My Diary North and South – William Howard Russell

June 16th.—I was compelled to send my excuses to Governor Pettus, and remained quietly within the house of my host, entreating him to protect me from visitors and especially my own confrères, that I might secure a few hours even in that ardent heat to write letters to home. Now, there is some self-denial required, if one be at all solicitous of the popularis aura, to offend the susceptibilities of the irritable genus in America. It may make all the difference between millions of people hearing and believing you are a high-toned, whole-souled gentleman or a wretched ignorant and prejudiced John Bull; but, nevertheless, the solid pudding of self-content and the satisfaction of doing one’s work are preferable to the praise even of a New York newspaper editor.

When my work was over I walked out and sat in the shade with a gentleman whose talk turned upon the practises of the Mississippi duello. Without the smallest animus, and in the most natural way in the world, he told us tale after tale of blood, and recounted terrible tragedies enacted outside bars of hotels and in the public streets close beside us. The very air seemed to become purple as he spoke, the land around a veritable “Aceldama.” There may, indeed, be security for property, but there is none for the life of its owner in difficulties, who may be shot by a stray bullet from a pistol as he walks up the street.

I learned many valuable facts. I was warned, for example, against the impolicy of trusting to small-bored pistols or to pocket six-shooters in case of a close fight, because suppose you hit your man mortally he may still run in upon you and rip you up with a bowie knife before he falls dead; whereas if you drive a good heavy bullet into him, or make a hole in him with a “Derringer” ball, he gets faintish and drops at once.

Many illustrations, too, were given of the value of practical lessons of this sort. One particularly struck me. If a gentleman with whom you are engaged in altercation moves his hand towards his breeches pocket, or behind his back, you must smash him or shoot him at once, for he is either going to draw his six-shooter, to pull out a bowie knife, or to shoot you through the lining of his pocket. The latter practice is considered rather ungentlemanly, but it has somewhat been more honoured lately in the observance than in the breach. In fact, the savage practice of walking about with pistols, knifes, and poniards, in bar-rooms and gambling-saloons, with passions ungoverned, because there is no law to punish the deeds to which they lead, affords facilities for crime which an uncivilised condition of society leaves too often without punishment, but which must be put down or the country in which it is tolerated will become as barbarous as a jungle inhabited by wild beasts.

Our host gave me an early dinner, at which I met some of the citizens of Jackson, and at six o’clock I proceeded by the train for Memphis. The carriages were of course, full of soldiers or volunteers, bound for a large camp at a place called Corinth, who made night hideous by their song and cries, stimulated by enormous draughts of whiskey and a proportionate consumption of tobacco, by teeth and by fire. The heat in the carriages added to the discomforts arising from these causes, and from great quantities of biting insects in the sleeping places. The people have all the air and manners of settlers. Altogether the impression produced on my mind was by no means agreeable, and I felt as if I was indeed in the land of Lynch law and bowie knives, where the passions of men have not yet been subordinated to the influence of the tribunals of justice. Much of this feeling has no doubt been produced by the tales to which I have been listening around me—most of which have a smack of manslaughter about them.

Friday, June 14th.—Last night with my good host from his plantation to the great two-storied steamer General Quitman, at Natchez. She was crowded with planters, soldiers and their families, and as the lights shone out of her windows, looked like a walled castle blazing from double lines of embrasures.

The Mississippi is assuredly the most uninteresting river in the world, and I can only describe it hereabout by referring to the account of its appearance which I have already given—not a particle of romance in spite of oratorical patriots and prophets, can ever shine from its depths, sacred to cat and buffalo fish, or vivify its turbid waters.

Before noon we were in sight of Vicksburg, which is situated on a high bank or bluff on the left bank of the river, about 400 miles above New Orleans and some 120 miles from Natchez.

Mr. MacMeekan, the proprietor of the “Washington,” declares himself to have been the pioneer of hotels in the far west; but he has now built himself this huge caravanserai, and rests from his wanderings. We entered the dining saloon, and found the tables closely packed with a numerous company of every condition in life, from generals and planters down to soldiers in the uniform of privates. At the end of the room there was a long table on which the joints and dishes were brought hot from the kitchen to be carved by the negro waiters, male and female, and as each was brought in the proprietor, standing in the centre of the room, shouted out with a loud voice, “Now, then, here is a splendid goose! ladies and gentlemen, don’t neglect the goose and apple-sauce! Here’s a piece of beef that I can recommend! upon my honour you will never regret taking a slice of the beef. Oyster-pie! oyster-pie ! never was better oyster-pie seen in Vicksburg. Run about, boys, and take orders. Ladies and gentlemen, just look at that turkey! who’s for turkey ?”—and so on, wiping the perspiration from his forehead and combating with the flies.

Altogether it was a semi-barbarous scene, but the host was active and attentive; and after all, his recommendations were very much like those which it was the habit of the taverners in old London to call out in the streets to the passers-by when the joints were ready. The little negroes who ran about to take orders were smart, but now and then came into violent collision, and were cuffed incontinently. One mild-looking little fellow stood by my chair and appeared so sad that I asked him “Are you happy, my boy?” He looked quite frjghtened. “Why don’t you answer me?” “I’se afeered, sir; I can’t tell that to Massa.” “Is not your master kind to you?” “Massa very kind man, sir; very good man when he is not angry with me,” and his eyes filled with tears to the brim.

The war fever is rife in Vicksburg, and the Irish and German labourers, to the extent of several hundreds, have all gone off to the war.

When dinner was over, the mayor and several gentlemen of the city were good enough to request that I would attend a meeting, at a room in the railway-station, where some of the inhabitants of the town had assembled. Accordingly I went to the terminus and found a room filled with gentlemen. Large china bowls, blocks of ice, bottles of wine and spirits, and boxes of cigars were on the table, and all the materials for a symposium.

The company discussed recent events, some of which I learned for the first time. Dislike was expressed to the course of the authorities in demanding negro labour for the fortifications along the river, and uneasiness was expressed respecting a negro plot in Arkansas; but the most interesting matter was Judge Taney’s protest against the legality of the President’s course in suspending the writ of habeas corpus in the case of Merriman. The lawyers who were present at this meeting were delighted with his argument, which insists that Congress alone can suspend the writ, and that the President, cannot legally do so.

The news of the defeat of an expedition from Fortress Monroe against a Confederate post at Great Bethel, has caused great rejoicing. The accounts show that there was the grossest mismanagement on the part of the Federal officers. The Northern papers particularly regret the loss of Major Winthrop, aide-decamp to General Butler, a writer of promise. At four o’clock p.m. I bade the company farewell, and the train started for Jackson. The line runs through a poor clay country, cut up with gulleys and watercourses made by violent rain.

There were a number of volunteer soldiers in the train; and their presence no doubt attracted the girls and women who waved flags and cheered for Jeff. Davis and States Rights. Well, as I travel on through such scenes, with a fine critical nose in the air, I ask myself “Is any Englishman better than these publicans and sinners in regard to this question of slavery?” It was not on moral or religious grounds that our ancestors abolished serfdom. And if to-morrow our good farmers, deprived of mowers, reapers, ploughmen, hedgers and ditchers, were to find substitutes in certain people of a dark skin assigned to their use by Act of Parliament, I fear they would be almost as ingenious as the Rev. Dr. Seabury in discovering arguments physiological, ethnological, and biblical for the retention of their property. And an evil day would it be for them if they were so tempted; for assuredly, without any derogation to the intellect of the Southern men, it may be said that a large proportion of the population is in a state of very great moral degradation compared with civilised Anglo-Saxon communities.

The man is more natural, and more reckless; he has more of the qualities of the Arab than are to be reconciled with civilisation; and it is only among the upper classes that the influences of the aristocratic condition which is generated by the subjection of masses of men to their fellow-man are to be found.

At six o’clock the train stopped in the country at a railway crossing by the side of a large platform. On the right was a common, bounded by a few detached wooden houses, separated by palings from each other, and surrounded by rows of trees. In front of the station were two long wooden, sheds, which, as the signboard indicates, were exchanges or drinking saloons; and beyond these again were visible some rudimentary streets of straggling houses, above which rose three pretentious spires and domes, resolved into insignificance by nearer approach. This was Jackson.

Our host was at the station in his carriage, and drove us to his residence, which consisted of some detached houses shaded by trees in a small enclosure, and bounded by a kitchen garden. He was one of the men who had been filled with the afflatus of 1848, and joined the Young Ireland party before it had seriously committed itself to an unfortunate outbreak; and when all hope of success had vanished, he sought, like many others of his countrymen, a shelter under the stars and stripes, which, like most of the Irish settled in Southern States, he was now bent on tearing asunder. He has the honour of being mayor of Jackson, and of enjoying a competitive examination with his medical rivals for the honour of attending the citizens.

In the evening I walked out with him to the adjacent city, which has no title to the name, except as being the State capital. The mushroom growth of these States, using that phrase merely as to their rapid development, raises hamlets in a small space to the dignity of cities. It is in such outlying expansion of the great republic that the influence of the foreign emigration is most forcibly displayed. It would be curious to inquire, for example, how many men there are in the city of Jackson exercising mechanical arts or engaged in small commerce, in skilled or manual labour, who are really Americans in the proper sense of the word. I was struck by the names over the doors of the shops, which were German, Irish, Italian, French, and by foreign tongues and accents in the streets; but, on the other hand, it is the native-born American who obtains the highest political stations and arrogates to himself the largest share of governmental emoluments.

Jackson proper consists of strings of wooden houses, with white porticoes and pillars a world too wide for their shrunk rooms, and various religious and other public edifices, of the hydrocephalic order of architecture, where vulgar cupola and exaggerated steeple tower above little bodies far too feeble to support them. There are of course a monster hotel and blazing barrooms—the former celebrated as the scene of many a serious difficulty, out of some of which the participators never escaped alive. The streets consist of rows of houses such as I have seen at Macon, Montgomery, and Baton Rouge; and as we walked towards the capital or State-house there were many more invitations “to take a drink” addressed to my friend and me than we were able to comply with. Our steps were bent to the State-house, which is a pile of stone, with open colonnades, and an air of importance at a distance which a nearer examination of its dilapidated condition does not confirm. Mr. Pettus, the Governor of the State of Mississippi, was in the Capitol; and on sending in our cards, we were introduced to his room, which certainly was of more than republican simplicity. The apartment was surrounded with some common glass cases, containing papers and odd volumes of books; the furniture, a table or desk, and a few chairs and a ragged carpet; the glass in the windows cracked and broken; the walls and ceiling discoloured by mildew.

The Governor is a silent man, of abrupt speech, but easy of access; and, indeed, whilst we were speaking, strangers and soldiers walked in and out of his room, looked around them, and acted in all respects as if they were in a public-house, except in ordering drinks. This grim, tall, angular man seemed to me such a development of public institutions in the South as Mr. Seward was in a higher phase in the North. For years he hunted deer and trapped in the forest of the far west, and lived in a Natty Bumpo or David Crocket state of life; and he was not ashamed of the fact when taunted with it during his election contest, but very rightly made the most of his independence and his hard work.

The pecuniary honours of his position are not very great as Governor of the enormous State of Mississippi. He has simply an income of £800 a year and a house provided for his use; he is not only quite contented with what he has but believes that the society in which he lives is the highest development of civilised life, notwithstanding the fact that there are more outrages on the person in his State, nay, more murders perpetrated in the very capital, than were known in the worst days of mediæval Venice or Florence; —indeed, as a citizen said to me, “Well, I think our average in Jackson is a murder a month;” but he used a milder name for the crime.

The Governor conversed on the aspect of affairs, and evinced that wonderful confidence in his own people which, whether it arises from ignorance of the power of the North, or a conviction of greater resources, is to me so remarkable. “Well, sir,” said he, dropping a portentous plug of tobacco just outside the spittoon, with the air of a man who wished to show he could have hit the centre if he liked, “England is no doubt a great country, and has got fleets and the like of that, and may have a good deal to do in Eu-rope; but the sovereign State of Mississippi can do a great deal better without England than England can do without her.” Having some slight recollection of Mississippi repudiation, in which Mr. Jefferson Davis was so actively engaged, I thought it possible that the Governor might be right; and after a time his Excellency shook me by the hand, and I left, much wondering within myself what manner of men they must be in the State of Mississippi when Mr. Pettus is their chosen Governor; and yet, after all, he is honest and fierce; and perhaps he is so far qualified as well as any other man to be Governor of the State. There are newspapers, electric telegraphs, and railways; there are many educated families, even much good society, I am told, in the State; but the larger masses of the people struck me as being in a condition not much elevated from that of the original backwoodsman. On my return to the Doctor’s house I found some letters which had been forwarded to me from New Orleans had gone astray, and I was obliged, therefore, to make arrangements for my departure on the following evening.

June 11th.—Before noon the steamer hauled alongside a stationary hulk at Baton Rouge, which once “walked the waters” by the aid of machinery, but which was now used as a floating hotel, depot, and storehouse— 315 feet long, and fully thirty feet on the upper deck above the level of the river. The Acadia stopped, and I disembarked. Here were my quarters till the boat for Natchez should arrive. The proprietor of the floating hotel was somewhat excited because one of his servants was away. The man presently came in sight. “Where have you been, you ——?” “Away to buy de newspaper, Massa.” “For who, you ——?” “Me buy ’em for no one, Massa; me sell ‘nm agin, Massa.” “See, now, you ——, if ever you goes aboard them steamers to meddle with newspapers, I’m —— but I’ll kill you, mind that!”

Baton Rouge is the capital of the State of Louisiana, and the State House thereof is a very quaint and very new example of bad taste. The Deaf and Dumb Asylum near it is in a much better style. It was my intention to have visited the State Prison and Penitentiary, but the day was too hot, and the distance too great, and so I dined at the oddest little creole restaurant, with the funniest old hostess, and the strangest company in the world.

On returning to the boat hotel, Mr. Conrad, one of the citizens of the place, and Mr. W. Avery, a judge of the district court, were good enough to call and to invite me to remain some time, but I was obliged to decline. These gentlemen were members of the home guard, and drilled assiduously every evening. Of the 1300 voters at Baton Rouge, more than 750 are already off to the wars, and another company is being formed to follow them. Mr. Conrad has three sons in the field, and another is anxious to follow, and he and his friend, Mr. Avery, are quite ready to die for the disunion. The waiter who served out drinks in the bar wore a uniform, and his musket lay in the corner among the brandy bottles. At night a patriotic meeting of citizen soldiery took place in the bow, with which song and whisky had much to do, so that sleep was difficult.

Precisely at seven o’clock on Wednesday morning the Mary T. came alongside, and soon afterward bore me on to Natchez, through scenery which became wilder and less cultivated as she got upwards. Of the 1500 steamers on the river, not a tithe are now in employment, and the owners of these profitable flotillas are “in a bad way.” It was late at night when the steamer arrived at Natchez, and next morning early I took shelter in another engineless steamer beside the bank of the river at Natchez-under-the-hill, which was thought to be a hotel by its owners.

In the morning I asked for breakfast. “There is nothing for breakfast; go to Curry’s on shore.” Walk up hill to Curry’s—a bar-room occupied by a waiter and flies. “Can I have any breakfast?” “No, sir-ree; it’s over half-an-hour ago.” “Nothing to eat at all?” “No, sir.” “Can I get some anywhere else?” “I guess not.” It had been my belief that a man with money in his pocket could not starve in any country soi-disant civilized. I chewed the cud of fancy faute de mieux, and became the centre of attraction to citizens, from whose conversation I learned that this was “Jeff. Davis’ fast day.” Observed one, “It quite puts me in mind of Sunday; all the stores closed.” Said another, “We’ll soon have Sunday every day, then, for I ‘spect it won’t be worth while for most shops to keep open any longer.” Natchez, a place of much trade and cotton export in the season, is now as dull—let us say, as Harwich without a regatta. But it is ultra-secessionist, nil obstante.

My hunger was assuaged by Mr. Marshall, who drove me to his comfortable mansion through a country like the wooded parts of Sussex, abounding in fine trees, and in the only lawns and park-like fields I have yet seen in America.

After dinner, my host took me out to visit a wealthy planter, who has raised and armed a cavalry corps at his own expense. We were obliged to get out of the carriage at a narrow lane and walk toward the encampment on foot in the dark; a sentry stopped us, and we observed that there was a semblance of military method in the camp. The captain was walking up and down in the verandah of the poor hut, for which he had abandoned his home. A book of tactics — Hardee’s— lay on the table of his little room. Our friend was full of fight, and said he would give all he had in the world to the cause. But the day before, and a party of horse, composed of sixty gentlemen in the district, worth from £20,000 to £50,000 each, had started for the war in Virginia. Everything to be seen or heard testifies to the great zeal and resolution with which the South have entered upon the quarrel. But they hold the power of the United States and the loyalty of the North to the Union at far too cheap a rate.

Next day was passed in a delightful drive through cotton fields, Indian corn, and undulating woodlands, amid which were some charming residences. I crossed the river at Natchez, and saw one fine plantation, in which the corn, however, was by no means so good as the crops I have seen on the coast. The cotton looks well, and some had already burst into flower—bloom, as it is called—which has turned to a flagrant pink, and seems saucily conscious that its boll will play an important part in the world.

The inhabitants of the tracts on the banks of the Mississippi, and on the inland regions hereabout, ought to be, in the natural order of things, a people almost nomadic, living by the chase, and by a sparse agriculture, in the freedom which tempted their ancestors to leave Europe. But the Old World has been working for them. All its trials have been theirs; the fruits of its experience, its labors, its research, its discoveries, are theirs. Steam has enabled them to turn their rivers into highways, to open primeval forests to the light of day and to man. All these, however, would have availed them little had not the demands of manufacture abroad, and the increasing luxury and population of the North and West at home, enabled them to find in these swamps and uplands sources of wealth richer and more certain than all the gold mines of the world.

There must be gnomes to work those mines. Slavery was an institution ready to their hands. In its development there lay every material means for securing the prosperity which Manchester opened to them, and in supplying their own countrymen with sugar. The small, struggling, deeply-mortgaged proprietors of swamp and forest set their negroes to work to raise levees, to cut down trees, to plant and sow. Cotton at ten cents a pound gave a nugget in every boll. Land could be had for a few dollars an acre. Negroes were cheap in proportion. Men who made a few thousand dollars invested them in more negroes, and more land, and borrowed as much again for the same purpose. They waxed fat and rich —there seemed no bounds to their fortune.

But threatening voices came from the North—the echoes of the sentiments of the civilized world repenting of its evil pierced their ears, and they found their feet were of clay, and that they were nodding to their fall in the midst of their power. Ruin inevitable awaited them if they did not shut out these sounds and stop the fatal utterances.

The issue is to them one of life and death. Whoever raises it hereafter, if it be not decided now, must expect to meet the deadly animosity which is now displayed towards the North. The success of the South —if they can succeed—must lead to complications and results in other parts of the world, for which neither they nor Europe are prepared. Of one thing there can be no doubt—a slave state cannot long exist without a slave trade. The poor whites who have won the fight will demand their share of the spoils. The land for tilth is abundant, and all that is wanted to give them fortunes is a supply of slaves. They will have that in spite of their masters, unless a stronger power than the Slave States prevents the accomplishment of their wishes.

The gentleman in whose house I was stopping was not insensible to the dangers of the future, and would, I think, like many others, not at all regret to find himself and property safe in England. His father, the very day of our arrival, had proceeded to Canada with his daughters, but the Confederate authorities are now determined to confiscate all property belonging to persons who endeavor to evade the responsibilities of patriotism. In such matters the pressure of the majority is irresistible, and a sort of mob law supplants any remissness on the part of the authorities. In the South, where the deeds of the land of cypress and myrtle are exaggerated by passion, this power will be exercised very rigorously. The very language of the people is full of the excesses generally accepted as types of Americanism. Turning over a newspaper this morning, I came upon a “card” as it is called, signed by one “Mr. Bonner,” relating to a dispute between himself and an Assistant-Quarter-Master-General, about the carriage of some wood at Mobile, which concludes with the sentence that I transcribe, as an evidence of the style which is tolerated, if not admired, down South:—

“If such a Shylock-hearted, caitiff scoundrel does exist, give me the evidence, and I will drag him before the bar of public opinion, and consign him to an infamy so deep and damnable that the hand of the Resurrection will never reach him.”

June 10th.—At last venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus. I had seen as much as might be of the best phase of the great institution—less than I could desire of a most exemplary, kind-hearted, clear-headed, honest man. In the calm of a glorious summer evening we crossed the Father of Waters, waving an adieu to the good friend who stood on the shore, and turning our backs to the home we had left behind us. It was dark when the boat reached Donaldsonville on the opposite “coast.”

I should not be surprised to hear that the founder of. this remarkable city, which once contained the archives of the State, now transferred to Baton Rouge, was a North Briton. There is a simplicity and economy in the plan of the place not unfavorable to that view, but the motives which induced Donaldson to found his Rome on the west of Bayou La Fourche from the Mississippi must be a secret to all time. Much must the worthy Scot have been perplexed by his neighbors, a long-reaching colony of Spanish creoles, who toil not and spin nothing but fishing-nets, and who live better than Solomon, and are probably as well dressed, minus the barbaric pearl and gold of the Hebrew potentate. Take the odd, little, retiring, modest houses which grow in the hollows of Scarborough, add to them the least imposing mansions in the town of Folkstone, cast these broadsown over the surface of the Essex marshes, plant a few trees in front of them, then open a few cafés billard of the camp sort along the main street, and you have done a very good Donaldsonville.

A policeman welcomes us on the landing, and does the honors of the market, which has a beggarly account of empty benches, a Texan bull done into beef, and a coffee-shop. The policeman is a tall, lean, west countryman; his story is simple, and he has it to tell. He was one of Dan Rice’s company—a travelling Astley. He came to Donaldsonville, saw, and was conquered by one of the Spanish beauties, married her, become tavern-keeper, failed, learned French, and is now constable of the parish. There was, however, a weight on his mind. He had studied the matter profoundly, but he was not near the bottom. How did the friends, relatives, and tribe of his wife live? No one could say. They reared chickens, and they caught fish; when there was a pressure on the planters, they turned out to work for 6s. 6d. a-day, but those were rare occasions. The policeman had become quite grey with excogitating the matter, and he had “nary notion how they did it.”

Donaldsonville has done one fine thing. It has furnished two companies of soldiers—all Irishmen—to the wars, and the third is in the course of formation. Not much hedging, ditching, or hard work these times for Paddy! The blacksmith, a huge tower of muscle, claims exemption on the ground that “the divil a bit of him comes from Oireland; he nivir hird af it, barrin’ from the buks he rid,” and is doing his best to remain behind, but popular opinion is against him.

As the steamer could not be up from New Orleans till dawn, it was a relief to saunter through Donaldsonville to see society, which consisted of several gentlemen and various Jews playing games unknown to Hoyle, in oaken bar-rooms flanked by billiard tables. Doctor Cotmann, who had crossed the river to see patients suffering from an attack of euchre, took us round to a little club, where I was introduced to a number of gentlemen, who expressed great pleasure at seeing me, shook hands violently, and walked away; and, finally, melted off into a cloud of mosquitoes by the river bank, into a box prepared for them, which was called a bedroom.

These rooms were built of timber on the stage close by the river. “Why can’t I have one of those rooms?” asked I, pointing to a larger mosquito box. “It is engaged by ladies.” “How do you know?” “Parceque elles ont envoyé leur butin.” It was delicious to meet the French “plunder” for baggage—the old phrase, so nicely rendered—in the mouth of the Mississippi boatman.

Having passed a night of discomfiture with the winged demons of my box, I was aroused by the booming of the steam drum of the boat, dipped my head in water among drowned mosquitoes, and went forth upon the landing. The policeman had just arrived. His eagle eye lighted upon a large flat moored alongside, on the stern of which was inscribed in chalk, “Pork, corn, butter, beef,” &c. Several “spry” citizens were also on the platform. After salutations and compliments, policeman speaks—”When did she come in?” (meaning flat.) First citizen—”In the night, I guess.” Second citizen—”There’s a lot of whisky aboord, too.” Policeman (with pleased surprise)—”Yeu never mean it?” First citizen—”Yes, sir; one hundred and twenty gallons!” Policeman (inspired by patriotism)—”It’s a west-country boat; why don’t the citizens seize it? And whisky rising from 17c. to 35c. a gallon!” Citizens murmur approval, and I feel the whisky part of the cargo is not safe. “Yes, sir,” says citizen three, “they seize all our property at Cairey (Cairo), and I’m making an example of this cargo.”

Further reasons for the seizure were adduced, and it is probable they were as strong as the whisky, which has, no doubt, been drunk long ago on the very purest principles. In course of conversation with the committee of taste which had assembled, it was revealed to me that there was a strict watch kept over those boats which are freighted with whisky forbidden to the slaves, and with principles, when they come from the west country, equally objectionable. “Did you hear, sir, of the chap over at Duncan Kenner’s, as was caught the other day?” “No, sir, what was it?” “Well, sir, he was a man that came here and went over among the niggers at Kenner’s to buy their chickens from them. He was took up, and they found he’d a lot of money about him.” “Well, of course, he had money to buy the chickens.” “Yes, sir, but it looked suspeec-ious. He was a west-country fellow, tew, and he might have been tamperin’ with ’em. Lucky for him he was not taken in the arternoon.” “Why so?” “Because, if the citizens had been drunk, they’d have hung him on the spot.”

The Acadia was now alongside, and in the early morning Donaldsonville receded rapidly into trees and clouds. To bed, and make amends for mosquito visits, and after a long sleep look out again on the scene. It is difficult to believe that we have been going eleven miles an hour against the turbid river, which is of the same appearance as it was below—the same banks, bends, driftwood, and trees. Large timber rafts, navigated by a couple of men, who stood in the shade of a few upright boards, were encountered at long intervals. White egrets and blue herons rose from the marshes. At every landing the whites who came down were in some sort of uniform. There were two blacks placed on board at one of the landings in irons—captured runaways—and very miserable they looked at the thought of being restored to the bosom of the patriarchal family from which they had, no doubt, so prodigally eloped. I fear the fatted calfskin would be applied to their backs.

June 8th.—According to promise, the inmates of Mr. Burnside’s house proceeded to pay a visit to-day to the plantation of Mr. M’Call, who lives at the other side of the river some ten or twelve miles away. Still the same noiseless plantations, the same oppressive stillness, broken only by the tolling of the bell which summons the slaves to labor, or marks the brief periods of its respite! Whilst waiting for the ferryboat, we visited Dr. Cotmann, who lives in a snug house near the levee, for, hurried as we were, ‘twould nevertheless have been a gross breach of etiquette to have passed his doors; and I was not sorry for the opportunity of making the acquaintance of a lady so amiable as his wife, and of seeing a face with tender, pensive eyes, serene brow, and lovely contour, such as Guido or Greuse would have immortalized, and which Miss Cotmann, in the seclusion of that little villa on the banks of the Mississippi, scarcely seemed to know, would have made her a beauty in any capital in Europe.

The Doctor is allowed to rave on about his Union propensities and political power, as Mr. Petigru is permitted to indulge in similar vagaries in Charleston, simply because he is supposed to be helpless. There is, however, at the bottom of the Doctor’s opposition to the prevailing political opinion of the neighborhood, a jealousy of acres and slaves, and a sentiment of animosity to the great seigneurs and slave-owners, which actuate him without his being aware of their influence. After a halt of an hour in his house, we crossed in the ferry to Donaldsonville, where, whilst we were waiting for the carriages, we heard a dialogue between some drunken Irishmen and some still more inebriated Spaniards in front of the public-house at hand. The Irishmen were going off to the wars, and were endeavoring in vain to arouse the foreign gentlemen to similar enthusiasm; but, as the latter were resolutely sitting in the gutter, it became necessary to exert eloquence and force to get them on their legs to march to the head-quarters of the Donaldsonville Chasseurs. “For the love of the Virgin and your own sowl’s sake, Fernandey, get up and cum along wid us to fight the Yankees.” “Josey, are you going to let us be murdered by a set of damned Protestins and rascally niggers?” “Gomey, my darling, get up; it’s eleven dollars a month, and food and everything found. The boys will mind the fishing for you, and we’ll come back as rich as Jews.”

What success attended their appeals I cannot tell, for the carriages came round, and, having crossed a great bayou which runs down into an arm of the Mississippi near the sea, we proceeded on our way to Mr. M’Call’s plantation, which we reached just as the sun was sinking into the clouds of another thunderstorm.

The more one sees of a planter’s life the greater is the conviction that its charms come from a particular turn of mind, which is separated by a wide interval from modern ideas in Europe. The planter is a denomadized Arab;—he has fixed himself with horses and slaves in a fertile spot, where he guards his women with Oriental care, exercises patriarchal sway, and is at once fierce, tender, and hospitable. The inner life of his household is exceedingly charming, because one is astonished to find the graces and accomplishments of womanhood displayed in a scene which has a certain sort of savage rudeness about it after all, and where all kinds of incongruous accidents are visible in the service of the table, in the furniture of the house, in its decorations, menials, and surrounding scenery.

It was late in the evening when the party returned to Donaldsonville; and when we arrived at the other side of the bayou there were no carriages, so that we had to walk on foot to the wharf where Mr. Burnside’s boats were supposed to be waiting—the negro ferryman having long since retired to rest. Under any circumstances a march on foot through an unknown track covered with blocks of timber and other impedimenta which represented the road to the ferry, could not be agreeable; but the recent rains had converted the ground into a sea of mud filled with holes, with islands of planks and beams of timber, lighted only by the stars—and then this in dress trousers and light boots!

We plunged, struggled, and splashed till we reached the levee, where boats there were none; and so Mr. Burnside shouted up and down the river, so did Mr. Lee, and so did Mr. Ward and all the others, whilst I sat on a log affecting philosophy and indifference, in spite of tortures from mosquitoes innumerable, and severe bites from insects unknown.

The city and river were buried in darkness; the rush of the stream, which is sixty feet deep near the banks, was all that struck upon the ear in the intervals of the cries, “Boat ahoy!” “Ho! Batelier!” and sundry ejaculations of a less regular and decent form. At length a boat did glide out of the darkness, and the man who rowed it stated he had been waiting all the time up the bayou, till by mere accident he came down to the jetty, having given us up for the night. In about half an hour we were across the river, and had per force another interview with Dr. Cotmann, who regaled us with his best in story and in wine till the carriages were ready, and we drove back to Mr. Burnside’s, only meeting on the way two mounted horsemen with jingling arms, who were, we were told, the night patrol;—of their duties I could, however, obtain no very definite account.

June 7th.—The Confederate issue of ten millions sterling, in bonds payable in twenty years, is not sufficient to meet the demands of Government; and the four millions of small Treasury notes, without interest, issued by Congress, are being rapidly absorbed. Whilst the Richmond papers demand an immediate movement on Washington, the journals of New York are clamoring for an advance upon Richmond. The planters are called upon to accept the Confederate bonds in payment of the cotton to be contributed by the States.

Extraordinary delusions prevail on both sides. The North believe that battalions of scalping Indian savages are actually stationed at Harper’s Ferry. One of the most important movements has been made by Major-General McClellan, who has marched a force into Western Virginia from Cincinnati, has occupied a portion of the line of the Baltimore and Ohio railway, which was threatened with destruction by the Secessionists; and has already advanced as far as Grafton. Gen. McDowell has been appointed to the command of the Federal forces in Virginia. Every day regiments are pouring down from the North to Washington. General Butler, who is in command at Fortress Monroe, has determined to employ negro fugitives, whom he has called “Contrabands,” in the works about the fort, feeding them, and charging the cost of their keep against the worth of their services; and Mr. Cameron, the Secretary of War, has ordered him to refrain from surrendering such slaves to their masters, whilst he is to permit no interference by his soldiers with the relations of persons held to service under the laws of the States in which they are in.

Mr. Jefferson Davis has arrived at Richmond. At sea the Federal steamers have captured a number of Southern vessels; and some small retaliations have been made by the Confederate privateers. The largest mass of the Confederate troops have assembled at a place called Manassas Junction, on the railway from Western Virginia to Alexandria.

The Northern papers are filled with an account of a battle at Philippi, and a great victory, in which no less than two of their men were wounded and two were reported missing as the whole casualties; but Napoleon scarcely expended so much ink over Austerlitz as is absorbed on this glory in the sensation headings of the New York papers.

After breakfast I accompanied a party of Mr. Burnside’s friends to visit the plantations of Governor Manning, close at hand. One plantation is as like another as two peas. We had the same paths through tasselling corn, high above our heads, or through wastes of rising sugar-cane; but the slave quarters on Governor Manning’s were larger, better built, and more comfortable-looking than any I have seen.

Mr. Bateman, the overseer, a dour strong man, with spectacles on nose, and a quid in his cheek, led us over the ground. As he saw my eye resting on a large knife in a leather case stuck in his belt, he thought it necessary to say, “I keep this to cut my way through the cane brakes about; they are so plaguey thick.”

All the surface water upon the estate is carried into a large open drain, with a reservoir in which the fans of a large wheel, driven by steam-power, are worked so as to throw the water over to a cut below the level of the plantation, which carries it into a bayou connected with the lower Mississippi.

In this drain one of my companions saw a prodigious frog, about the size of a tortoise, on which he pounced with alacrity; and on carrying his prize to land he was much congratulated by his friend. “What on earth will you do with the horrid reptile?” “Do with it! why, eat it to be sure.” And it is actually true, that on our return the monster ‘crapaud’ was handed over to the old cook, and presently appeared on the breakfast-table, looking very like an uncommonly fine spatch-cock, and was partaken of with enthusiasm by all the company.

From the draining-wheel we proceeded to visit the forest, where negroes were engaged in clearing the trees, turning up the soil between the stumps, which marked where the mighty sycamore, live oak, gumtrees, and pines had lately shaded the rich earth. In some places the Indian corn was already waving its head and tassels above the black gnarled roots; in other spots the trees, girdled by the axe, but not yet down, rose up from thick crops of maize; and still deeper in the wood negroes were guiding the ploughs, dragged with pain and difficulty by mules, three abreast, through the tangled roots and rigid earth, which will next year be fit for sowing. There were one hundred and twenty negroes at work; and these, with an adequate number of mules, will clear four hundred and fifty acres of land this year. “But it’s death on niggers and mules,” said Mr. Bateman. “We generally do it with Irish, as well as the hedging and ditching; but we can’t get them now, as they are all off to the wars.”

Although the profits of sugar are large, the cost of erecting the machinery, the consumption of wood in the boiler, and the scientific apparatus demand a far larger capital than is required by the cotton planter, who, when he has got land, may procure negroes on credit, and only requires food and clothing till he can realize the proceeds of their labor, and make a certain fortune. Cotton will keep where sugar spoils. The prices are far more variable in the latter, although it has a protective tariff of 20 per cent.

The whole of the half million of hogsheads of the sugar grown in the South is consumed in the United States, whereas most of the cotton is sent abroad; but in the event of a blockade the South can use its sugar ad nauseam, whilst the cotton is all but useless in consequence of the want of manufacturers in the South.

When I got back, Mr. Burnside was seated in his verandah, gazing with anxiety, but not with apprehension, on the marching columns of black clouds, which were lighted up from time to time by heavy flashes, and shaken by rolls of thunder. Day after day the planters have been looking for rain, tapping glasses, scrutinizing aneroids, consulting negro weather prophets, and now and then their expectations were excited by clouds moving down the river, only to be disappointed by their departure into space, or, worse than all, their favoring more distant plantations with a shower that brought gold to many a coffer. “Did you ever see such luck? Kenner has got it again! That’s the third shower Bringier has had in the last two days.”

But it was now the turn of all our friends to envy us a tremendous thunder-storm, with a heavy, even downfall of rain, which was sucked up by the thirsty earth almost as fast as it fell, and filled the lusty young corn with growing pains, imparting such vigor to the cane that we literally saw it sprouting up, and could mark the increase in height of the stems from hour to hour.

My good host is rather uneasy about his prospects this year, owing to the war; and no wonder. He reckoned on an income of £100,000 for his sugar alone; but if he cannot send it North it is impossible to estimate the diminution of his profits. I fancy, indeed, he more and more regrets that he embarked his capital in these great sugar-swamps, and that he would gladly now invest it at a loss in the old country, of which he is yet a subject; for he has never been naturalized in the United States. Nevertheless, he rejoices in the finest clarets, and in wines of fabulous price, which are tended by an old white-headed negro, who takes as much care of the fluid as if he was accustomed to drink it every day.

June 5th.—The smart negro who waited on me this morning spoke English. I asked him if he knew how to read and write.—”We must not do that, sir.” “Where were you born?”—” I were raised on the plantation, Massa, but I have been to New Orleens;” and then he added, with an air of pride, “I sp’ose, sir, Massa Burnside not take less than 1500 dollars for me.” Downstairs to breakfast, the luxuries of which are fish, prawns, and red meat which has been sent for to Donaldsonville by boat rowed by an old negro. Breakfast over, I walked down to the yard, where the horses were waiting, and proceeded to visit the saccharine principality. Mr. Seal, the overseer of this portion of the estate, was my guide, if not philosopher and friend. Our road lay through a lane formed by a cart-track, between fields of Indian corn just beginning to flower—as it is called technically, to “tassel”—and sugar-cane. There were stalks of the former twelve or fifteen feet in height, with three or four ears each, round which the pea twined in leafy masses. The maize affords food to the negro, and the husks are eaten by the horses and mules, which also fatten on the peas in rolling time.

The wealth of the land is inexhaustible: all the soil requires is an alternation of maize and cane; and the latter, when cut in the stalk, called “ratoons,” at the end of the year, produces a fresh crop, yielding excellent sugar. The cane is grown from stalks which are laid in pits during the winter till the ground has been ploughed, when each piece of cane is laid longitudinally on the ridge and covered with earth, and from each joint of the stalk springs forth a separate sprout when the crop begins to grow. At present the sugar-cane is waiting for its full development, but the negro labor around its stem has ceased. It is planted in long continuous furrows, and although the palm-like tops have not yet united in a uniform arch over the six feet which separates row from row, the stalks are higher than a man. The plantation is pierced with wagon roads, for the purpose of conveying the cane to the sugar-mills, and these again are intersected by and run parallel with drains and ditches, portions of the great system of irrigation and drainage, in connection with a canal to carry off the surplus water to a bayou. The extent of these works may be estimated by the fact that there are thirty miles of road and twenty miles of open deep drainage through the estate, and that the main canal is fifteen feet wide, and at present four feet deep; but in the midst of this waste of plenty and wealth, where are the human beings who produce both? One must go far to discover them; they are buried in sugar and in maize, or hidden in negro quarters. In truth, there is no trace of them, over all this expanse of land, unless one knows where to seek; no “ploughboy whistles o’er the lea;” no rustic stands to do his own work, but the gang is moved off in silence from point to point, like a corps d’armée of some despotic emperor manœuvring in the battle-field.

Admitting everything that can be said, I am the more persuaded, from what I see, that the real foundation of slavery in the Southern States lies in the power of obtaining labor at will at a rate which cannot be controlled by any combination of the laborers. Granting the heat and the malaria, it is not for a moment to be argued that planters could not find white men to do their work if they would pay them for the risk. A negro, it is true, bears heat well, and can toil under the blazing sun of Louisiana, in the stifling air between the thick-set sugar-canes, but the Irishman who is employed in the stoke-hole of a steamer is exposed to a higher temperature and physical exertion even more arduous. The Irish laborer can, however, set a value on his work; the African slave can only determine the amount of work to be got from him by the exhaustion of his powers. Again, the indigo planter in India, out from morn till night amidst his ryots, or the sportsman toiling under the midday sun through swamp and jungle, proves that the white man can endure the utmost power of the hottest sun in the world as well as the native. More than that, the white man seems to be exempt from the inflammatory disease, pneumonia, and attacks of the mucous membrane and respiratory organs to which the blacks are subject; and if the statistics of negro mortality were rigidly examined, I doubt that they would exhibit as large a proportion of mortality and sickness as would be found amongst gangs of white men under similar circumstances. But the slave is subjected to rigid control; he is deprived of stimulating drinks in which the free white laborer would indulge; and he is obliged to support life upon an antiphlogistic diet, which gives him, however, sufficient strength to execute his daily task.

It is in the supposed cheapness of slave labor and its profitable adaptation in the production of Southern crops, that the whole gist and essence of the question really lie. The planter can get from the labor of a slave for whom he has paid £200, a sum of money which will enable him to use up that slave in comparatively a few years of his life, whilst he would have to pay to the white laborer a sum that would be a great apparent diminution of his profits, for the same amount of work. It is calculated that each field-hand, as an able-bodied negro is called, yields seven hogsheads of sugar a year, which, at the rate of fourpence a pound, at an average of a hogshead an acre, would produce to the planter £140 for every slave. This is wonderful interest on the planter’s money; but he sometimes gets two hogheads an acre, and even as many as three hogsheads have been produced in good years on the best lands; in other words, two and a quarter tons of sugar and refuse stuff, called “bagasse” have been obtained from an acre of cane. Not one planter of the many I have asked has ever given an estimate of the annual cost of a slave’s maintenance; the idea of calculating it never comes into their heads.

Much depends upon the period at which frost sets in; and if the planters can escape till January without any cold to nip the juices and the cane, their crop is increased in value each day; but it is not till October they can begin to send cane to the mill, in average seasons; and if the frost does not come till December, they may count upon the fair average of a hogshead of 1200 pounds of sugar to every acre.

The labor of ditching, trenching, cleaning the waste lands, and hewing down the forests is generally done by Irish laborers, who travel about the country under contractors, or are engaged by resident gangsmen for the task. Mr. Seal lamented the high prices of this work; but then, as he said, “It was much better to have Irish to do it, who cost nothing to the planter if they died, than to use up good field-hands in such severe employment.” There is a wonderful mine of truth in this observation. Heaven knows how many poor Hibernians have been consumed and buried in these Louisianian swamps, leaving their earnings to the dramshop keeper and the contractor, and the results of their toil to the planter. This estate derives its name from an Indian tribe called Houmas; and when Mr. Burnside purchased it for £300,000 he received in the first year £63,000 as the clear value of the crops on his investment.

The first place I visited with the overseer was a new sugar-house, which negro carpenters and masons were engaged in erecting. It would have been amusing had not the subject been so grave, to hear the overseer’s praises of the intelligence and skill of these workmen, and his boast that they did all the work of skilled laborers on the estate, and then to listen to him, in a few minutes, expatiating on the utter helplessness and ignorance of the black race, their incapacity to do any good, or even to take care of themselves.

There are four sugar-houses on this portion of Mr. Burnside’s estate, consisting of grinding-mills, boiling-houses, and crystallizing sheds.

The sugar-house is the capital of the negro quarters, and to each of them is attached an enclosure, in which there is a double row of single-storied wooden cottages, divided into two or four rooms. An avenue of trees runs down the centre of the negro street, and behind each hut are rude poultry-hutches, which, with geese and turkeys and a few pigs, form the perquisites of the slaves, and the sole source from which they derive their acquaintance with currency. Their terms are strictly cash. An old negro brought up some ducks to Mr. Burnside last night, and offered the lot of six for three dollars. “Very well, Louis; if you come to-morrow, I’ll pay you.” “No, massa; me want de money now.” “But won’t you give me credit, Louis? Don’t you think I’ll pay the three dollars?” “Oh, pay some day, massa, sure enough. Massa good to pay de tree dollar; but this nigger want money now to buy food and things for him leetle famly. They will trust massa at Donaldsville, but they won’t trust this nigger.” I was told that a thrifty negro will sometimes make ten or twelve pounds a year from his corn and poultry; but he can have no inducement to hoard; for whatever is his, as well as himself, belongs to his master.

Mr. Seal conducted me to a kind of forcing-house, where the young negroes are kept in charge of certain old crones too old for work, whilst their parents are away in the cane and Indian corn. A host of children of both sexes were seated in the verandah of a large wooden shed, or playing around it, very happily and noisily. I was glad to see the boys and girls of nine, ten, and eleven years of age were at this season, at all events, exempted from the cruel fate which befalls poor children of their age in the mining and manufacturing districts of England. At the sight of the overseer the little ones came forward in tumultuous glee, babbling out, “Massa Seal,” and evidently pleased to see him.

As a jolly agriculturist looks at his yearlings or young beeves, the kindly overseer, lolling in his saddle, pointed with his whip to the glistening fat ribs and corpulent paunches of his woolly-headed flock. “There’s not a plantation in the State,” quoth he, “can show such a lot of young niggers. The way to get them right is not to work the mothers too hard when they are near their time; to give them plenty to eat, and not to send them to the fields too soon.” He told me the increase was about five per cent, per annum. The children were quite sufficiently clad, ran about round us, patted the horses, felt our legs, tried to climb up on the stirrup, and twinkled their black and ochrey eyes at Massa Seal. Some were exceedingly fair; and Mr. Seal, observing that my eye followed these, murmured something about the overseers before Mr. Burnside’s time being rather a bad lot. He talked about their color and complexion quite openly; nor did it seem to strike him that there was any particular turpitude in the white man who had left his offspring as slaves on the plantation.

A tall, well-built lad of some nine or ten years stood by me, looking curiously into my face. “What is your name?” said I. “George,” he replied. “Do you know how to read or write?” He evidently did not understand the question. “Do you go to church or chapel?” A dubious shake of the head. “Did you ever hear of our Saviour?” At this point Mr. Seal interposed, and said, “I think we had better go on, as the sun is getting hot,” and so we rode gently through the little ones; and when we had got some distance he said, rather apologetically, “We don’t think it right to put these things into their heads so young, it only disturbs their minds, and leads them astray.”

Now, in this one quarter there were no less than eighty children, some twelve and some even fourteen years of age. No education—no God—their whole life—food and play, to strengthen their muscles and fit them for the work of a slave. “And when they die?” “Well,” said Mr. Seal, “they are buried in that field there by their own people, and some of them have a sort of prayers over them, I believe.” The overseer, it is certain, had no fastidious notions about slavery; it was to him the right thing in the right place, and his summum bonum was a high price for sugar, a good crop, and a healthy plantation. Nay, I am sure I would not wrong him if I said he could see no impropriety in running a good cargo of regular black slaves, who might clear the great backwood and swampy undergrowth, which was now exhausting the energies of his field-hands, in the absence of Irish navvies.

Each negro gets 5 lbs. of pork a week, and as much Indian corn bread as he can eat, with a portion of molasses, and occasionally they have fish for breakfast. All the carpenters and smiths’ work, the erection of sheds, repairing of carts and ploughs, and the baking of bricks for the farm buildings, are done on the estate by the slaves. The machinery comes from tho manufacturing cities of the North; but great effort are made to procure it from New Orleans, where factories have been already established. On the borders of the forest the negroes are allowed to plant corn for their own use, and sometimes they have an overplus, which they sell to their masters. Except when there is any harvest pressure on their hands, they have from noon on Saturday till dawn on Monday morning to do as they please, but they must not stir off the plantation on the road, unless with special permit, which is rarely granted.

There is an hospital on the estate, and even shrewd Mr. Seal did not perceive the conclusion that was to be drawn from his testimony to its excellent arrangements. “Once a nigger gets in there, he’d like to live there for the rest of his life.” But are they not the happiest, most contented people in the world—at any rate, when they are in hospital? I declare that to me the more orderly, methodical, and perfect the arrangements for economizing slave labor—regulating slaves—are, the more hateful and odious does slavery become. I would much rather be the animated human chattel of a Turk, Egyptian, Spaniard, or French creole, than the laboring beast of a Yankee or of a New England capitalist.

When I returned back to the house I found my friends enjoying a quiet siesta, and the rest of the afternoon was devoted to idleness, not at all disagreeable with a thermometer worthy of Agra. Even the mocking-birds were roasted into silence, and the bird which answers to our rook or crow sat on the under branches of the trees, gaping for air with his bill wide open. It must be hot indeed when the mocking-bird loses his activity. There is one, with its nest in a rose-bush trailed along the verandah under my window, which now sits over its young ones with outspread wings, as if to protect them from being baked; and it is so courageous and affectionate, that when I approach quite close, it merely turns round its head, dilates its beautiful dark eye, and opens its beak, within which the tiny sharp tongue is saying, I am sure, “Don’t for goodness sake disturb me, for if you force me to leave, the children will be burned to death.”