Diary of William Howard Russell: May 2, 1861

Breakfasted with Mr. Hodgson, where I met Mr. Locke, Mr. Ward, Mr. Green, and Mrs. Hodgson and her sister. There were in attendance some good-looking little negro boys and men dressed in liveries, which smacked of our host's Orientalism; and they must have heard our discussion, or rather allusion, to the question which would decide whether we thought they are human beings or black two-legged cattle, with some interest, unless indeed the boast of their masters, that slavery elevates the character and civilizes the mind of a negro, is another of the false, pretences on which the institution is rested by its advocates. The native African, poor wretch, avoids being carried into slavery totis viribus, and it would argue ill for the effect on his mind of becoming a slave, if he prefers a piece of gaudy calico even to his loin-cloth and feather head-dress. This question of civilizing the African in slavery, is answered in the assertion of the slave owners themselves, that if the negroes were left to their own devices by emancipation, they would become the worst sort of barbarians — a veritable Quasheedom, the like of which was never thought of by Mr. Thomas Carlyle. I doubt if the aboriginal is not as civilized, in the true sense of the word, as any negro, after three degrees of descent in servitude, whom I have seen on any of the plantations — even though the latter have leather shoes and fustian or cloth raiment and felt hat, and sings about the Jordan. He is exempted from any bloody raid indeed, but he is liable to be carried from his village and borne from one captivity to an other, and his family are exposed to the same exile in America as in Africa. The extreme anger with which any unfavorable comment is met publicly, shows the sensitiveness of the slave owners. Privately, they affect philosophy; and the blue books, and reports of Education Commissions and Mining Committees, furnish them with an inexhaustible source of argument, if you once admit that the summum bonum lies in a certain rotundity of person, and a regular supply of coarse food. A long conversation on the old topics — old to me, but of only a few weeks’ birth. People are swimming with the tide. Here are many men, who would willingly stand aside if they could, and see the battle between the Yankees, whom they hate, and the Secessionists. But there are no women in this party. Wo betide the Northern Pyrrhus, whose head is within reach of a Southern tile and a Southern woman's arm!

I revisited some of the big houses afterwards, and found the merchants not cheerful, but fierce and resolute. There is a considerable population of Irish and Germans in Savannah, who to a man are in favor of the Confederacy, and will fight to support it. Indeed, it is expected they will do so, and there is a pressure brought to bear on them by their employers which they cannot well resist. The negroes will be forced into the place the whites hitherto occupied as laborers — only a few useful mechanics will be kept, and the white population will be obliged by a moral force drafting to go to the wars. The kingdom of cotton is most essentially of this world, and it will be fought for vigorously. On the quays of Savannah, and in the warehouses, there is not a man who doubts that he ought to strike his hardest for it, or apprehends failure. And then, what a career is before them! All the world asking for cotton, and England dependent on it. What a change since Whitney first set his cotton-gin to work in this state close by us! Georgia, as a vast country only partially reclaimed, yet looks to a magnificent future. In her past history the Florida wars, and the treatment of the unfortunate Cherokee Indians, who were expelled from their lands as late as 1838, show the people who descended from old Oglethorpe's band were fierce and tyrannical, and apt at aggression, nor will slavery improve them. I do not speak of the cultivated and hospitable citizens of the large towns, but of the bulk of the slaveless whites.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 157-8

Young America in England

Georg F. Train, the young Bostonian, who has been introducing the horse railroad system in England, lately made another speech on the American question, taking the secession side of it.  The speech was delivered in the Temple Forum, London, and the following is a specimen of Mr. Train’s advocacy of the South:

The Northerners think they have the very best Constitution in the world, because they have placed their Temple on their four corner stones – Wisdom, Mercy, Justice and Union!  But we in Secessia have based our Constitution and reared our Temple of Despotism on one acknowledged corner stone – Negro Slavery.

Now I never heard of a house with only one corner stone [laughter;] there must of necessity be four, and these are the other three – Perjury!  Robbery!  Treachery!  On these four columns we have raised that edition of Despotism for which I have risen to speak. [Cheers.]  The question of to-night is very strangely expressed.  It asks whether the North or South is right.  This is what I call an open and shut question – it is difficult to tell Blucher from Wellington.  I can answer in the affirmative or the negative. [Laughter.]

I maintain that the North has acted most wrongly by us – that the North was wrong in give us precedence in all matters of State – [hear] – wrong in giving us, as the honorable gentleman from Alabama says, the power to elect nearly all the Presidents – [hear] – that the North was wrong in giving the South all the naval officers – wrong in taking our men to make all the army officers. [Cheers.]

I maintain the North was wrong in allowing us to rob the treasury at Washington – wrong in allowing us to absorb all the Northern spoils – and wrong in allowing us to assume all the civil and military power. [Cheers.]  I tell you that we in Secessia despise the North.  * * *

I say that the South has a right to complain of the way in which the question in debate this night is considered in this country.  [Here Mr. Train, with biting sarcasm, turned his Southern argument on England.]  We blame you for deceiving us in this great issue.  We have to thank you for hastening to acknowledge us as belligerents, but we have a right to blame you for giving all your sympathies to the North.  [Loud applause.]  We blame you because all your press – the London Times and every other of your news journals – has given its voice in favor of the North.  [Loud laughter and cheers, the audience fully entering into the spirit of the sarcasm.]  You cannot spare one single journal to the South.  We blame you for not giving every assistance to our vessel of war (the Nashville) when in Southampton docks!  [Applause, and “Good again.”]  Your affections have been centered on the Tuscarora.  Your affections have been centered on the Tuscarora.  You have never assisted one-half of our enterprising navy – the Sumter – now in the Mediterranean.

I have heard, but I cannot believe it, that the reason the North has not caught her is because the North wishes her left to float on the ocean to show Europe what the North might do with five thousand similar vessels afloat.  [“Oh, Oh,” and cheers.]  We blame you, and we have a right to blame you, that you have not long since admitted the claims of our great Confederacy, as we were led, by unofficial correspondence, to  think you would have done long since.  [Hear, hear.]  Again, we have to complain that you have not sufficiently acknowledged our established valor: have you forgotten how ten thousand of our grand chivalry, after two days’ fighting, drove ninety of the Northern men out of Fort Sumter?  [Applause and laughter.]  Then again, did we not, in open daylight, assassinate in Alexandria their Colonel Ellsworth?  * *

Reference has been made to Bull Run.  It proves, as I told them at Hanley, what I have had much trouble in getting English people to believe – that the American people are never troubled with the gout.  [Laughter.]  But the Northerners are not the only people who have the right of claiming all such laurels.  [Hear.]  You ought to give us some credit on that account also.  Look when the Northerners landed at Port Royal and Beaufort; we showed them powers of pedestrianism throwing even Deerfoot into the shade.  [Laughter and cheers.]  When the Northern hordes landed, the chivalry of Georgia went first, South Carolina next, and the Germans last, until at last there was but one poor old nigger left.  [Loud cheers.]  I have never saw such speed; they reached Charleston in much shorter time that I should have thought possible.

Why did the gentlemen from Secessia omit this praiseworthy fact when alluding to our chivalry?  Then, again, read the papers of Saturday and to-day.  Have you not read how 10,000 men left the field whereon lay the bodies of Zolicoffer and Payton?  They went quickly because they were anxious to fight the battle in Tennessee.  [Confusion.]  Don’t get excited secessionists, for I am to-night on the side of the South.  [Applause and Laughter.]  The word Secessia signifies Revolver – Bowie Knife – Lynch Law – Tar – Feathers, and the noble science of Repudiation – [Hear,] – while the word Unionists or Yankee possesses the mean interpretation of Education – Virtue – Enterprise and Honesty.  [Cheers.]  You are not perhaps aware that in Mobile – in Charleston – in New Orleans – are all the manufactories of America.  [Laughter.]  That all the shipping of the United States comes from the South, and I can tell you that the North have no need to boast of their Eli Whitney and Cotton Gin!  [Laughter, and good.]

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 15, 1862, p. 1