Diary of 5th Sergeant Osborn H. Oldroyd: May 13, 1863

Up early, and on the march to Jackson, as we suppose.

I dreamed of my bunk-mate last night. Wonder if his remains will be put where they can be found, for I would like, if I ever get the chance, to put a board with his name on it at the head of his grave. When we enlisted we all paired off, each selecting his comrade—such a one as would be congenial and agreeable to him—and as yesterday's battle broke a good many such bonds, new ties have been forming,—as the boys say, new couples are getting married. If married people could always live as congenial and content as two soldiers sleeping under the same blanket, there would be more happiness in the world. I shall await the return of one of the wounded.

We arrived at Clinton after dark, a place on the Jackson and Vicksburg railroad. Yesterday a train ran through, the last that will ever be run by confederates. The orders are to destroy the road here in each direction. We expected to have to fight for this spot, but instead we took possession unmolested. "Cotton is king," and finding a good deal here, we have made our beds of it.

SOURCE: Osborn Hamiline Oldroyd, A Soldier's Story of the Siege of Vicksburg, p. 19-20

Joseph Green Cogswell to George Ticknor, April 29, 1861

NEW YORK, April 29, 1861.

. . . The humiliating condition to which Southern insolence and ruffianism have reduced us has preyed upon me greatly. I never wished to be young again until now, and, old as I am, I would have volunteered with any adequate number to go down and force a way through Baltimore, by laying it in ruins, if it could have been done in no other way. It was no disgrace to have the lawful authority of the country fallen upon by a mob, for that might happen under the strongest government. It is an indelible one to have allowed the mob to keep up the obstruction for days, between every part of the country and the capital of it. If it is not soon wiped out I shall be ashamed to own that I am an American.

The course which has been pursued by the South has changed all my feelings towards them. If they had taken the ground, that they had a right to secede if such was the clear and express will of the people, and maintained the right like honest men, I, for one, would have said, “Go, you shall have what fairly belongs to you”— but to buccaneers I would give no answer except from the mouth of the cannon.¹

Out of all this evil great good will come. The Northern States will be more united, the principle of unlicensed democracy will be checked, our vainglorious boasting will be silenced, and the practical acknowledgment that Cotton is King will no more be heard. I firmly believe that the substantial and permanent prosperity of the North was secured by the first gun that was fired at Fort Sumpter, and the rapid decline of the South will date from the same event. I rejoice to find that Massachusetts has come up so nobly to the rescue.

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¹ In connection with this strong expression of feeling it is pleasant to be allowed to present the testimony of a lady whose relations with different parts of the country, as well as her high standing in society, and refined estimate of the demands of good breeding, entitle her words to be accepted and highly valued.  In a note written after Mr. Cogswell’s death, Mrs. Gilpin of Philadelphia speaks of “His information on all subjects of conversation so correct and extended, and his manners so mild and unobtrusive, with great delicacy of feelings for others. This,” she goes on to say, “I particularly observed during the war, as he was often my guest during that unfortunate period, when, from the peculiarity of my own position, Southern ladies and gentlemen were often with us.  No word ever escaped his lips to wound the feelings of any, and at the same time he was known to be firm in his own opinion.  He avoided argument or heated discussion on the merits of the war question, and gave to all around him a beautiful example of forbearance, with the most kindly feeling for those whom I knew he thought in the wrong.”

SOURCE: Anna Eliot Ticknor, Editor, Life of Joseph Green Cogswell as Sketched in His Letters, p. 286-7

Diary of William Howard Russell: June 23, 1861

The latest information which I received today is of a nature to hasten my departure for Washington; it can no longer be doubted that a battle between the two armies assembled in the neighborhood of the capital is imminent. The vague hope which from time to time I have entertained of being able to visit Richmond before I finally take up my quarters with the only army from which I can communicate regularly with Europe has now vanished.

At four o'clock in the evening I started by the train on the famous Central Illinois line from Cairo to Chicago.

The carriages were tolerably well filled with soldiers, and in addition to them there were a few unfortunate women, undergoing deportation to some less moral neighborhood. Neither the look, language, nor manners of my fellow-passengers inspired me with an exalted notion of the intelligence, comfort, and respectability of the people which are so much vaunted by Mr. Seward and American journals, and which, though truly attributed, no doubt, to the people of the New England States, cannot be affirmed with equal justice to belong to all the other components of the Union.

As the Southerners say, their negroes are the happiest people on the earth, so the Northerners boast, “We are the most enlightened nation in the world.” The soldiers in the train were intelligent enough to think they ought not to be kept without pay, and free enough to say so. The soldiers abused Cairo roundly, and indeed it is wonderful if the people can live on any food but quinine. However, speculators, looking to its natural advantages as the point where the two great rivers join, bespeak for Cairo a magnificent and prosperous future. The present is not promising.

Leaving the shanties, which face the levees, and some poor wooden houses with a short vista of cross streets partially flooded at right angles to them, the rail suddenly plunges into an unmistakable swamp, where a forest of dead trees wave their ghastly, leafless arms over their buried trunks, like plumes over a hearse — a cheerless, miserable place, sacred to the ague and fever. This occurs close to the cleared space on which the city is to stand, — when it is finished — and the rail, which runs on the top of the embankment or levee, here takes to the trestle, and is borne over the water on the usual timber frame-work.

“Mound City,” which is the first station, is composed of a mere heap of earth, like a ruined brickkiln, which rises to some height and is covered with fine white oaks, beneath which are a few log huts and hovels, giving the place its proud name. Tents were pitched on the mound side, from which wild-looking banditti sort of men, with arms, emerged as the train stopped. “I’ve been pretty well over Europe,” said a meditative voice beside me, “and I've seen the despotic armies of the old world, but I don't think they equal that set of boys.” The question was not worth arguing — the boys were in fact very “weedy,” “splinter-shinned chaps,” as another critic insisted.

There were some settlers in the woods around Mound City, and a jolly-looking, corpulent man, who introduced himself as one of the officers of the land department of the Central Illinois railroad, described them as awful warnings to the emigrants not to stick in the south part of Illinois. It was suggestive to find that a very genuine John Bull, “located,” as they say in the States for many years, had as much aversion to the principles of the abolitionists as if he had been born a Southern planter. Another countryman of this and mine, steward on board the steamer to Cairo, eagerly asked me what I thought of the quarrel, and which side I would back. I declined to say more than I thought the North possessed very great superiority of means if the conflict were to be fought on the same terms. Whereupon my Saxon friend exclaimed, “all the Northern States and all the power of the world can't beat the South; and why? — because the South has got cotton, and cotton is king.”

The Central Illinois officer did not suggest the propriety of purchasing lots, but he did intimate I would be doing service if I informed the world at large, they could get excellent land, at sums varying from ten to twenty-five dollars an acre. In America a man's income is represented by capitalizing all that he is worth, and whereas in England we say a man has so much a year, the Americans, in representing his value, observe that he is worth so many dollars, by which they mean that all he has in the world would realize the amount.

It sounds very well to an Irish tenant farmer, an English cottier, or a cultivator in the Lothians, to hear that he can get land at the rate of from £2 to £5 per acre, to be his forever, liable only to state taxes; but when he comes to see a parallelogram marked upon the map as “good soil, of unfathomable richness,” and finds in effect that he must cut down trees, eradicate stumps, drain off water, build a house, struggle for high-priced labor, and contend with imperfect roads, the want of many things to which he has been accustomed in the old country, the land may not appear to him such a bargain. In the wooded districts he has, indeed a sufficiency of fuel as long as trees and stumps last, but they are, of course, great impediments to tillage. If he goes to the prairie he finds that fuel is scarce and water by no means wholesome.

When we left this swamp and forest, and came out after a run of many miles on the clear lands which abut upon the prairie, large fields of corn lay around us, which bore a peculiarly blighted and harassed look. These fields were suffering from the ravages of an insect called the “army worm,” almost as destructive to corn and crops as the locust-like hordes of North and South, which are vying with each other in laying waste the fields of Virginia. Night was falling as the train rattled out into the wild, flat sea of waving grass, dotted by patch-like Indian corn enclosures; but halts at such places as Jonesburgh and Cobden, enabled us to see that these settlements in Illinois were neither very flourishing nor very civilized.

There is a level modicum of comfort, which may be consistent with the greatest good of the greatest number, but which makes the standard of the highest in point of well-being very low indeed. I own, that to me, it would be more agreeable to see a flourishing community placed on a high level in all that relates to the comfort and social status of all its members than to recognize the old types of European civilization, which place the castle on the hill, surround its outer walls with the mansion of doctor and lawyer, and drive the people into obscure hovels outside. But then one must confess that there are in the castle some elevating tendencies which cannot be found in the uniform level of citizen equality. There are traditions of nobility and noble deeds in the family; there are paintings on the walls; the library is stored with valuable knowledge, and from its precincts are derived the lessons not yet unlearned in Europe, that though man may be equal, the condition of men must vary as the accidents of life or the effects of individual character, called fortune, may determine.

The towns of Jonesburgh and Cobden have their little teapot-looking churches and meeting-houses, their lager-bier saloons, their restaurants, their small libraries, institutes, and reading rooms, and no doubt they have also their political cliques, social distinctions and favoritisms; but it requires, nevertheless, little sagacity to perceive that the highest of the bourgeois who leads the mass at meeting and prayer, has but little to distinguish him from the very lowest member of the same body politic. Cobden, for example, has no less than four drinking saloons, all on the line of rail, and no doubt the highest citizen in the place frequents some one or other of them, and meets there the worst rowdy in the place. Even though they do carry a vote for each adult man, “locations” here would not appear very enviable in the eyes of the most miserable Dorsetshire small farmer ever ferreted out by “S. G. O.”

A considerable number of towns, formed by accretions of small stores and drinking places, called magazines, round the original shed wherein live the station master and his assistants, mark the course of the railway. Some are important enough to possess a bank, which is generally represented by a wooden hut, with a large board nailed in front, bearing the names of the president and cashier, and announcing the success and liberality of the management. The stores are also decorated with large signs, recommending the names of the owners to the attention of the public, and over all of them is to be seen the significant announcement, “Cash for produce.”

At Carbondale there was no coal at all to be found, but several miles farther to the north, at a place called Dugoine, a field of bituminous deposit crops out, which is sold at the pit's mouth for one dollar twenty-five cents, or about 5s. 2d. a ton. Darkness and night fell as I was noting such meagre particulars of the new district as could be learned out of the window of a railway carriage; and finally with a delicious sensation of cool night air creeping in through the windows, the first I had experienced for many a long day, we made ourselves up for repose, and were borne steadily, if not rapidly, through the great prairie, having halted for tea at the comfortable refreshment rooms of Centralia.

There were no physical signs to mark the transition from the land of the Secessionist to Union-loving soil. Until the troops were quartered there, Cairo was for Secession, and Southern Illinois is supposed to be deeply tainted with disaffection to Mr. Lincoln. Placards on which were printed the words, “Vote for Lincoln and Hamlin, for Union and Freedom,” and the old battle-cry of the last election, still cling to the wooden walls of the groceries, often accompanied by bitter words or offensive additions.

One of my friends argues that as slavery is at the base of Secession, it follows that States or portions of States will be disposed to join the Confederates or the Federalists, just as the climate may be favorable or adverse to the growth of slave produce. Thus in the mountainous parts of the Border States of Kentucky and Tennessee, in the north-western part of Virginia, vulgarly called the pan-handle, and in the pine woods of North Carolina, where white men can work at the rosin and naval store manufactories, there is a decided feeling in favor of the Union; in fact, it becomes a matter of isothermal lines. It would be very wrong to judge of the condition of a people from the windows of a railway carriage, but the external aspect of the settlements along the line, far superior to that of slave hamlets, does not equal my expectations. We all know the aspect of a wood in a gentleman's park; which is submitting to the axe, and has been partially cleared, how raw and bleak the stumps look, and how dreary is the naked land not yet turned into arable. Take such a patch, and fancy four or five houses made of pine planks, sometimes not painted, lighted by windows in which there is, or has been, glass, each guarded by a paling around a piece of vegetable garden, a pig house, and poultry box; let one be a grocery, which means a whiskey shop, another the post-office, and a third the store where “cash is given for produce.” Multiply these groups, if you desire a larger settlement, and place a wooden church with a Brobdignag spire and Lilliputian body out in a waste, to be approached only by a causeway of planks; before each grocery let there be a gathering of tall men in sombre clothing, of whom the majority have small newspapers, and all of whom are chewing tobacco; near the stores let there be some light-wheeled carts and ragged horses, around which are knots of unmistakably German women; then see the deep tracks which lead off to similar settlements in the forest or prairie, and you have a notion, if your imagination is strong enough, of one of these civilizing centres which the Americans assert to be the homes of the most cultivated and intelligent communities in the world.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, Vol. 1, p. 346-51

Diary of Gideon Welles: Saturday, July 18, 1863

Have a letter from Governor Andrew, who in a matter misrepresented me; claims to have been led into error by the “Gloucester men,” and is willing to drop the subject.¹ I shall not object, for the Governor is patriotic and zealous as well as somewhat fussy and fanatical.

General Marston and others, a delegation from New Hampshire with a letter from the Governor, wanted additional defenses for Portsmouth. Letters from numerous places on the New England coast are received to the same effect. Each of them wants a monitor, or cruiser, or both. Few of them seem to be aware that the shore defenses are claimed by and belong to the War, rather than the Navy, Department, nor do they seem to be aware of any necessity for municipal and popular effort for their own protection.

Two delegations are here from Connecticut in relation to military organizations for home work and to preserve the peace. I went to the War Department in their behalf, and one was successful, perhaps both.

There is some talk, and with a few, a conviction, that we are to have a speedy termination of the war. Blair is confident the Rebellion is about closed. I am not so sanguine. As long as there is ability to resist, we may expect it from Davis and the more desperate leaders, and when they quit, as they will if not captured, the seeds of discontent and controversy which they have sown will remain, and the social and political system of the insurrectionary States is so deranged that small bodies may be expected to carry on for a time, perhaps for years, a bushwhacking warfare. It will likely be a long period before peace and contentment will be fully restored. Davis, who strove to be, and is, the successor of Calhoun, without his ability, but with worse intentions, is ambitious and has deliberately plunged into this war as the leader, and, to win power and fame, has jeopardized all else. The noisy, gasconading politicians of the South who figured in Congress for years and had influence have, in their new Confederacy, sunk into insignificance. The Senators and Representatives who formerly loomed up in Congressional debate in Washington, and saw their harangues spread before the country by a thousand presses, have all been dwarfed, wilted, and shriveled. The “Confederate Government,” having the element of despotism, compels its Congress to sit with closed doors. Davis is the great “I am.”

In the late military operations of the Rebels he has differed with Lee, and failed to heartily sustain that officer. It was Lee's plan to uncover Washington by inducing Hooker to follow him into Pennsylvania. Hooker fell into the trap and withdrew everything from here, which is surprising, for Halleck's only study has been to take care of himself and not fall into Rebel hands. But he felt himself safe if Hooker and the army were between him and Lee.

From the interrupted dispatches and other sources, it is ascertained that Lee's plan was the concentration of a force of 40,000 men at Culpeper to rush upon Washington when our army and the whole Potomac force was far away in the Valley of the Cumberland. But Davis, whose home is in Mississippi and whose interest is there, did not choose to bring Beauregard East. The consequence has been the frustration of Lee's plans, which have perished without fruition. He might have been disappointed, had he been fairly seconded. Davis has undoubtedly committed a mistake. It hastens the end. Strange that such a man as Davis, though possessing ability, should mislead and delude millions, some of whom have greater intellectual capacity than himself. They were, however, and had been, in a course of sectional and pernicious training under Calhoun and his associates, who for thirty years devoted their time and talents to the inculcation first of hate, and then of sectional division, or a reconstruction of the federal government on a different basis. Nullification was an outgrowth. When Calhoun closed his earthly career several men of far less ability sought to wear his mantle. I have always entertained doubts whether Calhoun intended a dismemberment of the Union. He aimed to procure special privileges for the South, — something that should secure perpetuity to the social and industrial system of that section, which he believed, not without reason, was endangered by the increasing intelligence and advancing spirit of the age. Many of the lesser lights — shallow political writers and small speech-makers — talked flippantly of disunion, which they supposed would enrich the South and impoverish the North. “Cotton is king,” they said and believed, and with it they would dictate terms not only to the country but the world. The arrogance begotten of this folly led to the great Rebellion.

Davis is really a despot, exercising arbitrary power, and the people of the South are abject subjects, demoralized, subdued, but frenzied and enraged, with little individual independence left, — an impoverished community, hurrying to swift destruction. “King Cotton” furnishes them no relief. Men are not permitted in that region of chivalry to express their views if they tend to national unity. Hatred of the Union, of the government, and of the country is the basis of the Confederate despotism. Hate, sectional hate, is really the fundamental teaching of Calhoun and his disciples. How is it to be overcome and when can it be eradicated? It has been the growth of a generation, and abuse of the doctrine of States' rights, — a doctrine sound and wholesome in our federal system when rightly exercised. But when South Carolina in 1832 assumed the sovereign right of nullifying the laws of the government of which she was a member, — defeating by State action the federal authority and setting it at defiance, — claiming to be a part of the Union but independent of it while yet a part, her position becomes absolutely contradictory and untenable. Compelled to abandon the power and absolute right of a State to overthrow the government which she helped to create, or destroy federal jurisdiction, the nullifiers, still discontented, uneasy, and ambitious, resorted to another expedient, that of withdrawing from the Union, and, by combining with other States, establishing power to resist the government and country. Sectionalism or a combination of States was substituted for the old nullification doctrine of States' rights. If they could not remain in the Union and nullify its laws, they could secede and disregard laws and government. Can it be extinguished in a day? I fear not. It will require time.

It is sad and humiliating to see men of talents, capacity, and of reputed energy and independence, cower and shrink and humble themselves before the imperious master who dominates over the Confederacy. Political association and the tyranny of opinion and of party first led them astray, and despotism holds them in the wrong as with a vise. The whole political, social, and industrial fabric of the South is crumbling to ruins. They see and feel the evil, but dare not attempt to resist it. There is little love or respect for Davis among such intelligent Southern men as I have seen.

Had Meade done his duty, we should have witnessed a speedy change throughout the South. It is a misfortune that the command of the army had not been in stronger hands and with a man of broader views, and that he had not a more competent superior than Halleck. The late infirm action will cause a postponement of the end. Lee has been allowed to retreat — to retire — unmolested, with his army and guns, and the immense plunder which the Rebels have pillaged. The generals have succeeded in prolonging the war. Othello's occupation is not yet gone.

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1 This refers to the statement, in a letter of July 1, from Governor Andrew to Secretary Welles, that the Navy Department had sent no vessels to the defense of the Massachusetts coast till after the Confederate cruiser Tacony “had rioted along the Vineyard Sound for four days.” The Secretary, under date of July 11, showed the incorrectness of this allegation, and Governor Andrew, in his letter of the 16th, withdrew it and explained that it was made “upon the authority of municipal officers and citizens of Gloucester.”

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30, 1864, p. 375-9

Speech of James Henry Hammond: March 4, 1858

ON THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS, UNDER THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION. DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 4, 1858.

The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, having under consideration the bill for the admission of the State of Kansas in the Union — Mr. Hammond said:

Mr. President: In the debate which occurred in the early part of the last month, I understood the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas) to say that the question of the reception of the Lecompton Constitution was narrowed down to a single point. That point was, whether that constitution embodied the will of the people of Kansas. Am I correct?

Mr. Douglas. The Senator is correct, with this qualification: I could waive the irregularity and agree to the reception of Kansas into the Union under the Lecompton Constitution, provided I was satisfied that it was the act and deed of that people, and embodied their will. There are other objections; but the others I could overcome, if this point were disposed of.

Mr. Hammond. I so understood the Senator. I understood that if he could be satisfied that this Constitution embodied the will of the people of Kansas, all other defects and irregularities could be cured by the act of Congress, and that he himself would be willing to permit such an act to be passed.

Now, sir, the only question is, how is that will to be ascertained, and upon that point, and that only, shall we differ. In my opinion the will of the people of Kansas is to be sought in the act of her lawful convention elected to form a Constitution, and no where else; and that it is unconstitutional and dangerous to seek it elsewhere. I think that the Senator fell into a fundamental error in his report dissenting from the report of the majority of the territorial committee, when he said that the convention which framed this Constitution was “the creature of the Territorial Legislature;” and from that one error has probably arisen all his subsequent errors on this subject.

How can it be possible that a convention should be the creature of a Territorial Legislature? The convention was an assembly of the people in their highest sovereign capacity, about to perform their highest possible act of sovereignty. The Territorial Legislature is a mere provisional government; a petty corporation, appointed and paid by the Congress of the United States, without a particle of sovereign power. Shall such a body interefere with a sovereignty — inchoate, but still a sovereignty? Why, Congress cannot interfere; Congress cannot confer on the Territorial Legislature the power to interfere. Congress itself is not sovereign. Congress has sovereign powers, but no sovereignty. Congress has no power to act outside of the limitations of the Constitution; no right to carry into effect the Supreme Will of any people, and, therefore, Congress is not sovereign. Nor does Congress hold the sovereignty of Kansas. The sovereignty of Kansas resides, if it resides anywhere, with the sovereign States of this Union. They have conferred upon Congress, among other powers, that to administer such sovereignty to their satisfaction. They have given Congress the power to make needful rules and regulations regarding the Territories, and they have given it power to admit a State — “admit” not create. Under these two powers, Congress may first establish a provisional territorial government merely for municipal purposes; and when a State has grown into rightful sovereignty, when that sovereignty which has been kept in abeyance demands recognition, when a community is formed there, a social compact established, a sovereignty born as it were on the soil, then to Congress is granted the power to acknowledge it, and the Legislature, only by mere usage, sometimes neglected, assists at the birth of it by passing a precedent resolution assembling a convention.

But when that convention assembles to form a Constitution, it assembles in the highest known capacity of a people, and has no superior in this Government but a State sovereignty; or rather only the State sovereignties of all the States, acting by their established Constitutional agent the General Government, can do anything with the act of that convention. Then if that convention was lawful, if there is no objection to the convention itself, there can be no objection to the action of the convention; and there is no power on earth that has a right to inquire, outside of its acts, whether the convention represented the will of the people of Kansas or not, for a convention of the people is, according to the theory of our Government, for all the purposes for which the people elected it, the people, bona fide, being the only way in which all the people can assemble and act together. I do not doubt that there might be some cases of such gross and palpable frauds committed in the formation of a convention, as might authorize Congress to investigate them, but I can scarcely conceive of any. And when a State knocks at the door for admission, Congress can with propriety do little more than inquire if her Constitution is republican. That it embodies the will of her people must necessarily be taken for granted, if it is their lawful act. I am assuming, of course, that her boundaries are settled, and her population sufficient.

If what I have said be correct, then the will of the people of Kansas is to be found in the action of her constitutional convention. It is immaterial whether it is the will of a majority of the people of Kansas now, or not. The convention was, or might have been, elected by a majority of the people of Kansas. A convention, elected in June, might well frame a Constitution that would not be agreeable to a majority of the people of a new State, rapidly filling up, in the succeeding January; and if Legislatures are to be allowed to put to vote the acts of a convention, and have them annulled by a subsequent influx of immigrants, there is no finality. If you were to send back the Lecompton Constitution, and another was to be framed, in the slow way in which we do public business in this country, before it would reach Congress and be accepted, perhaps the majority would be turned the other way. Whenever you go outside of the regular forms of law and constitutions to seek for the will of the people you are wandering in a wilderness — a wilderness of thorns.

If this was a minority constitution I do not know that that would be an objection to it. Constitutions are made for minorities. Perhaps minorities ought to have the right to make constitutions, for they are administered by majorities. The Constitution of this Government was made by a minority, and as late as 1840 a minority had it in their hands, and could have altered or abolished it; for, in 1840, six out of the twenty-six States of the Union held the numerical majority.

The Senator from Illinois has, upon his view of the Lecompton Constitution and the present situation of affairs in Kansas, raised a cry of “popular sovereignty.” The Senator from New York (Mr. Seward) yesterday made himself facetious about it, and called it, “squatter sovereignty.” There is a popular sovereignty which is the basis of our Government, and I am unwilling that the Senator should have the advantage of confounding it with “squatter sovereignty.” In all countries and in all time, it is well understood that the numerical majority of the people could, if they chose, exercise the sovereignty of the country; but for want of intelligence, and for want of leaders, they have never yet been able successfully to combine and form a stable, popular government. They have often attempted it, but it has always turned out, instead of a popular sovereignty, a populace sovereignty; and demagogues, placing themselves upon the movement, have invariably led them into military despotism.

I think that the popular sovereignty which the Senator from Illinois would derive from the acts of his Territorial Legislature, and from the information received from partisans and partisan presses, would lead us directly into populace, and not popular sovereignty. Genuine popular sovereignty never existed on a firm basis except in this country. The first gun of the Revolution announced a new organization of it which was embodied in the Declaration of Independence, developed, elaborated, and inaugurated forever in the Constitution of the United States. The two pillars of it were Representation and the Ballot-box. In distributing their sovereign powers among various Departments of the Government, the people retained for themselves the single power of the ballot-box; and a great power it was. Through that they were able to control all the Departments of the Government. It was not for the people to exercise political power in detail; it was not for them to be annoyed with the cares of Government; but, from time to time, through the ballot-box, it was for them — enough — to exert their sovereign power and control the whole organization. This is popular sovereignty, the popular sovereignty of a legal constitutional ballot-box; and when spoken through that box, the “voice of the people,” which for all political purposes, “is the voice of God;” but when it is heard outside of that, it is the voice of a demon, the tocsin of a reign of terror.

In passing I omitted to answer a question that the Senator from Illinois has, I believe, repeatedly asked; and that is, what were the legal powers of the Territorial Legislature after the formation and adoption of the Lecompton Constitution? The Kansas Convention had nothing to do with the Territorial Legislature, which was a provisional government almost without power, appointed and paid by this Government. The Lecompton Constituton was the act of a people, and the sovereign act of a people legally assembled in convention. The two bodies moved in different spheres and on different planes, and could not come in contact at all without usurpation on the one part or the other. It was not competent for the Lecompton Constitution to overturn the territorial government and set up a government in place of it, because that Constitution, until acknowledged by Congress, was nothing; it was not in force anywhere. It could well require the people of Kansas to pass upon it or any portion of it; it could do whatever was necessary to perfect that Constitution, but nothing beyond that, until Congress had agreed to accept it. In the mean time the territorial government, always a government ad interim, was entitled to exercise all the sway over the Territory that it ever had been entitled to. The error of assuming, as the Senator did, that the convention was the creature of the territorial government, has led him into the difficulty and confusion resulting from connecting these two governments together. There was no power to govern in the convention until after the adoption by Congress of its Constitution, and then it was of course defunct.

As the Senator from Illinois, whom I regard as the Ajax Telamon of this debate, does not press the question of frauds, I shall have little or nothing to say about them. The whole history of Kansas is a disgusting one, from the beginning to the end. I have avoided reading it as much as I could. Had I been a Senator before, I should have felt it my duty, perhaps, to have done so; but not expecting to be one, I am ignorant, fortunately, in a great measure, of details; and I was glad to hear the acknowledgement of the Senator from Illinois, since it excuses me from the duty of examining them.

I hear, on the other side of the Chamber, a great deal said about “gigantic and stupendous frauds;” and the Senator from New York, in portraying the character of his party and the opposite one, laid the whole of those frauds upon the pro-slavery party. To listen to him, you would have supposed that the regiments of immigrants recruited in the purlieus of the great cities of the North, and sent out, armed and equipped with Sharpe's rifles and bowie knives and revolvers, to conquer freedom for Kansas, stood by, meek saints, innocent as doves, and harmless as lambs brought up to the sacrifice. General Lane's lambs! They remind one of the famous “lambs” of Colonel Kirke, to whom they have a strong family resemblance. I presume that there were frauds; and that if there were frauds, they were equally great on all sides; and that any investigation into them on this floor, or by a commission, would end in nothing but disgrace to the United States.

But, sir, the true object of the discussion on the other side of the Chamber, is to agitate the question of slavery. I have very great doubts whether the leaders on the other side really wish to defeat this bill. I think they would consider it a vastly greater victory to crush out the Democratic party in the North, and destroy the authors of the Kansas-Nebraska bill; and I am not sure that they have not brought about this imbroglio for the very purpose. They tell us that year after year the majority in Kansas was beaten at the polls! They have always had a majority, but they always get beaten! How could that be? It does seem, from the most reliable sources of information, that they have a majority, and have had a majority for some time. Why has not this majority come forward and taken possession of the government, and made a free-State constitution and brought it here? We should all have voted for its admission cheerfully. There can be but one reason: if they had brought, as was generally supposed at the time the Kansas-Nebraska act was passed would be the case, a free-State constitution here, there would have been no difficulty among the northern Democrats; they would have been sustained by their people. The statement made by some of them, as I understood, that that act was a good free-State act, would have been verified, and the northern Democratic party would have been sustained. But Kansas coming here a slave State, it is hoped will kill that party, and that is the reason they have refrained from going to the polls; that is the reason they have refrained from making it a free State when they had the power. They intend to make it a free State as soon as they have effected their purpose of destroying by it the Democratic party at the North, and now their chief object here is, to agitate slavery. For one, I am not disposed to discuss that question here in any abstract form. I think the time has gone by for that. Our minds are all made up. I may be willing to discuss it—and that is the way it should be and must be discussed—as a practical thing, as a thing that is, and is to be; and to discuss its effect upon our political institutions, and ascertain how long those institutions will hold together with slavery ineradicable.

The Senator from New York entered very fairly into this field yesterday. I was surprised, the other day, when he so openly said “the battle had been fought and won.” Although I knew, and had long known it to be true, I was surprised to hear him say so. I thought that he had been entrapped into a hasty expression by the sharp rebukes of the Senator from New Hampshire; and I was glad to learn yesterday that his words had been well considered — that they meant all that I thought they meant; that they meant that the South is a conquered province, and that the North intends to rule it. He said that it was their intention “to take this Government from unjust and unfaithful hands, and place it in just and faithful hands;” that it was their intention to consecrate all the Territories of the Union to free labor; end that, to effect their purposes, they intended to reconstruct the Supreme Court.

The Senator said, suppose we admit Kansas with the Lecompton constitution — what guarantees are there that Congress will not again interfere with the affairs of Kansas? meaning, I suppose, that if she abolished slavery, what guarantee there was that Congress would not force it upon her again. So far as we of the South are concerned, you have, at least, the guarantee of good faith that never has been violated. But what guarantee have we, when you have this Government in your possession, in all its departments, even if we submit quietly to what the Senator exhorts us to submit to — the limitation of slavery to its present territory, and even to the reconstruction of the Supreme Court — that you will not plunder us with tariffs; that you will not bankrupt us with internal improvements and bounties on your exports; that you will not cramp us with navigation laws, and other laws impeding the facilities of transportation to southern produce? What guarantee have we that you will not create a new bank, and concentrate all the finances of this country at the North, where already, for the want of direct trade and a proper system of banking in the South, they are ruinously concentrated? Nay, what guarantee have we that you will not emancipate our slaves, or, at least, make the attempt? We cannot rely on your faith when you have the power. It has been always broken whenever pledged.

As I am disposed to see this question settled as soon as possible, and am perfectly willing to have a final and conclusive settlement now, after what the Senator from New York has said, I think it not improper that I should attempt to bring the North and South face to face, and see what resources each of us might have in the contingency of separate organizations.

If we never acquire another foot of territory for the South, look at her. Eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles. As large as Great Britian, France, Austria, Prussia and Spain. Is not that territory enough to make an empire that shall rule the world? With the finest soil, the most delightful climate, whose staple productions none of those great countries can grow, we have three thousand miles of continental sea-shore line so indented with bays and crowded with islands, that, when their shore lines are added, we have twelve thousand miles. Through the heart of our country runs the great Mississippi, the father of waters, into whose bosom are poured thirty-six thousand miles of tributary rivers; and beyond we have the desert prairie wastes to protect us in our rear. Can you hem in such a territory as that? You talk of putting up a wall of fire around eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles so situated! How absurd.

But, in this territory lies the great valley of the Mississippi, now the real, and soon to be the acknowlIedged seat of the empire of the world. The sway of that valley will be as great as ever the Nile knew in the earlier ages of mankind. We own the most of it. The most valuable part of it belongs to us now; and although those who have settled above us are now opposed to us, another generation will tell a different tale. They are ours by all the laws of nature; slave-labor will go over every foot of this great valley where it will be found profitable to use it, and some of those who may not use it are soon to be united with us by such ties as will make us one and inseparable. The iron horse will soon be clattering over the sunny plains of the South to bear the products of its upper tributaries of the valley to our Atlantic ports, as it now does through the ice-bound North. And there is the great Mississippi, a bond of union made by Nature herself. She will maintain it forever.

On this fine territory we have a population four times as large as that with which these colonies separated from the mother country, and a hundred, I might say a thousand fold stronger. Our population is now sixty per cent. greater than that of the whole United States when we entered into the second war of independence. It is as large as the whole population of the United States was ten years after the conclusion of that war, and our own exports are three times as great as those of the whole United States then. Upon our muster-rolls we have a million of men. In a defensive war, upon an emergency, every one of them would be available. At any time, the South can raise, equip, and maintain in the field, a larger army than any Power of the earth can send against her, and an army of soldiers — men brought up on horseback, with guns in their hands. If we take the North, even when the two large States of Kansas and Minnesota shall be admitted, her territory will be one hundred thousand square miles less than ours. I do not speak of California and Oregon; there is no antagonism between the South and those countries, and never will be. The population of the North is fifty per cent. greater than ours. I have nothing to say in disparagement either of the soil of the North, or the people of the North, who are a brave and energetic race, full of intellect. But they produce no great staple that the South does not produce; while we produce two or three, and these the very greatest, that she can never produce. As to her men, I may be allowed to say, they have never proved themselves to be superior to those of the South, either in the field or in the Senate.

But the strength of a nation depends in a great measure upon its wealth, and the wealth of a nation, like that of a man, is to be estimated by its surplus production. You may go to your trashy census books, full of falsehood and nonsense — they tell you, for example, that in the State of Tennessee, the whole number of house-servants is not equal to that of those in my own house, and such things as that. You may estimate what is made throughout the country from these census books, but it is no matter how much is made if it is all consumed. If a man possess millions of dollars and consumes his income, is he rich? Is he competent to embark in any new enterprise? Can he long build ships or railroads? And could a people in that condition build ships and roads or go to war without a fatal strain on capital? All the enterprises of peace and war depend upon the surplus productions of a people. They may be happy, they may be comfortable, they may enjoy themselves in consuming what they make; but they are not rich, they are not strong. It appears, by going to the reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, which are authentic, that last year the United States exported in round numbers $279,000,000 worth of domestic produce, excluding gold and foreign merchandise re-exported. Of this amount $158,000,000 worth is the clear produce of the South; articles that are not and cannot be made at the North. There are then $80,000,000 worth of exports of products of the forest, provisions and breadstuff. If we assume that the South made but one third of these, and I think that is a low calculation, our exports were $185,000,000, leaving to the North less than $95,000,000.

In addition to this, we sent to the North $30,000,000 worth of cotton, which is not counted in the exports. We sent to her $7 or $8,000,000 worth of tobacco, which is not counted in the exports. We sent naval stores, lumber, rice, and many other minor articles. There is no doubt that we sent to the North $40,000,000 in addition ; but suppose the amount to be $35,000,000, it will give us a surplus production of $220,000,000. But the recorded exports of the South now are greater than the whole exports of the United States in any year before 1856. They are greater than the whole average exports of the United States for the last twelve years, including the two extraordinary years of 1856 and 1857. They are nearly double the amount of the average exports of the twelve preceding years. If I am right in my calculations as to $220,000,000 of surplus produce, there is not a nation on the face of the earth, with any numerous population, that can compete with us in produce per capita. It amounts to $16.66 per head, supposing that we have twelve millions of people. England with all her accumulated wealth, with her concentrated and educated energy, makes but sixteen and a half dollars of surplus production per head. I have not made a calculation as to the North, with her $95,000,000 surplus; admitting that she exports as much as we do, with her eighteen millions of population it would be but little over twelve dollars a head. But she cannot export to us and abroad exceeding ten dollars a head against our sixteen dollars. I know well enough that the North sends to the South a vast amount of the productions of her industry. I take it for granted that she, at least, pays us in that way for the thirty or forty million dollars worth of cotton and other articles we send her. I am willing to admit that she sends us considerably more; but to bring her up to our amount of surplus production — to bring her up to $220,000,000 a year, the South must take from her $125,000,000; and this, in addition to our share of the consumption of the $333,000,000 worth introduced into the country from abroad, and paid for chiefly by our own exports. The thing is absurd; it is impossible; it can never appear anywhere but in a book of statistics, or a Congress speech.

With an export of $220,000,000 under the present tariff, the South organized separately would have $40,000,000 of revenue. With one-fourth the present tariff, she would have a revenue with the present tariff adequate to all her wants, for the South would never go to war; she would never need an army or a navy, beyond a few garrisons on the frontiers and a few revenue cutters. It is commerce that breeds war. It is manufactures that require to be hawked about the world, and that give rise to navies and commerce. But we have nothing to do but to take off restrictions on foreign merchandise and open our ports, and the whole world will come to us to trade. They will be too glad to bring and carry us, and we never shall dream of a war. Why the South has never yet had a just cause of war except with the North. Every time she has drawn her sword it has been on the point of honor, and that point of honor has been mainly loyalty to her sister colonies and sister States, who have ever since plundered and calumniated her. But if there were no other reason why we should never have war, would any sane nation make war on cotton? Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us we could bring the whole world to our feet. The South is perfectly competent to go on, one, two, or three years without planting a seed of cotton. I believe that if she was to plant but half her cotton, for three years to come, it would be an immense advantage to her. I am not so sure but that after three years' entire abstinence she would come out stronger than ever she was before, and better prepared to enter afresh upon her great career of enterprise. What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what every one can imagine, but this is certain: England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her save the South. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is King. Until lately the Bank of England was king; but she tried to put her screws as usual, the fall before the last, upon the cotton crop, and was utterly vanquished. The last power has been conquered. Who can doubt, that has looked at recent events, that cotton is supreme? When the abuse of credit had destroyed credit and annihilated confidence; when thousands of the strongest commercial houses in the world were coming down, and hundreds of millions of dollars of supposed property evaporating in thin air; when you came to a dead lock, and revolutions were threatened, what brought you up? Fortunately for you it was the commencement of the cotton season, and we have poured in upon you one million six hundred thousand bales of cotton just at the crisis to save you from destruction. That cotton, but for the bursting of your speculative bubbles in the North, which produced the whole of this convulsion, would have brought us $100,000,000. We have sold it for $65,000,000, and saved you. Thirty-five million dollars we, the slaveholders of the South, have put into the charity box for your magnificent financiers, your “cotton lords,” your “merchant princes.”

But, sir, the greatest strength of the South arises from the harmony of her political and social institutions. This harmony gives her a frame of society, the best in the world, and an extent of political freedom, combined with entire security, such as no other people ever enjoyed upon the face of the earth. Society precedes government; creates it, and ought to control it; but as far as we can look back in historic times we find the case different; for government is no sooner created than it becomes too strong for society, and shapes and moulds, as well as controls it. In later centuries the progress of civilization and of intelligence has made the divergence so great as to produce civil wars and revolutions; and it is nothing now but the want of harmony between governments and societies which occasions all the uneasiness and trouble and terror that we see abroad. It was this that brought on the American Revolution. We threw off a Government not adapted to our social system, and made one for ourselves. The question is, how far have we succeeded? The South, so far as that is concerned, is satisfied, harmonious, and prosperous, but demands to be let alone.

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves. We found them slaves by the common “consent of mankind,” which, according to Cicero, “lex naturœ est.” The highest proof of what is Nature's law. We are old-fashioned at the South yet; slave is a word discarded now by “ears polite;” I will not characterize that class at the North by that term; but you have it; it is there; it is everywhere; it is eternal. The Senator from New York said yesterday that the whole world had abolished slavery. Aye, the name, but not the thing; all the powers of the earth cannot abolish that. God only can do it when he repeals the fiat, “the poor ye always have with you;” for the man who lives by daily labor, and scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his labor in the market, and take the best he can get for it; in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and “operatives,” as you call them, are essentially slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street in any of your large towns. Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South. We do not think that whites should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of the globe can be compared with the slaves of the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations. Yours are white, of your own race; you are brothers of one blood. They are your equals in natural endowment of intellect, and they feel galled by their degradation. Our slaves do not vote. We give them no political power. Yours do vote, and, being the majority, they are the depositaries of all your political power. If they knew the tremendous secret, that the ballot-box is stronger than “an army with banners,” and could combine, where would you be? Your society would be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided, not as they have mistakenly attempted to initiate such proceedings by meeting in parks, with arms in their hands, but by the quiet process of the ballot-box. You have been making war upon us to our very hearthstones. How would you like for us to send lecturers and agitators North, to teach these people this, to aid in combining, and to lead them?

Mr. Wilson and others. Send them along.

Mr. Hammond. You say send them along. There is no need of that. Your people are awaking. They are coming here. They are thundering at our doors for homesteads, one hundred and sixty acres of land for nothing, and Southern Senators are supporting them. Nay, they are assembling, as I have said, with arms in their hands, and demanding work at $1,000 a year for six hours a day. Have you heard that the ghosts of Mendoza and Torquemada are stalking in the streets of your great cities? That the inquisition is at hand? There is afloat a fearful rumor that there have been consultations for Vigilance Committees. You know what that means.

Transient and temporary causes have thus far been your preservation. The great West has been open to your surplus population, and your hordes of semi-barbarian immigrants, who are crowding in year by year. They make a great movement, and you call it progress. Whither? It is progress; but it is progress towards Vigilance Committees. The South have sustained you in a great measure. You are our factors. You fetch and carry for us. One hundred and fifty million dollars of our money passes annually through your hands. Much of it sticks; all of it assists to keep your machinery together and in motion. Suppose we were to discharge you; suppose we were to take our business out of your hands; — we should consign you to anarchy and poverty. You complain of the rule of the South; that has been another cause that has preserved you. We have kept the Government conservative to the great purposes of the Constitution. We have placed it, and kept it, upon the Constitution; and that has been the cause of your peace and prosperity. The Senator from New York says that that is about to be at an end; that you intend to take the Government from us; that it will pass from our hands into yours. Perhaps what he says is true; it may be; but do not forget — it can never be forgotten — it is written on the brightest page of human history — that we, the slaveholders of the South, took our country in her infancy, and, after ruling her for sixty out of the seventy years of her existence, we surrendered her to you without a stain upon her honor, boundless in prosperity, incalculable in her strength, the wonder and the admiration of the world. Time will show what you will make of her; but no time can diminish our glory or your responsibility.

SOURCE: John F. Trow & Co., New York, New York, Selections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond of South Carolina, p. 301-22

Diary of William Howard Russell: June 1, 1861

The respectable people of the city are menaced with two internal evils in consequence of the destitution caused by the stoppage of trade with the North and with Europe. The municipal authorities, for want of funds, threaten to close the city schools, and to disband the police; at the same time employers refuse to pay their workmen on the ground of inability. The British Consulate was thronged to-day by Irish, English, and Scotch, entreating to be sent North or to Europe. The stories told by some of these poor fellows were most pitiable, and were vouched for by facts and papers; but Mr. Mure has no funds at his disposal to enable him to comply with their prayers. Nothing remains for them but to enlist. For the third or fourth time I heard cases of British subjects being forcibly carried off to fill the ranks of so-called volunteer companies and regiments. In some instances they have been knocked down, bound, and confined in barracks, till in despair they consented to serve. Those who have friends aware of their condition were relieved by the interference of the Consul; but there are many, no doubt, thus coerced and placed in involuntary servitude without his knowledge. Mr. Mure has acted with energy, judgment, and success on these occasions; but I much wish he could have, from national sources, assisted the many distressed English subjects who thronged his office.

The great commercial community of New Orleans, which now feels the pressure of the blockade, depends on the interference of the European Powers next October. They have among them men who refuse to pay their debts to Northern houses, but they deny that they intend to repudiate, and promise to pay all who are not Black Republicans when the war is over. Repudiation is a word out of favor, as they feel the character of the Southern States and of Mr. Jefferson Davis himself has been much injured in Europe by the breach of honesty and honor of which they have been guilty; but I am assured on all sides that every State will eventually redeem all its obligations. Meantime, money here is fast vanishing. Bills on New York are worth nothing, and bills on England are at 18 per cent, discount from the par value of gold; but the people of this city will endure all this and much more to escape from the hated rule of the Yankees.

Through the present gloom come the rays of a glorious future, which shall see a grand slave confederacy enclosing the Gulf in its arms, and swelling to the shores of the Potomac and Chesapeake, with the entire control of the Mississippi and a monopoly of the great staples on which so much of the manufactures and commerce of England and France depend. They believe themselves, in fact, to be masters of the destiny of the world. Cotton is king — not alone king but czar; and coupled with the gratification and profit to be derived from this mighty agency, they look forward with intense satisfaction to the complete humiliation of their hated enemies in the New England States, to the destruction of their usurious rival New York, and to the impoverishment and ruin of the States which have excited their enmity by personal liberty bills, and have outraged and insulted them by harboring abolitionists and an anti-slavery press.

The abolitionists have said, “We will never rest till every slave is free in the United States.” Men of larger views than those have declared, “They will never rest from agitation until a man may as freely express his opinions, be they what they may, on slavery, or anything else, in the streets of Charleston or of New Orleans as in those of Boston or New York.” “Our rights are guaranteed by the Constitution,” exclaim the South. “The Constitution,” retorts Wendell Phillips, “is a league with the devil, — a covenant with hell.”

The doctrine of State Rights has been consistently advocated not only by Southern statesmen, but by the great party who have ever maintained there was danger to liberty in the establishment of a strong central Government; but the contending interests and opinions on both sides had hitherto been kept from open collision by artful compromises and by ingenious contrivances, which ceased with the election of Mr. Lincoln.

There was in the very corner-stone of the republican edifice a small fissure, which has been widening as the grand structure increased in height and weight. The early statesmen and authors of the Republic knew of its existence, but left to posterity the duty of dealing with it and guarding against its consequences. Washington himself was perfectly aware of the danger; and he looked forward to a duration of some sixty or seventy years only for the great fabric he contributed to erect. He was satisfied a crisis must come, when the States whom in his farewell address he warned against rivalry and faction would be unable to overcome the animosities excited by different interests, and the passions arising out of adverse institutions; and now that the separation has come, there is not, in the Constitution, or out of it, power to cement the broken fragments together.

It is remarkable that in New Orleans, as in New York, the opinion of the most wealthy and intelligent men in the community, so far as I can judge, regards universal suffrage as organized confiscation, legalized violence and corruption, a mortal disease in the body politic. The other night, as I sat in the club-house, I heard a discussion in reference to the operations, of the Thugs in this city, a band of native-born Americans, who at election times were wont deliberately to shoot down Irish and German voters occupying positions as leaders of their mobs. These Thugs were only suppressed by an armed vigilance committee, of which a physician who sat at table was one of the members.

Having made some purchases, and paid all my visits, I returned to prepare for my voyage up the Mississippi and visits to several planters on its banks — my first being to Governor Roman.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 249-52

Major Wilder Dwight: February 9, 1862

Cantonment Hicks, February 9, 1862, near Frederick.

If I could take the wings of this brisk, sunny morning, I would certainly fold them on our front-door steps in Brookline. Nor would I then proceed to hide my head under the wings, but, having flapped them cheerfully, I would thereupon crow!

But, as the wings and a furlough are both wanting, I must content myself with a web-footed, amphibious existence in the mud of Maryland.

There is a secession song which enjoys a surreptitious parlor popularity here. It is called, “Maryland, — my Maryland!” and rehearses, among other things, that “the despot's heel is on thy breast!” If that be so, all I have got to say is, that, just now, the heel has the worst of it. Yet there is a just satisfaction in this morning's inspection of men, tents, and kitchens, — to see how, by discipline, method, and fidelity, there is a successful contest maintained with all the elements. The neatness and order of our camp, in spite of mud, is a “volunteer miracle.”

You will be glad to know that the regiment is now in fine health. We already begin to count the days till spring. Of course, it is unsafe to predict the climate. I remember very well, however, that last February was quite dry, and that early in March dust, and not mud, was the enemy I found in Washington. It may well be, therefore, that there is a good time coming.

Indeed, has it not, in one sense, already come? Can you blind yourself to the omens and the tendencies? What shall we say of those statesmen of a budding empire, a new State, which is to give the law to the commerce and industry of the world through a single monopoly? What shall we say of the statesmen (Cobb, Toombs, etc.) who counsel their happy and chivalrous people to a general bonfire of house, home, and product? There's a new industry for a new State. King Cotton is a rare potentate. He proposes to be, himself, his own circulating medium, among other eccentricities.

Then, too, what admirable inferiority of fortification they succeed in erecting! Will our fleet of gunboats have as easy victories over all their river defences? and, if so, how far are we from Memphis? and where is Porter going with his “Mortar Fleet.” Among the ablest of our naval commanders, he is not bent on a fool's errand. When Jeff Davis sleeps o’ nights, does he dream of power?

But I've given you too many questions. In the midst of all this jubilant interrogatory, when will our time come? Just as soon as the mud dries, without a doubt.

Our life jogs on here without variety. For the most part, we spend our time in reading military books and talking military talk.

I am just now a good deal disturbed by the prospect of disbanding the bands. A greater mistake could not be made. The man with so little music in his soul as to vote for it is fit for — a Secessionist. Marshal Saxe, in introducing the cadenced step in the French infantry, says, “Music exerts a great and secret power over us. It disposes ‘nos organes aux exercises du corps, les soulagent dans ces exercises. On danse toute une nuit au son des instruments mais personne ne resterait à danser pendant un quart d’heure, seulement, sans musique.’” I have seen many a practical verification of this in the gathering freshness and quickness with which jaded men went on their march when the music called and cheered them.

Besides, we want the Star Spangled Banner, and its melody, as allies against the Rebel seductions.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 194-6

Major Wilder Dwight: Monday Night, December 2, 1861

camp Near Seneca, December 2, 1861,

Monday Night.

There is no reason why I should write, except that Colonel Andrews is going, and can take the letter. It is a harsh, cloudy, wind-driven night; and we have detained the canal-boat till morning. We are waiting our orders to march to Frederick. It looks like snow, and altogether there is a cheerful prospect of a march before us! I expect to awake in a snow-storm.

I am awaiting, with some interest, the President's Message. I shall like to see how he will pronounce a policy. One thing seems to me to be clear. He must leave all political questions to a military solution and settlement. Congress must do the same.

There is a method in events which must result, I think, in a wise and practical solution of the negro question.

You recollect the cloister life of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, — the abrupt transition of the proud king from a vast and absolute sway to the solitude and asceticism and self-mortification of the cloister. I want to read the cloister life of King Cotton, — his exile, poverty, and penance. There will be a story of most instructive contrast. It is a story soon to be written. I wonder, too, how Congress will bear our “inactivity” this winter. Clear it is that we must be inactive. The mere movement of a division, with its artillery and supply-train and baggage, is a distinct teaching that active field operations are impossible before spring, on this line. So you may continue to think of me as perfectly safe, and as hoping for liveliness with the buds of spring. We shall have tried almost every phase of army experience before we get home, I fancy I shall be an early riser to-morrow morning, and so must bid you good night.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 163-4

Diary of William Howard Russell: April 16, 1861

Early next morning [the 16th], soon after dawn, I crossed the Cape Fear River, on which Wilmington is situated, by a steam ferry-boat. On the quay lay quantities of shot and shell. “How came these here?” I inquired. “They're anti-abolition pills,” said my neighbor; “they've been waiting here for two months back, but now that Sumter's taken, I guess they won't be wanted.” To my mind, the conclusion was by no means legitimate. From the small glance I had of Wilmington, with its fleet of schooners and brigs crowding the broad and rapid river, I should think it was a thriving place. Confederate flags waved over the public buildings, and I was informed that the forts had been seized without opposition or difficulty. I can see no sign here of the “affection to the Union,” which, according to Mr. Seward, underlies all “secession proclivities.”

As we traversed the flat and uninteresting country, through which the rail passes, Confederate flags and sentiments greeted us everywhere; men and women repeated the national cry; at every station militia-men and volunteers were waiting for the train, and the everlasting word “Sumter” ran through all the conversation in the cars.

The Carolinians are capable of turning out a fair force of cavalry. At each stopping-place I observed saddle-horses tethered under the trees, and light driving vehicles, drawn by wiry muscular animals, not remarkable for size, but strong-looking and active. Some farmers in blue jackets, and yellow braid and facings, handed round their swords to be admired by the company. A few blades had flashed in obscure Mexican skirmishes — one, however, had been borne against “the Britishers.” I inquired of a fine, tall, fair-haired young fellow whom they expected to fight. “That's more than I can tell,” quoth he. “The Yankees ain't such cussed fools as to think they can come here and whip us, let alone the British.” “Why, what have the British got to do with it?” “They are bound to take our part: if they don't, we'll just give them a hint about cotton, and that will set matters right.” This was said very much with the air of a man who knows what he is talking about, and who was quite satisfied “he had you there.” I found it was still displeasing to most people, particularly one or two of the fair sex, that more Yankees were not killed at Sumter. All the people who addressed me prefixed my name, which they soon found out, by “Major” or “Colonel” — “Captain” is very low, almost indicative of contempt. The conductor who took our tickets was called “Captain.”

At the Pedee River the rail is carried over marsh and stream on trestle work for two miles. “This is the kind of country we'll catch the Yankees in, if they come to invade us. They'll have some pretty tall swimming, and get knocked on the head, if ever they gets to land. I wish there was ten thousand of the cusses in it this minute.” At Nichol's station on the frontiers of South Carolina, our baggage was regularly examined at the Custom House, but I did not see any one pay duties. As the train approached the level and marshy land near Charleston, the square block of Fort Sumter was seen rising above the water with the “stars and bars” flying over it, and the spectacle created great enthusiasm among the passengers. The smoke was still rising from an angle of the walls. Outside the village-like suburbs of the city a regiment was marching for old Virginny amid the cheers of the people — cavalry were picketed in the fields and gardens — tents and men were visible in the by-ways.

It was nearly dark when we reached the station. I was recommended to go to the Mills House, and on arriving there found Mr. Ward, whom I had already met in New York and Washington, and who gave me an account of the bombardment and surrender of the fort. The hotel was full of notabilities. I was introduced to ex-Governor Manning, Senator Chestnut, Hon. Porcher Miles, on the staff of General Beauregard, and to Colonel Lucas, aide-de-camp to Governor Pickens. I was taken after dinner and introduced to General Beauregard, who was engaged, late as it was, in his room at the Head-Quarters writing despatches. The General is a small, compact man, about thirty-six years of age, with a quick, and intelligent eye and action, and a good deal of the Frenchman in his manner and look. He received me in the most cordial manner, and introduced me to his engineer officer, Major Whiting, whom he assigned to lead me over the works next day.

After some general conversation I took my leave; but before I went, the General said, “You shall go everywhere and see everything; we rely on your discretion, and knowledge of what is fair in dealing with what you see. Of course you don't expect to find regular soldiers in our camps or very scientific works.” I answered the General, that he might rely on my making no improper use of what I saw in this country, but, “unless you tell me to the contrary, I shall write an account of all I see to the other side of the water, and if, when it comes back, there are things you would rather not have known, you must not blame me.” He smiled, and said, “I dare say we'll have great changes by that time.”

That night I sat in the Charleston Club with John Manning. Who that has ever met him can be indifferent to the charms of manner and of personal appearance, which render the ex-Governor of the State so attractive? There were others present, senators or congressmen, like Mr. Chestnut and Mr. Porcher Miles. We talked long, and at last angrily, as might be between friends, of political affairs.

I own it was a little irritating to me to hear men indulge in extravagant broad menace and rodomontade, such as came from their lips. “They would welcome the world in arms with hospitable hands to bloody graves.” “They never could be conquered.” “Creation could not do it,” and so on. I was obliged to handle the question quietly at first — to ask them “if they admitted the French were a brave and warlike people!” “Yes, certainly.” “Do you think you could better defend yourselves against invasion than the people of France?” “Well, no; but we'd make it pretty hard business for the Yankees.” “Suppose the Yankees, as you call them, come with such preponderance of men and materiel, that they are three to your one, will you not be forced to submit?” “Never.” “Then either you are braver, better disciplined, more warlike than the people and soldiers of France, or you alone, of all the nations in the world, possess the means of resisting physical laws which prevail in war, as in other affairs of life.” “No. The Yankees are cowardly rascals. We have proved it by kicking and cuffing them till we are tired of it; besides, we know John Bull very well. He will make a great fuss about non-interference at first, but when he begins to want cotton he'll come off his perch.” I found this was the fixed idea everywhere. The doctrine of “cotton is king,” — to us who have not much considered the question a grievous delusion or an unmeaning babble — to them is a lively all-powerful faith without distracting heresies or schisms. They have in it enunciated their full belief, and indeed there is some truth in it, in so far as we year after year by the stimulants of coal, capital, and machinery have been working up a manufacture on which four or five millions of our population depend for bread and life, which cannot be carried on without the assistance of a nation, that may at any time refuse us an adequate supply, or be cut off from giving it by war.

Political economy, we are well aware, is a fine science, but its followers are capable of tremendous absurdities in practice. The dependence of such a large proportion of the English people on this sole article of American cotton is fraught with the utmost danger to our honor and to our prosperity. Here were these Southern gentlemen exulting in their power to control the policy of Great Britain, and it was small consolation to me to assure them they were mistaken; in case we did not act as they anticipated, it could not be denied Great Britain would plunge an immense proportion of her people — a nation of manufacturers — into pauperism, which must leave them dependent on the national funds, or more properly on the property and accumulated capital of the district.

About 8:30, P. M., a deep bell began to toll. “What is that?” "It's for all the colored people to clear out of the streets and go home. The guards will arrest any who are found out without passes in half an hour.” There was much noise in the streets, drums beating, men cheering, and marching, and the hotel is crammed full with soldiers.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 95-8

Joseph Green Cogswell to George Ticknor, April 29, 1861

NEW YORK, April 29, 1861

. . . The humiliating condition to which Southern insolence and ruffianism have reduced us has preyed upon me greatly. I never wished to be young again until now, and, old as I am, I would have volunteered with any adequate number to go down and force a way through Baltimore, by laying it in ruins, if it could have been done in no other way. It was no disgrace to have the lawful authority of the country fallen upon by a mob, for that might happen under the strongest government. It is an indelible one to have allowed the mob to keep up the obstruction for days, between every part of the country and the capital of it. If it is not soon wiped out I shall be ashamed to own that I am an American.

The course which has been pursued by the South has changed all my feelings towards them. If they had taken the ground, that they had a right to secede if such was the clear and express will of the people, and maintained the right like honest men, I, for one, would have said, “Go, you shall have what fairly belongs to you” — but to buccaneers I would give no answer except from the mouth of the cannon.¹

Out of all this evil great good will come. The Northern States will be more united, the principle of unlicensed democracy will be checked, our vainglorious boasting will be silenced, and the practical acknowledgment that Cotton is King will no more be heard. I firmly believe that the substantial and permanent prosperity of the North was secured by the first gun that was fired at Fort Sumpter, and the rapid decline of the South will date from the same event. I rejoice to find that Massachusetts has come up so nobly to the rescue

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1 In connection with this strong expression of feeling, it is pleasant to be allowed to present the testimony of a lady whose relations with different parts of the country, as well as her high standing in society, and refined estimate of the demands of good breeding, entitle her words to be accepted and highly valued. In a note written after Mr. Cogswell's death, Mrs. Gilpin of Philadelphia speaks of “His information on all subjects of conversation so correct and extended, and his manners so mild and unobtrusive, with great delicacy of feeling for others. This,” she goes on to say, “I particularly observed during the war, as he was often my guest during that unfortunate period, when, from the peculiarity of my own position, Southern ladies and gentlemen were often with us.  No word ever escaped his lips to wound the feelings of any, and at the same time he was known to be firm in his own opinion. He avoided argument or heated discussion on the merits of the war question, and gave to all around him a beautiful example of forbearance, with the most kindly feeling for those whom I knew he thought in the wrong.”

SOURCE: Anna Eliot Ticknor, Editor, Life of Joseph Green Cogswell as Sketched in His Letters, p. 286-7

Charles Russell Lowell to Anna Cabot Jackson Lowell, January 27, 1861

Mt. Savage, [maryland,] Jan. 27, '61.

Living in a border state, politics are personally too interesting for me to enjoy the papers. It is hard to see clearly, but I fear Phillips was more than half right in his denunciation of Seward's speech; it was certainly a stultification of his previous course, more worthy of a political dodger than a statesman. The best explanation I have seen of it, is that it was the change of foot from offensive to defensive. The speech may save the Union, but I will never give its author my vote for any high office. We want higher thinking than that in times like the present. I fear the London “Times” is right in saying that the salt and savour of the Union is gone out of it, no matter how the event turns. One thing is clear, that the South have struck a blow at their Cotton King which he will never get well over. The mischief is already done. Cotton must and will be raised elsewhere, too. Whether or no the agitators succeed in their political game of brag, it is certain they will repent hereafter the damage to their material interests in the Union or out of it. Have you seen South Carolina's tax-laws? they are as ruinous to trade or manufactures as Duke Alva's laws in Holland.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 192-3