The day before yesterday, ships belonging to the United States in the river were seized by the Confederation authorities, on the ground that war had broken out, and that the time of grace accorded to the enemy’s traders had expired. Great was the rush to the Consul’s office to transfer the menaced property from ownership under the Stars and Strips to British hands; but Mr. Mure refused to recognize any transactions of the kind, unless sales bona fide had been effected before the action of the Confederate Marshals.
At Charleston the blockade has been raised, owing, apparently, to some want of information or of means on the part of the United States Government, and considerable inconvenience may be experienced by them in consequence. On the 11th, the United States steam frigate Niagara appeared outside and warned off several British ships, and on the 13th she was visited by Mr. Bunch, our Consul, who was positively assured by the officers on board that eight or ten vessels would be down to join in enforcing the blockade. On the 15th, however, the Niagara departed, leaving the port open, and several vessels have since run in and obtained fabulous freights, suggesting to the minds of the owners of the vessels which were warned off the propriety of making enormous demands for compensation. The Southerners generally believe not only that their Confederacy will be acknowledged, but that the blockade will be disregarded by England. Their affection for her is proportionably prodigious, and reminds one of the intensity of the gratitude which consists in lively expectations of favors to come.
NEW ORLEANS, May 21, 1861.
Yesterday morning early I left Mobile in the steamer Florida, which arrived in the Lake of Pontchartrain late at night, or early this morning. The voyage, if it can be called so, would have offered, in less exciting times, much that was interesting—certainly, to a stranger, a good deal that was novel—for our course lay inside a chain, almost uninterrupted, of reefs, covered with sand and pine trees, exceedingly narrow, so that the surf and waves of the ocean beyond could be seen rolling in foam through the foliage of the forest, or on the white beach, while the sea lake on which our steamer was speeding lay in a broad, smooth sheet, just crisped by the breeze, between the outward barrier and the wooded shores of the mainland. Innumerable creeks, or “bayous,” as they are called, pierce the gloom of these endless pines. Now and then a sail could be made out, stealing through the mazes of the marshy waters. If the mariner knows his course, he may find deep water in most of the channels from the outer sea into these inner waters, on which the people of the South will greatly depend for any coasting trade, and supplies coastwise, they may require, as well as for the safe retreat of their privateers. A few miles from Mobile, the steamer turning out of the bay, entered upon the series of these lakes through a narrow channel called Grant’s Pass, which some enterprising person, not improbably of Scottish extraction, constructed for his own behoof by an ingenious watercut, and for the use of which, and of a little iron light-house that he has built close at hand, on the model of a pepper-castor, he charges toll on passing vessels. This island is scarcely three feet above the water; it is not over twenty yards broad and one hundred and fifty yards long. A number of men were, however, busily engaged in throwing up the sand, and arms gleamed amid some tents pitched around the solitary wooden shed in the centre. A schooner lay at the wharf, laden with two guns and sand-bags, and as we passed through the narrow channel several men in military uniform, who were on board, took their places in a boat which pushed off for them, and were conveyed to their tiny station, of which one shell would make a dust-heap. The Mobilians are fortifying themselves as best they can, and seem, not unadvisedly, jealous of gunboats and small war steamers. On more than one outlying sand-bank toward New Orleans are they to be seen at work on other batteries, and they are busied in repairing, as well as they can, old Spanish and new United States works which had been abandoned, or which were never completed. The news has just been reported, indeed, that the batteries they were preparing on Ship Island have been destroyed and burnt by a vessel of war of the United States. For the whole day we saw only a few coasting craft and the return steamers from New Orleans; but in the evening a large schooner, which sailed like a witch and was crammed with men, challenged my attention, and on looking at her through the glass I could make out reasons enough for desiring to avoid her if one was a quiet, short-handed, well-filled old merchantman. There could be no mistake about certain black objects on the deck. She lay as low as a yacht, and there were some fifty or sixty men in the waist and forecastle. On approaching New Orleans, there are some settlements rather than cities, although they are called by the latter title, visible on the right hand, embowered in woods and stretching along the beach. Such are the “Mississippi City,” Pass Cagoula, and Pass Christian, &c.—all resorts of the inhabitants of New Orleans during the summer heats and the epidemics which play such havoc with life from time to time. Seen from sea, these huge hamlets look very picturesque. The detached villas, of every variety of architecture, are painted brightly and stand in gardens in the midst of magnolias and rhododendrons. Very long and slender piers lead far into the sea before the very door, and at the extremity of each there is a bathing box for the inmates. The general effect of one of these settlements, with its light domes and spires, long lines of whitewashed railings, and houses of every hue set in the dark green of the pines, is very pretty. The steamer touched at two of them. There was a motley group of colored people on the jetty, a few whites, of whom the males were nearly all in uniform; a few bales of goods were landed or put on board, and that was all one could see of the life of that place. Our passengers never ceased talking politics all day, except when they were eating or drinking, for I regret to say they can continue to chew and to spit while they are engaged in political discussion. Some were rude provincials in uniform. One was an acquaintance from the far East, who had been a lieutenant on board of the Minnesota, and had resigned his commission in order to take service under the Confederate flag. The fiercest among them all was a thin little lady, who uttered certain energetic aspirations for the possession of portions of Mr. Lincoln’s person, and who was kind enough to express intense satisfaction at the intelligence that there was small-pox among the garrison at Monroe. In the evening a little difficulty occurred among some of the military gentlemen, during which one of the logicians drew a revolver, and presented it at the head of the gentleman who was opposed to his peculiar views, but I am happy to say that an arrangement, to which I was an unwilling “party,” for the row took place within a yard of me, was entered into for a fight to come off on shore in two days after they landed, which led to the postponement of immediate murder.
The entrance to Pontchartrain Lake is infamous for the abundance of its mosquitoes, and it was with no small satisfaction that we experienced a small tornado, a thunderstorm, and a breeze of wind which saved us from their fury. It is a dismal canal through a swamp. At daylight the vessel lay alongside a wharf surrounded by small boats and bathing stations. A railway-shed receives us on shore, and a train is soon ready to start for the city, which is six miles distant. For a few hundred yards the line passes between wooden houses, used as restaurants, or “restaurats,” as they are called hereaway, kept by people with French names and using the French tongue; then the rail plunges through a swamp, dense as an Indian jungle, and with the overflowings of the Mississippi creeping in feeble, shallow currents over the black mud. Presently the spires of churches are seen rising above the underwood and rushes. Then we come out on a wide marshy plain, in which flocks of cattle up to the belly in mud are floundering to get at the rich herbage on the unbroken surface. Next comes a wide-spread suburb of exceedingly broad lanes, lined with small one-storied houses. The inhabitants are pale, lean, and sickly, and there is about the men a certain look, almost peculiar to the fishy-fleshy populations of Levantine towns, which I cannot describe, but which exists all along the Mediterranean seaboard, and crops out here again. The drive through badly-paved streets enables us to see that there is an air of French civilization about New Orleans. The streets are wisely adapted to the situation; they are not so wide as to permit the sun to have it all his own way from rising to setting. The shops are “magasins;” cafés abound. The colored population looks well dressed, and is going to mass or market in the early morning. The pavements are crowded with men in uniform, in which the taste of France is generally followed. The carriage stops at last, and rest comes gratefully after the stormy night, the mosquitoes, “the noise of the captains” (at the bar), and the shouting.
May 22.—The prevalence of the war spirit here is in everything somewhat exaggerated by the fervor of Gallic origin, and the violence of popular opinion and the tyranny of the mass are as potent as in any place in the South. The great house of Brown Brothers, of Liverpool and New York, has closed its business here in consequence of the intimidation of the mob, or, as the phrase is, of the “citizens,” who were “excited” by seeing that the firm had subscribed to the New York fund, on its sudden resurrection after Fort Sumter had fallen. Some other houses are about to pursue the same course; all large business transactions are over for the season, and the migratory population which comes here to trade has taken wing much earlier than usual. But the streets are full of “Turcos” and “Zouaves” and “Chasseurs;” the tailors are busy night and day on uniforms; the walls are covered with placards for recruits, the seamstresses are sewing flags, the ladies are carding lint and stitching cartridge bags. The newspapers are crowded with advertisements relating to the formation of new companies of Volunteers and the election of officers. There are Pickwick Rifles, Lafayette, Beauregard, Irish, German, Scotch, Italian, Spanish, Crescent, McMahon—innumerable—Rifle Volunteers of all names and nationalities, and the Meagher Rifles, indignant with “that valiant son of Mars” because he has drawn his sword for the North, have re-baptized themselves, and are going to seek glory under a more auspicious nomenclature. About New Orleans I shall have more to say when I see more of it. At present it looks very like an outlying suburb of Chalons when the Grand Camp is at its highest military development, although the thermometer is rising gradually, and obliges one to know occasionally that it can be 95° in the shade already. In the course of my journeying southward I have failed to find much evidence that there is any apprehension on the part of the planters of a servile insurrection, or that the slaves are taking much interest in the coming contest, or know what it is about. But I have my suspicions that all is not right; paragraphs meet the eye, and odd sentences strike the ear, and little facts here and there come to the knowledge which arouse curiosity and doubt. There is one stereotyped sentence which I am tired of: “Our negroes, Sir, are the happiest, the most contented, and the best off of any people in the world.”
The violence and reiterancy of this formula cause one to inquire whether anything 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 $10 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 good will, that the 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.”