All the live-long day was spent in tacking from one low shore to another low shore, through water which looked like pea soup. We had to be sure the pleasure of seeing Mobile from every point of view, east and west, with all the varieties between northing and southing, and numerous changes in the position of steeples, sand-hills, and villas, the sun roasting us all the time and boiling the pitch out of the seams.
The greatest excitement of the day was an encounter with a young alligator, making an involuntary voyage out to sea in the tideway. The crew said he was drowning, having lost his way or being exhausted by struggling with the current. He was about ten feet long, and appeared to be so utterly done up that he would willingly have come aboard as he passed within two yards of us; but desponding as he was, it would have been positive cruelty to have added him to the number of our party.
The next event of the day was dinner, in which Charlie outrivalled himself by a tremendous fry of onions and sliced Bologna sausage, and a piece of pig, which had not decided whether it was to be pork or bacon.
Having been fourteen hours beating some twenty-seven miles, I was landed at last at a wharf in the suburbs of the town about five o’clock in the evening. On my way to the Battle House I met seven distinct companies marching through the streets to drill, and the air was filled with sounds of bugling and drumming. In the evening a number of gentlemen called upon me to inquire what I thought of Fort Pickens and Pensacola, and I had some difficulty in parrying their very home questions, but at last adopted a formula which appeared to please them—I assured my friends I thought it would be an exceedingly tough business whenever the bombardment took place.
One of the most important steps which I have yet heard of has excited little attention, namely, the refusal of the officer commanding Fort MacHenry, at Baltimore, to obey the writ of habeas corpus issued by a judge of that city for the person of a soldier of his garrison. This military officer takes upon himself to aver there is a state of civil war in Baltimore, which he considers sufficient legal cause for the suspension of the writ.
CHAPTER XXIX. Judge Campbell
Judge Campbell—Dr. Nott—Slavery—Departure for New Orleans—Down the river—Fear of Cruisers—Approach to New Orleans—Duelling—Streets of New Orleans—Unhealthiness of the city—Public opinion as to the war—Happy and contented negroes.
May 18th.—An exceedingly hot day, which gives bad promise of comfort for the Federal soldiers, who are coming, as the Washington Government asserts, to put down rebellion in these quarters. The mosquitos are advancing in numbers and force. The day I first came I asked the waiter if they were numerous. “I wish they were a hundred times as many,” said he. On inquiring if he had any possible reason for such an extraordinary aspiration, he said, “because we would get rid of these darned black republicans out of Fort Pickens all the sooner.” The man seemed to infer they would not bite the Confederate soldiers.
I dined at Dr. Nott’s, and met Judge Campbell, who has resigned his high post as one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, and explained his reasons for doing so in a letter, charging Mr. Seward with treachery, dissimulation, and falsehood. He seemed to me a great casuist rather than a profound lawyer, and to delight in subtle distinctions and technical abstractions; but I had the advantage of hearing from him at great length the whole history of the Dred Scot case, and a recapitulation of the arguments used on both sides, the force of which, in his opinion, was irresistibly in favour of the decision of the Court. Mr. Forsyth, Colonel Hardee, and others were of the company.