But during our journey the hampers have not been neglected. The younger members of the party astonish the night-owls with patriotic songs, chiefly French, and the French chiefly with the “Marseillaise,” which, however inappropriate as the slogan of the Confederate States, they persist in quavering, forgetful, perhaps, that not three-quarters of a century ago Toussaiant l’Ouverture caught the words and air from his masters, and awoke the lugubrious notes of the insurrection.
Towards nine P. M., the special car rests in the woods, and is flanked on one side by the tents and watch-fires of a small encampment, chiefly of navvy and cotton-handling Milesian volunteers, called “the Tigers,” from their prehensile powers and predatory habits. A guard is stationed around the car; a couple of Ethiopians who have attended us from town are left to answer the query, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? and we make our way to the hotel, which looms up in the moonlight in a two-storied dignity. Here, alas! there have been no preparations made to sleep or feed us. The scapegoat “nobody” announced our coming. Some of the guests are club men, used to the small hours, who engage a room, a table, half a dozen chairs, and a brace of bottles to serve as candlesticks. They have brought stearine and pasteboards with them, and are soon deep in the finesses of “Euchre.” We quietly stroll back to the car, our only hope of shelter. At the entrance we are challenged by a sentry, apparently ignorant that he has a percussion cap on his brown rifle, which he levels at us cocked. From this unpleasant vision of an armed and reckless Tiger rampant we are relieved by one of the dusky squires, who assures the sentinel that we are “all right,” and proceeds to turn over a seat and arrange what might be called a sedan-chair bed, in which we prepare to make a night of it. Our party is soon joined by others in quest of repose, and in half an hour breathings, some of them so deep as to seem subterranean, indicate that all have attained their object—like Manfred’s—forgetfulness.
An early breakfast of rashers and eggs was prepared at the table d’hôte, which we were told would be replenished half-hourly until noon, when a respite of an hour was allowed to the “help” in which to make ready a dinner, to be served in the same progression.
Through a shady dingle a winding path led to the camp, and, after trudging a pleasant half mile, a bridge of boards, resting on a couple of trees laid across a pool, was passed, and, above a slight embankment, tents and soldiers are revealed upon a “clearing” of some thirty acres in the midst of a pine forest. Turning to the left, we reach a double row of tents, only distinguished from the rest by their “fly roofs” and boarded floors, and, in the centre, halt opposite to one which a poster of capitals on a planed deal marks as “Head-quarters.” Major-General Tracy commands the camp. The white tents crouching close to the shade of the pines, the parade alive with groups and colors as various as those of Joseph’s coat, arms stacked here and there, and occasionally the march of a double file in green, or in mazarine blue, up an alley from the interior of the wood, to be dismissed in the open camp, resembles a militia muster, or a holiday experiment at soldiering, rather than the dark shadow of forthcoming battle. The cordon of sentinels suffer no Volunteer to leave the precincts of the camp, even to bathe, without a pass or the word. There are neither wagons nor ambulances, and the men are rolling in barrels of bacon and bread and shouldering bags of pulse—good picnic practice and campaigning gymnastics in fair weather.
The arms of these Volunteers are the old United States smooth-bore musket, altered from flint to percussion, with bayonet—a heavy and obsolete copy of Brown Bess in bright barrels. All are in creditable order. Most of them have never been used, even to fire a parade volley, for powder is scarce in the Confederated States, and must not be wasted. Except in their material, the shoes of the troops are as varied as their clothing. None have as yet been served out, and each still wears the boots, the brogans, the patent leathers, or the Oxford ties in which he enlisted. The tents have mostly no other floor than the earth, and that rarely swept; while blankets, boxes, and utensils are stowed in corners with a disregard of symmetry that would drive a martinet mad. Camp stools are rare and tables invisible, save here and there in an officer’s tent. Still the men look well, and, we are told, would doubtless present a more cheerful appearance, but for some little demoralization occasioned by discontent at the repeated changes in the organic structure of the regiments, arising from misapprehensions between the State and Federal authorities, as well as from some favoritism toward certain officers, effected by political wire-pulling in the governing councils. The system of electing officers by ballot has made the camp as thoroughly a political arena as the poll districts in New Orleans before an election, and thus many heroes, seemingly ambitious of epaulettes, are in reality only “laying pipes” for the attainment of civil power or distinction after the war.
The volunteers we met at Maunshae the previous evening had been enlisted by the State to serve for twelve months, and had refused to extend their engagement for the war—a condition now made precedent at Montgomery to their being mustered into the army of the Confederate States. Another company, a majority of whom persist in the same refusal, were disbanded while we were patrolling the camp, and an officer told one of the party he had suffered a loss of six hundred volunteers by this disintegrating process within the last twenty-four hours. Some of these country companies were skilled in the use of the rifle, and most of them had made pecuniary sacrifices in the way of time, journeys, and equipments. Our informant deplored this reduction of volunteers, as tending to engender dissaffection in the parishes to which they will return, and comfort when known to the Abolitionists of the North. He added that the war will not perhaps last a twelvemonth, and if unhappily prolonged beyond that period, the probabilities are in favor of the short-term recruits willingly consenting to a reënlistment.
The encampment of the “Perrit Guards” was worthy of a visit. Here was a company of professional gamblers, one hundred and twelve strong, recruited for the war in a moment of banter by one of the patriarchs of the fraternity, who, upon hearing at the St. Charles Hotel one evening, that the vanity or the patriotism of a citizen, not famed for liberality, had endowed with $1,000 a company which was to bear his name, exclaimed that “he would give $1,500 to any one who should be fool enough to form a company and call it after him.” In less than an hour after the utterance of this caprice, Mr. Perrit was waited upon by fifty-six “professionals,” who had enrolled their names as the “Perrit Guards,” and unhesitatingly produced from his wallet the sum so sportively pledged. The Guards are uniformed in Mazarin blue flannel with red facings, and the captain, a youngish-looking fellow, with a hawk’s eye, who has seen service with Scott in Mexico and Walker in Nicaragua, informed us that there is not a pair of shoes in the company that cost less than six dollars, and that no money has been spared to perfect their other appointments. A sack of ice and half a dozen silver goblets enforced his invitation “to take a drink at his quarters,” and we were served by an African in uniform, who afterward offered us cigars received by the last Havana steamer. Looking at the sable attendant, one of the party observes that if these “experts of fortune win the present fight, it will be a case of couleur gagne.”
It would be difficult to find in the same number of men taken at hazard greater diversities of age, stature, and physiognomy; but in keenness of eye and imperturbility of demeanor they exhibit a family likeness, and there is not an unintelligent face in the company. The gamblers, or, as they are termed, the “sports,” of the United States have an air of higher breeding and education than the dice-throwers and card-turners of Ascot or Newmarket—nay, they may be considered the Anglo-Saxon equals, minus the title, of those âmes damnées of the continental nobility who are styled Greeks by their Parisian victims. They are the Pariahs of American civilization, who are, nevertheless, in daily and familiar intercourse with their patrons, and not restricted, as in England, to a betting-ring toleration by the higher orders. The Guards are the model company of Camp Moore, and I should have felt disposed to admire the spirit of gallantry with which they have volunteered in this war as a purification by fire of their maculated lives, were it not hinted that the “Oglethorpe Guards,” and more than one other company of volunteers, are youths of large private fortunes, and that in the Secession, as in the Mexican War, these patriots will doubtless pursue their old calling with as much profit as they may their new one with valor.
From the Lower Camp we wind through tents, which diminish in neatness and cleanliness as we advance deeper, to the Upper Division, which is styled “Camp Tracy,” a newer formation, whose brooms have been employed with corresponding success. The adjutant’s report for the day sums up one thousand and seventy-three rank and file, and but two on the sick list. On a platform, a desk beneath the shade of the grove holds a Bible and Prayer-book, that await the arrival at ten o’clock of the Methodist preacher, who is to perform Divine service. The green uniforms of the “Hibernian Guards,” and the gray and light blue dress of other companies, appertain to a better appointed sort of men than the Lower Division.
There may be two thousand men in Camp Moore—not more, and yet every authority gives us a different figure. The lowest estimate acknowledged for the two camps is three thousand five hundred men, and The Picayune and other New Orleans papers still speak in glowing terms of the five thousand heroes assembled in Tangipao. Although the muster there presents a tolerable show of ball-stoppers, it would require months of discipline to enable them to pass for soldiers even at the North; and besides that General Tracy has never had other experience than in militia duty, there is not, I think, a single West Point officer in his whole command. The only hope of shaping such raw material to the purposes of war, would naturally be by the admixture of a proper allowance of military experience, and until those possessing it shall be awarded to Camp Moore, we must sigh over the delusion which pictures its denizens to the good people of New Orleans as “fellows ready for the fray.”