GLOOMY FOREBODINGS OF COMING CONFLICT.
After the first shout of triumph and the first glow of exultation consequent on his Inauguration, Mr. Lincoln soon began to realize with dismay what was before him. Geographical lines were at last distinctly drawn. He was regarded as a sectional representative, elected President with most overwhelming majorities north of Mason and Dixon's line, and not a single electoral vote south of it. He saw a great people, comprising many millions and inhabiting a vast region of our common country, exasperated by calumny, stung by defeat, and alarmed by the threats of furious fanatics whom demagogues held up to them as the real and only leaders of the triumphant party. His election had brought the nation face to face with the perils that had been feared by every rank and party since the dawn of Independence,—with the very contingency, the crisis in which all venerable authority had declared from the beginning that the Union would surely perish, and the fragments, after exhausting each other by commercial restrictions and disastrous wars, would find ignominious safety in as many paltry despotisms as there were fragments.
On the 3d of March, 1861, the Thirty-sixth Congress had reached the prescribed period of its existence, and had died a constitutional death. Its last session of three months had been spent in full view of an awful public calamity, which it had made no effort to avert or to mitigate. It saw the nation compassed round with a frightful danger, but it proposed no plan either of conciliation or defence. It adjourned forever, and left the law precisely as it found it.
In his message to Congress, President Buchanan had said: "Congress alone has power to decide whether the present laws can or cannot be amended so as to carry out more effectually the objects of the Constitution." With Congress rested the whole responsibility of peace or war, and with them the message left it. But Congress behaved like a body of men who thought that the calamities of the nation were no special business of theirs. The members from the extreme South were watching for the proper moment to retire; those from the middle slave States were a minority which could only stand and wait upon the movements of others; while the great and all-powerful Northern party was what the French minister called "a mere aggregation of individual ambitions." They had always denied the possibility of a dissolution of the Union in any conjuncture of circumstances; and their habit of disregarding the evidence was too strong to be suddenly changed. In the philosophy of their politics it had not been dreamed of as a possible thing. Even when they saw it assume the shape of a fixed and terrible fact, they could not comprehend its meaning. They looked at the frightful phenomenon as a crowd of barbarians might look at an eclipse of the sun: they saw the light of heaven extinguished and the earth covered with strange and unaccountable darkness, but they could neither understand its cause nor foresee its end,—they knew neither whence it came nor what it portended. The nation was going to pieces, and Congress left it to its fate. The vessel, freighted with all the hopes and all the wealth of thirty millions of free people was drifting to her doom, and they who alone had power to control her course refused to lay a finger on the helm.
Only a few days before the convening of this Congress the following letter was written by Hon. Joseph Holt, Postmaster-General, afterward Secretary of War, under Buchanan:—
Washington, Nov. 30, 1860.
My dear Sir, — I am in receipt of yours of the 27th inst., and thank you for your kindly allusion to myself, in connection with the fearful agitation which now threatens the dismemberment of our government. I think the President's message will meet your approbation, but I little hope that it will accomplish anything in moderating the madness that rules the hour. The indications are that the movement has passed beyond the reach of human control. God alone can disarm the cloud of its lightnings. South Carolina will be out of the Union, and in the armed assertion of a distinct nationality probably before Christmas. This is certain, unless the course of events is arrested by prompt and decided action on the part of the people and Legislatures of the Northern States; the other slave States will follow South Carolina in a few weeks or months. The border States, now so devoted to the Union, will linger a little while; but they will soon unite their fortunes with those of their Southern sisters. Conservative men have now no ground to stand upon, no weapon to battle with. All has been swept from them by the guilty agitations and infamous legislation of the North. I do not anticipate, with any confidence, that the North will act up to the solemn responsibilities of the crisis, by retracing those fatal steps which have conducted us to the very brink of perdition, politically, morally, and financially.
There is a feeling growing in the free States which says, "Let the South go!" and this feeling threatens rapidly to increase. It is, in part, the fruit of complete estrangement, and in part a weariness of this perpetual conflict between North and South, which has now lasted, with increasing bitterness, for the last thirty years. The country wants repose, and is willing to purchase it at any sacrifice. Alas for the delusion of the belief that repose will follow the overthrow of the government!
I doubt not, from the temper of the public mind, that the Southern States will be allowed to withdraw peacefully; but when the work of dismemberment begins, we shall break up the fragments from month to month, with the nonchalance with which we break the bread upon our breakfast-table. If all the grave and vital questions which will at once arise among these fragments of the ruptured Republic can be adjusted without resort to arms, then we have made vast progress since the history of our race was written. But the tragic events of the hour will show that we have made no progress at all. We shall soon grow up a race of chieftains, who will rival the political bandits of South America and Mexico, and who will carve out to us our miserable heritage with their bloody swords. The masses of the people dream not of these things. They suppose the Republic can be destroyed to-day, and that peace will smile over its ruins to-morrow. They know nothing of civil war: this Marah in the pilgrimage of nations has happily been for them a sealed fountain; they know not, as others do, of its bitterness, and that civil war is a scourge that darkens every fireside, and wrings every heart with anguish. They are to be commiserated, for they know not what to do. Whence is all this? It has come because the pulpit and press and the cowering, unscrupulous politicians of the North have taught the people that they are responsible for the domestic institutions of the South, and that they have been faithful to God only by being unfaithful to the compact which they have made to their fellow-men. Hence those Liberty Bills which degrade the statute-books of some ten of the free States, and are confessedly a shameless violation of the federal Constitution in a point vital to her honor. We have presented, from year to year, the humiliating spectacle of free and sovereign States, by a solemn act of legislation, legalizing the theft of their neighbors' property. I say theft, since it is not the less so because the subject of the despicable crime chances to be a slave, instead of a horse or bale of goods.
From this same teaching has come the perpetual agitation of the slavery question, which has reached the minds of the slave population of the South, and has rendered every home in that distracted land insecure. This is the feature of the irrepressible conflict with which the Northern people are not familiar. In almost every part of the South miscreant fanatics have been found, and poisonings and conflagrations have marked their footsteps. Mothers there lie down at night trembling beside their children, and wives cling to their husbands as they leave their homes in the morning. I have a brother residing in Mississippi, who is a lawyer by profession, and a cotton planter, but has never had any connection with politics. Knowing the calm and conservative tone of his character, I wrote him a few weeks since, and implored him to exert his influence in allaying the frenzy of the popular mind around him. He has replied to me at much length, and after depicting the machinations of the wretches to whom I have alluded, and the consternation which reigns in the homes of the South, he says it is the unalterable determination of the Southern people to overthrow the government as the only refuge which is left to them from these insupportable wrongs; and he adds: "On the success of this movement depends my every interest,—the safety of my roof from the firebrand, and of my wife and children from the poison and the dagger."
I give you his language because it truthfully expresses the Southern mind which at this moment glows as a furnace in its hatred to the North because of these infernal agitations. Think you that any people can endure this condition of things? When the Northern preacher infuses into his audience the spirit of assassins and incendiaries in his crusade against slavery, does he think, as he lies down quietly at night, of the Southern homes he has robbed of sleep, and the helpless women and children he has exposed to all the nameless horrors of servile insurrections?
I am still for the Union, because I have yet a faint, hesitating hope that the North will do justice to the South, and save the Republic, before the wreck is complete. But action, to be available, must be prompt. If the free States will sweep the Liberty Bills from their codes, propose a convention of the States, and offer guaranties which will afford the same repose and safety to Southern homes and property enjoyed by those of the North, the impending tragedy may be averted, but not otherwise. I feel a positive personal humiliation as a member of the human family in the events now preparing. If the Republic is to be offered as a sacrifice upon the altar of American servitude, then the question of man's capacity for self-government is forever settled. The derision of the world will henceforth justly treat the pretension as a farce; and the blessed hope which for five thousand years our race, amid storms and battles, has been hugging to its bosom, will be demonstrated to be a phantom and a dream.
Pardon these hurried and disjointed words. They have been pressed out of my heart by the sorrows that are weighing upon it.
Sincerely your friend,
J. Holt.
Within forty-eight hours after the election of Mr. Lincoln, the Legislature of South Carolina called a State Convention. It met on the 17th of December, and three days later the inevitable ordinance of secession was formally adopted, and the little commonwealth began to act under the erroneous impression that she was a sovereign and independent nation. She benignantly accepted the postal service of the "late United States of America," and even permitted the gold and silver coins of the federal government to circulate within her sacred limits. But intelligence from the rest of the country was published in her newspapers under the head of "foreign news;" her governor appointed a "cabinet," commissioned "ambassadors," and practised so many fantastic imitations of greatness and power, that, but for the serious purpose and the bloody event, his proceedings would have been very amusing. It was a curious little comedy between the acts of a hideous tragedy.
In the practice which provoked the fury of his Northern countrymen, the slaveholder could see nothing but what was right in the sight of God, and just as between man and man. Slavery, he said, was as old almost as time. From the hour of deliverance to the day of dispersion, it had been practised by the peculiar people of God, with the awful sanction of a theocratic State. When the Saviour came with his fan in his hand, he not only spared it from all rebuke, but recognized and regulated it as an institution in which he found no evil. The Church had bowed to the authority and emulated the example of the Master. With her aid and countenance, slavery had flourished in every age and country since the Christian era; in new lands she planted it, in the old she upheld and encouraged it. Even the modest of the sectaries had bought and sold, without a shade of doubt or a twinge of conscience, the bondmen who fell to their lot, until the stock was exhausted or the trade became unprofitable. To this rule the Puritans and Quakers were no exceptions. Indeed, it was but a few years since slavery in Massachusetts had been suffered to die of its own accord, and the profits of the slave-trade were still to be seen in the stately mansions and pleasant gardens of her maritime towns.
The Southern man could see no reason of State, of law, or of religion which required him to yield his most ancient rights and his most valuable property to the new-born zeal of adversaries whom he more than suspected of being actuated by mere malignity under the guise of philanthropy. All that he knew or had ever known of the policy of the State, of religion, or of law was on the side of slavery. It was his inheritance in the land descended from his remotest ancestry; recorded in the deeds and written in the wills of his nearest kindred; interwoven more or less intimately with every tradition and every precious memory; the basis of public economy and of private prosperity, fostered by the maternal care of Great Britain, and, unlike any other domestic institution, solemnly protected by separate and distinct provisions in the fundamental law of the federal Union. It was, therefore, as much a part of his religion to cherish and defend it as it was part of the religion of an Abolitionist to denounce and assail it. To him, at least, it was still pure and of good report; he held it as sacred as marriage, as sacred as the relation of parent and child. Forcible abolition was in his eyes as lawless and cruel as arbitrary divorce, or the violent abduction of his offspring; it bereft his fireside, broke up his family, set his own household in arms against him, and deluded to their ruin those whom the Lord had given into his hand for a wise and beneficent purpose. He saw in the extinction of slavery the extinction of society and the subversion of the State; his imagination could compass no crime more daring in the conception, or more terrible in the execution. He saw in it the violation of every law, human and divine, from the Ten Commandments to the last Act of Assembly,—the inauguration of every disaster and of every enormity which men in their sober senses equally fear and detest; it was the knife to his throat, the torch to his roof, a peril unutterable to his wife and daughter, and certain penury, or worse, to such of his posterity as might survive to other times. We smile at his delusion, and laugh at his fears; but we forget that they were shared by eight millions of intelligent people, and had been entertained by the entire generation of patriots and statesmen who made the Union,—by Jefferson who opposed slavery and "trembled" for the judgment, as by the New-England ship-owner and the Georgia planter, who struck hands to continue the African slave-trade till 1808.
Mr. Lincoln himself, with that charity for honest but mistaken opinions which more than once induced him to pause long and reflect seriously before committing his Administration to the extremities of party rage, declared in an elaborate speech, that, had his lot been cast in the South, he would no doubt have been a zealous defender of the "peculiar institution,"—and confessed, that, were he then possessed of unlimited power, he would not know how to liberate the slaves without fatally disturbing the peace and prosperity of the country. He had once said in a speech; "The Southern people are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it: if it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses North and South. Doubtless, there are individuals on both sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others would gladly introduce slavery anew if it were out of existence. We know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North, and become tip-top Abolitionists; while some Northern men go South, and become cruel slave-masters."
Judge Jeremiah S. Black, in a paper written in response to a memorial address on William H. Seward, said: "The Southern people sprang from a race accustomed for two thousand years to dominate over all other races with which it came in contact. They supposed themselves greatly superior to negroes, most of them sincerely believing that if they and the African must live together, the best and safest relations that could be established between them was that of master and servant.... Some of them believed slavery a dangerous evil, but did not see how to get rid of it. They felt as Jefferson did, that they had the wolf by the ears: they could neither hold on with comfort nor let go with safety, and it made them extremely indignant to be goaded in the rear. In all that country from the Potomac to the Gulf there was probably not one man who felt convinced that this difficult subject could be determined for them by strangers and enemies; seeing that we in the North had held fast to every pound of human flesh we owned, and either worked it to death or sold it for a price, our provision for the freedom of unborn negroes did not tend much to their edification. They had no confidence in that 'ripening' influence of humanity which turned up the white of its eyes at a negro compelled to hoe corn and pick cotton, and yet gloated over the prospect of insurrection and massacre."
Further, emancipation was a question of figures as well as feeling. The loss of four millions of slaves, at an average value of six hundred dollars each, constituted in the aggregate a sacrifice too vast to be contemplated for a moment. Yet this was but a single item. The cotton crop of 1860 was worth the round sum of a hundred and ninety-eight million dollars, while that of 1859 was worth two hundred and forty-seven million dollars, and the demand still in excess of the supply. It formed the bulk of our exchanges with Europe; paid our foreign indebtedness; maintained a great marine; built towns, cities, and railways; enriched factors, brokers, and bankers; filled the federal treasury to overflowing, and made the foremost nations of the world commercially our tributaries and politically our dependants. A short crop embarrassed and distressed all western Europe; a total failure, a war, or non-intercourse, would reduce whole communities to famine, and probably precipitate them into revolution. It was an opinion generally received, and scarcely questioned anywhere, that cotton-planting could be carried on only by African labor, and that African labor was possible only under compulsion. Here, then, was another item of loss, which, being prospective, could neither be measured by statistics nor computed in figures. Add to this the sudden conversion of millions of producers into mere consumers, the depreciation of real estate, the depreciation of stocks and securities as of banks and railways, dependent for their value upon the inland commerce in the products of slave-labor, with the waste, disorder, and bloodshed inevitably attending a revolution like this, and you have a sum-total literally appalling. Could any people on earth tamely submit to spoliation so thorough and so fatal? The very Bengalese would muster the last man, and stake the last jewel, to avert it.
In the last days of March, 1861, I was sent by President Lincoln on a confidential mission to Charleston, South Carolina. It was in its nature one of great delicacy and importance; and the state of the public mind in the South at that juncture made it one not altogether free from danger to life and limb, as I was rather roughly reminded before the adventure was concluded. Throughout the entire land was heard the tumult of mad contention; the representative men, the politicians and the press of the two sections were hurling at one another deadly threats and fierce defiance; sober and thoughtful men heard with sickening alarm the deep and not distant mutterings of the coming storm; and all minds were agitated by gloomy forebodings, distressing doubts, and exasperating uncertainty as to what the next move in the strange drama would be. Following the lead of South Carolina, the secession element of other Southern States had cut them loose, one by one, from their federal moorings, and "The Confederate States of America" was the result. It was at the virtual Capital of the State which had been the pioneer in all this haughty and stupendous work of rebellion that I was about to trust my precious life and limbs as a stranger within her gates and an enemy to her cause.
Up to this time, Mr. Lincoln had been slow to realize or to acknowledge, even to himself, the awful gravity of the situation, and the danger that the gathering clouds portended. Certain it is that Mr. Seward wildly underrated the courage and determination of the Southern people, and both men indulged the hope that pacific means might yet be employed to arrest the tide of passion and render a resort to force unnecessary. Mr. Seward was inclined, as the world knows, to credit the Southern leaders with a lavish supply of noisy bravado, quite overlooking the dogged pertinacity and courage which Mr. Lincoln well knew would characterize those men, as well as the Southern masses, in case of armed conflict between the sections. Mr. Lincoln had Southern blood in his veins, and he knew well the character of that people. He believed it possible to effect some accommodation by dealing directly with the most chivalrous among their leaders; at all events he thought it his duty to try, and my embassy to Charleston was one of his experiments in that direction.
It was believed in the South that Mr. Seward had given assurances, before and after Lincoln's inauguration, that no attempt would be made to reinforce the Southern forts, or to resupply Fort Sumter, under a Republican Administration. This made matters embarrassing, as Mr. Lincoln's Administration had, on the contrary, adopted the policy of maintaining the federal authority at all points, and of tolerating no interference in the enforcement of that authority from any source whatever.
When my mission to Charleston was suggested by Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward promptly opposed it. "Mr. President," said he, "I greatly fear that you are sending Lamon to his grave. I fear they may kill him in Charleston. Those people are greatly excited, and are very desperate. We can't spare Lamon, and we shall feel very badly if anything serious should happen to him."
"Mr. Secretary," replied Mr. Lincoln, "I have known Lamon to be in many a close place, and he has never been in one that he didn't get out of. By Jing! I'll risk him. Go, Lamon, and God bless you! Bring back a Palmetto, if you can't bring us good news."
Armed with certain credentials—from the President, Mr. Seward, General Scott, Postmaster-General Blair, and others—I set out on my doubtful and ticklish adventure.
While I was preparing my baggage at Willard's Hotel, General (then Mr. Stephen A.) Hurlbut, of Illinois, entered my room, and seeing how I was engaged inquired as to the object. He being an old and reliable friend, I told him without hesitation; and he immediately asked if he might not be allowed to accompany me. He desired, he said, to pay a last visit to Charleston, the place of his birth, and to a sister living there, before the dread outbreak which he knew was coming. I saw no objection. He hurried to his rooms to make his own preparations, whence, an hour later, I took him and his wife to the boat.
On arriving at Charleston about eight o'clock Saturday night, the Hurlbuts went to the house of a kinsman, and I went to the Charleston Hotel. It so happened that several young Virginians arrived on the same train, and stopped at the same hotel. They all registered from Virginia, and made the fact known with some show of enthusiasm that they had come to join the Confederate army. I registered simply "Ward H. Lamon," followed by a long dash of the pen.
That evening, and all the next day (Sunday), little attention was paid to me, and no one knew me. I visited the venerable and distinguished lawyer, Mr. James L. Petigru, and had a conference with him,—having been enjoined to do so by Mr. Lincoln, who personally knew that Mr. Petigru was a Union man. At the close of the interview Mr. Petigru said to me that he seldom stirred from his house; that he had no sympathy with the rash movements of his people, and that few sympathized with him; that the whole people were infuriated and crazed, and that no act of headlong violence by them would surprise him. In saying farewell, with warm expressions of good-will, he said that he hoped he should not be considered inhospitable if he requested me not to repeat my visit, as every one who came near him was watched, and intercourse with him could only result in annoyance and danger to the visitor as well as to himself, and would fail to promote any good to the Union cause. It was now too late, he said; peaceable secession or war was inevitable.
Governor Pickens and his admirable and beautiful wife were boarding at the Charleston Hotel. Early Monday morning I sent my card to the governor requesting an interview, and stating that I was from the President of the United States. The answer came that he would see me as soon as he was through with his breakfast. I then strolled downstairs into the main lobby and corridors, where, early as the hour was, I soon discovered that something wonderful was "in the wind," and, moreover, that that wonderful something was embodied in my own person. I was not, like Hamlet, "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," yet I was somehow "the observed of all observers." I was conscious that I did not look like "the expectancy and rose of the fair state;" that my "personal pulchritude," as a witty statesman has it, was not overwhelming to the beholder; and yet I found myself at that moment immensely, not to say alarmingly, attractive.
The news had spread far and wide that a great Goliath from the North, a "Yankee Lincoln-hireling," had come suddenly into their proud city, uninvited, unheralded. Thousands of persons had gathered to see the strange ambassador. The corridors, the main office and lobby, were thronged, and the adjacent streets were crowded as well with excited spectators, mainly of the lower order,—that class of dowdy patriots who in times of public commotion always find the paradise of the coward, the bruiser, and the blackguard. There was a wagging of heads, a chorus of curses and epithets not at all complimentary, and all eyes were fixed upon the daring stranger, who seemed to be regarded not as the bearer of the olive-branch of peace, but as a demon come to denounce the curse of war, pestilence, and famine. This was my initiation into the great "Unpleasantness," and the situation was certainly painful and embarrassing; but there was plainly nothing to do but to assume a bold front.
I pressed my way through the mass of excited humanity to the clerk's counter, examined the register, then turned, and with difficulty elbowed my way through the dense crowd to the door of the breakfast-room. There I was touched upon the shoulder by an elderly man, who asked in a tone of peremptory authority,—
"Are you Mark Lamon?"
"No, sir; I am Ward H. Lamon, at your service."
"Are you the man who registered here as Lamon, from Virginia?"
"I registered as Ward H. Lamon, without designating my place of residence. What is your business with me, sir?"
"Oh, well," continued the man of authority, "have you any objection to state what business you have here in Charleston?"
"Yes, I have." Then after a pause, during which I surveyed my questioner with as much coolness as the state of my nerves would allow, I added, "My business is with your governor, who is to see me as soon as he has finished his breakfast. If he chooses to impart to you my business in this city, you will know it; otherwise, not."
"Beg pardon; if you have business with our governor, it's all right; we'll see."
Shortly after breakfast I was waited upon by one of the governor's staff, a most courtly and agreeable gentleman, in full military uniform, who informed me that the governor was ready to receive me.
My interview with Governor Pickens was, to me, a memorable one. After saying to him what President Lincoln had directed me to say, a general discussion took place touching the critical state of public affairs. With a most engaging courtesy, and an open frankness for which that brave man was justly celebrated, he told me plainly that he was compelled to be both radical and violent; that he regretted the necessity of violent measures, but that he could see no way out of existing difficulties but to fight out. "Nothing," said he, "can prevent war except the acquiescence of the President of the United States in secession, and his unalterable resolve not to attempt any reinforcement of the Southern forts. To think of longer remaining in the Union is simply preposterous. We have five thousand well-armed soldiers around this city; all the States are arming with great rapidity; and this means war with all its consequences. Let your President attempt to reinforce Sumter, and the tocsin of war will be sounded from every hill-top and valley in the South."
This settled the matter so far as accommodation was concerned. There was no doubt in my mind that Pickens voiced the sentiment of Rebellion.
My next duty was to confer with Major Anderson at the beleaguered fort. On my intimating a desire to see that officer, Governor Pickens promptly placed in my hands the following:—
State of South Carolina,
Executive Department, 25 March, 1861.Mr. Lamon, from the President of the United States, requests to see Major Anderson at Fort Sumter, on business entirely pacific; and my aid, Colonel Duryea, will go with him and return, merely to see that every propriety is observed toward Mr. Lamon.
F. W. Pickens, Governor.
A flag-of-truce steamer was furnished by the governor, under charge of Colonel Duryea, a genial and accomplished gentleman to whom I am indebted for most considerate courtesy, and I proceeded to Fort Sumter. I found Anderson in a quandary, and deeply despondent. He fully realized the critical position he and his men occupied, and he apprehended the worst possible consequences if measures were not promptly taken by the government to strengthen him. His subordinates generally, on the contrary, seemed to regard the whole affair as a sort of picnic, and evinced a readiness to meet any fate. They seemed to be "spoiling for a fight," and were eager for anything that might relieve the monotony of their position. War seemed as inevitable to them as to Governor Pickens.
After a full and free conference with Major Anderson, I returned to the Charleston Hotel. The excited crowds were still in the streets, and the hotel was overflowing with anxious people. The populace seemed maddened by their failure to learn anything of the purpose or results of my visit. The aspect of things was threatening to my personal safety, and Governor Pickens had already taken steps to allay the excitement.
A rope had been procured by the rabble and thrown into one corner of the reading-room; and as I entered the room I was accosted by a seedy patriot, somewhat past the middle age. He was dressed in a fork-tailed coat with brass buttons, which looked as if it might have done service at Thomas Jefferson's first reception. He wore a high bell-crowned hat, with an odor and rust of antiquity which seemed to proclaim it a relic from the wardrobe of Sir Walter Raleigh. His swarthy throat was decorated with a red bandana cravat and a shirt-collar of amazing amplitude, and of such fantastic pattern that it might have served as a "fly" to a Sibley tent. This individual was in a rage. Kicking the rope into the middle of the room, and squaring himself before me, he said,—
"Do you think that is strong enough to hang a damned —— Lincoln abolition hireling?"
To this highly significant interrogatory I replied, aiming my words more at the crowd than at the beggarly ruffian who had addressed me, "Sir, I am a Virginian by birth, and a gentleman, I hope, by education and instinct. I was sent here by the President of the United States to see your governor—"
The seedy spokesman interrupted with, "Damn your President!"
I continued: "You, sir, are surrounded by your friends—by a mob; and you are brutal and cowardly enough to insult an unoffending stranger in the great city that is noted for its hospitality and chivalry; and let me tell you that your conduct is cowardly in the extreme. Among gentlemen, the brutal epithets you employ are neither given nor received."
This saucy speech awoke a flame of fury in the mob, and there is no telling what might have happened but for the lucky entrance into the room at that moment of Hon. Lawrence Keitt, who approached me and laying his hand familiarly on my shoulder, said,—
"Why, Lamon, old fellow, where did you come from? I am glad to see you."
The man with the brass buttons showed great astonishment. "Keitt," said he, "do you speak to that Lincoln hireling?"
"Stop!" thundered Keitt; "you insult Lamon, and you insult me! He is a gentleman, and my friend. Come, Lamon, let us take a drink."
The noble and generous Keitt knew me well, and it may be supposed that his "smiling" invitation was music in one sinner's ears at least. Further insults to the stranger from the loafer element of Charleston were not indulged in. The extremes of Southern character—the top and the bottom of the social scale in the slaveholding States—were exemplified in the scene just described, by Keitt and the blustering bully with the shirt-collar. The first, cultivated, manly, noble, hospitable, brave, and generous; the other, mean, unmanly, unkempt, untaught, and reeking with the fumes of the blackguard and the brute.[5]
My instructions from Mr. Lincoln required me to see and confer with the postmaster of Charleston. By this time the temper of the riotous portion of the populace, inflamed by suspicion and disappointed rage, made my further appearance on the streets a hazardous adventure. Again Governor Pickens, who despised the cowardice as he deplored the excesses of the mob, interposed his authority. To his thoughtful courtesy I was indebted for the following pass, which enabled me to visit the postmaster without molestation:—
Headquarters, 25 March, 1861.
The bearer, Mr. Lamon, has business with Mr. Huger, Postmaster of Charleston, and must not be interrupted by any one, as his business in Charleston is entirely pacific in all matters.
F. W. Pickens, Governor.
At eight o'clock that Monday night I took the train for my return to Washington. At a station in the outskirts of the city my friends, General Hurlbut and wife, came aboard. Hurlbut knew the conductor, who gave him seats that were as private as possible. Very soon the conductor slipped a note into my hands that was significant as well as amusing. It was from General Hurlbut, and was in the following words:—
Don't you recognize us until this train gets out of South Carolina. There is danger ahead, and a damned sight of it.
Steve.
This injunction was scrupulously observed. I learned afterward that about all of Hurlbut's time in Charleston had been employed in eluding the search of the vigilants, who, it was feared, would have given him a rough welcome to Charleston if they had known in time of his presence there.
Without further adventure we reached Washington in safety, only a few days before the tocsin of war was sounded by the firing on Fort Sumter. On my return, the President learned for the first time that Hurlbut had been in South Carolina. He laughed heartily over my unvarnished recital of Hurlbut's experience in the hot-bed of secession, though he listened with profound and saddened attention to my account of the condition of things in the fort on the one hand, and in the State and city on the other.
I brought back with me a Palmetto branch, but I brought no promise of peace. I had measured the depth of madness that was hurrying the Southern masses into open rebellion; I had ascertained the real temper and determination of their leaders by personal contact with them; and this made my mission one that was not altogether without profit to the great man at whose bidding I made the doubtful journey.