My Diary North and South – William Howard Russell

The Hudson.—Military school at West Point.—Return to New York.—Altered appearance of the city.—Misery and suffering.—Altered state of public opinion, as to the Union and towards Great Britain.

July 2nd.—At early dawn this morning, looking out of the sleeping car, I saw through the mist a broad, placid river on the right, and on the left high wooded banks running sharply into the stream, against the base of which the rails were laid. West Point, which is celebrated for its picturesque scenery, as much as for its military school, could not be seen through the fog, and I regretted time did not allow me to stop and pay a visit to the academy. I was obliged to content myself with the handiwork of some of the ex-pupils. The only camaraderie I have witnessed in America exists among the West Point men. It is to Americans what our great public schools are to young Englishmen. To take a high place at West Point is to be a first-class man, or wrangler. The academy turns out a kind of military aristocracy, and I have heard complaints that the Irish and Germans are almost completely excluded, because the nominations to West Point are obtained by political influence; and the foreign element, though powerful at the ballot box, has no enduring strength. The Murphies and Schmidts seldom succeed in shoving their sons into the American institution. North and South, I have observed, the old pupils refer everything military to West Point. “I was with Beauregard at West Point. He was three above me.” Or, ” M’Dowell and I were in the same class.” An officer is measured by what he did there, and if professional jealousies date from the state of common pupilage, so do lasting friendships. I heard Beauregard, Lawton, Hardee, Bragg, and others, speak of M’Dowell, Lyon, M’Clellan, and other men of the academy, as their names turned up in the Northern papers, evidently judging of them by the old school standard. The number of men who have been educated there greatly exceeds the modest requirements of the army. But there is likelihood of their being all in full work very soon.

At about nine a.m., the train reached New York, and in driving to the house of Mr. Duncan, who accompanied me from Niagara, the first thing which struck me was the changed aspect of the streets. Instead of peaceful citizens, men in military uniforms thronged the pathways, and such multitudes of United States’ flags floated from the windows and roofs of the houses as to convey the impression that it was a great holiday festival. The appearance of New York when I first saw it was very different. For one day, indeed, after my arrival, there were men in uniform to be seen in the streets, but they disappeared after St. Patrick had been duly honoured, and it was very rarely I ever saw a man in soldier’s clothes during the rest of my stay. Now, fully a third of the people carried arms, and were dressed in some kind of martial garb.

The walls are covered with placards from military companies offering inducements to recruits. An outburst of military tailors has taken place in the streets; shops are devoted to militia equipments; rifles, pistols, swords, plumes, long boots, saddle, bridle, camp beds, canteens, tents, knapsacks, have usurped the place of the ordinary articles of traffic. Pictures and engravings— bad, and very bad—of the “battles” of Big Bethel and Vienna, full of furious charges, smoke and dismembered bodies, have driven the French prints out of the windows. Innumerable “General Scotts” glower at you from every turn, making the General look wiser than he or any man ever was. Ellsworths in almost equal proportion, Grebles and Winthrops—the Union martyrs—and Tompkins, the temporary hero of Fairfax court-house.

The “flag of our country” is represented in a coloured engraving, the original of which was not destitute of poetical feeling, as an angry blue sky through which meteors fly streaked by the winds, whilst between the red stripes the stars just shine out from the heavens, the flag-staff being typified by a forest tree bending to the force of the blast. The Americans like this idea—to my mind it is significant of bloodshed and disaster. And why not! What would become of all these pseudo-Zouaves who have come out like an eruption over the States, and are in no respect, not even in their baggy breeches, like their great originals, if this war were not to go on? I thought I had had enough of Zouaves in New Orleans, but dîs aliter visum.

They are overrunning society, and the streets here, and the dress which becomes the broad-chested, stumpy, short-legged Celt, who seems specially intended for it, is singularly unbecoming to the tall and slightly-built American. Songs “On to glory,” “Our country,” new versions of “Hail Columbia,” which certainly cannot be considered by even American complacency a “happy land ” when its inhabitants are preparing to cut each other’s throats; of the “star-spangled banner,” are displayed in booksellers’ and music-shop windows, and patriotic sentences emblazoned on flags float from many houses. The ridiculous habit of dressing up children and young people up to ten and twelve years of age as Zouaves and vivandières has been caught up by the old people, and Mars would die with laughter if he saw some of the abdominous, be-spectacled light infantry men who are hobbling along the pavement.

There has been indeed a change in New York: externally it is most remarkable, but I cannot at all admit that the abuse with which I was assailed for describing the indifference which prevailed on my arrival was in the least degree justified. I was desirous of learning how far the tone of conversation” in the city” had altered, and soon after breakfast I went down Broadway to Pine Street and Wall Street. The street in all its length was almost draped with flags— the warlike character of the shops was intensified. In front of one shop window there was a large crowd gazing with interest at some object which I at last succeeded in feasting my eyes upon. A grey cap with a tinsel badge in front, and the cloth stained with blood was displayed, with the words, “Cap of Secession officer killed in action.” On my way I observed another crowd of women, some with children in their arms standing in front of a large house and gazing up earnestly and angrily at the windows. I found they were wives, mothers, and sisters, and daughters of volunteers who had gone off and left them destitute.

The misery thus caused has been so great that the citizens of New York have raised a fund to provide food, clothes, and a little money—a poor relief, in fact, for them, and it was plain they were much needed, though some of the applicants did not seem to belong to a class accustomed to seek aid from the public. This already! But Wall Street and Pine Street are bent on battle. And so this day, hot from the South and impressed with the firm resolve of the people, and finding that the North has been lashing itself into fury, I sit down and write to England, on my return from the city. “At present dismiss entirely the idea, no matter how it may originate, that there will be, or can be, peace, compromise, union, or secession, till war has determined the issue.”

As long as there was a chance that the struggle might not take place, the merchants of New York were silent, fearful of offending their Southern friends and connections, but inflicting infinite damage on their own government and misleading both sides. Their sentiments, sympathies, and business bound them with the South; and, indeed, till “the glorious uprising” the South believed New York was with them, as might be credited from the tone of some organs in the press, and I remember hearing it said by Southerners in Washington, that it was very likely New York would go out of the Union! When the merchants, however, saw that the South was determined to quit the Union, they resolved to avert the permanent loss of the great profits derived from their connection with the South by some present sacrifices. They rushed to the platforms—the battle-cry was sounded from almost very pulpit—flag raisings took place in every square, like the planting of the tree of liberty in France in 1848, and the oath was taken to trample Secession under foot, and to quench the fire of the Southern heart for ever.

The change in manner, in tone, in argument, is most remarkable. I met men to-day who last March argued coolly and philosophically about the right of Secession. They are now furious at the idea of such wickedness—furious with England, because she does not deny their own famous doctrine of the sacred right of insurrection. “We must maintain our glorious Union, sir.” “We must have a country.” “We cannot allow two nations to grow up on this Continent, sir.” “We must possess the entire control of the Mississippi.” These “musts,” and “can’ts,” and “won’ts,” are the angry utterances of a spirited people who have had their will so long that they at last believe it is omnipotent. Assuredly, they will not have it over the South without a tremendous and long-sustained contest, in which they must put forth every exertion, and use all the resources and superior means they so abundantly possess.

It is absurd to assert, as do the New York people, to give some semblance of reason to their sudden outburst, that it was caused by the insult to the flag at Sumter. Why, the flag had been fired on long before Sumter was attacked by the Charleston batteries! It had been torn down from United States’ arsenals and forts all over the South; and but for the accident which placed Major Anderson in a position from which he could not retire, there would have been no bombardment of the fort, and it would, when evacuated, have shared the fate of all the other Federal works on the Southern coast. Some of the gentlemen who are now so patriotic and Unionistic, were last March prepared to maintain that if the President attempted to reinforce Sumter or Pickens, he would be responsible for the destruction of the Union. Many journals in New York and out of it held the same doctrine.

One word to these gentlemen. I am pretty well satisfied that if they had always spoke, written, and acted as they do now, the people of Charleston would not have attacked Sumter so readily. The abrupt outburst of the North and the demonstration at New York filled the South, first with astonishment, and then with something like fear, which was rapidly fanned into anger by the press and the politicians, as well, as by the pride inherent in slaveholders.

I wonder what Mr. Seward will say when I get back to Washington. Before I left, he was of opinion—at all events, he stated—that all the States would come back, at the rate of one a month. The nature of the process was not stated; but we are told there are 250,000 Federal troops now under arms, prepared to try a new one.

Combined with the feeling of animosity to the rebels, there is, I perceive, a good deal of ill-feeling towards Great Britain. The Southern papers are so angry with us for the Order in Council closing British ports against privateers and their prizes, that they advise Mr. Rust and Mr. Yancey to leave Europe. We are in evil case between North and South. I met a reverend doctor, who is most bitter in his expressions towards us; and I dare say, Bishop and General Leonidas Polk, down South, would not be much better disposed. The clergy are active on both sides; and their flocks approve of their holy violence. One journal tells with much gusto of a blasphemous chaplain, a remarkably good rifle shot, who went into one of the skirmishes lately, and killed a number of rebels—the joke being in the fact, that each time he fired and brought down his man, he exclaimed, piously, “May Heaven have mercy on your soul!” One Father Mooney, who performed the novel act for a clergyman of “christening” a big gun at Washington the other day, wound up the speech he made on the occasion, by declaring “the echo of its voice would be sweet music, inviting the children of Columbia to share the comforts of his father’s home.” Can impiety and folly, and bad taste, go further?

I shall here briefly recapitulate what has occurred since the last mention of political events.

In the first place the South has been developing every day greater energy in widening the breach between it and the North, and preparing to fill it with dead; and the North, so far as I can judge, has been busy in raising up the Union as a nationality, and making out the crime of treason from the act of Secession. The South has been using conscription in Virginia, and is entering upon the conflict with unsurpassable determination. The North is availing itself of its greater resources and its foreign vagabondage and destitution to swell the ranks of its volunteers, and boasts of its enormous armies, as if it supposed conscripts well led do not fight better than volunteers badly officered. Virginia has been invaded on three points, one below and two above Washington, and passports are now issued on both sides.

The career open to the Southern privateers is effectually closed by the Duke of Newcastle’s notification that the British Government will not permit the crusiers of either side to bring their prizes into or condemn them in English ports; but, strange to say, the Northerners feel indignant against Great Britain for an act which deprives their enemy of an enormous advantage, and which must reduce their privateering to the mere work of plunder and destruction on the high seas. In the same way the North affects to consider the declaration of neutrality, and the concession of limited belligerent rights to the seceding States, as deeply injurious and insulting; whereas our course has, in fact, removed the greatest difficulty from the path of the Washington Cabinet, and saved us from inconsistencies and serious risks in our course of action.

It is commonly said, “What would Great Britain have done if we had declared ourselves neutral during the Canadian rebellion, or had conceded limited belligerent rights to the Sepoys?” as if Canada and Hindostan have the same relation to the British Crown that the seceding States had to the Northern States. But if Canada, with its parliament, judges, courts of law, and its people, declared it was independent of Great Britain; and if the Government of Great Britain, months after that declaration was made and acted upon, permitted the new State to go free, whilst a large number of her Statesmen agreed that Canada was perfectly right, we could find little fault with the United States’ Government for issuing a proclamation of neutrality the same as our own, when after a long interval of quiescence a war broke out between the two countries.

Secession was an accomplished fact months before Mr. Lincoln came into office, but we heard no talk of rebels and pirates till Sumter had fallen, and the North was perfectly quiescent—not only that—the people of wealth in New York were calmly considering the results of Secession as an accomplished fact, and seeking to make the best of it; nay, more, when I arrived in Washington some members of the Cabinet were perfectly ready to let the South go.

One of the first questions put to me by Mr. Chase in my first interview with him, was whether I thought a very injurious effect would be produced to the prestige of the Federal Government in Europe if the Northern States let the South have its own way, and told them to go in peace. “For my own part,” said he,” “I should not be averse to let them try it, for I believe they would soon find out their mistake.” Mr. Chase may be finding out his mistake just now. When I left England the prevalent opinion, as far as I could judge, was, that a family quarrel, in which the South was in the wrong, had taken place, and that it would be better to stand by and let the Government put forth its strength to chastise rebellious children. But now we see the house is divided against itself, and that the family are determined to set up two separate establishments. These remarks occur to me with the more force because I see the New York papers are attacking me because I described a calm in a sea which was afterwards agitated by a storm. “What a false witness is this,” they cry, “See how angry and how vexed is our Bermoothes, and yet the fellow says it was quite placid.”

I have already seen so many statements respecting my sayings, my doings, and my opinions, in the American papers, that I have resolved to follow a general rule, with few exceptions indeed, which prescribes as the best course to pursue, not so much an indifference to these remarks as a fixed purpose to abstain from the hopeless task of correcting them. The “Quicklys” of the press are incorrigible. Commerce may well be proud of Chicago. I am not going to reiterate what every Crispinus from the old country has said again and again concerning this wonderful place—not one word of statistics, of corn elevators, of shipping, or of the piles of buildings raised from the foundation by ingenious applications of screws. Nor am I going to enlarge on the splendid future of that which has so much present prosperity, or on the benefits to mankind opened up by the Illinois Central Railway. It is enough to say that by the borders of this lake there has sprung up in thirty years a wonderful city of fine streets, luxurious hotels, handsome shops, magnificent stores, great warehouses, extensive quays, capacious docks; and that as long as corn holds its own, and the mouths of Europe are open, and her hands full, Chicago will acquire greater importance, size, and wealth with every year. The only drawback, perhaps, to the comfort of the money-making inhabitants, and of the stranger within the gates, is to be found in the clouds of dust and in the unpaved streets and thoroughfares, which give anguish to horse and man.

I spent three days here writing my letters and repairing the wear and tear of my Southern expedition; and although it was hot enough, the breeze from the lake carried health and vigour to the frame, enervated by the sun of Louisiana and Mississippi. No need now to wipe the large drops of moisture from the languid brow lest they blind the eyes, nor to sit in a state of semi-clothing, worn out and exhausted, and tracing with moist hand imperfect characters on the paper.

I could not satisfy myself whether there was, as I have been told, a peculiar state of feeling in Chicago, which induced many people to support the Government of Mr. Lincoln because they believed it necessary for their own interests to obtain decided advantages over the South in the field, whilst they were opposed totis viribus to the genius of emancipation and to the views of the black Republicans. But the genius and eloquence of the little giant have left their impress on the facile mould of democratic thought, and he who argued with such acuteness and ability last March in Washington, in his own study, against the possibility, or at least the constitutional legality, of using the national forces, and the militia and volunteers of the Northern States, to subjugate the Southern people, carried away by the great bore which rushed through the placid North when Sumter fell, or perceiving his inability to resist its force, sprung to the crest of the wave, and carried to excess the violence of the Union reaction.

Whilst I was in the South I had seen his name in Northern papers with sensation headings and descriptions of his magnificent crusade for the Union in the west. I had heard his name reviled by those who had once been his warm political allies, and his untimely death did not seem to satisfy their hatred. His old foes in the North admired and applauded the sudden apostasy of their eloquent opponent, and were loud in lamentations over his loss. Imagine, then, how I felt when visiting his grave at Chicago, seeing his bust in many houses, or his portrait in all the shop-windows I was told that the enormously wealthy community of which he was the idol were permitting his widow to live in a state not far removed from penury.

“Senator Douglas, sir,” observed one of his friends to me, “died of bad whisky. He killed himself with it while he was stumping for the Union all over the country.” “Well,” I said, “I suppose, sir, the abstraction called the Union, for which by your own account he killed himself, will give a pension to his widow.” Virtue is its own reward, and so is patriotism, unless it takes the form of contracts.

As far as all considerations of wife, children, or family are concerned, let a man serve a decent despot, or even a constitutional country with an economising House of Commons, if he wants anything more substantial than lip-service. The history of the great men of America is full of instances of national ingratitude. They give more praise and less pence to their benefactors than any nation on the face of the earth. Washington got little, though the plundering scouts who captured Andre were well rewarded; and the men who fought during the War of Independence were long left in neglect and poverty, sitting in sackcloth and ashes at the doorsteps of the temple of liberty, whilst the crowd rushed inside to worship Plutus.

If a native of the British isles, of the natural ignorance of his own imperfections which should characterise him, desires to be subjected to a series of moral shower-baths, douches, and shampooing with a rough glove, let him come to the United States. In Chicago he will be told that the English people are fed by the beneficence of the United States, and that all the trade and commerce of England are simply directed to the one end of obtaining gold enough to pay the western States for the breadstuffs exported for our population.

We know what the South think of our dependence on cotton. The people of the east think they are striking a great blow at their enemy by the Morrill tariff, and I was told by a patriot in North Carolina, “Why, creation! if you let the Yankees shut up our ports, the whole of your darned ships will go to rot. Where will you get your naval stores from? Why, I guess in a year you could not scrape up enough of tarpentine in the whole of your country for Queen Victoria to paint her nursery-door with.”

Nearly one half of the various companies enrolled in this district are Germans, or are the descendants of German parents, and speak only the language of the old country; two-thirds of the remainder are Irish, or of immediate Irish descent; but it is said that a grand reserve of Americans born lies behind this avant garde, who will come into the battle should there ever be need for their services.

Indeed so long as the Northern people furnish the means of paying and equipping armies perfectly competent to do their work, and equal in numbers to any demands made for men, they may rest satisfied with the accomplishment of that duty, and with contributing from their ranks the great majority of the superior and even of the subaltern officers; but with the South it is far different. Their institutions have repelled immigration; the black slave has barred the door to the white free settler. Only on the seaboard and in the large cities are German and Irish to be found, and they to a man have come forward to fight for the South; but the proportion they bear to the native-born Americans who have rushed to arms in defence of their menaced borders, is of course far less than it is as yet to the number of Americans in the Northern States who have volunteered to fight for the Union.

I was invited before I left to visit the camp of a Colonel Turchin, who was described to me as a Russian officer of great ability and experience in European warfare, in command of a regiment consisting of Poles, Hungarians, and Germans, who were about to start for the seat of war; but I was only able to walk through his tents, where I was astonished at the amalgam of nations that constituted his battalion; though, on inspection, I am bound to say there proved to be an American element in the ranks which did not appear to have coalesced with the bulk of the rude and, I fear, predatory Cossacks of the Union. Many young men of good position have gone to the wars, although there was no complaint, as in Southern cities, that merchant’s offices have been deserted, and great establishments left destitute of clerks and working hands. In warlike operations, however, Chicago, with its communication open to the sea, its access to the head waters of the Mississippi, its intercourse with the marts of commerce and of manufacture, may be considered to possess greater belligerent power and strength than the great city of New Orleans; and there is much greater probability of Chicago sending its contingent to attack the Crescent City than there is of the latter being able to despatch a soldier within five hundred miles of its streets.

June 23rd.—The latest information which I received to-day 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 neighbourhood 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 neighbourhood. 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 unmistakeable swamp, were 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 brick-kiln, 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 Illonois 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 his 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 realise 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 for ever, 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 labour, 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 civilised.

There is a level modicum of comfort, which maybe 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 recognise the old types of European civilisation, 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 favouritisms; 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 ferretted 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 favourable 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 favour 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 whisky 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 unmistakeably 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 civilising centres which the Americans assert to be the homes of the most cultivated and intelligent communities in the world.

Next morning, just at dawn, I woke up and got out on the platform of the carriage, which is the favourite resort of smokers and their antithetics, those who love pure fresh air, notwithstanding the printed caution “It is dangerous to stand on the platform;” and under the eye of early morn saw spread around a flat sea-like expanse not yet warmed into colour and life by the sun. The line was no longer guarded from daring Secessionists by soldiers’ outposts, and small camps had disappeared. The train sped through the centre of the great verdant circle as a ship through the sea, leaving the rigid iron wake behind it tapering to a point at the horizon, and as the light spread over it the surface of the crisping corn waved in broad undulations beneath the breeze from east to west. This is the prairie indeed. Hereabouts it is covered with the finest crops, some already cut and stacked. Looking around one could see church spires rising in the distance from the white patches of houses, and by degrees the tracks across the fertile waste became apparent, and then carts and horses were seen toiling through the rich soil.

A large species of partridge or grouse appeared very abundant, and rose in flocks from the long grass at the side of the rail or from the rich carpet of flowers on the margin of the corn fields. They sat on the fence almost unmoved by the rushing engine, and literally swarmed along the line. These are called “prairie chickens” by the people, and afford excellent sport. Another bird about the size of a thrush, with a yellow breast and a harsh cry, I learned was “the sky-lark;” and apropos of the unmusical creature, I was very briskly attacked by a young lady patriot for finding fault with the sharp noise it made. “Oh, my! And you not to know that your Shelley loved it above all things! Didn’t he write some verses —quite beautiful, too, they are—to the sky-lark.” And so “the Britisher was dried up,” as I read in a paper afterwards of a similar occurrence.

At the little stations which occur at every few miles —there are some forty of them, at each of which the train stops, in 365 miles between Cairo and Chicago— the Union flag floated in the air; but we had left all the circumstance of this inglorious war behind us, and the train rattled boldly over the bridges across the rare streams, no longer in danger from Secession hatchets. The swamp had given place to the corn field. No black faces were turned up from the mowing and free white labour was at work, and the type of the labourers was German and Irish.

The Yorkshireman expatiated on the fertility of the land, and on the advantages it held out to the emigrant. But I observed all the lots by the side of the rail, and apparently as far as the eye could reach, were occupied. “Some of the very best land lies beyond on each side,” said he. “Out over there in the fat places is where we put our Englishmen.” By digging deep enough good water is always to be had, and coal can be carried from the rail, where it costs only 7s. or 8s. a ton. Wood there is little or none in the prairies, and it was rarely indeed a clump of trees could be detected, or anything higher than some scrub brushwood. These little communities which we passed were but the growth of a few years, and as we approached the Northern portion of the line we could see, as it were, the village swelling into the town, and the town spreading out to the dimensions of the city. “I daresay. Major,” says one of the passengers, “this gentleman never saw anything like these cities before. I’m told they’ve nothin’ like them in Europe?” “Bless you,” rejoined the Major, with a wink, “just leaving out London, Edinbro’, Paris, and Manchester, there’s nothing on earth to ekal them.” My friend, who is a shrewd fellow, by way of explanation of his military title, says, “I was a major once, a major in the Queen’s Bays, but they would put troop-sergeant before it them days.” Like many Englishmen he complains that the jealousy of native-born Americans effectually bars the way topolitical position of any naturalised citizen, and all the places are kept by the natives.

The scene now began to change gradually as we approached Chicago, the prairie subsided into swampy land, and thick belts of trees fringed the horizon; on our right glimpses of the sea could be caught through openings in the wood—the inland sea on which stands the Queen of the Lakes. Michigan looks broad and blue as the Mediterranean. Large farmhouses stud the country, and houses which must be the retreat of merchants and citizens of means; and when the train, leaving the land altogether, dashes out on a pier and causeway built along the borders of the lake, we see lines of noble houses, a fine boulevard, a forest of masts, huge isolated piles of masonry, the famed grain elevators by which so many have been hoisted to fortune, churches and public edifices, and the apparatus of a great city; and just at nine o’clock the train gives its last steam shout and comes to a standstill in the spacious station of the Central Illinois Company, and in half-an-hour more I am in comfortable quarters at the Richmond House, where I find letters waiting for me, by which it appears that the necessity for my being in Washington in all haste, no longer exists. The wary General who commands the army is aware that the advance to Richmond, for which so many journals are clamouring, would be attended with serious risk at present, and the politicians must be content to wait a battle longer.

June 22nd. An active man would soon go mad if he were confined in Cairo. A mudbank stretching along the course of a muddy river is not attractive to a pedestrian; and, as is the case in most of the Southern cities, there is no place round Cairo where a man can stretch his legs, or take an honest walk in the country. A walk in the country! The Americans have not an idea of what the thing means. I speak now only of the inhabitants of the towns of the States through which I have passed, as far as I have seen of them. The roads are either impassible in mud or knee-deep in dust. There are no green shady lanes, no sheltering groves, no quiet paths through green meadows beneath umbrageous trees. Off the rail there is a morass—or, at best, a clearing—full of stumps. No temptations to take a stroll. Down away South the planters ride or drive; indeed in many places the saunterer by the way-side would probably encounter an alligator, or disturb a society of rattle-snakes.

To-day I managed to struggle along the levee in a kind of sirocco, and visited the works at the extremity, which were constructed by an Hungarian named Waagner, one of the emigrés who came with Kossuth to the United States. I found him in a hut full of flies, suffering from camp diarrhœa, and waited on by Mr. O’Leary, who was formerly petty officer in our navy, served in the Furious in the Black Sea, and in the Shannon Brigade in India, now a lieutenant in the United States’ army, where I should say he feels himself very much out of place. The Hungarian and the Milesian were, however, quite agreed about the utter incompetence of their military friends around them, and the great merits of heavy artillery. “When I tell them here the way poor Sir William made us rattle about them 68-pounder guns, the poor ignorant creatures laugh at me—not one of them believes it.” “It is most astonishing,” says the colonel, “how ignorant they are; there is not one of these men who can trace a regular work. Of West-point men I speak not, but of the people about here, and they will not learn of me—from me who knows.” However, the works were well enough, strongly covered, commanded both rivers, and not to be reduced without trouble.

The heat drove me in among the flies of the crowded hotel, where Brigadier Prentiss is planning one of those absurd expeditions against a Secessionist camp at Commerce, in the State of Missouri, about two hours steaming up the river, and some twelve or fourteen miles inland. Cairo abounds in Secessionists and spies, and it is needful to take great precautions lest the expedition be known; but, after all, stores must be got ready, and put on board the steamers, and preparations must be made which cannot be concealed from the world. At dusk 700 men, supported by a six-pounder field-piece, were put on board the “City of Alton,” on which they clustered like bees in a swarm, and as the huge engine laboured up and down against the stream, and the boat swayed from side to side, I felt a considerable desire to see General Prentiss chucked into the stream for his utter recklessness in cramming on board one huge tinder-box, all fire and touchwood, so many human beings, who, in event of an explosion, or a shot in the boiler, or of a heavy musketry fire on the banks, would have been converted into a great slaughter-house. One small boat hung from her stern, and although there were plenty of river flats and numerous steamers, even the horses belonging to the field piece were crammed in among the men along the deck.

In my letter to Europe I made, at the time, some remarks by which the belligerents might have profited, and which at the time these pages are reproduced may strike them as possessing some value, illustrated as they have been by many events in the war. “A handful of horsemen would have been admirable to move in advance, feel the covers, and make prisoners for political or other purposes in case of flight; but the Americans persist in ignoring the use of horsemen, or at least in depreciating it, though they will at last find that they may shed much blood, and lose much more, before they can gain a victory without the aid of artillery and charges after the retreating enemy. From the want of cavalry, I suppose it is, the unmilitary practice of ‘scouting,’ as it is called here, has arisen. It is all very well in the days of Indian wars for footmen to creep about in the bushes, and shoot or be shot by sentries and pickets; but no civilised war recognises such means of annoyance as firing upon sentinels, unless in case of an actual advance or feigned attack on the line. No camp can be safe without cavalry videttes and pickets; for the enemy can pour in impetuously after the alarm has been given, as fast as the outlying footmen can run in. In feeling the way for a column, cavalry are invaluable, and there can be little chance of ambuscades or surprises where they are judiciously employed; but ‘scouting’ on foot, or adventurous private expeditions on horseback, to have a look at the enemy, can do, and will do, nothing but harm. Every day the papers contain accounts of ‘scouts’ being killed, and sentries being picked off. The latter is a very barbarous and savage practice; and the Russian, in his most angry moments, abstained from it. If any officer wishes to obtain information as to his enemy, he has two ways of doing it. He can employ spies, who carry their lives in their hands, or he can beat up their quarters by a proper reconnaissance on his own responsibility, in which, however, it would be advisable not to trust his force to a railway train.”

At night there was a kind of émeute in camp. The day, as I have said, was excessively hot, and on returning to their tents and huts from evening parade the men found the contractor who supplies them with water had not filled the barrels; so they forced the sentries, broke barracks after hours, mobbed their officers, and streamed up to the hotel, which they surrounded, calling out, “Water, water,” in chorus. The General came out, and got up on a rail: “Gentlemen,” said he, “it is not my fault you are without water. It’s your officers who are to blame; not me.” (“Groans for the Quartermaster,” from the men.) “If it is the fault of the contractor, I’ll see that he is punished. I’ll take steps at once to see that the matter is remedied. And now, gentlemen, I hope you’ll go back to your quarters;” and the gentlemen took it into their heads very good-humouredly to obey the suggestion, fell in, and marched back two deep to their huts.

As the General was smoking his cigar before going to bed, I asked him why the officers had not more control over the men. “Well,” said he, “the officers are to blame for all this. The truth is, the term for which these volunteers enlisted is drawing to a close; and they have not as yet enrolled themselves in the United States’ army. They are merely volunteer regiments of the State of Illinois. If they were displeased with anything, therefore, they might refuse to enter the service or to take fresh engagements: and the officers would find themselves suddenly left without any men; they therefore curry favour with the privates, many of them, too, having an eye to the votes of the men when the elections of officers in the new regiments are to take place.”

The contractors have commenced plunder on a gigantic scale; and their influence with the authorities of the State is so powerful, there is little chance of punishing them. Besides, it is not considered expedient to deter contractors, by too scrupulous an exactitude, in coming forward at such a trying period; and the Quartermaster’s department, which ought to be the most perfect, considering the number of persons connected with transport and carriage is in a most disgraceful and inefficient condition. I told the General that one of the Southern leaders proposed to hang any contractor who was found out in cheating the men, and that the press cordially approved of the suggestion. “I am afraid,” said he, “if any such proposal was carried out here, there would scarcely be a contractor left throughout the States.” Equal ignorance is shown by the medical authorities of the requirements of an army. There is not an ambulance or cacolet of any kind attached to this camp; and, as far as I could see, not even a litter was sent on board the steamer which has started with the expedition.

Although there has scarcely been a fought field or anything more serious than the miserable skirmishes of Shenck and Butler, the pressure of war has already told upon the people. The Cairo paper makes an urgent appeal to the authorities to relieve the distress and pauperism which the sudden interruption of trade has brought upon so many respectable citizens. And when I was at Memphis the other day, I observed a public notice in the journals, that the magistrates of the city would issue orders for money to families left in distress by the enrolment of the male members for military service. When General Scott, sorely against his will, was urged to make preparations for an armed invasion of the seceded states in case it became necessary, he said it would need some hundreds of thousands of men and many millions of money to effect that object. Mr. Seward, Mr Chase, and Mr. Lincoln laughed pleasantly at this exaggeration, but they have begun to find by this time the old general was not quite so much in the wrong.

In reference to the discipline maintained in the camp, I must admit that proper precautions are used to prevent spies entering the lines. The sentries are posted closely and permit no one to go in without a pass in the day and a countersign at night. A conversation with General Prentiss in the front of the hotel was interrupted this evening by an Irishman, who ran past us towards the camp, hotly pursued by two policemen. The sentry on duty at the point of the lines close to us brought him up by the point of the bayonet. “Who goes tere?” “A friend, shure your honour; I’m a friend.” “Advance three paces and give the countersign.” “I don’t know it, I tell you. Let me in, let me in.” But the German was resolute, and the policemen now coming up in hot pursuit, seized the culprit, who resisted violently, till General Prentiss rose from his chair and ordered the guard, who had turned out, to make a prisoner of the soldier and hand him over to the civil power, for which the man seemed to be most deeply grateful. As the policemen were walking him off, he exclaimed, “Be quiet wid ye, till I spake a word to the Giniral,” and then bowing and chuckling with drunken gravity, he said, “an’ indeed, Giniral, I’m much obleeged to ye altogither for this kindness. Long life to ye. We’ve got the better of that dirty German. Hoora’ for Giniral Prentiss.” He preferred a chance of more whisky in the police office and a light punishment to the work in camp and a heavy drill in the morning. An officer who was challenged by a sentry the other evening, asked him, “do you know the countersign yourself?” “No, sir, it’s not nine o’clock and they have not given it out yet.” Another sentry who stopped a man because he did not know the countersign. The fellow said, “I dare say you don’t know it yourself.” “That’s a lie,” he exclaimed, “it’s Plattsburgh.” “Plattsburgh it is, sure enough,” said the other, and walked on without further parley.

The Americans, Irish, and Germans, do not always coincide in the phonetic value of each letter in the passwords, and several difficulties have occurred in consequence. An incautious approach towards the posts at night is attended with risk; for the raw sentries are very quick on the trigger. More fatal and serious injuries have been inflicted on the Federals by themselves than by the enemy. “I declare to you, sir, the way the boys touched off their irons at me going home to my camp last night, was just like a running fight with the Ingins. I was a little ‘tight,’ and didn’t mind it a cuss.”

June 21st. Verily I would be sooner in the Coptic Cairo, narrow streeted, dark bazaared, many flied, much vexed by donkeys and by overland route passengers, than the horrid tongue of land which licks the muddy margin of the Ohio and the Mississippi. The thermometer at 100° in the shade before noon indicates nowhere else such an amount of heat and suffering, and yet prostrate as I was, it was my fate to argue that England was justified in conceding belligerent rights to the South, and that the attitude of neutrality we had assumed in this terrible quarrel is not in effect an aggression on the United States; and here is a difference to be perceived between the North and the South.

The people of the seceding States, aware in their consciences that they have been most active in their hostility to Great Britain, and whilst they were in power were mainly responsible for the defiant, irritating, and insulting tone commonly used to us by American statesmen, are anxious at the present moment, when so much depends on the action of foreign countries, to remove all unfavourable impressions from our minds by declarations of good will, respect, and admiration, not quite compatible with the language of their leaders in times not long gone by. The North, as yet unconscious of the loss of power, and reared in a school of menace and violent assertion of their rights regarding themselves as the whole of the United States, and animated by their own feeling of commercial and political opposition to Great Britain, maintain the high tone of a people who have never known let or hindrance in their passions, and consider it an outrage that the whole world does not join in active sympathy for a government which in its brief career has contrived to affront every nation in Europe with which it had any dealings.

If the United States have astonished France by their ingratitude, they have certainly accustomed England to their petulance, and one can fancy the satisfaction with which the Austrian Statesmen who remember Mr. Webster’s despatch to Mr. Hulsemann, contemplate the present condition of the United States in the face of an insurrection of these sovereign and independent States which the Cabinet at Washington stigmatises as an outbreak of rebels and traitors to the royalty of the Union.

During my short sojourn in this country I have never yet met any person who could show me where the sovereignty of the Union resides. General Prentiss, however, and his Illinois volunteers, are quite ready to fight for it.

In the afternoon the General drove me round the camps in company with Mr. Washburne, Member of Congress, from Illinois, his staff and a party of officers, among whom was Mr. Oglesby, colonel of a regiment of State Volunteers, who struck me by his shrewdness, simple honesty, and zeal. (Since died of wounds received in action.) He told me that he had begun life in the utmost obscurity, but that somehow or other he got into a lawyer’s office, and there, by hard drudgery, by mother wit, and industry, notwithstanding a defective education, he had raised himself not only to independence but to such a position that 1000 men had gathered at his call and selected one who had never led a company in his life to be their colonel; in fact, he is an excellent orator of the western school, and made good homely, telling speeches to his men.

“I’m not as good as your Frenchmen of the schools of Paris, nor am I equal to the Russian colonels I met at St. Petersburg, who sketched me out how they had beaten you Britishers at Sebastopol,” said he; “but I know I can do good straight fighting with my boys when I get a chance. There is a good deal in training, to be sure, but nature tells too. Why I believe I would make a good artillery officer if I was put to it. General, you heard how I laid one of them guns the other day and touched her off with my own hand and sent the ball right into a tree half-a-mile away.” The Colonel evidently thought he had by that feat proved his fitness for the command of a field battery. One of the German officers who was listening to the lively old man’s talk, whispered to me, “Dere is a good many of tese colonels in dis camp.”

At each station the officers came out of their tents, shook hands all round, and gave an unfailing invitation to get down and take a drink, and the guns on the General’s approach fired salutes, as though it was a time of profoundest peace. Powder was certainly more plentiful than in the Confederate camps, where salutes are not permitted unless by special order on great occasions.

The General remained for some time in the camp of the Chicago light artillery, which was commanded by a fine young Scotchman of the Saxon genus Smith, who told me that the privates of his company represented a million and a half of dollars in property. Their guns, horses, carriages, and accoutrements were all in the most creditable order, and there was an air about the men and about their camp which showed they did not belong to the same class as the better disciplined Hungarians of Milotzky close at hand.

Whilst we were seated in Captain Smith’s tent, a number of the privates came forward, and sang the “Star-spangled banner” and a patriotic song, to the air of “God save the Queen,” and the rest of the artillerymen, and a number of stragglers from the other camps, assembled and then formed line behind the singers. When the chorus was over there arose a great shout for Washburne, and the honourable Congress man was fain to come forward and make a speech, in which he assured his hearers of a very speedy victory and the advent of liberty all over the land. Then “General Prentiss” was called for; and as citizen soldiers command their Generals on such occasions, he too was obliged to speak, and to tell his audience “the world had never seen any men more devoted, gallant, or patriotic than themselves.” “Oglesby” was next summoned, and the tall, portly, good-humoured old man stepped to the front, and with excellent tact and good sense, dished up in the Buncombe style, told them the time for making speeches had passed, indeed it had lasted too long; and although it was said there was very little fighting when there was much talking, he believed too much talking was likely to lead to a great deal more fighting than any one desired to see between citizens of the United States of America, except their enemies, who, no doubt, were much better pleased to see Americans fighting each other than to find them engaged in any other employment. Great as the mischief of too much talking had been, too much writing had far more of the mischief to answer for. The pen was keener than the tongue, hit harder, and left a more incurable wound; but the pen was better than the tongue, because it was able to cure the mischief it had inflicted.” And so by a series of sentences the Colonel got round to me, and to my consternation, remembering how I had fared with my speech at the little private dinner on St. Patrick’s Day in New York, I was called upon by stentorian lungs, and hustled to the stump by a friendly circle, till I escaped by uttering a few sentences as to “mighty struggle,” “Europe gazing,” “the world anxious,” “the virtues of discipline,” “the admirable lessons of a soldier’s life,” and the “aspiration that in a quarrel wherein a British subject was ordered, by an authority he was bound to respect, to remain neutral, God might preserve the right.”

Colonel, General, and all addressed the soldiers as “gentlemen,” and their auditory did not on their part refrain from expressing their sentiments in the most unmistakeable manner. “Bully for you, General!” “Bravo, Washburne!” “That’s so, Colonel!” and the like, interrupted the harangues and when the oratorical exercises were over the men crowded round the staff, cheered and hurrahed, and tossed up their caps in the greatest delight.

With the exception of the foreign officers, and some of the Staff, there are very few of the colonels, majors, captains, or lieutenants who know anything of their business. The men do not care for them, and never think of saluting them. A regiment of Germans was sent across from Bird’s Point this evening for plundering and robbing the houses in the district in which they were quartered.

It may be readily imagined that the scoundrels who had to fly from every city in Europe before the face of the police will not stay their hands when they find themselves masters of the situation in the so-called country of an enemy. In such matters the officers have little or no control, and discipline is exceedingly lax, and punishments but sparingly inflicted, the use of the lash being forbidden altogether. Fine as the men are, incomparably better armed, clad— and doubtless better fed—than the Southern troops, they will scarcely meet them man to man in the field with any chance of success. Among the officers are bar-room keepers, persons little above the position of potmen in England, grocers’ apprentices, and such like—often inferior socially, and in every other respect, to the men whom they are supposed to command. General Prentiss has seen service, I believe, in Mexico; but he appears to me to be rather an ardent politician, embittered against slaveholders and the South, than a judicious or skilful military leader.

The principles on which these isolated commanders carry on the war are eminently defective. They apply their whole minds to petty expeditions, which go out from the camps, attack some Secessionist gathering, and then return, plundering as they go and come, exasperating enemies, converting neutrals into opponents, disgusting friends, and leaving it to the Secessionists to boast that they have repulsed them. Instead of encouraging the men and improving their discipline these ill-conducted expeditions have an opposite result.

“Never did a people enter on a war so utterly destitute of any reason for waging it, or of the means of bringing it to a successful termination against internal enemies.”

June 20th.—When I awoke this morning and, gazing out of my little window on the regiments parading on the level below me, after an arduous struggle to obtain cold water for a bath, sat down to consider what I had seen within the last two months, and to arrive at some general results from the retrospect, I own that after much thought, my mind was reduced to a hazy analysis of the abstract principles of right and wrong, in which it failed to come to any very definite conclusion: the space of a very few miles has completely altered the phases of thought and the forms of language.

I am living among “abolitionists, cut-throats, Lincolnite mercenaries, foreign invaders, assassins, and plundering Dutchmen.” Such, at least, the men of Columbus tell me the garrison at Cairo consists of. Down below me are “rebels, conspirators, robbers, slave breeders, wretches bent upon destroying the most perfect government on the face of the earth, in order to perpetuate an accursed system, by which, however, beings are held in bondage and immortal souls consigned to perdition.”

On the whole, the impression left upon my mind by what I had seen in slave states is unfavourable to the institution of slavery, both as regards its effects on the slave and its influence on the master. But my examination was necessarily superficial and hasty. I have reason to believe that the more deeply the institution is probed, the more clearly will its unsoundness and its radical evils be discerned. The constant appeals made to the physical comforts of the slaves, and their supposed contentment, have little or no effect on any person who acts up to a higher standard of human happiness than that which is applied to swine or the beasts of the fields “See how fat my pigs are.”

The arguments founded on a comparison of the condition of the slave population with the pauperised inhabitants of European states are utterly fallacious, inasmuch as in one point, which is the most important by far, there can be no comparison at all. In effect slavery can only be justified in the abstract on the grounds which slavery advocates decline to take boldly, though they insinuate it now and then, that is, the inferiority of the negro in respect to white men, which removes them from the upper class of human beings and places them in a condition which is as much below the Caucasian standard as the quadrumanous creatures are beneath the negro. Slavery is a curse, with its time of accomplishment not quite at hand—it is a cancer, the ravages of which are covered by fair outward show, and by the apparent health of the sufferer.

The slave states, of course, would not support the Northern for a year if cotton, sugar, and tobacco became suddenly worthless. But, nevertheless, the slave owners would have strong grounds to stand upon if they were content to point to the difficulties in the way of emancipation, and the circumstances under which they received their damnosa hereditas from England, which fostered, nay forced, slavery in legislative hotbeds throughout the colonies. The Englishman may say “We abolished slavery when we saw its evils.” The slave owner replies, “Yes, with you it was possible to decree the extinction—not with us.”

Never did a people enter on a war so utterly destitute of any reason for waging it, or of the means of bringing it to a successful termination against internal enemies. The thirteen colonies had a large population of sea-faring and soldiering men, constantly engaged in military expeditions. There was a large infusion, compared with the numbers of men capable of commanding in the field, and their great enemy was separated by a space far greater than the whole circumference of the globe would be in the present time from the scene of operations. Most American officers who took part in the war of 1812-14 are now too old for service, or retired into private life soon after the campaign. The same remark applies to the senior officers who served in Mexico, and the experiences of that campaign could not be of much use to those now in the service, of whom the majority were subalterns, or at most, officers in command of volunteers.

A love of military display is very different indeed from a true soldierly spirit, and at the base of the volunteer system there lies a radical difficulty, which must be overcome before real military efficiency can be expected. In the South the foreign element has contributed largely to swell the ranks with many docile and a few experienced soldiers, the number of the latter predominating in the German levies, and the same remark is, I hear, true of the Northern armies.

The most active member of the staff here is a young Englishman named Binmore, who was a stenographic writer in London, but has now sharpened his pencil into a sword, and when I went into the guard-room this morning I found that three-fourths of the officers, including all who had seen actual service, were foreigners. One, Milotzky, was an Hungarian; another, Waagner, was of the same nationality; a third, Schuttner, was a German; another, Mac something, was a Scotchman; another, was an Englishman. One only (Colonel Morgan), who had served in Mexico, was an American. The foreigners, of course, serve in this war as mercenaries; that is, they enter into the conflict to gain something by it, either in pay, in position, or in securing a status for themselves.

The utter absence of any fixed principle determining the side which the foreign nationalities adopt is proved by their going North or South with the state in which they live. On the other hand, the effects of discipline and of the principles of military life on rank and file are shown by the fact that the soldiers of the regular regiments of the United States and the sailors in the navy have to a man adhered to their colours, notwithstanding the examples and inducements of their officers.

After breakfast I went down about the works, which fortify the bank of mud, in the shape of a V, formed by the two rivers—a flêche with a ditch, scarp, and counter-scarp. Some heavy pieces cover the end of the spit at the other side of the Mississippi, at Bird’s Point. On the side of Missouri there is a field entrenchment, held by a regiment of Germans, Poles, and Hungarians, about 1000 strong, with two field batteries. The sacred soil of Kentucky, on the other side of the Ohio, is tabooed by Beriah Magoffin, but it is not possible for the belligerents to stand so close face to face without occupying either Columbus or Hickman. The thermometer was at 100° soon after breakfast, and it was not wonderful to find that the men in Camp Defiance, which is the name of the cantonment on the mud between the levees of the Ohio and Mississippi, were suffering from diarrhœa and fever.

In the evening there was a review of three regiments, forming a brigade of some 2800 men, who went through their drill, advancing in columns of company, moving en echelon, changing front, deploying into line on the centre company, very creditably. It was curious to see what a start ran through the men during the parade when a gun was fired from the battery close at hand, and how their heads turned towards the river; but the steamer which had appeared round the bend hoisted the private signs, by which she was known as a friend, and tranquillity was restored.

I am not sure that most of these troops desire anything but a long residence at a tolerably comfortable station, with plenty of pay and no marching. Cairo, indeed, is not comfortable; the worst barrack that ever asphixiated the British soldier would be better than the best shed here, and the flies and the mosquitoes are beyond all conception virulent and pestiferous. I would give much to see Cairo in its normal state, but it is my fate to witness the most interesting scenes in the world through a glaze of gunpowder. It would be unfair to say that any marked superiority in dwelling, clothing, or comfort was visible between the mean white of Cairo or the black chattel a few miles down the river. Brawling, rioting, and a good deal of drunkenness prevailed in the miserable sheds which line the stream, although there was nothing to justify the libels on the garrison of the Columbus Crescent, edited by one Colonel L. G. Faxon, of the Tennessee Tigers, with whose writings I was made acquainted by General Prentiss, to whom they appeared to give more annoyance than he was quite wise in showing.

This is a style of journalism which may have its merits, and which certainly is peculiar; I give a few small pieces. “The Irish are for us, and they will knock Bologna sausages out of the Dutch, and we will knock wooden nutmegs out of the Yankees.” “The mosquitoes of Cairo have been sucking the lager-bier out of the dirty soldiers there so long, they are bloated and swelled up as large as spring ‘possums. An assortment of Columbus mosquitoes went up there the other day to suck some, but as they have not returned, the probability is they went off with delirium tremens; in fact, the blood of these Hessians would poison the most degraded tumble bug in creation.”

Our editor is particularly angry about the recent seizure of a Confederate flag at Columbus by Colonel Oglesby and a party of Federals from Cairo. Speaking of a flag intended for himself he says, “Would that its folds had contained 1000 asps to sting 1000 Dutchmen to eternity unshriven.” Our friend is certainly a genius. His paper of June the 19th opens with an apology for the non-appearance of the journal for several weeks. “Before leaving,” he says, “we engaged the services of a competent editor, and left a printer here to issue the paper regularly. We were detained several weeks beyond our time, the aforesaid printer promised faithfully to perform his duties, but he left the same day we did, and consequently there was no one to get out the paper. We have the charity to suppose that fear and bad whisky had nothing to do with his evacuation of Columbus.” Another elegant extract about the flag commences, “When the bowlegged, wooden shoed, sour craut stinking, Bologna sausage eating, hen roost robbing Dutch sons of _____ had accomplished the brilliant feat of taking down the Secession flag on the river bank, they were pointed to another flag of the same sort which their guns did not cover, flying gloriously and defiantly, and dared yea! double big black dog—dared, as we used to say at school, to take that flag down—the cowardly pups, the thieving sheep dogs, the sneaking skunks, dare not do so, because their twelve pieces of artillery were not bearing on it.” As to the Federal commander at Cairo, Colonel Faxon’s sentiments are unambiguous. “The qualifications of this man, Prentiss,” he says, “for the command of such a squad of villains and cut-throats are, that he is a miserable hound, a dirty dog, a sociable fellow, a treacherous villain, a notorious thief, a lying blackguard, who has served his regular five years in the Penitentiary and keeps his hide continually full of Cincinnati whisky, which he buys by the barrel in order to save his money—in him are embodied the leprous rascalities of the world, and in this living score, the gallows is cheated of its own. Prentiss wants our scalp; we propose a plan by which he may get that valuable article. Let him select 150 of his best fighting men, or 250 of his lager-bier Dutchmen, we will select 100, then let both parties meet where there will be no interruption at the scalping business, and the longest pole will knock the persimmon. If he does not accept this proposal, he is a coward. We think this a gentlemanly proposition and quite fair and equal to both parties.”

June 19th. It is probable the landlord of the Gayoso House was a strong Secessionist, and resolved, therefore, to make the most out of a neutral customer like myself—certainly Herodotus would have been astonished if he were called upon to pay the little bill which was presented to me in the modern Memphis; and had the old Egyptian hostelries been conducted on the same principles as those of the Tennessean Memphis, the “Father of History ” would have had to sell off a good many editions in order to pay his way. I had to rise at three o’clock A.m., to reach the train, which started before five. The omnibus which took us to the station was literally nave deep in the dust; and of all the bad roads and dusty streets I have yet seen in the New World, where both prevail, North and South, those of Memphis are the worst. Indeed, as the citizen, of Hibernian birth, who presided over the luggage of the passengers on the roof, declared, “The streets are paved with waves of mud, only the mud is all dust when it’s fine weather.”

By the time I had arrived at the station my clothes were covered with a fine alluvial deposit in a state of powder; the platform was crowded with volunteers moving off for the wars, and I was obliged to take my place in a carriage full of Confederate officers and soldiers who had a large supply of whisky, which at that early hour they were consuming as a prophylactic against the influence of the morning dews, which hereabouts are of such a deadly character that, to be quite safe from their influence, it appears to be necessary, judging from the examples of my companions, to get as nearly drunk as possible. Whisky, by-the-by, is also a sovereign specific against the bites of rattlesnakes. All the dews of the Mississippi and the rattlesnakes of the prairie might have spent their force or venom in vain on my companions before we had got as far as Union City.

I was evidently regarded with considerable suspicion by my fellow passengers, when they heard I was going to Cairo, until the conductor obligingly informed them who I was, whereupon I was much entreated to fortify myself against the dews and rattlesnakes, and received many offers of service and kindness.

Whatever may be the normal comforts of American railway cars, they are certainly most unpleasant conveyances when the war spirit is abroad, and the heat of the day, which was excessive, did not contribute to diminish the annoyance of foul air—the odour of whisky, tobacco, and the like, combined with innumerable flies. At Humbolt, which is eighty-two miles away, there was a change of cars, and an opportunity of obtaining some refreshment,—the station was crowded by great numbers of men and women dressed in their best, who were making holiday in order to visit Union City, forty-six miles distant, where a force of Tennesseean and Mississippi regiments are encamped. The ladies boldly advanced into carriages ,which were quite full, and as they looked quite prepared to sit down on the occupants of the seats if they did not move, and to destroy them with all-absorbing articles of feminine warfare, either defensive or aggressive, and crush them with iron-bound crinolines, they soon drove us out into the broiling sun.

Whilst I was on the platform I underwent the usual process of American introduction, not, I fear, very good-humouredly. A gentleman whom you never saw before in your life, walks up to you and says, “I am happy to see you among us, sir,” and if he finds a hand wandering about, he shakes it cordially. “My name is Jones, sir, Judge Jones of Pumpkin County. Any information about this place or State that I can give is quite at your service.” This is all very civil and well meant of Jones, but before you have made up your mind what to say, or on what matter to test the worth of his proffered information, he darts off and seizes one of the group who have been watching Jones’s advance, and comes forward with a tall man, like himself, busily engaged with a piece of tobacco. “Colonel, let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Russell. This, sir, is one of our leading citizens, Colonel Knags.” Whereupon the Colonel shakes hands, uses nearly the same formula as Judge Jones, immediately returns to his friends, and cuts in before Jones is back with other friends, whom he is hurrying up the platform, introduces General Cassius Mudd and Dr. Ordlando Bellows, who go through the same ceremony, and as each man has a circle of his own, my acquaintance becomes prodigiously extended, and my hand considerably tortured in the space of a few minutes; finally I am introduced to the driver of the engine and the stoker, but they proved to be acquaintances not at all to be despised, for they gave me a seat on the engine, which was really a boon considering that the train was crowded beyond endurance, and in a state of internal nastiness scarcely conceivable.

When I had got up on the engine a gentleman clambered after me in order to have a little conversation, and he turned out to be an intelligent and clever man well acquainted with the people and the country. I had been much impressed by the account in the Memphis papers of the lawlessness and crime which seemed to prevail in the state of Mississippi, and of the brutal shootings and stabbings which disgraced it and other Southern States. He admitted it was true, but could not see any remedy. “Why not?” “Well, sir, the rowdies have rushed in on us, and we can’t master them; they are too strong for the respectable people.” “Then you admit the law is nearly powerless?” “Well, you see, sir, these men have got hold of the people who ought to administer the law, and when they fail to do so they are so powerful by reason of their numbers, and so reckless, they have things their own way.”

“In effect, then, you are living under a reign of terror, and the rule of a ruffian mob?” “It’s not quite so bad as that, perhaps, for the respectable people are not much affected by it, and most of the crimes of which you speak are committed by these bad classes in their own section; but it is disgraceful to have such a state of things, and when this war is over, and we have started the Confederacy all fair, we’ll put the whole thing down. We are quite determined to take the law into our own hands, and the first remedy for the condition of affairs which, we all lament, will be to confine the suffrage to native-born Americans, and to get rid of the infamous, scoundrelly foreigners, who now overrule us in our country.” “But are not many regiments of Irish and Germans now fighting for you? And will these foreigners who have taken up arms in your cause be content to receive as the result of their success an inferior position, politically, to that which they now hold?” “Well, sir, they must; we are bound to go through with this thing if we would save society.” I had so often heard a similar determination expressed by men belonging to the thinking classes in the South that I am bound to believe the project is entertained by many of those engaged in this great revolt—one principle of which indeed, may be considered hostility to universal suffrage, combining with it, of course, the limitation of the immigrant vote.

The portion of Tennessee through which the rail runs is exceedingly uninteresting, and looks unhealthy, the clearings occur at long intervals in the forest, and the unwholesome population, who came out of their low shanties, situated amidst blackened stumps of trees or fields of Indian corn, did not seem prosperous or comfortable. The twists and curves of the rail, through cane brakes and swamps exceeded in that respect any line I have ever travelled on; but the vertical irregularities of the rail were still greater, and the engine bounded as if it were at sea.

The names of the stations show that a savant has been rambling about the district. Here is Corinth, which consists of a wooden grog-shop and three log shanties; the acropolis is represented by a grocery store, of which the proprietors, no doubt, have gone to the wars, as their names were suspiciously Milesian, and the doors and windows were fastened; but occasionally the names of the stations on the railway boards represented towns and villages, hidden in the wood some distance away, and Mummius might have something to ruin if he marched off the track but not otherwise.

The city of Troy was still simpler in architecture than the Grecian capitol. The Dardanian towers were represented by a timber-house, in the verandah of which the American Helen was seated, in the shape of an old woman smoking a pipe, and she certainly could have set the Palace of Priam on fire much more readily than her prototype. Four sheds, three log huts, a sawmill, about twenty negroes sitting on a wood-pile, and looking at the train, constituted the rest of the place, which was certainly too new for one to say, Trqja fuit, whilst the general “fixins” would scarcely authorise us to say with any confidence, Trojafuerit.

The train from Troy passed through a cypress swamp, over which the engine rattled, and hopped at a perilous rate along high trestle work, till forty-six miles from Humbolt we came to Union City, which was apparently formed by aggregate meetings of discontented shavings that had travelled out of the forest hard by. But a little beyond it was the Confederate camp, which so many citizens and citizenesses had come out into the wilderness to see; and a general descent was made upon the place whilst the volunteers came swarming out of their tents to meet their friends. It was interesting to observe the affectionate greetings between the young soldiers, mothers, wives, and sweethearts, and as a display of the force and earnestness of the Southern people—the camp itself containing thousands of men, many of whom were members of the first families in the State—was specially significant.

There is no appearance of military order or discipline about the camps, though they were guarded by sentries and cannon, and implements of war and soldiers’ accoutrements were abundant. Some of the sentinels carried their firelocks under their arms like umbrellas, others carried the but over the shoulder and the muzzle downwards, and one for his greater ease had stuck the bayonet of his firelock into the ground, and was leaning his elbow on the stock with his chin on his hand, whilst Sybarites less ingenious, had simply deposited their muskets against the trees, and were lying down reading newspapers. Their arms and uniforms were of different descriptions—sporting rifles, fowling pieces, flint muskets, smooth bores, long and short barrels, new Enfields, and the like; but the men, nevertheless, were undoubtedly material for excellent soldiers. There were some few boys, too young to carry arms, although the zeal and ardour of such lads cannot but have a good effect, if they behave well in action.

The great attraction of this train lay in a vast supply of stores, with which several large vans were closely packed, and for fully two hours the train was delayed, whilst hampers of wine, spirits, vegetables, fruit, meat, groceries, and all the various articles acceptable to soldiers living under canvas were disgorged on the platform, and carried away by the expectant military.

I was pleased to observe the perfect confidence that was felt in the honesty of the men. The railway servants simply deposited each article as it came out on the platform—the men came up, read the address, and carried it away, or left it, as the case might be; and only in one instance did I see a scramble, which was certainly quite justifiable, for in handing out a large basket the bottom gave way, and out tumbled onions, apples, and potatoes among the soldiery, who stuffed their pockets and haversacks with the unexpected bounty. One young fellow, who was handed a large wicker-covered jar from the van, having shaken it, and gratified his ear by the pleasant jingle inside, retired to the roadside, drew the cork, and, raising it slowly to his mouth, proceeded to take a good pull at the contents, to the envy of his comrades; but the pleasant expression upon his face rapidly vanished, and spurting out the fluid with a hideous grimace, he exclamed, “D____; why, if the old woman has not gone and sent me a gallon of syrup.” The matter was evidently considered too serious to joke about, for not a soul in the crowd even smiled; but they walked away from the man, who, putting down the jar, seemed in doubt as to whether he would take it away or not.

Numerous were the invitations to stop, which I received from the officers. “Why not stay with us, sir; what can a gentleman want to go among black Republicans and Yankees for.” It is quite obvious that my return to the Northern States is regarded with some suspicion; but I am bound to say that my explanation of the necessity of the step was always well received, and satisfied my Southern friends that I had no alternative. A special correspondent, whose letters cannot get out of the country in which he is engaged, can scarcely fulfil the purpose of his mission; and I used to point out, good-humouredly, to these gentlemen that until they had either opened the communication with the North, or had broken the blockade, and established steam communication with Europe, I must seek my base of operations elsewhere.

At last we started from Union City; and there came into the car, among other soldiers who were going out to Columbus, a fine specimen of the wild filibustering population of the South, which furnish many recruits to the ranks of the Confederate army—a tall, brawny-shouldered, brown-faced, black-bearded, hairy-handed man, with a hunter’s eye, and rather a Jewish face, full of life, energy, and daring. I easily got into conversation with him, as my companion happened to be a freemason, and he told us he had been a planter in Mississippi, and once owned 110 negroes, worth at least some 20,000£.; but, as he said himself, “I was always patrioting it about;” and so he went off, first with Lopez to Cuba, was wounded and taken prisoner by the Spaniards, but had the good fortune to be saved from the execution which was inflicted on the ringleaders of the expedition. When he came back he found his plantation all the worse, and a decrease amongst his negroes; but his love of adventure and filibustering was stronger than his prudence or desire of gain. He took up with Walker, the “the grey eyed man of destiny,” and accompanied him in his strange career till his leader received the coup de grace in the final raid upon Nicaragua.

Again he was taken prisoner, and would have been put to death by the Nicaraguans, but for the intervention of Captain Aldham. “I don’t bear any love to the Britishers,” said he, “but I’m bound to say, as so many charges have been made against Captain Aldham, that he behaved like a gentleman, and if I had been at New Orleans when them cussed cowardly blackguards ill-used him, I’d have left my mark so deep on a few of them, that their clothes would not cover them long.” He told us that at present he had only five negroes left, “but I’m not going to let the black republicans lay hold of them, and I’m just going to stand up for States’ rights as long as I can draw a trigger—so snakes and Abolitionists look out.” He was so reduced by starvation, ill-treatment, and sickness in Nicaragua, when Captain Aldham procured his release, that he weighed only 110 pounds, but at present he was over 200 pounds, a splendid bête fauve, and without wishing so fine a looking fellow any harm, I could not but help thinking that it must be a benefit to American society to get rid of a considerable number of these class of which he is a representative man. And there is every probability that they will have a full opportunity of doing so.

On the arrival of the train at Columbus, twenty-five miles from Union City, my friend got out, and a good number of men in uniform joined him, which led me to conclude that they had some more serious object than a mere pleasure trip to the very uninteresting looking city on the banks of the Mississippi, which is asserted to be neutral territory, as it belongs to the sovereign state of Kentucky. I heard, accidentally, as I came in the train, that a party of Federal soldiers from the camp at Cairo, up the river, had recently descended to Columbus and torn down a secession flag which had been hoisted on the river’s bank, to the great indignation of many of the inhabitants.

In those border states the coming war promises to produce the greatest misery; they will be the scenes of hostile operations; the population is divided in sentiment; the greatest efforts will be made by each side to gain the ascendancy in the state, and to crush the opposite faction, and it is not possible to believe that Kentucky can maintain a neutral position, or that either Federal or Confederates will pay the smallest regard to the proclamation of Governor McGoffin, and to his empty menaces.

At Columbus the steamer was waiting to convey us up to Cairo, and I congratulated myself on the good fortune of arriving in time for the last opportunity that will be afforded of proceeding northward by this route. General Pillow on the one hand, and General Prentiss on the other, have resolved to blockade the Mississippi, and as the facilities for Confederates going up to Columbus and obtaining information of what is happening in the Federal camps cannot readily be checked, the general in command of the port to which I am bound has intimated that the steamers must cease running. It was late in the day when we entered once more on the father of waters, which is here just as broad, as muddy, as deep, and as wooded as it is at Baton Rouge, or Vicksburg.

Columbus is situated on an elevated spur or elbow of land projecting into the river, and has, in commercial faith, one of those futures which have so many rallying points down the centre of the great river. The steamer which lay at the wharf, or rather the wooden piles in the bank which afforded a resting place for the gangway, carried no flag, and on board presented traces of better days, a list of refreshments no longer attainable, and of bill of fare utterly fanciful. About twenty passengers came on board, most of whom had a distracted air, as if they were doubtful of their journey. The captain was surly, the office keeper petulant, the crew morose, and, perhaps, only one man on board, a stout Englishman, who was purser or chief of the victualling department, seemed at all inclined to be communicative. At dinner he asked me whether I thought there would be a fight, but as I was oscillating between one extreme and the other, I considered it right to conceal my opinion even from the steward of the Mississippi boat; and, as it happened, the expression of it would not have been of much consequence one way or the other, for it turned out that our friend was of very stern stuff, “This war,” he said, “is all about niggers; I’ve been sixteen years in the country, and I never met one of them yet was fit to be anything but a slave; I know the two sections well, and I tell you, sir, the North can’t whip the South, let them do their best; they may ruin the country, but they’ll do no good.”

There were men on board who had expressed the strongest secession sentiments in the train, but who now sat and listened and acquiesced in the opinions of Northern men, and by the time Cairo was in sight, they, no doubt, would have taken the oath of allegiance which every doubtful person is required to utter before he is allowed to go beyond the military post.

In about two hours or so the captain pointed out to me a tall building and some sheds, which seemed to arise out of a wide reach in the river, “that’s Cairey,” said he, “where the Unionists have their camp,” and very soon the stars and stripes were visible, waving from a lofty staff, at the angle of low land formed by the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio.

For two months I had seen only the rival stars and bars, with the exception of the rival banner floating from the ships and the fort at Pickens. One of the passengers told me that the place was supposed to be described by Mr. Dickens, in “Martin Chuzzlewit,” and as the steamer approached the desolate embankment, which seemed the only barrier between the low land on which the so-called city was built, and the waters of the great river rising above it, it certainly became impossible to believe that sane men, even as speculators, could have fixed upon such a spot as the possible site of a great city, —an emporium of trade and commerce. A more desolate woe-begone looking place, now that all trade and commerce had ceased cannot be conceived; but as the southern terminus of the central Illinois railway, it displayed a very different scene before the war broke out.

With the exception of the large hotel, which rises far above the levee of the river, the public edifices are represented by a church and spire, and the rest of the town by a line of shanties and small houses, the rooms and upper stories of which are just visible above the embankment. The general impression effected by the place was decidedly like that which the Isle of Dogs produces on a despondent foreigner as he approaches London by the river on a drisly day in November. The stream, formed by the united efforts of the Mississippi and the Ohio, did not appear to gain much breadth, and each of the confluents looked as large as its product with the other. Three steamers lay alongside the wooden wharves projecting from the embankment, which was also lined by some flat-boats. Sentries paraded the gangways as the steamer made fast along the shore, but no inquiry was directed to any of the passengers, and I walked up the levee and proceeded straight to the hotel, which put me very much in mind of an effort made by speculating proprietors to create a watering-place on some lifeless beach. In the hall there were a number of officers in United States’ uniforms, and the lower part of the hotel was, apparently, occupied as a military bureau; finally, I was shoved into a small dungeon, with a window opening out on the angle formed by the two rivers, which was lined with sheds and huts and terminated by a battery.

These camps are such novelties in the country, and there is such romance in the mere fact of a man living in a tent, that people come far and wide to see their friends under such extraordinary circumstances, and the hotel at Cairo was crowded by men and women who had come from all parts of Illinois to visit their acquaintances and relations belonging to the state troops encamped at this important point. The salle à manger, a long and lofty room on the ground floor, which I visited at supper time, was almost untenable by reason of heat and flies; nor did I find that the free negroes, who acted as attendants, possessed any advantages over their enslaved brethren a few miles lower down the river; though their freedom was obvious enough in their demeanour and manners.

I was introduced to General Prentiss, an agreeable person,without anything about him to indicate the soldier. He gave me a number of newspapers, the articles in which were principally occupied with a discussion of Lord John RusselPs speech on American affairs: Much as the South found fault with the British minister for the views he had expressed, the North appears much more indignant, and denounces in the press what the journalists are pleased to call “the hostility of the Foreign Minister to the United States.” It is admitted, however, that the extreme irritation caused by admitting the Southern States to exercise limited belligerent rights was not quite justifiable. Soon after nightfall I retired to my room and battled with mosquitoes till I sank into sleep and exhaustion, and abandoned myself to their mercies; perhaps, after all, there were not more than a hundred or so, and their united efforts could not absorb as much blood as would be taken out by one leech, but then their horrible acrimony, which leaves a wreck behind in the place where they have banqueted, inspires the utmost indignation and appears to be an indefensible prolongation of the outrage of the original bite.