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.