Pictures of Southern Life, Social, Political, and Military.

by Sir William Howard Russell

The violence and reiterancy of this formula cause one to inquire whether any thing which demands such insistance is really in the condition predicated; and for myself I always say: “It may be so, but as yet I do not see the proof of it. The negroes do not look to be what you say they are.” For the present that is enough as to one’s own opinions. Externally, the paragraphs which attract attention, and the acts of the authorities, are inconsistent with the notion that the negroes are all very good, very happy, or at all contented, not to speak of their being in the superlative condition of enjoyment; and as I only see them as yet in the most superficial way, and under the most favorable circumstances, it may be that when the cotton-picking season is at its height, and it lasts for several months, when the labor is continuous from sunrise to sunset, there is less reason to accept the assertions as so largely and generally true of the vast majority of the slaves. “There is an excellent gentleman over there,” said a friend to me, “who gives his overseers a premium of ten dollars on the birth of every child on his plantation.” “Why so?” “Oh, in order that the overseers may not work the women in the family-way overmuch.” There is little use in this part of the world in making use of inferences. But where overseers do not get the premium, it may be supposed they do work the pregnant women too much. Here are two paragraphs which do not look very well as they stand.

Those negroes who were taken with a sudden leaving on Sunday night last, will save the country the expenses of their burial if they keep dark from these parts. They and other of the “breden” will not be permitted to express themselves quite so freely in regard to their braggadocio designs upon virtue, in the absence of volunteers.—Wilmington (Clintock County, Ohio) Watchman (Republican).

Served Him Right. One day last week, some colored individual, living near South Plymouth, made a threat that, in case a civil war should occur, “he would be one to ravish the wife of every democrat, and to help murder their offspring, and wash his hands in their blood.” For this diabolical assertion he was hauled up before a committee of white citizens, who adjudged him forty stripes on his naked back. He was accordingly stripped, and the lashes were laid on with such a good will that blood flowed at the end of the castigation.—Washington (Fayette County, Ohio) Register (Neutral).

It is reported that the patrols are strengthened, and I could not help hearing a charming young lady say to another, the other evening, that “she would not be afraid to go back to the plantation, though Mrs. Brown Jones said she was afraid her negroes were after mischief.”

There is a great scarcity of powder, which is one of the reasons, perhaps, why it has not yet been expended as largely as might be expected from the tone and temper on both sides. There is no sulphur in the States; nitre and charcoal abound. The sea is open to the North. There is no great overplus of money on either side. In Missouri, the interest on the state debt, due in July, will be used to procure arms for the state volunteers to carry on the war. The South is preparing for the struggle by sowing a most unusual quantity of grain; and in many fields corn and maize have been planted instead of cotton. “Stay laws,” by which all inconveniences arising from the usual dull, old-fashioned relations between debtor and creditor are avoided (at least by the debtor), have been adopted in most of the seceding states. How is it that the state legislatures seem to be in the hands of the debtors and not of the creditors?

There are some who cling to the idea that there will be no war after all, but no one believes that the South will ever go back of its own free will, and the only reason that can be given by those who hope rather than think in that way is to be found in the faith that the North will accept some mediation, and will let the South go in peace. But could there—can there be peace? The frontier question—the adjustment of various claims—the demands for indemnity, or for privileges or exemptions, in the present state of feeling, can have but one result. The task of mediation is sure to be as thankless as abortive. Assuredly the proffered service of England would, on one side at least, be received with something like insult. Nothing but adversity can teach these people its own most useful lessons. Material prosperity has puffed up the citizens to an unwholesome state. The toils and sacrifices of the old world have been taken by them as their birthright, and they have accepted the fruits of all that the science, genius, suffering, and trials of mankind in time past have wrought out, perfected, and won as their own peculiar inheritance, while they have ignorantly rejected the advice and scorned the lessons with which these were accompanied.

May 23.—The Congress at Montgomery, having sat with closed doors almost since it met, has now adjourned till July the 20th, when it will reassemble at Richmond, in Virginia, which is thus designated, for the time, capital of the Confederate States of America. Richmond, the principal city of the Old Dominion, is about one hundred miles in a straight line south by west of Washington. The rival capitals will thus be in very close proximity by rail and by steam, by land and by water. The movement is significant. It will tend to hasten a collision between the forces which are collected on the opposite sides of the Potomac. Hitherto, Mr. Jefferson Davis has not evinced all the sagacity and energy, in a military sense, which he is said to possess. It was bad strategy to menace Washington before he could act. His secretary of war, Mr. Walker, many weeks ago, in a public speech, announced the intention of marching upon the capital. If it was meant to do so, the blow should have been struck silently. If it was not intended to seize upon Washington, the threat had a very disastrous effect on the South, as it excited the North to immediate action, and caused General Scott to concentrate his troops on points which present many advantages in the face of any operations which may be considered necessary along the lines either of defence or attack. The movement against the Norfolk navy-yard strengthened Fortress Monroe, and the Potomac and Chesapeake were secured to the United States. The fortified ports held by the Virginians and the Confederate States troops, are not of much value as long as the streams are commanded by the enemy’s steamers; and General Scott has shown that he has not outlived either his reputation or his vigor by the steps, at once wise and rapid, he has taken to curb the malcontents in Maryland, and to open his communications through the city of Baltimore. Although immense levies of men may be got together, on both sides, for purposes of local defence or for state operations, it seems to me that it will be very difficult to move these masses in regular armies. The men are not disposed for regular, lengthened service, and there is an utter want of field trains, equipment, and commissariat, which cannot be made good in a day, a week, or a month.

The bill passed by the Montgomery Congress, entitled “An act to raise an additional military force to serve during the war,” is, in fact, a measure to put into the hands of the government the control of irregular bodies of men, and to bind them to regular military service. With all their zeal, the people of the South will not enlist. They detest the recruiting sergeant, and Mr. Davis knows enough of war to feel hesitation in trusting himself in the field to volunteers. The bill authorizes Mr. Davis to accept volunteers who may offer their services, without regard to the place of enlistment, “to serve during the war, unless sooner discharged.” They may be accepted in companies, but Mr. Davis is to organize them into squadrons, battalions, or regiments, and the appointment of field and staff officers is reserved especially to him. The company officers are to be elected by the men of the company, but here again Mr. Davis reserves to himself the right of veto, and will only commission those officers whose election he approves.

The absence of cavalry and the deficiency of artillery may prevent either side obtaining any decisive results in one engagement; but, no doubt, there will be great loss whenever these large masses of men are fairly opposed to each other in the field. Of the character of the Northern regiments I can say nothing more from actual observation; nor have I yet seen, in any place, such a considerable number of the troops of the Confederate States, moving together, as would justify me in expressing any opinion with regard to their capacity for organized movements, such as regular troops in Europe are expected to perform. An intelligent and trustworthy observer, taking one of the New York state militia regiments as a fair specimen of the battalions which will fight for the United States, gives an account of them which leads me to the conclusion that such regiments are much superior, when furnished by the country districts, to those raised in the towns and cities. It appears, in this case at least, that the members of the regular militia companies in general send substitutes to the ranks. Ten of these companies form the regiment, and, in nearly every instance, they have been doubled in strength by volunteers. Their drill is exceedingly incomplete, and in forming the companies there is a tendency for the different nationalities to keep themselves together. In the regiment in question the rank and file often consists of quarrymen, mechanics, and canal boatmen, mountaineers from the Catskill, bark peelers, and timber cutters—ungainly, square-built, powerful fellows, with a Dutch tenacity of purpose crossed with an English indifference to danger. There is no drunkenness and no desertion among them. The officers are almost as ignorant of military training as their men. The colonel, for instance, is the son of a rich man in his district, well educated, and a man of travel. Another officer is a shipmaster. A third is an artist; others are merchants and lawyers, and they are all busy studying “Hardee’s Tactics,” the best book for infantry drill in the United States. The men have come out to fight for what they consider the cause of the country, and are said to have no particular hatred of the South, or of its inhabitants, though they think they are “a darned deal too high and mighty, and require to be wiped down considerably.” They have no notion as to the length of time for which their services will be required, and I am assured that not one of them has asked what his pay is to be.

Reverting to Montgomery, one may say without offence that its claims to be the capital of a republic which asserts that it is the richest, and believes that it will be the strongest in the world, are not by any means evident to a stranger. Its central position, which has reference rather to a map than to the hard face of matter, procured for it a distinction to which it had no other claim. The accommodations which suited the modest wants of a state legislature vanished or were transmuted into barbarous inconveniences by the pressure of a central government, with its offices, its departments, and the vast crowd of applicants which flocked thither to pick up such crumbs of comfort as could be spared from the executive table. Never shall I forget the dismay of myself, and of the friends who were travelling with me, on our arrival at the Exchange Hotel, under circumstances with some of which you are already acquainted. With us were men of high position, members of Congress, senators, ex-governors, and General Beauregard himself. But to no one was greater accommodation extended than could be furnished by a room held, under a sort of ryot-warree tenure, in common with a community of strangers. My room was shown to me. It contained four large four-post beds, a ricketty table, and some chairs of infirm purpose and fundamental unsoundness. The floor was carpetless, covered with litter of paper and ends of cigars, and stained with tobacco juice. The broken glass of the window afforded no ungrateful means of ventilation. One gentleman sat in his shirt sleeves at the table reading the account of the marshalling of the Highlanders at Edinburgh in the Abbottsford edition of Sir Walter Scott; another, who had been wearied, apparently, by writing numerous applications to the government for some military post, of which rough copies lay scattered around, came in, after refreshing himself at the bar, and occupied one of the beds, which by the bye, were ominously provided with two pillows apiece. Supper there was none for us in the house, but a search in an outlying street enabled us to discover a restaurant, where roasted squirrels and baked opossums figured as luxuries in the bill of fare. On our return we found that due preparation had been made in the apartment by the addition of three mattresses on the floor. The beds were occupied by unknown statesmen and warriors, and we all slumbered and snored in friendly concert till morning. Gentlemen in the South complain that strangers judge of them by their hotels, but it is a very natural standard for strangers to adopt, and in respect to Montgomery it is almost the only one that a gentleman can conveniently use, for if the inhabitants of this city and its vicinity are not maligned, there is an absence of the hospitable spirit which the South lays claim to as one of its animating principles, and a little bird whispered to me that from Mr. Jefferson Davis down to the least distinguished member of his government there was reason to observe that the usual attentions and civilities offered by residents to illustrious stragglers had been “conspicuous for their absence.” The fact is, that the small planters who constitute the majority of the land-owners are not in a position to act the Amphytrion, and that the inhabitants of the district can scarcely aspire to be considered what we would call gentry in England, but are a frugal, simple, hog-and-hominy living people, fond of hard work and, occasionally, of hard drinking.