CHAPTER XVII. Return to Baltimore
Return to Baltimore—Colonel Carroll—A Priest’s view of the Abolition of Slavery—Slavery in Maryland—Harper’s Ferry—John Brown—Back by train to Washington—Further accounts of Bull Run—American Vanity—My own unpopularity for speaking the truth—Killing a “Nigger” no murder—Navy Department.
On the 17th August I returned to Baltimore on my way to Drohoregan Manor, the seat of Colonel Carroll, in Maryland, where I had been invited to spend a few days by his son-in-law, an English gentleman of my acquaintance. Leaving Baltimore at 5.40 p.m., in company with Mr. Tucker Carroll, I proceeded by train to Ellicott’s Mills, a station fourteen miles on the Ohio and Baltimore railroad, from which our host’s residence is distant more than an hour’s drive. The country through which the line passes is picturesque and undulating, with hills and valleys and brawling streams, spreading in woodland and glade, ravine, and high uplands on either side, haunted by cotton factories, poisoning air and water; but it has been a formidable district for the engineers to get through, and the line abounds in those triumphs of engineering which are generally the ruin of shareholders.
All these lines are now in the hands of the military. At the Washington terminus there is a guard placed to see that no unauthorised person or unwilling volunteer is going north; the line is watched by patrols and sentries; troops are encamped along its course. The factory chimneys are smokeless; half the pleasant villas which cover the hills or dot the openings in the forest have a deserted look and closed windows. And so these great works, the Carrolton viaduct, the Thomas viaduct, and the high embankments and great cuttings in the ravine by the river side, over which the line passes, have almost a depressing effect, as if the people for whose use they were intended had all become extinct. At Ellicott’s Mills, which is a considerable manufacturing town, more soldiers and Union flags. The people are Unionists, but the neighbouring gentry and country people are Seceshers.
This is the case wherever there is a manufacturing population in Maryland, because the workmen are generally foreigners, or have come from the Northern States, and feel little sympathy with States rights’ doctrines, and the tendencies of the landed gentry to a Conservative action on the slave question. There was no good-will in the eyes of the mechanicals as they stared at our vehicle; for the political bias of Colonel Carroll was well known, as well as the general sentiments of his family. It was dark when we reached the manor, which is approached by an avenue of fine trees. The house is old-fashioned, and has received additions from time to time. But for the black faces of the domestics, one might easily fancy he was in some old country house in Ireland. The family have adhered to their ancient faith. The founder of the Carrolls in Maryland came over with the Catholic colonists led by Lord Baltimore, or by his brother, Leonard Calvert, and the colonel possesses some interesting deeds of grant and conveyance of the vast estates, which have been diminished by large sales year after year, but still spread over a considerable part of several counties in the State.
Colonel Carroll is an immediate descendant of one of the leaders in the revolution of 1776, and he pointed out to me the room in which Carroll, of Carrolton, and George Washington, were wont to meet when they were concocting their splendid treason. One of his connections married the late Marquis Wellesley, and the colonel takes pleasure in setting forth how the daughter of the Irish recusant, who fled from his native country all but an outlaw, sat on the throne of the Queen of Ireland, or, in other words, held court in Dublin Castle as wife of the Viceroy. Drohoregan is supposed to mean “Hall of the Kings,” and is called after an old place belonging, some time or other, to the family, the early history of which, as set forth in the Celtic authorities and Irish antiquarian works, possesses great attractions for the kindly, genial old man—kindly and genial to all but the Abolitionists and black republicans; nor is he indifferent to the reputation of the State in the Revolutionary War, where the “Maryland line” seems to have differed from many of the contingents of the other States in not running away so often at critical moments in the serious actions. Colonel Carroll has sound arguments to prove the sovereign independence and right of every State in the Union, derived from family teaching and the lessons of those who founded the Constitution itself.
On the day after my arrival the rain fell in torrents. The weather is as uncertain as that of our own isle. The torrid heats at Washington, the other day, were succeeded by bitter cold days; now there is a dense mist, chilly and cheerless, seeming as a sort of strainer for the even down pour that falls through it continuously. The family after breakfast slipped round to the little chapel which forms the extremity of one wing of the house. The coloured people on the estate were already trooping across the lawn and up the avenue from the slave quarters, decently dressed for the most part, having due allowance for the extraordinary choice of colours in their gowns, bonnets, and ribbons, and for the unhappy imitations, on the part of the men, of the attire of their masters. They walked demurely and quietly past the house, and presently the priest, dressed like a French curé, trotted up, and service began. The negro houses were of a much better and more substantial character than those one sees in the south, though not remarkable for cleanliness and good order. Truth to say, they were palaces compared to the huts of Irish labourers, such as might be found, perhaps, on the estates of the colonel’s kinsmen at home. The negroes are far more independent than they are in the south. They are less civil, less obliging, and, although they do not come cringing to shake hands as the field hands on a Louisianian plantation, less servile. They inhabit a small village of brick and wood houses, across the road at the end of the avenue, and in sight of the house. The usual swarms of little children, poultry, pigs, enlivened by goats, embarrassed the steps of the visitor, and the old people, or those who were not finely dressed enough for mass, peered out at the strangers from the glassless windows.
When chapel was over, the boys and girls came up for catechism, and passed in review before the ladies of the house, with whom they were on very good terms. The priest joined us in the verandah when his labours were over, and talked with intelligence of the terrible war which has burst over the land. He has just returned from a tour in the Northern States, and it is his belief the native Americans there will not enlist, but that they will get foreigners to fight their battles. He admitted that slavery was in itself an evil, nay, more, that it was not profitable in Maryland. But what are the landed proprietors to do? The slaves have been bequeathed to them as property by their fathers, with certain obligations to be respected, and duties to be fulfilled. It is impossible to free them, because, at the moment of emancipation, nothing short of the confiscation of all the labour and property of the whites would be required to maintain the negroes, who would certainly refuse to work unless they had their masters’ land as their own. Where is white labour to be found? Its introduction must be the work of years, and meantime many thousands of slaves, who have a right to protection, would canker the land.