At night the steamer entered a dismal canal, through a swamp which is infamous as the most mosquito haunted place along the infested shore; the mouths of the Mississippi themselves being quite innocent, compared to the entrance of Lake Pontchartrain. When I woke up at daylight, I found the vessel lying alongside a wharf with a railway train alongside, which is to take us to the city of New Orleans, six miles distant.

A village of restaurants or “restaurants,” as they are called here, and of bathing boxes has grown up around the terminus; all the names of the owners, the notices and sign-boards being French. Outside the settlement the railroad passes through a swamp, like an Indian jungle, through which the over-flowings of the Mississippi creep in black currents. The spires of New Orleans rise above the underwood and semi-tropical vegetation of this swamp. Nearer to the city lies a marshy plain, in which flocks of cattle, up to the belly in the soft earth are floundering among the clumps of vegetation. The nearer approach to New Orleans by rail lies through a suburb of exceedingly broad lanes, lined on each side by rows of miserable mean one-storied houses, inhabited, if I am to judge from the specimens I saw, by a miserable and sickly population.

A great number of the men and women had evident traces of negro blood in their veins, and of the purer blooded whites many had the peculiar look of the fishy-fleshy population of the Levantine towns, and all were pale and lean. The railway terminus is marked by a dirty, barrack-like shed in the city. Selecting one of the numerous tumble-down hackney carriages which crowded the street outside the station, I directed the man to drive me to the house of Mr. Mure, the British consul, who had been kind enough to invite me as his guest for the period of my stay in New Orleans.

The streets are badly paved, as those of most of the American cities, if not all that I have ever been in, but in other respects they are more worthy of a great city than are those of New York There is an air thoroughly French about the people — cafes, restaurants, billiard-rooms abound, with oyster and lager-bier saloons interspersed. The shops are all magazines; the people in the streets are speaking French, particularly the negroes, who are going out shopping with their masters and mistresses, exceedingly well dressed, noisy, and not unhappy looking. The extent of the drive gave an imposing idea of the size of New Orleans — the richness of some of the shops, the vehicles in the streets, and the multitude of well-dressed people on the pavements, an impression of its wealth and the comfort of the inhabitants, The Confederate flag was flying from the public buildings and from many private houses. Military companies paraded through the streets, and a large proportion of men were in uniform.

In the day I drove through the city, delivered letters of introduction, paid visits, and examined the shops and the public places; but there is such a whirl of secession and politics surrounding one it is impossible to discern much of the outer world.

Whatever may be the number of the Unionists or of the non-secessionists, a pressure too potent to be resisted has been directed by the popular party against the friends of the federal government. The agent of Brown Brothers, of Liverpool and New York, has closed their office and is going away in consequence of the intimidation of the mob, or as the phrase is here, the “excitement of the citizens,” on hearing of the subscription made by the firm to the New York fund, after Sumter had been fired upon. Their agent in Mobile has been compelled to adopt the same course. Other houses follow their example, but as most business transactions are over for the season, the mercantile community hope the contest will be ended before the next season, by the recognition of Southern Independence.

The streets are full of Turcos, Zouaves, Chasseurs; walls are covered with placards of volunteer companies; there are Pickwick rifles, La Fayette/Beauregard, MacMahon guards, Irish, German, Italian and Spanish and native volunteers, among whom the Meagher rifles, indignant with the gentleman from whom they took their name, because of his adhesion to the North, are going to rebaptize themselves and to seek glory under one more auspicious. In fact, New Orleans looks like a suburb of the camp at Chalons. Tailors are busy night and day making uniforms. I went into a shop with the consul for some shirts — the mistress and all her seamstresses were busy preparing flags as hard as the sewing-machine could stitch them, and could attend to no business for the present. The Irish population, finding themselves unable to migrate northwards, and being without work, have rushed to arms with enthusiasm to support Southern institutions, and Mr. John Mitchell and Mr. Meagher stand opposed to each other in hostile camps.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 227-31

Diary of William Howard Russell: May 12, 1861

I was busy making arrangements to get to Pensacola, and Fort Pickens, all day. The land journey was represented as being most tedious and exceedingly comfortless in all respects, through a waste of sand, in which we ran the chance of being smothered or lost. And then I had set my mind on seeing Fort Pickens as well as Pensacola, and it would be difficult, to say the least of it, to get across from an enemy's camp to the Federal fortress, and then return again. The United States squadron blockaded the port of Pensacola, but I thought it likely they would permit me to run in to visit Fort Pickens, and that the Federals would allow me to sail thence across to General Bragg, as they might be assured I would not communicate any information of what I had seen in my character as neutral to any but the journal in Europe, which I represented, and in the interests of which I was bound to see and report all that I could as to the state of both parties. It was, at all events, worth while to make the attempt, and after a long search I heard of a schooner which was ready for the voyage at a reasonable rate, all things considered.

Mr. Forsyth asked, if I had any objection to take with me three gentlemen of Mobile, who were anxious to be of the party, as they wanted to see their friends at Pensacola, where it was believed a “fight” was to come off immediately. Since I came South I have seen the daily announcement that “Braxton Bragg is ready,” and his present state of preparation must be beyond all conception. But here was a difficulty. I told Mr. Forsyth that I could not possibly assent to any persons coming with me who were not neutrals, or prepared to adhere to the obligations of neutrals. There was a suggestion that I should say these gentlemen were my friends, but as I had only seen two of them on board the steamer yesterday, I could not accede to that idea. “Then if you are asked if Mr. Ravesies is your friend, you will say he is not.” “Certainly.” “But surely you don't wish to have Mr. Ravesies hanged?” “No, I do not, and I shall do nothing to cause him to be hanged; but if he meets that fate by his own act, I can't help it. I will not allow him to accompany me under false pretences.”

At last it was agreed that Mr. Ravesies and his friends, Mr. Bartre and Mr. Lynes, being in no way employed by or connected with the Confederate Government, should have a place in the little schooner which we had picked out at the quayside and hired for the occasion, and go on the voyage with the plain understanding that they were to accept all the consequences of being citizens of Mobile.

Mr. Forsyth, Mr. Ravesies, and a couple of gentlemen dined with me in the evening. After dinner., Mr. Forsyth, who, as mayor of the town, is the Executive of the Vigilance Committee, took a copy of “Harper's Illustrated Paper,” which is a very poor imitation of the “London Illustrated News,” and called my attention to the announcement that Mr. Moses, their special artist, was travelling with me in the South, as well as to an engraving, which purported to be by Moses aforesaid. I could only say that I knew nothing of the young designer, except what he told me, and that he led me to believe he was furnishing sketches to the “London News.” As he was in the hotel, though he did not live with me, I sent for him, and the young gentleman, who was very pale and agitated on being shown the advertisement and sketch, declared that he had renounced all connection with Harper, that he was sketching for the “Illustrated London News,” and that the advertisement was contrary to fact, and utterly unknown to him; and so he was let go forth, and retired uneasily. After dinner I went to the Bienville Club. “Rule No. 1” is, “No gentleman shall be admitted in a state of intoxication.” The club very social, very small, and very hospitable.

Later paid my respects to Mrs. Forsyth, whom I found anxiously waiting for news of her young son, who had gone off to join the Confederate Army. She told me that nearly all the ladies in Mobile are engaged in making cartridges, and in preparing lint or clothing for the army. Not the smallest fear is entertained for the swarming black population.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 197-8