The elegant residences along the battery front retained the aristocratic seclusion of their embowering shrubbery, creepers and flowering plants; but even through these gracious concealments which Nature cast over them, the scars from the Swamp Angel could everywhere be seen. Pavements had been torn up from the principal business streets, to build the batteries that lined the shore; and great embankments, crowned with Tredegar guns, shut out the prospect from many an aristocratic window. The unfinished Custom House was among the most conspicuous buildings, the white marble blocks lying scattered about it, as they were left by the workmen four years ago. “We’ll never finish it,” the fervid revolutionists said, as they began the war. “We’ve paid Yankee tariffs long enough; now, hurrah for free trade with our friends of France and Great Britain!” But the Custom House stands, and next winter Mr. Fessenden will be reporting to the Senate an item in the military appropriation bill for its completion.
Admiral Dahlgren and Fleet Captain Bradford came alongside in the Admiral’s gig, soon after our arrival; and while our boatswain was piping his whistle as the Admiral came over the ship’s side, the guns of the “Pawnee” began a salute for the Chief Justice. The Treasury Agent and some other officials soon followed, and the Admiral took the party under his charge, transferred us to a comfortable and speedy little harbor steamer, and started toward that first goal of every man’s curiosity—Sumter.
The rebellion has left its marks on the pale, thoughtful features of the Admiral, not less than upon the harbor he has been assailing. The terrible death of noble young Ulric Dahlgren, a martyr to the barbarism of slavery, might well grave deep traces on a father’s face; but the climate here, and the labors of the past have also been very trying, and one can readily believe, what used to be rather sarcastically urged by the Admiral’s enemies, that his health did not permit him to keep up in gunnery with General Gillmore.
We passed a little sailing vessel manned by blacks. The Admiral told us that they had brought it down one of the rivers, the other day, and he had allowed them to keep it. They earn a livelihood bringing wood to the city. Recently there have been a number of outrages perpetrated on the blacks inland, by their late masters and some of the returning Rebel soldiers. Greatly infuriated, the blacks came to him begging for arms. “I have never before doubted their orderly disposition,” he said, “and I am not sure that anybody would remain orderly under those circumstances.”
The Charleston city negroes were represented as unexpectedly intelligent. “Out of two hundred and seventy-four laborers at work on the streets,” said one of the city officials who had joined us, “one hundred and seventy-four are negroes—the rest whites. Of the negroes, over a hundred (or over four-sevenths) can read, while scarcely one-seventh of the whites have made the same advancement!”[[11]] Captain Bradford gave a significant illustration of the progress of some ideas among the less intelligent negroes of the country. They had again and again asked him, he said, what good it did them to make them free, unless they were to own the land on which they had been working, and which they had made productive and valuable. “Gib us our own land and we take care ourselves; but widout land, de ole massas can hire us or starve us, as dey please.”
A huge mass of iron was pointed out as we passed, not unlike the plates of the famous “Merrimac,” or like the gunboat “Benton,” on the Mississippi. It was one of the Rebel iron clads, sunk just before the evacuation of the city. They had injured it very little, and our authorities are confident of making it one of the best iron clads in the service. Enforced self-reliance, had, indeed, gone far toward making the South a nation; for here were fine engines, worthy of our most extensive Northern shops, which had been manufactured in Georgia within a year. Before the war, such an undertaking as making engines for a great steamer, in the South, was scarcely dreamed of. Near the iron clad lay some of the cigar-shaped torpedo boats—an invention never very successful, and now, let us hope, with its occupation, wholly gone.
The obstructions in the harbor, which so long kept the iron clads under Dupont and Dahlgren at bay, still stretched in a long line, unbroken in parts, across from Sumter toward the land on either side. Plenty of torpedoes were supposed to be still in the harbor—Captain Bradford himself had been blown up not long ago by one of them, to the serious discomposure of his personal effects, in cabin and state-room, but without actual physical injury.
But for two things, a stranger might have supposed Sumter a mere pile of mortar, stones and sand, which only culpable lack of enterprise left to block up the harbor. From the center of the rubbish rose a flagstaff, with the stars and stripes floating at the top; and near the water’s edge, uninjured casements still stood among the debris, with black muzzles peeping out, as from the lower deck of an old ship of the line. Closer inspection showed, also, some little howitzers and other light pieces, placed on what was once the parapet.
The sun fairly parboiled us, and, coming into this tropical heat so suddenly—for the night before, on the deck of the “Wayanda,” at sea, we were wearing overcoats—it was so oppressive as to produce a sickening faintness on some of the party; but we patiently followed everywhere, clambered over the shapeless sea wall, inspected the sand gabions, worked our way into the snugly-protected little out-looks for the sharpshooters, ran down the inside of what had been the walls, and dived into the subterranean regions where the casemate guns stood all the time of the bombardment, uninjured, but not deigning to waste their ammunition in useless replies. The contracted but comparatively comfortable quarters here remain almost as the Rebels left them. A long, damp hall, with a few cots still standing in it, was the place for the garrison, where they slept in comparative indifference to the explosion of shells overhead; a rather more airy hall still contained the old, split-bottom arm-chairs, which the officers had collected; on another side were the hospitals, and—ghastly sight—there, on a shelf, were half a dozen coffins, which had been all ready for the reception of the next victims to Gillmore’s shells!