The leading hotel was crowded with guests, including many soldiers en route for Bragg's army. It was my own design to leave for Pensacola that evening, and look at the possible scene of early hostilities. A Secession friend in New Orleans had given me a personal letter to General Bragg, introducing me as a gentleman of leisure, who would be glad to make a few sketches of proper objects of interest about his camps, for one of the New York illustrated papers. It added that he had known me all his life, and vouched completely for my "soundness."
Suspicions Aroused—an Awkward Encounter.
But a little incident changed my determination. Among my fellow-passengers from New Orleans were three young officers of the Confederate army, also bound for Fort Pickens. While on the steamer, I did not observe that I was an object of their special attention; but just after breakfast this morning, as I was going up to my room, in the fourth story of the Battle House, I encountered them also ascending the broad stairs. The moment they saw me, they dropped the subject upon which they were conversing, and one, with significant glances, burst into a most violent invective against The Tribune, denouncing it as the vilest journal in America, except Parson Brownlow's Knoxville Whig! pronouncing every man connected with it a thief and scoundrel, and asserting that if any of its correspondents could be caught here, they would be hung upon the nearest tree.
This philippic was so evidently inspired by my presence, and the eyes of the whole group glared with a speculation so unpleasant, that I felt myself an unhappy Romeo, "too early seen unknown and known too late." I had learned by experience that the best protection for a suspected man was to go everywhere, as if he had a right to go; to brave scrutiny; to return stare for stare and question for question.
So, during this tirade, which lasted while, side by side, we leisurely climbed two staircases, I strove to maintain an exterior of serene and wooden unconsciousness. When the speaker had exhausted his vocabulary of hard words, I drew a fresh cigar from my pocket, and said to him, "Please to give me a light, sir." With a puzzled air he took his cigar from his mouth, knocked off the ashes with his forefinger, handed it to me, and stood regarding me a little curiously, while, looking him full in the face, I slowly ignited my own Havana, returned his, and thanked him.
They turned away apparently convinced that their zeal had outrun their discretion. The look of blank disappointment and perplexity upon the faces of those young officers as they disappeared in the passage will be, to me, a joy forever.
Pondering in my room upon fresh intelligence of the arrest of suspicious persons in General Bragg's camp, and upon this little experience, I changed my plan. As Toodles, in the farce, thinks he "won't smoke," so I decided not to go to Pensacola; but ordered a carriage, and drove down to the mail-boat St. Charles, which was to leave for Montgomery that evening.
I fully expected during the afternoon to entertain a vigilance committee, the police, or some military officials who would invite me to look at Secession through prison bars. It was not an inviting prospect; yet there was nothing to do but to wait.
The weather was dreamy and delicious. My state-room looked out upon the shining river, and the rich olive green of the grassy shore. Upon the dull, opaque water of a broad bayou beyond, little snowy sails flashed, and a steamer, with tall black chimneys, left a white, foamy track in the waters, and long clouds of brown smoke against the sky.
"Mass'r, Fort Sumter's Gone up!"