The Civil War in America / Fuller's Modern Age, August 1861

by Sir William Howard Russell

ALTHOUGH I have written two letters since my arrival at Charleston, I have not been able to give an account of many things which have come under my notice, and which appeared to be noteworthy; and now that I am fairly on my travels once more, it seems only too probable that I shall be obliged to pass them over altogether. The roaring fire of the revolution is fast sweeping over the prairies, and one must fly before it or burn. I am obliged to see all that can be seen of the South at once, and then, armed with such safeguards as I can procure, to make an effort to recover my communications. Bridges broken, rails torn up, telegraphs pulled down—I am quite in the air, and air charged with powder and fire.

One of the most extraordinary books in the world could be made out of the cuttings and parings of the newspapers which have been published within the last few days. The judgments, statements, asseverations of the press, everywhere necessarily hasty, ill-sifted, and off-hand, do not aspire to even an ephemeral existence here. They are of use if they serve the purpose of the moment, and of the little boys who commence their childhood in deceit, and continue to adolescence in iniquity, by giving vocal utterance to the “sensation” headings in the journals they retail so sharply and curtly. Talk of the superstition of the Middle Ages, or of the credulity of the more advanced periods of rural life; laugh at the Holy Coat of Treves, or groan over the Lady of Salette; deplore the faith in winking pictures, or in a communiquè of the Moniteur; moralize on the superstition which discovers more in the liquefaction of the ichor of St. Gennaro than a chemical trick; but if you desire to understand how far faith can see and trust among the people who consider themselves the most civilized and intelligent in the world, you will study the American journals, and read the telegrams which appear in them. One day the 7th New York regiment is destroyed for the edification of the South, and is cut up into such small pieces that none of it is ever seen afterward. The next day it marches into Washington, or Annapolis, all the better for the process. Another, in order to encourage the North, it is said that hecatombs of dead were carried out of Fort Moultrie, packed up, for easy travelling, in boxes. Again, to irritate both, it is credibly stated that Lord Lyons is going to interfere, or that an Anglo-French fleet is coming to watch the ports, and so on through a wild play of fancy, inexact in line as though the batteries were charged with the aurora borealis or summer lightning, instead of the respectable, steady, manageable offspring of acid and metal, to whose staid deportment we are accustomed at a moderate price for entrance. As is usual in such periods, the contending parties accuse each other of inveterate falsehood, perfidy, oppression, and local tyranny and persecution. “Madness rules the hour.”

It was only a day or two ago I took up a local journal of considerable influence, in which were two paragraphs which struck me as being inexpressibly absurd. In the first it was stated that a gentleman who had expressed strong Southern sentiments in a New York hotel, had been mobbed and thrown into the street, and the writer indulged in some fitting reflections on the horrible persecution which prevailed in New York, and on the atrocity of such tyrannical mob-lawlessness in a civilized community. In another column there was a pleasant little narrative how citizens of Opelika, in Georgia, had waited on a certain person, who was “suspected” of entertaining Northern views, and had deported him on a rustic conveyance, known as a rail, which was considered by the journalist a very creditable exercise of public spirit. Nay, more; in a naive paragraph relative to an attempt to burn the huge hotel of Willard, at Washington, in which some hundreds of people were residing, the paper, to account satisfactorily for the attempt, and to assign some intelligible and laudable motive for it, adds, that he supposes it was intended to burn out the “Border ruffians” who were lodged there—a reproduction of the excuse of our Anglo-Irish lord, who apologized for setting fire to a cathedral, on the ground that he imagined the Bishop was inside. The exultation of the South when the flag of the United States was lowered at Sumter, has been answered by a shout of indignation and a battle-cry from the North, and the excitement at Charleston has produced a reflex action there, the energy of which cannot be described. The apathy which struck me at New York, when I landed, has been succeeded by violent popular enthusiasm, before which all Laodicean policy has melted into fervent activity. The truth must be, that the New York population did not believe in the strength and unanimity of the South, and that they thought the Union safe, or did not care about it. I can put down the names of gentlemen who expressed the strongest opinions that the Government of the United States had no power to coerce the South, and who have since put down their names and their money to support the Government in the attempt to recover the forts which have been taken. As to the change of opinion in other quarters, which has been effected so rapidly and miraculously, that it has the ludicrous air of a vulgar juggler’s trick at a fair, the public regard it so little, that it would be unbecoming to waste a word about it.

I expressed a belief in my first letter, written a few days after my arrival, that the South would never go back into the Union. The North thinks that it can coerce the South, and I am not prepared to say they are right or wrong; but I am convinced that the South can only be forced back by such a conquest as that which laid Poland prostrate at the feet of Russia. It may be that such a conquest can be made by the North, but success must destroy the Union as it has been constituted in times past. A strong Government must be the logical consequence of victory, and the triumph of the South will be attended by a similar result, for which, indeed, many Southerners are very well disposed. To the people of the Confederate States there would be no terror in such an issue, for it appears to me they are pining for a strong Government exceedingly. The North must accept it, whether they like it or not. Neither party, if such a term can be applied to the rest of the United States and to those States which disdain the authority of the Federal Government, was prepared for the aggressive or resisting power of the other. Already the Confederate States perceive that they cannot carry all before them with a rush, while the North have learnt that they must put forth all their strength to make good a tithe of their lately uttered threats. But the Montgomery Government are now, they say, anxious to gain time, and to prepare a regular army. The North, distracted by apprehensions of vast disturbances in its complicated relations, is clamoring for instant action and speedy consummation. The counsels of the moderate men, as they were called, have been utterly overruled.

I am now, however, dealing with South Carolina, which has been the fons et origo of the Secession doctrines, and their development into the full life of the Confederate States. The whole foundation on which South Carolina rests is cotton and a certain amount of rice, or rather she bases her whole fabric on the necessity which exists in Europe for those products of her soil, believing and asserting, as she does, that England and France cannot and will not do without them. Cotton, without a market, is so much flocculent matter encumbering the ground. Rice, without demand for it, is unsalable grain in store and on the field. Cotton at ten cents a pound is boundless prosperity, empire, and superiority, and rice or grain need no longer be regarded. In the matter of slave labor, South Carolina argues pretty much in this way: England and France require our products. In order to meet their wants, we must cultivate our soil. There is only one way of doing so. The white man cannot live on our land at certain seasons of the year; he cannot work in the manner required by the crops. We must, therefore, employ a race suited to the labor, and that is a race which will only work when it is obliged to do so. That race was imported from Africa, under the sanction of the law, by our ancestors, when we were a British colony, and it has been fostered by us, so that its increase here has been as that of the most nourishing people in the world. In other places where its labor was not productive, or imperatively essential, that race has been made free, sometimes with disastrous consequences to itself and to industry. But we will not make it free. We cannot do so. We hold that Slavery is essential to our existence as producers of what Europe requires; nay, more, we maintain it is in the abstract right in principle; and some of us go so far as to maintain that the only proper form of society, according to the law of God and the exigencies of man, is that which has Slavery as its basis. As to the slave, he is happier far in his state of servitude, more civilized and religious than he is or could be if free or in his native Africa.

I have already endeavored to describe the portion of the State through which I travelled, and the aspect of Charleston, and I will now proceed, at the risk of making this letter longer than it should be, to make a few observations on matters which struck me during my visit to one or two of the planters of the many who were kind enough to give me invitations to their residences in the State.

Early one fine morning I started in a coasting steamer to visit a plantation in the Pedee and Maccamaw district, in the Island coast of the State, north of Charleston. The only source of uneasiness in the mind of the party arose from the report that the United States squadron was coming to blockade the port, which would have cut off our line of retreat, and compelled us to make a long detour and a somewhat difficult journey by land, seeing that the roads are mere sand tracts, as the immense number of rivers and creeks offers excuse for not improving the means of land communication. Passing Sumter, on which men are busily engaged, under the Confederate flag, in making good damages, and mounting guns, we put out a few miles to sea, and with the low sandy shore, dotted with soldiers, and guard-houses, and clumps of trees, on our left, in a few hours pass the Santee River, and enter an estuary into which the Pedee and Maccamaw Rivers run a few miles further to the northwest. The arid, barren, pine-covered sand-hills, which form the shores of this estuary, are guarded by rude batteries, mounted with heavy guns, and manned by the State troops, some of whom we can see strolling along the beach, or, with arms glancing in the sunlight, pacing up and down on their posts. On the left hand side there are said to be plantations, the sites of which are marked by belts of trees, and after we had proceeded a few miles from the sea, the steamer ran alongside a jetty and pier, which was crowded by men in uniform, waiting for the news, and for supplies of creature comforts.

Ladies were cantering along the fine hard beach, and some gigs and tax-carts, fully laden, rolled along very much as one sees them at Scarborough. The soldiers on the pier were all gentlemen of the county. Some, dressed in gray tunics and yellow facings, in high felt hats and plumes, and jack-boots, would have done no discredit in face, figure, and bearing, to the gayest cavaliers who ever thundered at the heels of Prince Rupert. Their horses, full of Carolinian fire and metal, stood picketed under the trees along the margin of the beach. Among these men, who had been doing the duty of common troopers in patrolling the sea-coast, were gentlemen possessed of large estates and princely fortunes; and one who stood among them was pointed out to me as captain of a company for whose uses his liberality provided unbounded daily libations of champagne, and the best luxuries which French ingenuity can safely imprison in those well-known caskets, with which Crimean warriors were not unacquainted at the close of the campaign. They were eager for news, which was shouted out to them by their friends in the steamer, and one was struck by the intimate personal cordiality and familiar acquaintance which existed among them. Three heavy guns, mounted in an earthwork, defended by palisades, covered the beach and landing-place, and the garrison was to have been reënforced by a regiment from Charleston, which, however, had not got in readiness to go up on our steamer, owing to some little difficulties between the Volunteers, their officers, and the Quartermaster-general’s department.

I mention these particulars to give an idea of the state of defence in which South Carolina holds itself, for, unless Georgetown, which lies at the head of this inlet, could be considered an object of attack, one seeks in vain for any reason to induce an enemy to make his appearance in this direction. A march on Charleston by land would be an operation of extreme difficulty, through a series of sand-hills, alternating with marshes, water-course, rivers, and flooded rice-fields. As to Georgetown, which we have now reached, nothing can be said by way of description more descriptive than the remark of its inhabitants, that it was a finished town a hundred years ago. It is a dosy, sleepy, sandy, lifeless, straggling village, with wooden houses drawn up in right lines on the margins of great, straight, grass-grown pathways, lined with trees, and known to the natives as streets.

As the Nina approaches the tumble-down wharf, two or three citizens advance from the shade of shaky sheds to welcome us, and a few country vehicles and light phaetons are drawn forth from the same shelter to receive the passengers, while the negro boys and girls, who have been playing upon the bales of cotton and barrels of rice, which represent the trade of the place on the wharf, take up commanding positions for the better observation of our proceedings. One or two small yachts and coasting schooners are moored by the banks of the broad, full stream, the waters of which we had previously crossed in our journey from the dismal swamp.