Sir William Howard Russell

“ Whoever raises it hereafter, if it be not decided now, must expect to meet the deadly animosity which is displayed toward the North. The success of the South—if it can succeed—must lead to complications and results in other parts of the world, for which neither it nor Europe is now prepared. Of one thing there can be no doubt—a slave state cannot long exist without a slave trade. The poor whites who have won the fight will demand their share of the spoils. The land is abundant, and all that is wanted to give them fortunes is a supply of slaves. ”

“ Once, as a large fish came gamboling along the surface close at hand, a great gleam of white shot up in the waves beneath, and a boiling whirl, marked with a crimson pool, which gradually melted off in the tide, showed where a monster shark had taken down a part of his breakfast. “That’s a ground sheark,” quoth the skipper; “there’s quite a many of them about here.” Porpoises passed by in a great hurry for Pensacola, and now and then a turtle showed his dear little head above the enviable fluid which he honored with his presence. ”

“ In the evening I started, by railroad, for the city of Memphis, in Mississippi. There was a sleeping-car on the train, but the flying-bug and the creature less volatile, more pungent and persistent, which bears its name, murdered sleep; and when Monday morning came, I was glad to arise and get into one of the carriages, although it was full of noisy soldiers, bound to the camp at Corinth, in the state of Mississippi, who had been drinking whiskey all night, and were now screaming for water and howling like demons. ”

“ In a space of the floor unoccupied by machinery some fifteen women and as many men were assembled, and four couples were dancing a kind of Irish jig to the music of the negro musicians—a double shuffle and a thumping ecstasy, with loose elbows, pendulous paws, and angulated knees, heads thrown back, and backs arched inwards—a glazed eye, intense solemnity of mien, worthy of the minuet in Don Giovanni. At this time of year there is no work done in the sugar-house, but when the crushing and boiling are going on the labor is intense, and all the hands work in gangs night and day ”

“ Even the good cheer and comfort of the General Quitman could not reconcile me to the eternal beating of steam drums, blowing of whistles, bumping at landings, and the general oppression of levees, clearings and plantations, which marked the course of the river, and I was not sorry next morning when Vicksburgh came in sight, on the left bank of the giant stream—a city on a hill, not very large, be-steepled, be-cupolaed, large-hoteled. Here lives a man who has been the pioneer of hotels in the West, and who has now established himself in a big caravansery, which he rules in a curious fashion. ”

“ As we pass the row of cars, most of them freight wagons, we are hailed with shouts and yells in every key by the disbanded volunteers, who seem a youngish, poorly-clad, and undersized lot, though noisy as a street mob.
After Manchac, the road begins to creep up toward terra firma, and before nightfall there was a change from cypresses and swamp laurels to pines and beeches, and we inhale the purer atmosphere of dry land, with an occasional whiff of resinous fragrance, that dispels the fever-tainted suggestions of the swamp below. There we only breathed to live. Here we seem to live to breathe. ”

“ Assuredly the New England demon, who has been persecuting the South until its intolerable cruelty and insolence forced her, in a spasm of agony, to rend her chains asunder. The New Englander must have something to persecute, and as he has hunted down all his Indians, burnt all his witches, and persecuted all his opponents to the death, he invented Abolitionism as the sole resource left to him for the gratification of his favorite passion. ”

“ There is nothing in all the dark caves of human passion so cruel and deadly as the hatred the South Carolinians profess for the Yankees. That hatred has been swelling for years till it is the very life-blood of the state. It has set South Carolina to work steadily to organize her resources for the struggle which she intended to provoke if it did not come in the course of time. ”

“ Hoisting one of our only two table-cloths to the masthead as a flag of truce, we dropped slowly with the tide through the channel that runs parallel to one face of Fort Pickens. The wind favored us but little, and the falling breeze enabled all on board to inspect deliberately the seeming artistic preparations for the threatened attack which frowns and bristles from three miles of forts and batteries arrayed around the slight indenture opposite. ”

“ Here is the favored land—alas! it is a fever-land, too—of sugar-cane and Indian corn. To those who have very magnificent conceptions of the Mississippi, founded on mere arithmetical computations of leagues, or vague geographical data, it may be astonishing, but it is nevertheless true, the Mississippi is artificial for many hundreds of miles. Nature has, of course, poured out the waters, but man has made the banks. By a vast system of raised embankments, called levees, the river is constrained to abstain from overflowing the swamps, now drained, and green with wealth-producing crops. ”

“ The wayfarer who confides in the maps of a strange country, or who should rely upon even the guide-books of the United States, which still lack a Murray or a Bradshaw, may be at times embarrassed by insuperable hills and innavigable rivers. When, however, I saw the three towering stories of the high-pressure steamer Southern Republic, on board of which we tumbled down the steep bank of the Alabama river at Montgomery, any such misgivings vanished from my mind. ”

“ In this part of Mississippi the secessionist feeling was not so overpowering at first as it has been since the majority declared itself, but the expression of feeling is now all one way. The rage of Southern sentiment is to me inexplicable, making every allowance for Southern exaggeration. It is sudden, hot, and apparently as causeless as summer lightning. From every place I touched at along the Mississippi, a large portion of the population has gone forth to fight, or is preparing to do so. The whispers which rise through the storm are few and feeble. ”

“ I have frequently had occasion to remark the curious operation of the doctrine of state rights on the minds of the people; but an examination of the institutions of the country as they actually exist leads to the inference that, where the tyranny of the majority is at once irresponsible and cruel, it is impossible for any man, where the doctrine prevails, to resist it with safety or success. It is the inevitable result of the action of this majority, as it operates in America, first to demoralize and finally to absorb the minority ”

“ Corn is abundant. The vast plains are rich with crops, or are ready to yield to the tilth. A city worthy of such a name rises above the waters of the sea-like lake whose waves roll from the boundless horizon in crisping foam on the smooth sandy beach. The pure clear air invigorates the frame, weakened by the warm clammy breath of the South. ”

“ The gray swamp yields to an open savanna, beyond which, upon the left, a straggling line of sparse trees skirts the left bank of the Mississippi, and soon after the broad expanse of Lake Pontchartrain appears within gunshot of our right, only separated from the road by a hundred yards or more of rush-covered prairie, which seems but a feeble barrier against the caprices of so extensive a sheet of water, subject to the influences of wind and tide. ”

“ Pettus, the governor of the state of Mississippi, according to invitation, and found him in the state-house, in a very poor room, with broken windows and ragged carpets, and dilapidated furniture. He is a grim, silent man, tobacco-ruminant, abrupt-speeched, firmly believing that the state of society in which he exists, wherein there are monthly foul murders perpetrated at the very seat of government, is the most free and civilized in the world. He is easy of access to all, and men sauntered in and out of his office just as they would walk into a public-house. ”

“ I am now, however, dealing with South Carolina, which has been the fons et origo of the secession doctrines and their development into the full life of the Confederate States. The whole foundation on which South Carolina rests is cotton and a certain amount of rice; or rather she bases her whole fabric on the necessity which exists in Europe for those products of her soil, believing and asserting, as she does, that England and France cannot and will not do without them. Cotton, without a market, is so much flocculent matter encumbering the ground. ”

“ There is a steep high bank above us, and while dusky forms are flitting to and fro with food for our furnace, we survey a long stair-way ascending the bank at a sharp angle in a cut, which is lost in the sheds that crown the eminence over-head. This stair is flanked on either side by the bars of an iron tram-way, up which freight is hauled when landed, and parallel to it is a wooden slide, down which bales of cotton and sacks of corn are shot upon the steamer. ”

“ Punctuality is reputed a rare virtue in the river steamers of the West and South, and seldom leave their wharves until they have bagged a fair complement of passengers, although steaming up and ringing gongs and bells every afternoon for a week or more before their departure, as if travelers were to be swarmed like bees. ”

“ As the commodore entered the redan, the guns of the fort broke out into a long salute, and the band at the gate struck up almost as noisy a welcome. Inside, the parade presented a scene of life and animation very unlike the silence of the city we had left. Men were busy clearing out the casemates, rolling away stores and casks of ammunition and provisions, others were at work at the gin and shears, others building sand-bag traverses to guard the magazine doors, as though expecting an immediate attack. ”

“ When he sent orders to the New Orleans banks, some time ago, to suspend specie payment, he exercised a power which could not be justified by any reading of the Southern constitution. All men applauded. The President of the United States is far from receiving any such support or confidence, and it need not be said any act of his, of the same nature as that of Mr. Davis, would have created an immense outcry against him. But the South has all the unanimity of a conspiracy, and its unanimity is not greater than its confidence. One is rather tired of endless questions, “Who can conquer such men?” ”

“ As we cleave the glassy surface of the black water the timber-clad banks seem to hem us in more closely, and to shut up the vista before us, and while we glide down with a rapidity which would need but the roar of the rapids to prefigure a cataract beyond, we yield to the caprice of fancy, instituting comparisons between the dark perspective ahead and the mystery of the future. ”

“ If their facts and statistics are accurate, there can be no doubt of the justice of their deductions on many points; but they can scarcely be correct in assuming that they will bring the United States to destruction by cutting off from Lowell the 600,000 bales of cotton which she usually consumes. One great fact, however, is unquestionable—the government has in its hands the souls, the wealth, and the hearts of the people. They will give anything—money, labor, life itself—to carry out their theories. ”

“ This question of price is introduced incidentally in reference to the treatment of negroes. It has often been said to me that no one will ill-use a creature worth £300 or £400, but that is not a universal rule. Much depends on temper, and many a hunting-field could show that if value be a guarantee for good usage, the slave is more fortunate than his fellow chattel, the horse. If the growth of sugar-cane, cotton and corn, be the great end of man’s mission on earth, and if all masters were like Governor Roman, slavery might be defended as a natural and innocuous institution. ”

“ An excellent lunch was spread in the casemated bomb-proof which served as the colonel’s quarter, and before sunset the party were steaming toward Savannah through a tide-way full of leaping sturgeon and porpoises, leaving the garrison intent on the approach of a large ship, which had her sails aback off the bar, and hoisted the stars and stripes, but which turned out to be nothing more formidable than a Liverpool cotton ship. It will take some hard blows before Georgia is driven to let go her grip of Fort Pulaski. The channel is very narrow, and passes close to the guns of the fort. ”

“ The Southerners are firmly convinced that they have “kept the North going” by the prices they have paid for the protected articles of their manufacture, and they hold out to Sheffield, to Manchester, to Leeds, to Wolverhampton, to Dudley, to Paris, to Lyons, to Bordeaux, to all the centres of English manufacturing life, as of French taste and luxury, the tempting baits of new and eager and hungry markets. ”

“ For five weeks the Tennessee troops under General Pillow, who is at the head of the forces of the state, have been working at a series of curious intrenchments, which are supposed to represent an intrenched camp, and which look like an assemblage of mud beaver-dams. In a word, they are so complicated that they would prove exceedingly troublesome to the troops engaged in their defence, and it would require very steady, experienced regulars to man them so as to give proper support to each other. The maze of breastworks, of flanking parapets, of parapets for field-pieces, is overdone. ”

“ Of the fustian about dying in their tracks and fighting till every man, woman and child is exterminated, there is a great deal too much, but they really believe that the fate which Poland could not avert, to which France, as well as the nations she overran, bowed the head, can never reach them. With their faithful negroes to raise their corn, sugar and cotton while they are at the wars, and England and France to take the latter and pay them for it, they believe they can meet the American world in arms. ”

“ There is an air of fertile desolation that prevails in no other cultivated land. The regularity of the cane, its gardenlike freedom from grass or weeds, and the ad unguem finish and evenness of the furrows, would seem the work of nocturnal fairies, did we not realize the system of “gang labor” exemplified in a field we at length reach, where some thirty men and women were giving with the hoe the last polish to the earth around the cane, which would not be molested again until gathered for the autumnal banquet of the rolling-mills. ”

“ There are some who cling to the idea that there will be no war after all, but no one believes that the South will ever go back of its own free will, and the only reason that can be given by those who hope rather than think in that way is to be found in the faith that the North will accept some mediation, and will let the South go in peace. ”

“ If an English agriculturist could see six thousand acres of the finest land in one field, unbroken by hedge or boundary, and covered with the most magnificent crops of tasselling Indian corn and sprouting sugar-cane, as level as a billiard-table, he would surely doubt his senses. ”

“ There are doubts arising in my mind respecting the number of armed men actually in the field in the South, and the amount of arms in the possession of the Federal forces. The constant advertisements and appeals for “a few more men to complete” such and such companies furnish some sort of evidence that men are still wanting. But a painful and startling insight into the manner in which “volunteers” have been sometimes obtained has been afforded to me at New Orleans. In no country in the world have outrages on British subjects been so frequent and so wanton as in the States of America. ”