April 19th.—An exceeding hot day. The sun pours on the broad sandy street of Charleston with immense power, and when the wind blows down the thoroughfare it sends before it vast masses of hot dust. The houses are generally detached, surrounded by small gardens, well provided with verandas to protect the windows from the glare, and are sheltered with creepers and shrubs and flowering plants, through which flit humming-birds and fly-catchers. In some places the streets and roadways are covered with planking, and as long as the wood is sound they are pleasant to walk or drive upon.
I paid a visit to the markets; the stalls are presided over by negroes, male and female; the colored people engaged in selling and buying are well clad; the butchers’ meat by no means tempting to the eye, but the fruit and vegetable stalls well filled. Fish is scarce at present, as the boats are not permitted to proceed to sea lest they should be whipped up by the expected Yankee cruisers, or carry malcontents to communicate with the enemy. Around the flesh-market there is a skirling crowd of a kind of turkey-buzzard; these are useful as scavengers and are protected by law. They do their nasty work very zealously, descending on the offal thrown out to them with the peculiar crawling, puffy, soft sort of flight which is the badge of all their tribe, and contending with wing and beak against the dogs which dispute the viands with the harpies. It is curious to watch the expression of their eyes as with outstretched necks they peer down from the ledge of the market roof on the stalls and scrutinize the operations of the butchers below. They do not prevent a disagreeable odor in the vicinity of the markets, nor are they deadly to a fine and active breed of rats.
Much drumming and marching through the streets to-day. One very ragged regiment which had been some time at Morris’ Island halted in the shade near me, and I was soon made aware they consisted, for the great majority, of Irishmen. The Emerald Isle, indeed, has contributed largely to the population of Charleston. In the principal street there is a large and tine red sandstone building with the usual Greek-Yankee-composite portico, over which is emblazoned the crownless harp and the shamrock wreath proper to a St. Patrick’s Hall, and several Roman Catholic churches also attest the Hibernian presence.
I again called on General Beauregard, and had a few moments’ conversation with him. He told me that an immense deal depended on Virginia, and that as yet the action of the people in that State had not been as prompt as might have been hoped, for the President’s proclamation was a declaration of war against the South, in which all would be ultimately involved. He is going to Montgomery to confer with Mr. Jefferson Davis. I have no doubt there is to be some movement made in Virginia. Whiting is under orders to repair there, and he hinted that he had a task of no common nicety and difficulty to perform. He is to visit the forts which had been seized on the coast of North Carolina, and probably will have a look at Portsmouth. It is incredible that the Federal authorities should have neglected to secure this place.
Later I visited the Governor of the State, Mr. Pickens, to whom I was conducted by Colonel Lucas, his aide-de-camp. His palace was a very humble shed-like edifice with large rooms, on the doors of which were pasted pieces of paper with sundry high-reading inscriptions, such as “Adjutant General’s Dept., Quartermaster-General’s Dept., Attorney General of State,” &c., and through the doorways could be seen men in uniform, and grave, earnest people busy at their desks with pen, ink, paper, tobacco, and spittoons. The governor, a stout man, of a big head, and a large important looking face, with watery eyes and flabby features, was seated in a barrack-like room, furnished in the plainest way and decorated by the inevitable portrait of George Washington, close to which was the “Ordinance of Secession of the State of South Carolina” of last year.
Governor Pickens is considerably laughed at by his subjects, and I was amused by a little middy, who described with much unction the governor’s alarm on his visit to Fort Pickens, when he was told that there were a number of live shells and a quantity of powder still in the place. He is said to have commenced one of his speeches with “Born insensible to fear,” &c. To me the governor was very courteous, but I confess the heat of the day did not dispose me to listen with due attention to a lecture on political economy with which he favored me. I was told, however, that he had practiced with success on the late Czar when he was United States Minister to St. Petersburg, and that he does not suffer his immediate staff to escape from having their minds improved on the relations of capital to labor, and on the vicious condition of capital and labor in the North.
“In the North, then, you will perceive, Mr. Russell, they have maximized the hostile condition of opposed interests in the accumulation of capital and in the employment of labor, whilst we in the South, by the peculiar excellence of our domestic institution, have minimized their opposition and maximized the identity of interest by the investment of capital in the laborer himself,” and so on, or something like it. I could not help remarking it struck me there was “another difference betwixt the North and the South which he had overlooked—the capital of the North is represented by gold, silver, notes, and other exponents, which are good all the world over and are recognized as such; your capital has power of locomotion, and ceases to exist the moment it crosses a geographical line.” “That remark, sir,”said the Governor, “requires that I should call your attention to the fundamental principles on which the abstract idea of capital should be formed. In order to clear the ground, let us first inquire into the soundness of the ideas put forward by your Adam Smith ” I had to look at my watch and to promise I would come back to be illuminated on some other occasion, and hurried off to keep an engagement with myself to write letters by the next mail.
The Governor writes very good proclamations, nevertheless, and his confidence in South Carolina is unbounded. “If we stand alone, sir, we must win. They can’t whip us.” A gentleman named Pringle, for whom I had letters of introduction, has come to Charleston to ask me to his plantation, but there will be no boat from the port till Monday, and it is uncertain then whether the blockading vessels, of which we hear so much, may not be down by that time.
