NEW ORLEANS, May 24, 1861.
It is impossible to resist the conviction that the Southern Confederacy can only be conquered by means as irresistible as those by which Poland was subjugated. The South will fall, if at all, as a nation prostrate at the feet of a victorious enemy. There is no doubt of the unanimity of the people. If words mean any thing, they are animated by only one sentiment, and they will resist the North as long as they can command a man or a dollar. There is nothing of a sectional character in this disposition of the South. In every state there is only one voice audible. Hereafter, indeed, state jealousies may work their own way. Whatever may be the result, unless the men are the merest braggarts—and they do not look like it—they will fight to the last before they give in, and their confidence in their resources is only equalled by their determination to test them to the utmost. There is a noisy vociferation about their declarations of implicit trust and reliance on their slaves which makes one think “they do protest too much,” and it remains to be seen whether the slaves really will remain faithful to their masters should the abolition army ever come among them as an armed propaganda. One thing is obvious here. A large number of men who might be usefully employed in the ranks are idling about the streets. The military enthusiasm is in proportion to the property interest of the various classes of the people, and the very boast that so many rich men are serving in the ranks is a significant proof, either of the want of a substratum, or of the absence of great devotion to the cause, of any such layer of white people as may underlie the great slave-holding, mercantile, and planting oligarchy. The whole state of Louisiana contains about 50,000 men liable to serve when called on. Of that number only 15,000 are enrolled and under arms in any shape whatever, and if one is to judge of the state of affairs by the advertisements which appear from the adjutant-general’s office, there was some difficulty in procuring the 3,000 men—merely 3,000 volunteers—“to serve during the war,” who are required by the Confederate government. There is “plenty of prave ’ords,” and if fierce writing and talking could do the work, the armies on both sides would have been killed and eaten long ago. It is found out that “lives of the citizens” at Pensacola are too valuable to be destroyed in attacking Pickens. A storm that shall drive away the ships, a plague, yellow fever, mosquitos, rattlesnakes, small-pox—any of these agencies, is looked to with confidence to do the work of shot, shell, and bayonet. Our American “brethren in arms” have yet to learn that great law in military cookery, that “if they want to make omelets they must break eggs.” The “moral suasion” of the lasso, of head-shaving, ducking, kicking, and such processes, are, I suspect, used not unfrequently to stimulate volunteers; and the extent to which the acts of the recruiting officer are somewhat aided by the arm of the law, and the force of the policeman and the magistrate, may be seen from paragraphs in the morning papers now and then, to the effect that certain gentlemen of Milesian extraction, who might have been engaged in pugilistic pursuits, were discharged from custody unpunished on condition that they enlisted for the war. With the peculiar views entertained of freedom of opinion and action by large classes of people on this continent, such a mode of obtaining volunteers is very natural, but resort to it evinces a want of zeal on the part of some of the 50,000 who are on the rolls; and, from all I can hear—and I have asked numerous persons likely to be acquainted with the subject—there are not more than those 15,000 men of whom I have spoken in all the state under arms, or in training, of whom a considerable proportion will be needed for garrison and coast defence duties. It may be that the Northern states and Northern sentiments are as violent as those of the South but I see some evidences to the contrary. For instance, in New York ladies and gentlemen from the South are permitted to live at their favorite hotel without molestation, and one hotel keeper at Saratoga Springs advertises openly for the custom of his Southern patrons. In no city of the South which I have visited would a party of Northern people be permitted to remain for an hour if the “citizens” were aware of their presence. It is laughable to hear men speaking of the “unanimity” of the South. Just look at the peculiar means by which unanimity is enforced and secured! This is an extract from a New Orleans paper:
CHARGES OF ABOLITIONISM.—Mayor Monroe has disposed of some of the cases brought before him on charges of this kind by sending the accused to the workhouse.
A Mexican named Bernard Cruz, born in Tampico, and living here with an Irish wife, was brought before the Mayor this morning charged with uttering Abolition sentiments. After a full investigation, it was found from the utterance of his incendiary language, that Cruz’s education was not yet perfect in Southern classics, and his Honor therefore directed that he be sent for six months to the Humane Institution for the Amelioration of the Condition of Northern Barbarians and Abolition Fanatics, presided over by Professor Henry Mitchell, keeper of the workhouse, who will put him through a course of study on Southern ethics and institutions.
The testimony before him Saturday, however, in the case of a man named David O’Keefe, was such as to induce him to commit the accused for trial before the Criminal Court. One of the witnesses testified positively that he heard him make his children shout for Lincoln; another, that the accused said, “I am an abolitionist,” &c. The witnesses, the neighbors of the accused, gave their evidence reluctantly, saying that they had warned him of the folly and danger of his conduct. O’Keefe says he has been a United States soldier, and came here from St. Louis and Kansas.
John White was arraigned before Recorder Emerson on Saturday for uttering incendiary language while traveling in the baggage car of a train of the New Orleans, Ohio, and Great Western Railroad, intimating that the decapitator of Jefferson Davis would get $10,000 for his trouble, and the last man of us would be whipped like dogs by the Lincolnites. He was held under bonds of $500 to answer the charge on the 8th of June.
Nicholas Gento, charged with declaring himself an Abolitionist, and acting very much like he was one, by harboring a runaway slave, was sent to prison in default of bail, to await examination before the recorder.
Such is “freedom of speech” in Louisiana! But in Texas the machinery for the production of “unanimity” is less complicated, and there are no insulting legal formalities connected with the working of the simple appliances which a primitive agricultural people have devised for their own purposes. Hear the Texan correspondent of one of the journals of this city on the subject. He says:
It is to us astonishing, that such unmitigated lies as those Northern papers disseminate of anarchy and disorder here in Texas, dissension among ourselves, and especially from our German, &c., population, with dangers and anxieties from the fear of insurrection among the negroes, &c., should be deemed anywhere South worthy of a moment’s thought. It is surely notorious enough that in no part of the South are Abolitionists, or other disturbers of the public peace, so very unsafe as in Texas. The lasso is so very convenient!