Men.
Morris Island,2,625
Sullivan’s Island,1,750
Stone and other points,750
Total,5,125
Columbia,1,950
Charleston,1,900
Total,8,975
In field at the time of report,3,027
Total,12,002

The regiments mentioned here are composed of the various companies raised in different localities with different names, but the State regulars are in expectation that they will soon be made portions of the regular army of the Confederate States, which is in course of formation. There are, I believe, only fifty-five thousand registered voters in South Carolina. The number of men furnished by them is a fair indication of the zeal for the cause which animates the population. The physique of the troops is undeniably good. Now and then undersized, weakly men may be met with, but the great majority of the companies consist of rank and file exceeding the average stature of Europeans, and very well built and muscular. The men run very large down here. Nothing, indeed, can be more obvious when one looks at the full-grown, healthy, handsome race which developes itself in the streets, in the bar-rooms, and in the hotel halls, than the error of the argument, which is mainly used by the Carolinians themselves, that white men cannot thrive in their State. In limb, figure, height, weight, they are equal to any people I have ever seen, and their features are very regular and pronounced. They are, indeed, as unlike the ideal American of our caricaturists and our stage as is the “milor” of the Porte St. Martin to the English gentleman. Some of this superiority is due to the fact that the bulk of the white population here are in all but name aristocrats or rather oligarchs. The State is but a gigantic Sparta, in which the helotry are marked by an indelible difference of color and race from the masters. The white population, which is not land and slaveholding and agricultural, is very small and very insignificant. The masters enjoy every advantage which can conduce to the physical excellence of a people, and to the cultivation of the graces and accomplishments of life, even though they are rather disposed to neglect purely intellectual enjoyments and tastes. Many of those who serve in the ranks are men worth from £5,000 to £10,000 a year—at least, so I was told—and men were pointed out to me who were said to be worth far more. One private feeds his company on French pâtés and Madeira, another provides his comrades with unlimited champagne, most grateful on the arid sand-hill; a third, with a more soldierly view to their permanent rather than occasional efficiency, purchases for the men of his “guard” a complete equipment of Enfield rifles. How long the zeal and resources of these gentlemen will last it may not be easy to say. At present they would prove formidable to any enemy, except a regular army on the plain and in the open field, but they are not provided with field artillery or with adequate cavalry, and they are not accustomed to act in concert and in large bodies.

Yesterday morning I waited on General Beauregard, who is commanding the forces of South Carolina. His aides-de-camp, Mr. Manning, Mr. Chesnut, Mr. Porcher Miles, and Colonel Lucas, accompanied me. Of these, the former has been Governor of this State, the next has been a Senator, the third a member of Congress. They are all volunteers, and are gentlemen of position in the State, and the fact that they are not only content but gratified to act as aides to the professional soldier, is the best proof of the reality of the spirit which animates the class they represent. Mr. Lucas is a gentleman of the State, who is acting as aide-de-camp to Governor Pickens. Passing through the dense crowd which, talking, smoking, and reading newspapers, fills the large hall on Mills’s house, we emerge on the dirty streets, sufficiently broad, and lined with trees protected by wooden sheathings at the base. The houses, not very lofty, are clean and spacious, and provided with verandahs facing the South as far as possible. The trees give the streets the air of a boulevard, and the town has somehow or other a reminiscence of the Hague about it, which I cannot explain or account for satisfactorily. The headquarters are in a large, airy, public building, once devoted to an insurance company’s operations, or to the accommodation of the public fire companies. There was no guard at the door; officers and privates were passing to and fro in the hall, part of which was cut off by canvass screens, so as to form rooms for departments of the Horse Guards of South Carolina. Into one of these we turned, and found the desks occupied by officers in uniform, waiting despatches and copying documents with all the abandon which distinguishes the true soldier when he can get at printed forms and Government stationery. In another moment we were ushered into a smaller room, and were presented to the General, who was also seated at his desk. Any one accustomed to soldiers can readily detect the “real article” from the counterfeit, and when General Beauregard stood up to welcome us, it was patent he was a man capable of greater things than taking Sumter. He is a squarely-built, lean man, of about forty years of age, with broad shoulders, and legs “made to fit” a horse, of middle height, and his head is covered with thick hair, cropped close, and showing the bumps, which are reflective and combative, with a true Gallic air, at the back of the skull; the forehead, broad and well-developed, projects somewhat over the keen, eager, dark eyes; the face is very thin, with very high cheek-bones, a well-shaped nose, slightly aquiline, and a large, rigid, sharply cut mouth, set above a full fighting chin. In the event of any important operations taking place, the name of this officer will, I feel assured, be heard often enough to be my excuse for this little sketch of his outward man. He was good enough to detail his chief engineer officer to go with me over the works, and I found in Major Whiting a most able guide and agreeable companion. It is scarcely worth while to waste time in describing the position of Charleston. It lies as low as Venice, the look of which it rather affects from a distance, with long, sandy islands stretching out as arms to close up the approaches, and lagunes cutting into the marshy shores. On a sandy island and spit on the left hand shore stands Fort Moultrie. On the southern side, on another sandy island, are the lines of the batteries which, probably, were most dangerous, from their proximity and position, to the unprotected face of Sumter. The fort itself is built in the tideway, on a rocky point, which has been increased by artificial deposits of granite chips. Embarked, with a few additions to our original party, on board a small steamer, called the Lady Davis, we first proceeded to Morris Island, about 3¾ miles from Charleston. Our steamer was filled with commissariat stores for the troops, of whom 4,000 were said to be encamped among the sand-hills. Any one who has ever been at Southport, or has seen the dunes about Dunkirk or Calais, will have a good idea of the place. Our landing was opposed by a guard of stout volunteers, with crossed firelocks; but they were satisfied by the General’s authority, and we proceeded, ankle-deep in the soft, white sand, to visit the batteries which played on the landward face of Sumter. They are made of sand-bags for the most part, well placed in the sand-hills, with good traverses and well-protected magazines, the embrasures being faced with palmetto logs, which do not splinter when struck by shot. It did not, however, require much investigation to show that these works would be greatly injured by a fire of vertical and horizontal shell from the fort, and that the distance of their armament would render it difficult to breach the solid walls which were opposed to them at upward of 1,200 yards away. However, there were two powerful mortar batteries, which could have done great damage if they were well served, and have made the terreplein and parade of the fort a complete “shell trap” unless the mortars were injured. The civilians and militiamen set greater store on the Iron Battery at Cummings’ Point, which is the part of the island nearest to the fort, but the fire of heavy guns would have soon destroyed their confidence. It consists of yellow pine logs placed as vertical uprights. The roof, of the same material, slopes from the top of the uprights to the sand facing the enemy; over it are dovetailed bars of railroad iron, of the T pattern, from top to bottom, all riveted down in the most secure manner. On the front the railroad iron roof and incline present an angle of about thirty degrees. There are three portholes with iron shutters. When opened by the action of a lever the muzzles of the columbiads fill up the space completely. The columbiad guns with which this battery is equipped bear on the south wall of Sumter at an angle. The inclined side of the battery has been struck by six shots, the effect of two of which is enough to demonstrate that the fire of the guns en barbette would have been destructive. The columbiad is a kind of Dahlgren—that is, a piece of ordinance very thick in the breech, and lightened off gradually from the trunnions to the muzzle. The platforms were rather light, but the carriages were solid and well made, and the elevating screws or hitches of the guns were in good order. The mortars are of various calibres and descriptions, mostly 8-inch and 10-inch; and it is said there were seventeen of them in position and working against the fort, and that thirty-five guns were from time to time directed against it. Shot and shell appeared to be abundant enough. The works are all small detached batteries, with sand-bag merlons, and open at the gorge, and they extend for four miles along the shore of the island. The camps are pitched most irregularly between the sand-hills—tents of all shapes and sizes, in the fashion called higgledy-piggledy, here and there, in knots and groups, in a way that would drive an Indian quartermaster-general mad. Bones of beef and mutton, champagne and wine bottles, obstructed the approaches, which were of a nature to afflict Dr. Sutherland and Sir John M’Neill most bitterly, and to suggest the reflection that the army which so utterly neglected sanitary regulations could not long exist as soon as the sun gained full power. They say, however, the men are not sickly, and that these sand-hills are the most healthy spots about Charleston. The men were occupied as soldiers generally are when they have nothing to do—lounging or lying on the straw and plank carpets, smoking, reading, sleeping. The owners of the tents give them various names, of which “The Lions’ Den,” “The Tigers’ Lair,” “The Eagles’ Nest,” “Mars’ Delight,” are fair specimens, and these are done in black on the white calico. In one which we visited, the hospitable inmates were busily engaged in brewing claret cup, and Bordeaux, lemons, sugar, ice, and Champagne, and salads were in abundance, and at the end of the tent was a Bar, where anything else in reason could be had for the asking, though water was not so plentiful. At one of the batteries the great object of attraction was a gun made on Captain Blakeley’s principle, by Messrs. Fawcett, Preston & Co., of Liverpool, which was only put in battery the day before the fire opened, and the effect of which on the masonry is said to have been very powerful. It is a 12-pounder—the same which was tried last year, I think—and bears a brass plate with the inscription, “Presented to South Carolina by one of her citizens.” It is remarkable enough that the vessel which carried it lay in the midst of the United States war vessels at the mouth of the harbor.

Having satisfied our curiosity as well as time and a sand-storm permitted, we got in a row-boat and proceeded to Sumter. At a distance, the fort bears some resemblance to Fort Paul at Sevastopol. It is a truncated pentagon, with three faces armed—that which is toward Morris Island being considered safe from attack, as the work was only intended to resist an approach from the sea. It is said to have cost altogether more than £200,000 sterling. The walls are of solid brick and concrete masonry, built close to the edge of the water, sixty feet high, and from eight to twelve feet in thickness, and carry three tiers of guns on the north, east, and west exterior sides. Its weakest point is on the south side, where the masonry is not protected by any flank fire to sweep the wharf. The work is designed for an armament of one hundred and forty pieces of ordnance of all calibres. Two tiers are under bomb-proof casemates, and the third or upper tier is en barbette; the lower tier is intended for 42-pounders paixhan guns; the second tier for eight and ten-inch columbiads, for throwing solid or hollow shot, and the upper tier for mortars and guns. But only seventy-five are now mounted. Eleven paixhan guns are among that number, nine of them commanding Fort Moultrie. Some of the columbiads are not mounted. Four of the 32-pounder barbette guns are on pivot carriages, and others have a sweep of 180°. The walls are pierced everywhere for musketry. The magazine contains several hundred barrels of gunpowder, and a supply of shot, powder, and shells. The garrison was amply supplied with water from artificial wells. The war garrison of the fort ought to be at least six hundred men, but only seventy-nine were within its walls, with the laborers—one hundred and nine all told—at the time of the attack.

The walls of the fort are dented on all sides by shot marks, but in no instance was any approach made to a breach, and the greatest damage, at one of the angles on the south face, did not extend more than two feet into the masonry, which is of very fine brick. The parapet is, of course, damaged, but the casemate embrasures are uninjured. On landing at the wharf we perceived that the granite copings had suffered more than the brickwork, and that the stone had split up and splintered where it was struck. The ingenuity of the defenders was evident even here. They had no mortar with which to fasten up the stone slabs they had adapted as blinds to the windows of the unprotected south side; but Major Anderson, or his subordinate, Captain Foster, had closed the slabs in with lead, which he procured from some water piping, and had rendered them proof against escalade, which he was prepared also to resent by extensive mines laid under the wharf and landing-place, to be fired by friction tubes and lines laid inside the work. He had also prepared a number of shells for the same purpose, to act as hand-grenades, with friction tubes and lanyards, when hurled down from the parapet on his assailants. The entrance to the fort was blocked up by masses of masonry, which had been thrown down from the walls of the burnt barracks and officers’ quarters, along the south side. A number of men were engaged in digging up the mines at the wharf, and others were busied in completing the ruin of the tottering walls, which were still so hot that it was necessary to keep a hose of water playing on part of the brickwork. To an uninitiated eye it would seem as if the fort was untenable, but, in reality, in spite of the destruction done to it, a stout garrison, properly supplied, would have been in no danger from anything, except the explosion of the magazine, of which the copper door was jammed by the heat at the time of the surrender. Exclusive of the burning of the quarters and the intense heat, there was no reason for a properly handled and sufficient force to surrender the place. It is needless to say Major Anderson had neither one nor the other. He was in all respects most miserably equipped. His guns were without screws, scales, or tangents, so that his elevations were managed by rude wedges of deal, and his scales marked in chalk on the breech of the guns, and his distances and bearings scratched in the same way on the side of the embrasures. He had not a single fuse for his shells, and he tried in vain to improvise them by filling pieces of bored-out pine with caked gunpowder. His cartridges were out, and he was compelled to detail some few of his men to make them out of shirts, stockings, and jackets. He had not a single mortar, and he was compelled to the desperate expedient of planting long guns in the ground at an angle of 45 degrees, for which he could find no shell, as he had no fuses which could be fired with safety. He had no sheers to mount his guns, and chance alone enabled him to do so by drifting some large logs down with the tide against Sumter. Finally, he had not even one engine to put out a fire in quarters. I walked carefully over the parade, and could detect the marks of only seven shells in the ground; but Major Whiting told me the orders were to burst the shells over the parapet, so as to frustrate any attempt to work the barbette guns. Two of these were injured by shot, and one was overturned, apparently by its own recoil; but there was no injury done inside any of the casemates to the guns or works. The shell splinters had all disappeared, carried off, I am told, as “trophies.” Had Major Anderson been properly provided, so that he could have at once sent his men to the guns, opened fire from those in barbette, thrown shell and hot shot, kept relays to all his casemates, and put out fires as they arose from red-hot shot or shell, he must, I have no earthly doubt, have driven the troops off Morris Island, burnt out Fort Moultrie, and silenced the enemy’s fire. His loss might have been considerable; that of the Confederates must have been very great. As it was, not a life was lost by actual fire on either side. A week hence and it will be impossible for a fleet to do anything except cover the descent of an army here, and they must lie off, at the least, four miles from the nearest available beach.

LETTER VI.
THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA.

APRIL 30, 1861.

NOTHING I could say can be worth one fact which has forced itself upon my mind in reference to the sentiments which prevail among the gentlemen of this State. I have been among them several days. I have visited their plantations, I have conversed with them freely and fully, and I have enjoyed that frank, courteous, and graceful intercourse which constitutes an irresistible charm of their society. From all quarters have come to my ears the echoes of the same voice; it may be feigned, but there is no discord in the note, and it sounds in wonderful strength and monotony all over the country. Shades of George III., of North, of Johnson, of all who contended against the great rebellion which tore these colonies from England, can you hear the chorus which rings through the State of Marion, Sumter, and Pinckney, and not clap your ghostly hands in triumph? That voice says, “If we could only get one of the Royal race of England to rule over us, we should be content.” Let there be no misconception on this point. That sentiment, varied in a hundred ways, has been repeated to me over and over again. There is a general admission that the means to such an end are wanting, and that the desire cannot be gratified. But the admiration for monarchical institutions on the English model, for privileged classes, and for a landed aristocracy and gentry, is undisguised and apparently genuine. With the pride of having achieved their independence is mingled in the South Carolinians’ hearts a strange regret at the result and consequences, and many are they who “would go back to-morrow if we could.” An intense affection for the British connection, a love of British habits and customs, a respect for British sentiment, law, authority, order, civilization, and literature, preëminently distinguish the inhabitants of this State, who, glorying in their descent from ancient families on the three islands, whose fortunes they still follow, and with whose members they maintain not unfrequently familiar relations, regard with an aversion of which it is impossible to give an idea to one who has not seen its manifestations, the people of New England and the populations of the Northern States, whom they regard as tainted beyond cure by the venom of “Puritanism.” Whatever may be the cause, this is the fact and the effect. “The State of South Carolina was,” I am told, “founded by gentlemen.” It was not established by witch-burning Puritans, by cruel persecuting fanatics, who implanted in the North the standard of Torquemada, and breathed into the nostrils of their newly-born colonies all the ferocity of blood-thirstiness and rabid intolerance of the Inquisition. It is absolutely astounding to a stranger, who aims at the preservation of a decent neutrality, to mark the violence of these opinions.

“If that confounded ship had sunk with those —— Pilgrim Fathers on board,” says one, “we never should have been driven to these extremities!” “We could have got on with fanatics if they had been either Christians or gentlemen,” says another; “for in the first case they would have acted with common charity, and in the second they would have fought when they insulted us; but there are neither Christians nor gentlemen among them!” “Anything on the earth!” exclaims a third, “any form of government, any tyranny or despotism you will; but”—and here is an appeal more terrible than the adjuration of all the Gods—“nothing on earth shall ever induce us to submit to any union with the brutal, bigoted blackguards of the New England States, who neither comprehend nor regard the feelings of gentlemen! Man, woman, and child, we’ll die first.” Imagine these and an infinite variety of similar sentiments uttered by courtly, well-educated men, who set great store on a nice observance of the usages of society, and who are only moved to extreme bitterness and anger when they speak of the North, and you will fail to conceive the intensity of the dislike of the South Carolinians for the Free States. There are national antipathies on our side of the Atlantic which are tolerably strong, and have been unfortunately pertinacious and long-lived. The hatred of the Italian for the Tedesco, of the Greek for the Turk, of the Turk for the Russ, is warm and fierce enough to satisfy the Prince of Darkness, not to speak of a few little pet aversions among the allied Powers and the atoms of composite empires; but they are all mere indifference and neutrality of feeling compared to the animosity evinced by the “gentry” of South Carolina for the “rabble of the North.”