Virginia has indeed
been invaded by the Federals. Alexandria has been seized. It is impossible to
describe the excitement and rage of the people; they take, however, some
consolation in the fact that Colonel Ellsworth, in command of a regiment of New
York Zouaves, was shot by J. T. Jackson, the landlord of an inn in the city,
called the Marshall House. Ellsworth, on the arrival of his regiment in
Alexandria, proceeded to take down the Secession flag, which had been long seen
from the President's windows. He went out upon the roof, cut it from the staff,
and was proceeding with it down-stairs, when a man rushed out of a room,
levelled a double-barrelled gun, shot Colonel Ellsworth dead, and fired the
other barrel at one of his men, who had struck at the piece, when the murderer
presented it at the Colonel. Almost instantaneously, the Zouave shot Jackson in
the head, and as he was falling dead thrust his sabre bayonet through his body.
Strange to say, the people of New Orleans, consider Jackson was completely
right, in shooting the Federal Colonel, and maintain that the Zouave, who shot
Jackson, was guilty of murder. Their theory is that Ellsworth had come over
with a horde of ruffianly abolitionists, or, as the “Richmond Examiner” has it,
“the band of thieves, robbers, and assassins in the pay of Abraham Lincoln,
commonly known as the United States Army,” to violate the territory of a sovereign
State, in order to execute their bloody and brutal purposes, and that he was in
the act of committing a robbery, by taking a flag which did not belong to him,
when he met his righteous fate.
It is curious to
observe how passion blinds man's reason, in this quarrel. More curious still to
see, by the light of this event, how differently the same occurrence is viewed
by Northerners and Southerners respectively. Jackson is depicted in the
Northern papers as a fiend and an assassin; even his face in death is declared
to have worn a revolting expression of rage and hate. The Confederate flag
which was the cause of the fatal affray, is described by one writer, as having
been purified of its baseness, by contact with Ellsworth's blood. The invasion
of Virginia is hailed on all sides of the North with the utmost enthusiasm. “Ellsworth
is a martyr hero, whose name is to be held sacred forever.”
On the other hand,
the Southern papers declare that the invasion of Virginia, is “an act of the
Washington tyrants, which indicates their bloody and brutal purpose to
exterminate the Southern people. The Virginians will give the world another
proof, like that of Moscow, that a free people, fighting on a free soil, are
invincible when contending for all that is dear to man.” Again — “A band of
execrable cut-Croats and jail-birds, known as the Zouaves of New York, under
that chief of all scoundrels, Ellsworth, broke open the door of a citizen, to
tear down the flag of the house — the courageous owner met the favorite hero of
the Yankees in his own hall, alone, against thousands, and shot him through the
heart — he died a death which emperors might envy, and his memory will live
through endless generations.” Desperate, indeed, must have been the passion and
anger of the man who, in the fullest certainty that immediate death must be its
penalty, committed such a deed. As it seems to me, Colonel Ellsworth, however
injudicious he may have been, was actually in the performance of his duty when
taking down the flag of an enemy.
In the evening I
visited Mr. Slidell, whom I found at home, with his family, Mrs. Slidell and
her sister Madame Beauregard, wife of the general, two very charming young
ladies, daughters of the house, and a parlor full of fair companions, engaged,
as hard as they could, in carding lint with their fair hands. Among the company
was Mr. Slidell's son, who had just travelled from school at the North, under a
feigned name, in order to escape violence at the hands of the Union mobs which
are said to be insulting and outraging every Southern man. The conversation, as
is the case in most Creole domestic circles, was carried on in French, I rarely
met a man whose features have a greater finesse and firmness of purpose
than Mr. Slidell's; his keen gray eye is full of life ; his thin, firmly-set
lips indicate resolution and passion. Mr. Slidell, though born in a Northern
State, is perhaps one of the most determined disunionists in the Southern
Confederacy; he is not a speaker of note, nor a ready stump orator, nor an able
writer; but he is an excellent judge of mankind, adroit, persevering, and
subtle, full of device, and fond of intrigue; one of those men, who, unknown
almost to the outer world, organizes and sustains a faction, and exalts it into
the position of a party — what is called here a “wire-puller.” Mr. Slidell is
to the South something greater than Mr. Thurlow Weed has been to his party in
the North. He, like every one else, is convinced that recognition must come
soon; but, under any circumstances, he is quite satisfied, the government and
independence of the Southern Confederacy are as completely established as those
of any power in the world. Mr. Slidell and the members of his family possess naïveté, good sense, and agreeable manners; and the
regrets I heard expressed in Washington society, at their absence, had every
justification.
I supped at the
club, which I visited every day since I was made an honorary member, as all the
journals are there, and a great number of planters and merchants, well
acquainted with the state of affairs in the South. There were two Englishmen
present, Mr. Lingam and another, the most determined secessionists and the most
devoted advocates of slavery I have yet met in the course of my travels.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 235-8
