The extent of the damage by the bombardment has, I imagine, been generally overrated at the North. The lower part of the city was certainly not an eligible location for a quiet residence; but it is an error to suppose that most of the houses, or any considerable number of them, have been destroyed. The shells generally failed to explode, and the marks on the houses are rather scars than serious breaches. Roofs are injured, walls are weakened, windows destroyed and floors more or less ripped up; but still the houses stand, and can, with comparatively little outlay, be repaired. The General’s headquarters are established in the midst of the bombarded district; but the elegant house which he occupies shows no mark whatever. Most of the other officers who have taken houses are in the same quarter, and I observe that they have the same passion, as at Wilmington, for getting the very best establishments in a place.
The General drove us through the Arsenal grounds, and past those of the Military Academy, where, of old, the martial spirit of South Carolina had been fostered. The drives and walks had been bordered with spherical case, round shot and shell; and here and there, at the corners, little ornamental effects were produced by the erection of small pillars, made of our long rifle projectiles, flanked by a few broken bayonets. It was thus the Charlestonians amused themselves during the progress of the bombardment.
Passing through the shabby suburbs, which would hardly comport with the dignity of a first-class Northern village, we came out upon the track where, of yore, all the beauty and fashion of Charleston was wont to congregate—the Race Course. Of late years it has been used for a different purpose. Here, without shelter, without clothing, and with insufficient food, were confined the Yankee prisoners; and in a little inclosure, back of the judges’ stand, may be seen their uncounted graves. Sympathizing hands have cleared away the weeds, and placed over the entrance an inscription that must bring shame to the cheek of every Southern man who passes: “The Martyrs of the Race Course.” Near it was an elegant cemetery, carefully tended, glorious with superb live-oaks, and weeping with the long, pendent trails of the silvery Spanish moss; but into this consecrated ground no Yankee’s body could be borne. Negro soldiers were strolling through it as we passed, and some were reading from showy tombstones, to the dusky groups around them, the virtues of the—masters from whom they had run away to enlist!
Occasional vehicles were seen on the road, bringing in black and white refugees. The country is in such confusion that many seek the safe shelter of the cities, solely from the blind instinct that where there is force there must be protection. Such wagons and such horses were surely never seen. Each rivaled the other in corners, in age, in protuberance, and shakiness, and general disposition to tumble down and dissolve. They all bring in saddening stories of destitution in the country. Still I am inclined to think that these stories are exaggerated. There is little evidence of actual suffering in the country; and in the cities none who want have any scruples in calling upon the hireling minions of the tyrannical Washington Government for rations. Next winter is the dead point of danger. There is a smaller breadth of cereals sown in the South this year than in any year since 1861, and by fall the stock on hand is likely to be exhausted. Now the suffering is only individual; then it promises to be too nearly general.
On the other hand, the reports from the North-west, or mountain region of the State, indicate little prospect of suffering. “I tell you,” said a South Carolinian, from Greenville, “the South could have continued the war for ten years, if it had had your Northern gift of perseverance. We were neither exhausted of men nor of provisions; it was only that the flame of enthusiasm had burnt out. I have myself traveled, within the past month, through sections of South Carolina, from Greenville to Columbia, and thence north-east and north-west, so as to know accurately the condition of the crops in one-half the State. There is no trouble about starvation. The people are not suffering, except in such isolated cases as you will always find, and there is a larger breadth of grains planted than ever before. With reasonable care there ought to be no starvation this winter.”
There was a little party in the evening, in the fine old mansion of a noted Charleston banker, but there were few South Carolinians there, excepting the house servants who had remained to wait on the new occupants. Admiral Dahlgren, Major-General Saxton, two or three Brigadiers and Brevet Brigadiers, and their wives, made up the bulk of the company; and the talk was of the army and navy and the policy of the Government. A gentleman was introduced as the editor of the Charleston Courier, and I was not a little surprised to find that redoubtable Rebel personage greeting me with the warmth of an old acquaintance. He turned out to be a former attaché of a leading New York paper, who had often reported to me in Washington, when I had been in temporary charge of its bureau there.
Persons writing from here in the spring of 1861, said there was no feature of the feeling among the leaders more marked than their scarcely disguised hostility to the freedom of the press. I had been reading over some of those letters, of four years ago, in the morning; and it sounded curiously, like a continuation of the old strain, to hear the editor’s lamentations over the impossibility of making a newspaper where you could express no opinions, and couldn’t always even print the news. “Here, yesterday, for example, was a reconstruction meeting. The call for it was sent to me. I published that, and then sent phonographers to make a full report of the proceedings. There was a big row; the whites ordered out the negroes; then the latter got re-enforced, and came back to maintain their ground, whereupon the whites left. The speeches on both sides were racy; there was a good deal of excitement. I had a splendid report of the whole thing, and it was capital news. I had it all in type, when an order came to make no allusion whatever to the meeting. This morning everybody thinks the Courier is behind the times, because it didn’t know anything about the reconstruction meeting!”
After the party, the Dominie told me of his explorations among his old friends in Charleston.