“Are there any mosquitoes here?” inquired I of the waiter, on the day of my arrival. “Well, there’s a few, I guess; but I wish there were ten times as many.” “In the name of goodness why do you say so?” asked I, with some surprise and indignation. “Because we’d get rid of the —— Black Republicans out of Fort Pickens all the sooner,” replied he. There is a strange unilateral tendency in the minds of men in judging of the operation of causes and results in such a contest as that which now prevails between the North and the South. The waiter reasoned and spoke like many of his betters. The mosquitoes, for whose aid he was so anxious, were regarded by him as true Southerners, who would only torture his enemies. The idea of these persecuting little fiends being so unpatriotic as to vex the Confederates in their sandy camp never entered into his mind for a moment. In the same way a gentleman of intelligence, who was speaking to me of the terrible sufferings which would be inflicted on the troops at Tortugas and at Pickens by fever, dysentery, and summer heats, looked quite surprised when I asked him “whether these agencies would not prove equally terrible to the troops of the Confederates?”
LETTER X.
FORT PICKENS AND PENSACOLA—A VISIT TO BOTH CAMPS.
MOBILE, May 16, 1861.
OUR little schooner lay quietly at the wharf all night, but no one was allowed to come on board without a pass, for these wild-looking sentries are excellent men of business, and look after the practical part of soldiering with all the keenness which their direct personal interest imparts to their notions of duty. The enemy is to them the incarnation of all evil, and they hunt his spies and servants very much as a terrier chases a rat—with intense traditional and race animosity. The silence of the night is not broken by many challenges, or the “All’s well” of patrols; but there is warlike significance enough in the sound of the shot which the working parties are rolling over the wooden jetty, with a dull, ponderous thumping on board the flats that are to carry them off for the food and nourriture of the batteries. With the early morning, however, came the moral signs of martial existence. I started up from among my cockroaches, knocked my head against the fine pine beams over my hammock, and then, considerably obfuscated by the result, proceeded to investigate all the grounds that presented themselves to me as worthy of consideration in reference to the theory which had suddenly forced itself upon my mind that I was in the Crimea. For close at hand, through the sleepy organs of the only sense which was fully awake, came the well-known réveillée of the Zouaves, and then French clangors, rolls, ruffles, and calls ran along the line, and the Volunteers got up, or did not, as seemed best to them. An ebony and aged Ganymede, however, appeared with coffee, and told me, “the Cap’n wants ask weder you take some bitters, Sir;" and, indeed, “the Captain” did compound some amazing preparation for the Judges and Colonels present on deck and below, that met the approval of them all, and was recommending it for its fortifying qualities in making a Redan and Malakhoff of the stomach. Breakfast came in due time; not much Persic apparatus to excite the hate of the simple-minded, but a great deal of substantial matter, in the shape of fried onions, ham, eggs, biscuit, with accompaniments of iced water, Bordeaux, and coffee. Our guests were two—a broad, farmer-like gentleman, weighing some sixteen stone, dressed in a green frieze tunic, with gold lace and red and scarlet worsted facings, and a felt wide awake, who, as he wiped his manly brow, informed me he was a “rifleman.” We have some Volunteers quite as corpulent, and not more patriotic, for our farmer was a man of many bales, and, in becoming an officer in his company of braves, had given an unmistakable proof of devotion to his distant home and property. The other, a quiet, modest, intelligent-looking young man, was an officer in a different battalion, and talked with sense about a matter with which sense has seldom anything to do—I mean uniform. He remarked that in a serious action and close fighting, or in night work, it would be very difficult to prevent serious mistakes, and even disasters, owing to the officers of the Confederate States’ troops wearing the same distinguishing marks of rank and similar uniforms, whenever they can get them, to those used in the regular service of the United States, and that much inconvenience will inevitably result from the great variety and wonderful diversity of the dresses of the immense number of companies forming the different regiments of Volunteers.
The only troops near us which were attired with a regard to military exactness, were the regiment of Zouaves from New Orleans. Most of these are Frenchmen or Creoles, some have belonged to the battalions which the Crimea first made famous, and were present before Sevastopol and in Italy, and the rest are Germans and Irish. Our friends went off to see them drill, but, as a believer in the enchanting power of distance, I preferred to look on at such of the manœuvres as could be seen from the deck. These Zouaves look exceedingly like the real article. They are, perhaps, a trifle leaner and taller, and are not so well developed at the back of the head, the heels, and the ankles, as their prototypes. They are dressed in the same way, except that I saw no turban on the fez cap. The jacket, the cummerbund, the baggy red breeches, and the gaiters, are all copies of the original. They are all armed with rifle-musket and sword-bayonet, and their pay is at the usual rate of $11, or something like £2 6s. a month, with rations and allowances. The officers do their best to be the true “chacal.” I was more interested, I confess, in watching the motions of vast shoals of mullet and other fish, which flew here and there, like flocks of plover, before the red fish and other enemies, and darted under our boat, than in examining Zouave drill. Once, as a large fish came gamboling along the surface close at hand, a great gleam of white shot up in the waves beneath, and a boiling whirl marked with a crimson pool, which gradually melted off in the tide, showed where a monster shark had taken down a part of his breakfast. “That’s a ground-sheark,” quoth the skipper. “There’s quite a many of them about here.” Porpoises passed by in a great hurry for Pensacola, and now and then a turtle showed his dear little head above the enviable fluid which he honored with his presence. Far away in the long stretch of water toward Pensacola are six British merchantmen in a state of blockade; that is, they have only fifteen days to clear out, according to the reading of the law adopted by the United States officers.
The Navy Yard looks clean and neat in the early morning, and away on the other side of the channel Fort Pickens—teterrima causa—raises its dark front from the white sand and green sward of the glacis, on which a number of black objects invite inspection through a telescope, and obligingly resolve themselves into horses turned out to graze on the slope. Fort M’Rae, at the other side of the channel, as if to irritate its neighbor, flings out a flag to the breeze, which is the counterpart of the “Stars and Stripes” that wave from the rival flagstaff, and is at this distance identical to the eye until the glass detects the solitary star in its folds instead of the whole galaxy. On the dazzling snowy margin of sand that separates the trees and brushwood from the sea, close at hand, the outline of the batteries which stud the shore for miles is visible. Let us go and make a close inspection. Mr. Ellis, a lieutenant in the Louisiana regiment, who is aide-de-camp to Brigadier-General Bragg, has just arrived with a message from his chief to escort me round all the works, and wherever else I like to go, without any reservation whatever. He is a handsome, well-built, slight young fellow, very composed and staid in manner, but full of sentiment for the South. Returned from a tour in Europe, he is all admiration for English scenery, life, and habits. “After all, nature has been more bountiful to you than to us.” He is dressed in a tight undress cavalry jacket and trowsers of blue flannel, with plain gold lace pipings and buttons, but on his heels are heavy brass spurs, worthy of the heaviest of field officers. Our horses are standing in the shade of a large tree near the wharf, and mine is equipped with a saddle of ponderous brass-work, on raised pummel and cantle, and housings, and emblazoned cloth, and mighty stirrups of brass fit for the stoutest marshal that ever led an army of France to victory; General Braxton Bragg is longer in the leg than Marshal Pelissier or Canrobert, or the writer, and as we jogged along over the deep, hot sand, my kind companion, in spite of my assurances that the leathers were quite comfortable, made himself and me somewhat uneasy on the score of their adjustment, and, as there was no implement at hand to make a hole, we turned into the General’s court yard to effect the necessary alterations. The cry of “Orderly” brought a smart, soldierly young man to the front, who speedily took me three holes up, and as I was going away he touched his cap and said, “I beg your pardon, Sir, but I often saw you in the Crimea.” His story as he told it was brief. He had been in the 11th Hussars, and on the day of the 25th of October he was following, as he said, close after Lord Cardigan and Captain Nolan, when his horse was killed under him. As he tried to make his escape, the Cossacks took him prisoner, and for eleven months he was in captivity, but was exchanged at Odessa. “Why did you leave the service?” “Well, Sir, I was one of the two sergeants that was permitted to leave in each regiment on the close of the war, and I came away.” “But here you are soldiering again?” “Yes, Sir; I came over here to better myself, as I thought, and I had to enter one of their cavalry regiments, but now I am an orderly.” He told me further, that his name was Montague, and that he “thought his father lived near Windsor, twenty-one miles from London;” and I was pleased to find his superior officers spoke of him in very high terms, although I could have wished those who spoke so were in our own service.
I do not think that any number of words can give a good idea of a long line of detached batteries. I went through them all, and I certainly found stronger reasons than ever for distrusting the extraordinary statements which appear in the American journals in reference to military matters, particularly on their own side of the question. Instead of hundreds of guns, there are only ten. They are mostly of small calibre, and the gun-carriages are old and unsound, or new and rudely made. There are only five “heavy” guns in all the works, but the mortar batteries, three in number, of which one is unfinished, will prove very damaging, although they will only contain nine or ten mortars. The batteries are all sand-bag and earthworks, with the exception of Fort Barrancas. They are made after all sorts of ways, and are of very different degrees of efficiency. In some the magazines will come to speedy destruction; in others they are well made. Some are of the finest white sand, and will blind the gunners, or be blown away with shells; others are cramped, and hardly traversed; others, again, are very spacious, and well constructed. The embrasures are usually made of sand-bags, covered with raw hide, to save the cotton bags from the effect of the fire of their own guns. I was amused to observe that most of these works had galleries in the rear, generally in connection with the magazine passages, which the constructors called “rat-holes,” and which are intended as shelter to the men at the guns, in case of shells falling inside the battery. They may prove to have a very different result, and are certainly not so desirable in a military point of view as good traverses. A rush for the “rat-holes” will not be very dignified or improving to the morale every time a bomb hurtles over them; and assuredly the damage to the magazines will be enormous if the fire from Pickens is accurate and well sustained. Several of the batteries were not finished, and the men who ought to have been working were lying under the shade of trees, sleeping or smoking—long-limbed, long-bearded fellows in flannel shirts and slouched hats, uniformless in all save bright, well-kept arms, and resolute purpose. We went along slowly from one battery to the other. I visited nine altogether, not including Fort Barrancas, and there are three others, among which is Fort M’Rae. Perhaps there may be fifty guns of all sorts in position for about three miles, along a line exceeding 136 deg. around Fort Pickens, the average distance being about 11/3 mile. The mortar batteries are well placed among brushwood, quite out of view to the fort, at distances varying from 2,500 to 2,800 yards, and the mortars are generally of callibres nearly corresponding with our 10-inch pieces. Several of the gun batteries are put on the level of the beach; others have more command, and one is particularly well placed, close to the White Lighthouse, on a raised plateau, which dominates the sandy strip that runs out to Fort M’Rae. Of the latter I have already spoken. Fort Barrancas is an old fort—I believe of Spanish construction, with a very meagre trace—a plain curtain-face toward the sea, protected by a dry ditch and an outwork, in which, however, there are no guns. There is a drawbridge in the rear of the work, which is a simple parallelogram, showing twelve guns mounted en barbette on the sea-face. The walls are of brick, and the guns are protected by thick merlons of sand-bags. The sole advantage of the fort is in its position; it almost looks down into the casemates of Pickens opposite, at its weakest point, and it has a fair command of the sea entrance, but the guns are weak, and there are only three pieces mounted which can do much mischief. While I was looking round there was an entertaining dispute going on between two men, whom I believe to have been officers, as to the work to be done, and I heard the inferior intimate pretty broadly his conviction that his chief did not know his own business in reference to some orders he was conveying.
The amount of ammunition which I saw did not appear to me to be at all sufficient for one day’s moderate firing, and many of the shot were roughly cast and had deep flanges from the moulds in their sides, very destructive to the guns as well as to accuracy. In the rear of these batteries, among the pine woods and in deep brush, are three irregular camps, which, to the best of my belief, could not contain more than 2,700 men. There are probably 3,000 in and about the batteries, the Navy Yard, and the suburbs, and there are also, I am informed, 1,500 at Pensacola, but I doubt exceedingly that there are as many as 8,000 men, all told, of effective strength under the command of Gen. Bragg. It would be a mistake to despise these Irregulars. One of the Mississippi regiments out in camp was evidently composed of men who liked campaigning, and who looked as though they would like fighting. They had no particular uniforms—the remark will often be made—but they had pugnacious physiognomies, and the physical means of carrying their inclinations into effect, and every man of them was, I am informed, familiar with the use of arms. Their tents are mostly small and bad, on the ridge-pole pattern, with side flys to keep off the sun. In some battalions they observe regularity of line, in others they follow individual or company caprice. The men use green boughs and bowers, as our poor fellows did in the old hot days in Bulgaria, and many of them had benches and seats before their doors, and the luxury of boarded floors to sleep upon.
There is an embarrassing custom in America, scarcely justifiable in any code of good manners, which in the South at least is too common, and which may be still more general in the North; at all events, to a stranger it is productive of the annoyance which is experienced by one who is obliged to inquire whether the behavior of those among whom he is at the time is intentional rudeness or conventional want of breeding. For instance, my friend and myself, as we are riding along, see a gentleman standing near his battery or his tent—“Good-morrow, Colonel,” or “General” (as the case may be), says my friend—“Good-morrow (imagining military rank according to the notion possessed by speaker of the importance of the position of a General’s A. D. C.), Ellis.” “Colonel, &c., allow me to introduce to you Mr. Jones of London.” The Colonel advances with effusion, holds out his hand, grasps Jones’s hand rigidly, and says warmly, as if he had just gained a particular object of his existence, “Mr. Jones, I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Sir. Have you been pretty well since you have been in this country, Sir?” &c. But it is most likely that the Colonel will just walk away when he pleases, without saying a word to or taking the least notice of the aforesaid Jones, as to whose acquaintance he had just before expressed such friendly feelings, and in whose personal health he had taken so deep an interest; and Jones, till he is accustomed to it, feels affronted. The fact is, that the introduction means nothing; you are merely told each other’s names, and if you like you may improve your acquaintance. The hand shaking is a remnant of barbarous times, when men with the same colored skin were glad to see each other.
The country through which we rode was most uninteresting, thick brushwood and pine trees springing out of deep sand, here and there a nullah and some dirty stream—all flat as ditchwater. On our return we halted at the General’s quarters. I had left a note for him, in which I inquired whether he would have any objection to my proceeding to Fort Pickens from his command, in case I obtained permission to do so, and when I entered General Bragg’s room he was engaged in writing not merely a very courteous and complimentary expression of his acquiescence in my visit, but letters of introduction to personal friends in Louisiana, in the hope of rendering my sojourn more agreeable. He expressed a doubt whether my comrades would be permitted to enter the fort, and talked very freely with me in reference to what I had seen at the batteries, but I thought I perceived an indication of some change of purpose with respect to the immediate urgency of the attack on Fort Pickens, compared with his expressions last night. At length I departed with many thanks to General Bragg for his kindness and confidence, and returned to a room full of Generals and Colonels, who made a levee of their visits.