It is announced positively that the authorities in Pensacola
and Charleston have refused to allow any further supplies to be sent to Fort
Pickens, the United States fleet in the Gulf, and to Fort Sumter. Everywhere
the Southern leaders are forcing on a solution with decision and energy, whilst
the Government appears to be helplessly drifting with the current of events,
having neither bow nor stern, neither keel nor deck, neither rudder, compass,
sails, or steam. Mr. Seward has declined to receive or hold any intercourse
with the three gentlemen called Southern Commissioners, who repaired to
Washington accredited by the Government and Congress of the Seceding States now
sitting at Montgomery, so that there is no channel of mediation or means of
adjustment left open. I hear, indeed, that Government is secretly preparing
what force it can to strengthen the garrison at Pickens, and to reinforce
Sumter at any hazard; but that its want of men, ships, and money compels it to
temporize, lest the Southern authorities should forestall their designs by a
vigorous attack on the enfeebled forts.
There is, in reality, very little done by New York to
support or encourage the Government in any decided policy, and the journals are
more engaged now in abusing each other, and in small party aggressive warfare,
than in the performance of the duties of a patriotic press, whose mission at
such a time is beyond all question the resignation of little differences for
the sake of the whole country, and an entire devotion to its safety, honor, and
integrity. But the New York people must have their intellectual drams every
morning, and it matters little what the course of Government may be, so long as
the aristocratic democrat can be amused by ridicule of the Great Rail Splitter,
or a vivid portraiture of Mr. Horace Greeley's old coat, hat, breeches, and
umbrella. The coarsest personalities are read with gusto, and attacks of a kind
which would not have been admitted into the “Age” or “Satirist” in their worst
days, form the staple leading articles of one or two of the most largely circulated
journals in the city. “Slang” in its worst Americanized form is freely used in
sensation headings and leaders, and a class of advertisements which are not
allowed to appear in respectable English papers, have possession of columns of
the principal newspapers, few, indeed, excluding them. It is strange, too, to
see in journals which profess to represent the civilization and intelligence of
the most enlightened and highly educated people on the face of the earth,
advertisements of sorcerers, wizards, and fortunetellers by the score — “wonderful
clairvoyants,” “the seventh child of a seventh child,” “mesmeristic
necromancers,” and the like, who can tell your thoughts as soon as you enter
the room, can secure the affections you prize, give lucky numbers in lotteries,
and make everybody's fortunes but their own. Then there are the most impudent
quack programmes — very doubtful “personals”
addressed to “the young lady with black hair and blue eyes, who got out
of the omnibus at the corner of 7th Street” — appeals by “a lady about to be
confined” to “any respectable person who is desirous of adopting a child:” all
rather curious reading for a stranger, or for a family.
It is not to be expected, of course, that New York is a very
pure city, for more than London or Paris it is the sewer of nations. It is a
city of luxury also — French and Italian cooks and milliners, German and
Italian musicians, high prices, extravagant tastes and dressing, money readily
made, a life in, hotels, bar-rooms, heavy gambling, sporting, and
prize-fighting flourish here, and combine to lower the standard of the bourgeoisie
at all events. Where wealth is the sole aristocracy, there is great danger
of mistaking excess and profusion for elegance and good taste. To-day as I was
going down Broadway, some dozen or more of the most over-dressed men I ever saw
were pointed out to me as “sports;” that is, men who lived by gambling-houses
and betting on races; and the class is so numerous that it has its own
influence, particularly at elections, when the power of a hard-hitting prize-fighter
with a following makes itself unmistakably felt. Young America essays to look
like martial France in mufti, but the hat and the coat suited to the Colonel of
Carabiniers en retraite do not at all become the thin, tall, rather
long-faced gentlemen one sees lounging about Broadway. It is true, indeed, the
type, though not French, is not English. The characteristics of the American
are straight hair, keen, bright, penetrating eyes, and want of color in the
cheeks.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 26-8
