—It is asserted for the hundredth time, in apparently authoritative circles, that Fort Sumter will be evacuated on or before Wednesday next, April 8d.— World, April 1.
March 30th.—Descended into the barber’s shop off the hall of the hotel; all the operators, men of color, mostly mulattoes, or yellow lads, good-looking, dressed in clean white jackets and aprons, were smart, quick, and attentive. Some seven or eight shaving chairs were occupied by gentlemen intent on early morning calls. Shaving is carried in all its accessories to a high degree of publicity, if not of perfection, in America; and as the poorest, or as I may call them without offence, the lowest orders in England have their easy shaving for a penny, so the highest, if there be any in America, submit themselves in public to the inexpensive operations of the negro barber. It must be admitted that the chairs are easy and well-arranged, the fingers nimble, sure, and light; but the affectation of French names, and the corruption of foreign languages, in which the hairdressers and barbers delight, are exceedingly amusing. On my way down a small street near the Capitol, I observed in a shop window, “Rowland’s make easier paste,” which I attribute to an imperfect view of the etymology of the great “Macassar;” on another occasion, I was asked to try Somebody’s “Curious Elison,” which I am afraid was an attempt to adapt to a shaving paste, an address not at all suited to profane uses. It appears that the trade of barber is almost the birthright of the free negro or colored man in the United States. There is a striking exemplification of natural equality in the use of brushes, and the senator flops down in the seat, and has his noble nose seized by the same fingers which the moment before were occupied by the person and chin of an unmistakable rowdy.
In the midst of the divine calm produced by hard hand rubbing of my head, I was aroused by a stout gentleman who sat in a chair directly opposite. Through the door which opened into the hall of the hotel, one could see the great crowd passing to and fro, thronging the passage as though it had been the entrance to the Forum, or the “Salle de pas perdus.” I had observed my friend’s eye gazing fixedly through the opening on the outer world. Suddenly, with his face half-covered with lather, and a bib tucked under his chin, he got up from his seat exclaiming, “Senator! Senator! hallo!” and made a dive into the passage—whether he received a stern rebuke, or became aware of his impropriety, I know not, but in an instant he came back again, and submitted quietly, till the work of the barber was completed.
The great employment of four-fifths of the people at Willard’s at present seems to be to hunt senators and congress men through the lobbies. Every man is heavy with documents—those which he cannot carry in his pockets and hat, occupy his hands, or are thrust under his arms. In the hall are advertisements announcing that certificates, and letters of testimonial, and such documents, are printed with expedition and neatness. From paper collars, and cards of address to carriages, and new suites of clothes, and long hotel bills, nothing is left untried or uninvigorated. The whole city is placarded with announcements of facilities for assaulting the powers that be, among which must not be forgotten the claims of the “excelsior card-writer,” at Willard’s, who prepares names, addresses, styles, and titles in superior penmanship. The men who have got places, having been elected by the people, must submit to the people, who think they have established a claim on them by their favors. The majority confer power, but they seem to forget that it is only the minority who can enjoy the first fruits of success. It is as if the whole constituency of Marylebone insisted on getting some office under the Crown the moment a member was returned to Parliament. There are men at Willard’s who have come literally thousands of miles to seek for places which can only be theirs for four years, and who with true American facility have abandoned the calling and pursuits of a lifetime for this doubtful canvas; and I was told of one gentleman, who having been informed that he could not get a judgeship, condescended to seek a place in the Post Office, and finally applied to Mr. Chase to be appointed keeper of a “lighthouse,” he was not particular where. In the forenoon I drove to the Washington Navy Yard, in company with Lieutenant Nelson and two friends. It is about two miles outside the city, situated on a fork of land projecting between a creek and the Potomac river, which is here three-quarters of a mile broad. If the French had a Navy Yard at Paris it could scarcely be contended that English, Russians, or Austrians would not have been justified in destroying it in case they got possession of the city by force of arms, after a pitched battle fought outside its gates. I confess I would not give much for Deptford and Woolwich if an American fleet succeeded in forcing its way up the Thames ; but our American cousins,—a little more than kin and less than kind, who speak with pride of Paul Jones and of their exploits on the Lakes,—affect to regard the burning of the Washington Navy Yard by us, in the last war, as an unpardonable outrage on the law of nations, and an atrocious exercise of power. For all the good it did, for my own part, I think it were as well had it never happened, but no jurisconsult will for a moment deny that it was a legitimate, even if extreme, exercise of a belligerent right in the case of an enemy who did not seek terms from the conqueror; and who, after battle lost, fled and abandoned the property of their state, which might be useful to them in war, to the power of the victor. Notwithstanding all the unreasonableness of the American people in reference to their relations with foreign powers, it is deplorable such scenes should ever have been enacted between members of the human family so closely allied by all that shall make them of the same household.
The Navy Yard is surrounded by high brick walls; in the gateway stood two sentries in dark blue tunics, yellow facings, with eagle buttons, brightly polished arms, and white Berlin gloves, wearing a cap something like a French kepi, all very clean and creditable. Inside are some few trophies of guns taken from us at York Town, and from the Mexicans in the land of Cortez. The interior inclosure is surrounded by red brick houses, and stores and magazines, picked out with white stone; and two or three green grass-plots, fenced in by pillars and chains and bordered by trees, give an air of agreeable freshness to the place. Close to the river are the workshops: of course there is smoke and noise of steam and machinery. In a modest office, surrounded by books, papers, drawings, and models, as well as by shell and shot and racks of arms of different descriptions, we found Capt. Dahlgren, the acting superintendent of the yard, and the inventor of the famous gun which bears his name, and is the favorite armament of the American navy. By our own sailors they are irreverently termed “soda-water bottles,” owing to their shape. Capt. Dahlgren contends that guns capable of throwing the heaviest shot may be constructed of cast-iron, carefully prepared and moulded so that the greatest thickness of metal may he placed at the points of resistance, at the base of the gun, the muzzle and forward portions being of very moderate thickness.
All inventors, or even adapters of systems, must be earnest self-reliant persons, full of confidence, and, above all, impressive, or they will make little way in the conservative, status-quo-loving world. Captain Dahlgren has certainly most of these characteristics, but he has to fight with his navy department, with the army, with boards and with commissioners,— in fact, with all sorts of obstructors. When I was going over the yard, he deplored the parsimony of the department, which refused to yield to his urgent entreaties for additional furnaces to cast guns.
No large guns are cast at Washington. The foundries are only capable of turning out brass fieldpieces and boat-guns. Capt. Dahlgren obligingly got one of the latter out to practice for us—a 12-pounder howitzer, which can be carried in a boat, run on land on its carriage, which is provided with wheels, and is so light that the gun can be drawn readily about by the crew. He made some good practice with shrapnel at a target 1200 yards distant, firing so rapidly as to keep three shells in the air at the same time. Compared with our establishments, this dockyard is a mere toy, and but few hands are employed in it. One steam sloop, the “Pawnee,” was under the shears, nearly ready for sea: the frame of another was under the building-shed. There are no facilities for making iron ships, or putting on plate-armour here. Everything was shown to us with the utmost frankness. The fuse of the Dahlgren shell is constructed on the vis inertia principle, and is not unlike that of the Armstrong.
On returning to the hotel, I found a magnificent bouquet of flowers, with a card attached to them, with Mrs. Lincoln’s compliments, and another card announcing that she had a “reception” at 3 o’clock. It was rather late before I could get to the White House, and there were only two or three ladies in the drawing-room when I arrived. I was informed afterwards that the attendance was very scanty. The Washington ladies have not yet made up their minds that Mrs. Lincoln is the fashion. They miss their Southern friends, and constantly draw comparisons between them and the vulgar Yankee women and men who are now in power. I do not know enough to say whether the affectation of superiority be justified; but assuredly if New York be Yankee, there is nothing in which it does not far surpass this preposterous capitol. The impression of homeliness produced by Mrs. Lincoln on first sight, is not diminished by closer acquaintance. Few women not to the manner born there are, whose heads would not be disordered, and circulation disturbed, by a rapid transition, almost instantaneous, from a condition of obscurity in a country town to be mistress of the White House. Her smiles and her frowns become a matter of consequence to the whole American world. As the wife of the country lawyer, or even of the congress man, her movements were of no consequence. The journals of Springfield would not have wasted a line upon them. Now, if she but drive down Pennsylvania Avenue, the electric wire thrills the news to every hamlet in the Union which has a newspaper; and fortunate is the correspondent who, in a special despatch, can give authentic particulars of her destination and of her dress. The lady is surrounded by flatterers and intriguers, seeking for influence or such places as she can give. As Selden says, “Those who wish to set a house on fire begin with the thatch.”
Wednesday.—I have been mobbed by my own house servants. Some of them are at the plantation, some hired out at the Camden hotel, some are at Mulberry. They agreed to come in a body and beg me to stay at home to keep my own house once more, “as I ought not to have them scattered and distributed every which way.” I had not been a month in Camden since 1858. So a house there would be for their benefit solely, not mine. I asked my cook if she lacked anything on the plantation at the Hermitage. “Lack anything?” she said, “I lack everything. What are corn-meal, bacon, milk, and molasses? Would that be all you wanted? Ain’t I been living and eating exactly as you does all these years? When I cook for you, didn’t I have some of all? Dere, now!” Then she doubled herself up laughing. They all shouted, “Missis, we is crazy for you to stay home.”
Armsted, my butler, said he hated the hotel. Besides, he heard a man there abusing Marster, but Mr. Clyburne took it up and made him stop short. Armsted said he wanted Marster to know Mr. Clyburne was his friend and would let nobody say a word behind his back against him, etc., etc. Stay in Camden? Not if I can help it. “Festers in provincial sloth”—that’s Tennyson’s way of putting it.
“We” came down here by rail, as the English say. Such a crowd of Convention men on board. John Manning¹ flew in to beg me to reserve a seat by me for a young lady under his charge. “Place aux dames,” said my husband politely, and went off to seek a seat somewhere else. As soon as we were fairly under way, Governor Manning came back and threw himself cheerily down into the vacant place. After arranging his umbrella and overcoat to his satisfaction, he coolly remarked: “I am the young lady.” He is always the handsomest man alive (now that poor William Taber has been killed in a duel), and he can be very agreeable; that is, when he pleases to be so. He does not always please. He seemed to have made his little maneuver principally to warn me of impending danger to my husband’s political career. “Every election now will be a surprise. New cliques are not formed yet. The old ones are principally bent upon displacing one another.” “But the Yankees—those dreadful Yankees!” “Oh, never mind, we are going to take care of home folks first! How will you like to rusticate?—go back and mind your own business?” “If I only knew what that was—what was my own business.”
Our round table consists of the Judge, Langdon Cheves,² Trescott,³ and ourselves. Here are four of the cleverest men that we have, but such very different people, as opposite in every characteristic as the four points of the compass. Langdon Cheves and my husband have feelings and ideas in common. Mr. Petigru† said of the brilliant Trescott: “He is a man without indignation.” Trescott and I laugh at everything.
The Judge, from his life as solicitor, and then on the bench, has learned to look for the darkest motives for every action. His judgment on men and things is always so harsh, it shocks and repels even his best friends. To-day he said: “Your conversation reminds me of a flashy second-rate novel.” “How?” “By the quantity of French you sprinkle over it. Do you wish to prevent us from understanding you?” “No,” said Trescott, “we are using French against Africa. We know the black waiters are all ears now, and we want to keep what we have to say dark. We can’t afford-to take them into our confidence, you know.”
This explanation Trescott gave with great rapidity and many gestures toward the men standing behind us. Still speaking the French language, his apology was exasperating, so the Judge glared at him, and, in unabated rage, turned to talk with Mr. Cheves, who found it hard to keep a calm countenance.
On the Battery with the Rutledges, Captain Hartstein was introduced to me. He has done some heroic things—brought home some ships and is a man of mark. Afterward he sent me a beautiful bouquet, not half so beautiful, however, as Mr. Robert Gourdin’s, which already occupied the place of honor on my center table. What a dear, delightful place is Charleston!
A lady (who shall be nameless because of her story) came to see me to-day. Her husband has been on the Island with the troops for months. She has just been down to see him. She meant only to call on him, but he persuaded her to stay two days. She carried him some clothes made from his old measure. Now they are a mile too wide. “So much for a hard life!” I said.
“No, no,” said she, “they are all jolly down there. He has trained down; says it is good for him, and he likes the life.” Then she became confidential, although it was her first visit to me, a perfect stranger. She had taken no clothes down there—pushed, as she was, in that manner under Achilles’s tent. But she managed things; she tied her petticoat around her neck for a nightgown.
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¹ John Lawrence Manning was a son of Richard I. Manning, a former Governor of South Carolina. He was himself elected Governor of that State in 1852, was a delegate to the convention that nominated Buchanan, and during the War of Secession served on the staff of General Beauregard. In 1865 he was chosen United States Senator from South Carolina, but was not allowed to take his seat.
² Son of Langdon Cheves, an eminent lawyer of South Carolina, who served in Congress from 1810 to 1814; he was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, and from 1819 to 1823 was President of the United States Bank; he favored Secession, but died before it was accomplished—in 1857.
³ William Henry Trescott, a native of Charleston, was Assistant Secretary of State of the United States in 1860, but resigned after South Carolina seceded. After the war he had a successful career as a lawyer and diplomatist.
† James Louis Petigru before the war had reached great distinction as a lawyer and stood almost alone in his State as an opponent of the Nullification movement of 1830-1832. In 1860 he strongly opposed disunion, although he was then an old man of 71. His reputation has survived among lawyers because of the fine work he did in codifying the laws of South Carolina.
SATURDAY 30
This has been rather a busy day in the office for me as I had to make out the monthly account, or Report. Some removals among the subordinates today. Many are trembling expecting decapitation. I think that the removals so far have been generaly judicious and such as ou[gh]t to have been made. The day has been windy and dry, and consequently very dusty. Went down to the Ave and got the NY papers. Came home with Julia from Mr Woodwards, read the papers till it is now high time to bed 1/2 pst 11.
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The three diary manuscript volumes, Washington during the Civil War: The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861-1865, are available online at The Library of Congress.
FORT PICKENS, FLA., March 30, 1861.
The ASSISTANT ADJUTANT-GENERAL, Headquarters of the Army:
SIR: I have the honor to report that matters have not assumed hostile attitude. Everything appears quiet. Troops are being quietly concentrated and preparations made for an immediate movement should the present amicable agreement be interrupted. From all I can learn, there are now nearly one thousand enlisted men occupying the various posts and batteries in the vicinity and five thousand expected. Since my last report the redoubt between Fort Barrancas and the bayou has been occupied and made an ordnance depot. Nearly all the powder has been transferred from the navy-yard to that post. The troops are organized and apparently under good discipline, a marked difference existing between them and the volunteers who first occupied these positions. Guns are being mounted at Fort McRee. The light-house battery has four 8-inch columbiads which bear directly on this work. Another battery of four 8-inch columbiads is situated to the east and front of the naval hospital. Report says that another battery has been constructed at the old light-house. I cannot distinguish any signs of however. If made, it is effectually masked.
Fort Barrancas is fully armed. Guns are mounted in the navy-yard for its protection. These works are being strengthened and completed each day, and soon the position will be one which will be very difficult to reoccupy, and one which will prove a serious annoyance to this post. Shot and shells can be thrown from each of these works into Fort Pickens. I have protested against the prosecution of these works, but with no effect. Colonel Chase did stop the work, but his successors have continued them on the plea of being for defensive purposes. With one or two batteries established on Santa Rosa Island, Fort Pickens would be in almost as bad a position as Fort Sumter. Fort McRee and these batteries would be able to drive off any shipping and prevent the introduction of re-enforcements and provisions. I have thus far succeeded in preventing any lodgment on the island, and will consider any such movement a breach of the agreement.
It is very necessary that we should be informed as to passing events, and would, therefore, most respectfully call the attention of the Commanding General to the fact that from the 23d February until the 29th March no important communication has been received. We receive nothing but from the sufferance of the opposing forces, which at any moment may be stopped should anything occur contrary to their desires. I am now left without an officer, but will request the transfer of Lieutenant Langdon to the fort during the absence of Lieutenant Gilman.
Fresh provisions are now denied us. If it is the intention of the Government to hold this fort, I would most respectfully suggest that the stores and supplies necessary for the effective defense of the work be forwarded immediately, with definite instructions as to their being landed.
I am, sir, very respectfully, your most obedient servant,
A. J. SLEMMER,
First Lieutenant, First Artillery, Commanding.
—The Mississippi State Convention, at Jackson, ratified the Constitution of the Confederate States, by a vote of 78 to 7.—Tribune, April 1.
Note: This particular diary entry—a document written in 1861—includes a term that is very offensive to many today. No attempt will be made to censor or edit 19th century material to today’s standards.
March 29th, Good Friday.—The religious observance of the day was not quite as strict as it would be in England. The Puritan aversion to ceremonials and formulary observances has apparently affected the American world, even as far south as this. The people of color were in the streets dressed in their best. The first impression produced by fine bonnets, gay shawls, brightly-colored dresses, and silk brodequins, on black faces, flat figures, and feet to match, is singular; but, in justice to the backs of many of the gaudily-dressed women, who, in little groups, were going to church or chapel, it must be admitted that this surprise only came upon one when he got a front view. The men generally affected black coats, silk or satin waistcoats, and parti-colored pantaloons. They carried Missal or Prayer-book, pocket-handkerchief, cane or parasol, with infinite affectation of correctness. As I was looking out of the window, a very fine, tall young negro, dressed irreproachably, save as to hat and boots, passed by. “I wonder what he is?” I exclaimed inquiringly to a gentleman who stood beside me.” Well,” he said, “that fellow is not a free nigger; he looks too respectable. I daresay you could get him for 1500 dollars, without his clothes. You know,” continued he, “what our Minister said when he saw a nigger at some Court in Europe, and was asked what he thought of him: ‘Well, I guess,’ said he, ‘if you take off his fixings, he may be worth 1000 dollars down.’ In the course of the day, Mr. Banks, a corpulent, energetic young Virginian, of strong Southern views, again called on me. As the friend of the Southern Commissioners he complained vehemently of the refusal of Mr. Seward to hold intercourse with him. “These fellows, mean treachery, but we will baulk them.” In answer to a remark of mine, that the English Minister would certainly refuse to receive Commissioners from any part of the Queen’s dominions which had seized upon the forts and arsenals of the empire and menaced war, he replied: “The case is quite different. The Crown claims a right to govern the whole of your empire; but the Austrian Government could not refuse to receive a deputation from Hungary for an adjustment of grievances; nor could any State belonging to the German Diet attempt to claim sovereignty over another, because they were members of the same Confederation.” I remarked “that his views of the obligations of each State of the Union were perfectly new to me, as a stranger ignorant of the controversies which distracted them. An Englishman had nothing to do with a Virginian and New Yorkist, or a South Carolinian—he scarcely knew anything of a Texan, or of an Arkansian; we only were conversant with the United States as an entity; and all our dealings were with citizens of the United States of North America.” This, however, only provoked logically diffuse dissertations on the Articles of the Constitution, and on the spirit of the Federal Compact.
Later in the day, I had the advantage of a conversation with Mr. Truman Smith, an old and respected representative in former days, who gave me a very different account of the matter; and who maintained that by the Federal Compact each State had delegated irrevocably the essence of its sovereignty to a Government to be established in perpetuity for the benefit of the whole body. The Slave States, seeing that the progress of free ideas, and the material power of the North, were obtaining an influence which must be subversive of the supremacy they had so long exercised in the Federal Government for their own advantage, had developed this doctrine of States’ Rights as a cloak to treason, preferring the material advantages to be gained by the extension of their system to the grand moral position which they would occupy as a portion of the United States in the face of all the world.
It is on such radical differences of ideas as these, that the whole of the quarrel, which is widening every day, is founded. The Federal Compact, at the very outset, was written on a torn sheet of paper, and time has worn away the artificial cement by which it was kept together. The corner stone of the Constitution had a crack in it, which the heat and fury of faction have widened into a fissure from top to bottom, never to be closed again.
In the evening I had the pleasure of dining with an American gentleman who has seen much of the world, travelled far and wide, who has read much and beheld more, a scholar, a politician, after his way, a poet, and an ologist — one of those modern Grœculi, who is unlike his prototype in Juvenal only in this, that he is not hungry, and that he will not go to heaven if you order him.
Such men never do or can succeed in the United States; they are far too refined, philosophical, and cosmopolitan. From what I see, success here may be obtained by refined men, if they are dishonest, never by philosophical men, unless they be corrupt—not by cosmopolitan men under any circumstances whatever; for to have sympathies with any people, or with any nation in the world, except his own, is to doom a statesman with the American public, unless it be in the form of an affectation of pity or good will, intended really as an offence to some allied people. At dinner there was the very largest naval officer I have ever seen in company, although I must own that our own service is not destitute of some good specimens, and I have seen an Austrian admiral at Pola, and the superintendent of the Arsenal at Tophaneh, who were not unfit to be marshals of France. This Lieutenant, named Nelson, was certainly greater in one sense than his British namesake, for he weighed 260 pounds.
It may be here remarked, passim and obiter, that the Americans are much more precise than ourselves in the enumeration of weights and matters of this kind. They speak of pieces of artillery, for example, as being of so many pounds weight, and of so many inches long, where we would use cwts. and feet. With a people addicted to vertical rather than lateral extension in everything but politics and morals, precision is a matter of importance. I was amused by a description of some popular personage I saw in one of the papers the other day, which after an enumeration of many high mental and physical attributes, ended thus, “In fact he is a remarkably fine high-toned gentleman, and weighs 210 pounds.”
The Lieutenant was a strong Union man, and he inveighed fiercely, and even coarsely, against the members of his profession who had thrown up their commissions. The superintendent of the Washington Navy Yard is supposed to be very little disposed in favor of this present Government; in fact, Capt. Buchanan may be called a Secessionist, nevertheless, I am invited to the wedding of his daughter, in order to see the President give away the bride. Mr. Nelson says, Sumter and Pickens are to be reinforced. Charleston is to be reduced to order, and all traitors hanged, or he will know the reason why; and, says he, “I have some weight in the country.” In the evening, as we were going home, notwithstanding the cold, we saw a number of ladies sitting out on the door steps, in white dresses. The streets were remarkably quiet and deserted; all the colored population had been sent to bed long ago. The fire bell, as usual, made an alarm or two about midnight.
FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 1861.
A pleasant warm day, which has passed off much as others do when nothing in particular occurs. The office is thronged with expectants for office, and it puzzles the “heads” to find places for even a small portion of the applicants. Went down to the Express office this evening, Julia went with me for a walk. We called no where else except for the NY Papers. We are all very well. My own health never was better. We read the papers till I was left alone & I went to bed at 11 o’ck.
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The three diary manuscript volumes, Washington during the Civil War: The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861-1865, are available online at The Library of Congress.
CINCINNATI, March 29, 1861.
DEAR UNCLE:—I have received your favor, and suspect you are more anxious that I should be re-elected than the occasion calls for. I philosophize in this way: I have got out of the office pretty much all the good there is in it—reputation and experience. If I quit it now, I shall be referred to as the best, or one of the best solicitors, the city has had. If I serve two years more, I can add nothing to this. I may possibly lose. I shall be out of clients and business a little while, but this difficulty will perhaps be greater two years hence. So you see it is no great matter. Still, I should prefer to beat, and with half a chance, I should do it.
I am not wasting much time looking after the election—none in mere personal electioneering. I am trying to so behave as to go out respectably.
Sincerely,
R.B. HAYES.
S. BIRCHARD.
WAR DEPARTMENT, A. AND I. G. O.,
Montgomery, March 29, 1861.
Brig. Gen. G. T. BEAUREGARD,
Commanding, &c., Charleston, S.C.:
SIR: The Secretary of War directs that you will allow no further communications between the Government of the United States and Fort Sumter, unless the written instructions of the intermediary are first submitted to your inspection, with satisfactory assurances that there are no verbal instructions inconsistent with those which are written.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
S. COOPER,
Adjutant and Inspector General.
