CHAPTER XXI. The river at Savannah
The river at Savannah—Commodore Tatnall—Fort Pulaski—Want of a fleet to the Southerners—Strong feeling of the women—Slavery considered in its results—Cotton and Georgia—Off for Montgomery—The Bishop of Georgia—The Bible and Slavery—Macon—Dislike of United States’ gold.
May Day.—Not unworthy of the best effort of English fine weather before the change in the kalendar robbed the poets of twelve days, but still a little warm for choice. The young American artist Moses, who was to have called our party to meet the officers who were going to Fort Pulaski, for some reason known to himself remained on board the Camilla, and when at last we got down to the river-side I found Commodore Tatnall and Brigadier Lawton in full uniform waiting for me.
The river is about the width of the Thames below Gravesend, very muddy, with a strong current, and rather fetid. That effect might have been produced from the rice-swamps at the other side of it, where the land is quite low, and stretches away as far as the sea in one level green, smooth as a billiard-cloth. The bank at the city side is higher, so that the houses stand on a little eminence over the stream, affording convenient wharfage and slips for merchant vessels.
Of these there were few indeed visible—nearly all had cleared out for fear of the blockade; some coasting vessels were lying idle at the quayside, and in the middle of the stream near a floating dock the Camilla was moored, with her club ensign flying. These are the times for bold ventures, and if Uncle Sam is not very quick with his blockades, there will be plenty of privateers and the like under C. S. A. colours looking out for his fat merchantmen all over the world.
I have been trying to persuade my friends here they will find very few Englishmen willing to take letters of marque and reprisal.
The steamer which was waiting to receive us had the Confederate flag flying, and Commodore Tatnall, pointing to a young officer in a naval uniform, told me he had just “come over from the other side,” and that he had pressed hard to be allowed to hoist a Commodore or flag-officer’s ensign in honour of the visit and of the occasion. I was much interested in the fine white-headed, blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked old man—who suddenly found himself blown into the air by a great political explosion, and in doubt and wonderment was floating to shore, under a strange flag in unknown waters. He was full of anecdote too, as to strange flags in distant waters and well-known names. The gentry of Savannah had a sort of Celtic feeling towards him in regard of his old name, and seemed determined to support him.
He has served the Stars and Stripes for three-fourths of a long life—his friends are in the North, his wife’s kindred are there, and so are all his best associations—but his State has gone out. How could he fight against the country that gave him birth! The United States is no country, in the sense we understand the words. It is a corporation or a body corporate for certain purposes, and a man might as well call himself a native of the common council of the city of London, or a native of the Swiss Diet, in the estimation of our Americans, as say he is a citizen of the United States; though it answers very well to say so when he is abroad, or for purposes of a legal character.
Of Fort Pulaski itself I wrote on my return a long account to the “Times.”
When I was venturing to point out to General Lawton the weakness of Fort Pulaski, placed as it is in low land, accessible to boats, and quite open enough for approaches from the city side, he said, “Oh, that is true enough. All our sea-coast works are liable to that remark, but the Commodore will take care of the Yankees at sea, and we shall manage them on land.” These people all make a mistake in referring to the events of the old war. “We beat off the British fleet at Charleston by the militia—ergo, we’ll sink the Yankees now.” They do not understand the nature of the new shell and heavy vertical fire, or the effect of projectiles from great distances falling into open works. The Commodore afterwards, smiling, remarked, “I have no fleet. Long before the Southern Confederacy has a fleet that can cope with the Stars and Stripes my bones will be white in the grave.”
We got back by eight o’clock P.M., after a pleasant day. What I saw did not satisfy me that Pulaski was strong, or Savannah very safe. At Bonaventure yesterday I saw a poor fort called “Thunderbolt,” on an inlet from which the city was quite accessible. It could be easily menaced from that point, while attempts at landing were made elsewhere as soon as Pulaski was reduced. At dinner met a very strong and very well-informed Southerner—there are some who are neither—or either—whose name was spelled Gourdin and pronounced Go-dine—just as Huger is called Hugée—and Tagliaferro, Telfer in these parts.
May 2nd.—Breakfasted with Mr. Hodgson, where I met Mr. Locke, Mr. Ward, Mr. Green and Mrs. Hodgson and her sister. There were in attendance some good-looking little negro boys and men dressed in liveries, which smacked of our host’s Orientalism, and they must have heard our discussion, or rather allusion, to the question which would decide whether we thought they are human beings or black two-legged cattle, with some interest, unless indeed the boast of their masters, that slavery elevates the character and civilises the mind of a negro, is another of the false pretences on which the institution is rested by its advocates. The native African, poor wretch, avoids being carried into slavery totis viribus, and it would argue ill for the effect on his mind of becoming a slave if he prefers a piece of gaudy calico even to his loin-cloth and feather head-dress. This question of civilising the African in slavery is answered in the assertion of the slave-owners themselves, that if the negroes were left to their own devices by emancipation, they would become the worst sort of barbarians—a veritable Quasheedom, the like of which was never thought of by Mr. Thomas Carlyle. I doubt if the aboriginal is not as civilised, in the true sense of the word, as any negro, after three degrees of descent in servitude, whom I have seen on any of the plantations—even though the latter have leather shoes and fustian or cloth raiment, and felt hat, and sings about the Jordan. He is exempted from any bloody raid indeed, but he is liable to be carried from his village and borne from one captivity to another, and his family are exposed to the same exile in America as in Africa. The extreme anger with which any unfavourable comment is met publicly, shows the sensitiveness of the slave-owners. Privately, they affect philosophy; and the blue books, and reports of Education Commissions and Mining Committees, furnish them with an inexhaustible source of argument if you once admit that the summum bonum lies in a certain rotundity of person, and a regular supply of coarse food. A long conversation on the old topics—old to me, but of only a few weeks’ birth. People are swimming with the tide. Here are many men who would willingly stand aside if they could, and see the battle between the Yankees, whom they hate, and the Secessionists. But there are no women in this party. Woe betide the Northern Pyrrhus whose head is within reach of a Southern tile and a Southern woman’s arm!
I re-visited some of the big houses afterwards, and found the merchants not cheerful, but fierce and resolute. There is a considerable population of Irish and Germans in Savannah, who to a man are in favour of the Confederacy, and will fight to support it. Indeed, it is expected they will do so, and there is a pressure brought to bear on them by their employers which they cannot well resist. The negroes will be forced into the place the whites hitherto occupied as labourers—only a few useful mechanics will be kept, and the white population will be obliged by a moral force draughting to go to the wars. The kingdom of cotton is most essentially of this world, and it will be fought for vigorously. On the quays of Savannah, and in the warehouses, there is not a man who doubts that he ought to strike his hardest for it, or apprehends failure. And then, what a career is before them! All the world asking for cotton, and England dependent on it. What a change since Whitney first set his cotton gin to work in this state close by us! Georgia, as a vast country only partially reclaimed, yet looks to a magnificent future. In her past history the Florida wars, and the treatment of the unfortunate Cherokee Indians, who were expelled from their lands as late as 1838, show the people who descended from old Oglethorpe’s band were fierce and tyrannical, and apt at aggression, nor will slavery improve them. I do not speak of the cultivated and hospitable citizens of the large towns, but of the bulk of the slaveless whites.
May 3rd.—I bade good-by to Mr. Green, who with several of his friends came down to see me off, at the terminus or “depôt” of the Central Railway, on my way to Montgomery—and looked my last on Savannah, its squares and leafy streets, its churches, and institutes with a feeling of regret that I could not see more of them, and that I was forced to be content with the outer aspect of the public buildings. I had been serenaded and invited out in all directions, asked to visit plantations and big trees, to make excursions to famous or beautiful spots, and specially warned not to leave the State without visiting the mountain district in the northern and western portion; but the march of events called me to Montgomery.
From Savannah to Macon, 191 miles, the road passes through level country only partially cleared. That is, there are patches of forest still intruding on the green fields, where the jagged black teeth of the destroyed trees rise from above the maize and cotton. There were but few negroes visible at work, nor did the land appear rich, but I was told the rail was laid along the most barren part of the country. The Indians had roamed in these woods little more than twenty years ago—now the wooden huts of the planters’ slaves and the larger edifice with its verandah and timber colonnade stood in the place of their wigwam.
Among the passengers to whom I was introduced was the Bishop of Georgia, the Rev. Mr. Elliott, a man of exceeding fine presence, of great stature, and handsome face, with a manner easy and graceful, but we got on the unfortunate subject of slavery, and I rather revolted at hearing a Christian prelate advocating the institution on scriptural grounds.
This affectation of Biblical sanction and ordinance as the basis of slavery was not new to me, though it is not much known at the other side of the Atlantic. I had read in a work on slavery, that it was permitted by both the Scriptures and the Constitution of the United States, and that it must, therefore, be doubly right. A nation that could approve of such interpretations of the Scriptures and at the same time read the “New York Herald,” seemed ripe for destruction as a corporate existence. The malum prohibitum was the only evil its crass senses could detect, and the malum per se was its good, if it only came covered with cotton or gold. The miserable sophists who expose themselves to the contempt of the world by their paltry thesicles on the divine origin and uses of slavery, are infinitely more contemptible than the wretched bigots who published themes long ago on the propriety of burning witches, or on the necessity for the offices of the Inquisition.
Whenever the Southern Confederacy shall achieve its independence—no matter what its resources, its allies, or its aims—it will have to stand face to face with civilized Europe on this question of slavery, and the strength which it derived from the ægis of the Constitution—“the league with the devil and covenant with Hell”—will be withered and gone.
I am well aware of the danger of drawing summary conclusions off-hand from the windows of a railway, but there is also a right of sight which exists under all circumstances, and so one can determine if a man’s face be dirty as well from a glance as if he inspected it for half an hour. For instance, no one can doubt the evidence of his senses, when he sees from the windows of the carriages that the children are barefooted, shoeless, stockingless—that the people who congregate at the wooden huts and grog-shops of the stations are rude, unkempt, but great fighting material too—that the villages are miserable places, compared with the trim, snug settlements one saw in New Jersey from the carriage-windows. Slaves in the fields looked happy enough—but their masters certainly were rough-looking and uncivilised—and the land was but badly cleared. But then we were traversing the least fertile portions of the State—a recent acquirement—gained only one generation since.
The train halted at a snug little wood-embowered restaurant, surrounded by trellis and lattice-work, and in the midst of a pretty garden, which presented a marked contrast to the “surroundings” we had seen. The dinner, served by slaves, was good of its kind, and the charge not high. On tendering the landlord a piece of gold for payment, he looked at it with disgust, and asked, “Have you no Charleston money? No Confederate notes?” “Well, no! Why do you object to gold?” “Well, do you see, I’d rather have our own paper! I don’t care to take any of the United States’ gold. I don’t want their stars and their eagles; I hate the sight of them.” The man was quite sincere—my companion gave him notes of some South Carolina bank.
It was dark when the train reached Macon, one of the principal cities of the State. We drove to the best hotel, but the regular time for dinner hour was over, and that for supper not yet come. The landlord directed us to a subterranean restaurant, in which were a series of crypts closed in by dirty curtains, where we made a very extraordinary repast, served by a half-clad little negress, who watched us at the meal with great interest through the curtains—the service was of the coarsest description; thick French earthenware, the spoons of pewter, the knives and forks steel or iron, with scarce a pretext of being cleaned. On the doors were the usual warnings against pickpockets, and the customary internal police regulations and ukases. Pickpockets and gamblers abound in American cities, and thrive greatly at the large hotels and the lines of railways.