In one long tent there was a party of roystering young men, opening claret, and mixing “cup” in large buckets; whilst others were helping the servants to set out a table for a banquet to one of their generals. Such heat, tobacco-smoke, clamour, toasts, drinking, hand-shaking, vows of friendship! Many were the excuses made for the more demonstrative of the Edonian youths by their friends. “Tom is a little cut, sir; but he’s a splendid fellow—he’s worth half-a-million of dollars.” This reference to a money standard of value was not unusual or perhaps unnatural, but it was made repeatedly; and I was told wonderful tales of the riches of men who were lounging round, dressed as privates, some of whom at that season, in years gone by, were looked for at the watering places as the great lions of American fashion. But Secession is the fashion here. Young ladies sing for it; old ladies pray for it; young men are dying to fight for it; old men are ready to demonstrate it. The founder of the school was St. Calhoun. Here his pupils carry out their teaching in thunder and fire. States’ Rights are displayed after its legitimate teaching, and the Palmetto flag and the red bars of the Confederacy are its exposition. The utter contempt and loathing for the venerated Stars and Stripes, the abhorrence of the very words United States, the intense hatred of the Yankee on the part of these people, cannot be conceived by anyone who has not seen them. I am more satisfied than ever that the Union can never be restored as it was, and that it has gone to pieces, never to be put together again, in the old shape, at all events by any power on earth.
After a long and tiresome promenade in the dust, heat, and fine sand, through the tents, our party returned to the beach, where we took boat, and pushed off for Fort Sumter. The Confederate flag rose above the walls. On near approach the marks of the shot against the pain coupé, and the embrasures near the salient were visible enough; but the damage done to the hard brickwork was trifling, except at the angles: the edges of the parapets were ragged and pock-marked, and the quay-wall was rifted here and there by shot; but no injury of a kind to render the work untenable could be made out. The greatest damage inflicted was, no doubt, the burning of the barracks, which were culpably erected inside the fort, close to the flank wall facing Cumming’s Point.
As the boat touched the quay of the fort, a tall, powerful-looking man came through the shattered gateway, and with uneven steps strode over the rubbish towards a skiff which was waiting to receive him, and into which he jumped and rowed off. Recognising one of my companions as he passed our boat, he suddenly stood up, and with a leap and a scramble tumbled in among us, to the imminent danger of upsetting the party. Our new friend was dressed in the blue frock-coat of a civilian, round which he had tied a red silk sash—his waist-belt supported a straight sword, something like those worn with Court dress. His muscular neck was surrounded with a loosely-fastened silk handkerchief; and wild masses of black hair, tinged with grey, fell from under a civilian’s hat over his collar; his unstrapped trousers were gathered up high on his legs, displaying ample boots, garnished with formidable brass spurs. But his face was one not to be forgotten—a straight, broad brow, from which the hair rose up like the vegetation on a river bank, beetling black eyebrows—a mouth coarse and grim, yet full of power, a square jaw—a thick argumentative nose—a new growth of scrubby beard and moustache—these were relieved by eyes of wonderful depth and light, such as I never saw before but in the head of a wild beast. If you look some day when the sun is not too bright into the eye of the Bengal tiger, in the Regent’s Park, as the keeper is coming round, you will form some notion of the expression I mean. It was flashing, fierce, yet calm—with a well of fire burning behind and spouting through it, an eye pitiless in anger, which now and then sought to conceal its expression beneath half-closed lids, and then burst out with an angry glare, as if disdaining concealment.
This was none other than Louis T. Wigfall, Colonel (then of his own creation) in the Confederate army, and Senator from Texas in the United States—a good type of the men whom the institutions of the country produce or throw off—a remarkable man, noted for his ready, natural eloquence; his exceeding ability as a quick, bitter debater; the acerbity of his taunts; and his readiness for personal encounter. To the last he stood in his place in the Senate at Washington, when nearly every other Southern man had seceded, lashing with a venomous and instant tongue, and covering with insults, ridicule, and abuse, such men as Mr. Chandler, of Michigan, and other Republicans: never missing a sitting of the House, and seeking out adversaries in the bar-rooms or the gambling tables. The other day, when the fire against Sumter was at its height, and the fort, in flames, was reduced almost to silence, a small boat put off from the shore, and steered through the shot and the splashing waters right for the walls. It bore the colonel and a negro oarsman. Holding up a white handkerchief on the end of his sword, Wigfall landed on the quay, clambered through an embrasure, and presented himself before the astonished Federals with a proposal to surrender, quite unauthorised, and “on his own hook,” which led to the final capitulation of Major Anderson.
I am sorry to say, our distinguished friend had just been paying his respects sans bornes to Bacchus or Bourbon, for he was decidedly unsteady in his gait and thick in speech; but his head was quite clear, and he was determined I should know all about his exploit. Major Whiting desired to show me round the work, but he had no chance. “Here is where I got in,” quoth Colonel Wigfall. “I found a Yankee standing here by the traverse, out of the way of our shot. He was pretty well scared when he saw me, but I told him not to be alarmed, but to take me to the officers. There they were, huddled up in that corner behind the brickwork, for our shells were tumbling into the yard, and bursting like,”—&c. (The Colonel used strong illustrations and strange expletives in narrative.) Major Whiting shook his military head, and said something uncivil to me, in private, in reference to volunteer colonels and the like, which gave him relief; whilst the martial Senator—I forgot to say that he has the name, particularly in the North, of having killed more than half-a-dozen men in duels—(I had an escape of being another)—conducted me through the casemates with uneven steps, stopping at every traverse to expatiate on some phase of his personal experiences, with his sword dangling between his legs, and spurs involved in rubbish and soldiers’ blankets.
In my letter I described the real extent of the damage inflicted, and the state of the fort as I found it. At first the batteries thrown up by the Carolinians were so poor, that the United States’ officers in the fort were mightily amused at them, and anticipated easy work in enfilading, ricocheting, and battering them to pieces, if they ever dared to open fire. One morning, however, Capt. Foster, to whom really belongs the credit of putting Sumter into a tolerable condition of defence with the most limited means, was unpleasantly surprised by seeing through his glass a new work in the best possible situation for attacking the place, growing up under the strenuous labours of a band of negroes. “I knew at once,” he said, “the rascals had got an engineer at last.” In fact, the Carolinians were actually talking of an escalade when the officers of the regular army, who had “seceded,” came down and took the direction of affairs, which otherwise might have had very different results.
There was a working party of Volunteers clearing away the rubbish in the place. It was evident they were not accustomed to labour. And on asking why negroes were not employed, I was informed: “The niggers would blow us all up, they’re so stupid; and the State would have to pay the owners for any of them who were killed and injured.” “In one respect, then, white men are not so valuable as negroes?” “Yes, sir,—that’s a fact.”
Very few shell craters were visible in the terre-plein; the military mischief, such as it was, showed most conspicuously on the parapet platforms, over which shells had been burst as heavily as could be, to prevent the manning of the barbette guns. A very small affair, indeed, that shelling of Fort Sumter. And yet who can tell what may arise from it? “Well, sir,” exclaimed one of my companions, “I thank God for it, if it’s only because we are beginning to have a history for Europe. The universal Yankee nation swallowed us up.”
Never did men plunge into unknown depth of peril and trouble more recklessly than these Carolinians. They fling themselves against the grim, black future, as the cavaliers under Rupert may have rushed against the grim, black Ironsides. Will they carry the image farther? Well! The exploration of Sumter was finished at last, not till we had visited the officers of the garrison, who lived in a windowless, shattered room, reached by a crumbling staircase, and who produced whiskey and crackers, many pleasant stories and boundless welcome. One young fellow grumbled about pay. He said: “I have not received a cent, since I came to Charleston for this business.” But Major Whiting, some days afterwards, told me he had not got a dollar on account of his pay, though on leaving the United States’ army he had abandoned nearly all his means of subsistence. These gentlemen were quite satisfied it would all be right eventually; and no one questioned the power or inclination of the Government, which had just been inaugurated under such strange auspices, to perpetuate its principles and reward its servants.