Before noon we were in sight of Vicksburg, which is situated on a high bank or bluff on the left bank of the river, about 400 miles above New Orleans and some 120 miles from Natchez.
Mr. MacMeekan, the proprietor of the “Washington,” declares himself to have been the pioneer of hotels in the far west; but he has now built himself this huge caravanserai, and rests from his wanderings. We entered the dining saloon, and found the tables closely packed with a numerous company of every condition in life, from generals and planters down to soldiers in the uniform of privates. At the end of the room there was a long table on which the joints and dishes were brought hot from the kitchen to be carved by the negro waiters, male and female, and as each was brought in the proprietor, standing in the centre of the room, shouted out with a loud voice, “Now, then, here is a splendid goose! ladies and gentlemen, don’t neglect the goose and apple-sauce! Here’s a piece of beef that I can recommend! upon my honour you will never regret taking a slice of the beef. Oyster-pie! oyster-pie! never was better oyster-pie seen in Vicksburg. Run about, boys, and take orders. Ladies and gentlemen, just look at that turkey! who’s for turkey?”—and so on, wiping the perspiration from his forehead and combating with the flies.
Altogether it was a semi-barbarous scene, but the host was active and attentive; and after all, his recommendations were very much like those which it was the habit of the taverners in old London to call out in the streets to the passers-by when the joints were ready. The little negroes who ran about to take orders were smart, but now and then came into violent collision, and were cuffed incontinently. One mild-looking little fellow stood by my chair and appeared so sad that I asked him “Are you happy, my boy?” He looked quite frightened. “Why don’t you answer me?” “I’se afeered, sir; I can’t tell that to Massa.” “Is not your master kind to you?” “Massa very kind man, sir; very good man when he is not angry with me,” and his eyes filled with tears to the brim.
The war fever is rife in Vicksburg, and the Irish and German labourers, to the extent of several hundreds, have all gone off to the war.
When dinner was over, the mayor and several gentlemen of the city were good enough to request that I would attend a meeting, at a room in the railway-station, where some of the inhabitants of the town had assembled. Accordingly I went to the terminus and found a room filled with gentlemen. Large china bowls, blocks of ice, bottles of wine and spirits, and boxes of cigars were on the table, and all the materials for a symposium.
The company discussed recent events, some of which I learned for the first time. Dislike was expressed to the course of the authorities in demanding negro labour for the fortifications along the river, and uneasiness was expressed respecting a negro plot in Arkansas; but the most interesting matter was Judge Taney’s protest against the legality of the President’s course in suspending the writ of habeas corpus in the case of Merriman. The lawyers who were present at this meeting were delighted with his argument, which insists that Congress alone can suspend the writ, and that the President, cannot legally do so.
The news of the defeat of an expedition from Fortress Monroe against a Confederate post at Great Bethel, has caused great rejoicing. The accounts show that there was the grossest mismanagement on the part of the Federal officers. The Northern papers particularly regret the loss of Major Winthrop, aide-de-camp to General Butler, a writer of promise. At four o’clock p.m. I bade the company farewell, and the train started for Jackson. The line runs through a poor clay country, cut up with gulleys and water-courses made by violent rain.
There were a number of volunteer soldiers in the train; and their presence no doubt attracted the girls and women who waved flags and cheered for Jeff. Davis and States Rights. Well, as I travel on through such scenes, with a fine critical nose in the air, I ask myself “Is any Englishman better than these publicans and sinners in regard to this question of slavery?” It was not on moral or religious grounds that our ancestors abolished serfdom. And if to-morrow our good farmers, deprived of mowers, reapers, ploughmen, hedgers and ditchers, were to find substitutes in certain people of a dark skin assigned to their use by Act of Parliament, I fear they would be almost as ingenious as the Rev. Dr. Seabury in discovering arguments physiological, ethnological, and biblical for the retention of their property. And an evil day would it be for them if they were so tempted; for assuredly, without any derogation to the intellect of the Southern men, it may be said that a large proportion of the population is in a state of very great moral degradation compared with civilised Anglo-Saxon communities.
The man is more natural, and more reckless; he has more of the qualities of the Arab than are to be reconciled with civilisation; and it is only among the upper classes that the influences of the aristocratic condition which is generated by the subjection of masses of men to their fellow-man are to be found.