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