Part 16

On Friday evening, June 14, I started from Natchez for Vicksburgh, on board the steamer General Quitman, up the Mississippi. These long yellow rivers are very fine for patriots to talk about, for poets to write about, for buffalo fish to live in, and for steamers to navigate when there are no snags, but I confess the father of waters is extremely tiresome. Even the good cheer and comfort of the General Quitman could not reconcile me to the eternal beating of steam drums, blowing of whistles, bumping at landings, and the general oppression of levees, clearings and plantations, which marked the course of the river, and I was not sorry next morning when Vicksburgh came in sight, on the left bank of the giant stream--a city on a hill, not very large, be-steepled, be-cupolaed, large-hoteled. Here lives a man who has been the pioneer of hotels in the West, and who has now established himself in a big caravansery, which he rules in a curious fashion. M’Makin has, he tells us, been rendered famous by Sir Charles Lyell. The large dining-room--a stall _à manger_, as a friend of mine called it--is filled with small tables, covered with party-colored cloths. At the end is a long deal table, heavy with dishes of meat and vegetables, presided over by negresses and gentlemen of uncertain hue. In the centre of the room stood my host, shouting out at the top of his voice the names of the joints, and recommending his guests to particular dishes, very much as the chronicler tells us was the wont of the taverners in old London. Many little negroes ran about in attendance, driven hither and thither by the commands of their white Soulouque--white-teethed, pensive-eyed, but sad as memory. “Are you happy here?” asked I of one of them who stood by my chair. He looked uneasy and frightened. “Why don’t you answer?” “I’se afeared to tell dat to massa.” “Why, your master is kind to you?” “Berry good man, sir, when he not angry wid me!” And the little fellow’s eyes filled with tears at some recollection which pained him. I asked no more. Vicksburgh is secessionist. There were hundreds of soldiers in the streets, many in the hotel, and my host said some hundreds of Irish had gone off to the wars, to fight for the good cause. If Mr. O’Connell were alive, he would surely be pained to see the course taken by so many of his countrymen on this question. After dinner I was invited to attend a meeting of some of the citizens, at the railway station, where the time passed very agreeably till four o’clock, when the train started for Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, and after a passage of two hours, through a poor, clay country, seared with water-courses and gullies, with scanty crops of Indian corn and very backward cotton, we were deposited in that city. It must be called a city. It is the state capital, but otherwise there is no reason why, in strict nomenclature, it should be designated by any such title. It is in the usual style of the “cities” which spring up in the course of a few years amid the stumps of half-cleared fields in the wilderness--wooden houses, stores kept by Germans, French, Irish, Italians; a large hotel swarming with people, with a noisy billiard-room and a noisier bar, the arena and the cause of “difficulties;” wooden houses, with portentous and pretentious white porticoes, and pillars of all the Grecian orders; a cupola or two, and two or three steeples, too large for the feeble bodies beneath--hydrocephalic architecture; a state-house, looking well in the distance, ragged, dirty, and mean within; groups of idlers in front of the “Exchange,” where the business transacted consists in a barter between money, or credit, and “drinks” of various stimulants; a secluded telegraph-office round a corner; a forward newspaper-office in the street, and a population of negroes, shuffling through the thick dust which forms the streets. I called on Mr. Pettus, the governor of the state of Mississippi, according to invitation, and found him in the state-house, in a very poor room, with broken windows and ragged carpets, and dilapidated furniture. He is a grim, silent man, tobacco-ruminant, abrupt-speeched, firmly believing that the state of society in which he exists, wherein there are monthly foul murders perpetrated at the very seat of government, is the most free and civilized in the world. He is easy of access to all, and men sauntered in and out of his office just as they would walk into a public-house. Once on a time, indeed, the governor was a deer-hunter, in the forest, and lived far away from the haunts of men, and he is proud of the fact. He is a strenuous seceder, and has done high-handed things in his way--simple apparently, honest probably, fierce certainly--and he lives, while he is governor, on his salary of four thousand dollars a year, in the house provided for him by the state. There was not much to say on either side. I can answer for one. Next day being Sunday, I remained at rest in the house of a friend listening to local stories--not _couleur de rose_, but of a deeper tint--blood-red;--how such a man shot another, and was afterward stabbed by a third; how this fellow and his friends hunted down, in broad day, and murdered one obnoxious to them--tale after tale, such as I have heard through the South and seen daily narratives of in the papers. Aceldama! No security for life! Property is quite safe. Its proprietor is in imminent danger, were it only from stray bullets, when he turns a corner. The “bar,” the “drink,” the savage practice of walking about with pistol and poniard--ungovernable passions, ungoverned because there is no law to punish the deeds to which they lead--these are the causes of acts which would not be tolerated in the worst days of Corsican _vendette_, and which must be put down, or the countries in which they are unpunished will become as barbarous as jungles of wild beasts. In the evening I started, by railroad, for the city of Memphis, in Mississippi. There was a sleeping-car on the train, but the flying-bug and the creature less volatile, more pungent and persistent, which bears its name, murdered sleep; and when Monday morning came, I was glad to arise and get into one of the carriages, although it was full of noisy soldiers, bound to the camp at Corinth, in the state of Mississippi, who had been drinking whiskey all night, and were now screaming for water and howling like demons. At Holly Springs, where a rude breakfast awaited us, the warriors got out on the top of the carriages and performed a war-dance to the music of their band, which was highly creditable to the carriage-maker’s workmanship. Along the road, at all the settlements and clearings, the white people cheered, and the women waved white things, and secession flags floated. There is no doubt of the state of feeling in this part of the country; and yet it does not look much worth fighting for--an arid soil, dry water-courses, clay ravines, light crops. Perhaps it will be better a month hence, and negroes may make it pay. There were many in the fields, and it struck me they looked better than those who work in gangs on the larger and richer plantations. Among our passengers were gentlemen from Texas, going to Richmond to offer service to Mr. Davis. They declared the feeling in their state was almost without exception in favor of secession. It is astonishing how positive all these people are that England is in absolute dependence on cotton for her national existence. They are at once savage and childish. If England does not recognize the Southern Confederacy pretty quick, they will pass a resolution not to let her have any cotton, except, &c. Suppose England does ever recognize a Confederation based on the principles of the South, what guarantee is there that in her absolute dependence, if it exists, similar coercive steps may not be taken against her? “Oh! we shall be friends, you know;” and so on.

On the train before us there had just passed on a company armed with large bowie-knives and rifled pistols, who called themselves the “Tooth-pick Company.” They carried a coffin along with them, on which was a plate with “ABE LINCOLN” inscribed on it, and they amused themselves with the childish conceit of telling the people as they went along that “they were bound” to bring his body back in it. At Grand Junction station the troops got out and were mustered preparatory to their transfer to a train for Richmond, in Virginia. The first company, about seventy strong, consisted exclusively of Irish, who were armed with rifles without bayonets. The second consisted of five-sixths Irish, armed mostly with muskets; the third were of Americans, who were well uniformed, but had no arms with them. The fourth, clad in green, were nearly all Irish; they wore all sorts of clothing, and had no pretensions to be regarded as disciplined soldiers. I am led to believe that the great number of Irish who have enlisted for service indicates a total suspension of all the works on which they are ordinarily engaged in the South. They were not very orderly. “Fix bayonets,” elicited a wonderful amount of controversy in the ranks. “Whar are yer dhrivin to?” “Sullivan, don’t ye hear we’re to fix beenits?” “Ayse the sthrap of my baynit, sarjent, jewel!” “If ye prod me wid that agin, I’ll let dayloite into ye,” &c. Officer reading muster--“No. 23, James Phelan.” No reply. Voice from the ranks--“Faith, Phelan’s gone; shure he wint at the last dipôt.” Old men and boys were mixed together, but the mass of the rank and file were strong, full-grown men. In one of the carriages were some women dressed as _vivandieres_, minus the coquette air and the trousers and boots of these ladies. They looked sad, sorry, dirty and foolish. There was great want of water along the line, and the dust and heat were very great and disagreeable. When they have to march many of the men will break down, owing to bad shoes and the weight of clothes and trash of various kinds they sling on their shoulders. They moved off amid much whooping, and our journey was continued through a country in which the railroad engineer had made the opening for miles at a time. When a clearing was reached, however, there were signs that the soil was not without richness, and all the wheat ready cut and in sheaf. The passengers said it was fine and early, and that it averaged from forty to sixty bushels to the acre (more than it looked). Very little ground here is under cotton. It was past one o’clock on Monday when the train reached Memphis, in Tennessee, which is situated on a high bluff overhanging the Mississippi. Here is one of the strategic positions of the Confederates. It is now occupied by a force of the Tennesseeans, which is commanded by Major-General Pillow, whom I found quartered in Gayoso House, a large hotel, named after one of the old Spanish rulers here, and as he was starting to inspect his batteries and the camp at Randolph, sixty odd miles higher up the river, I could not resist his pressing invitations, tired as I was, to accompany him and his staff on board the Ingomar to see what they were really like. First we visited the bluff, on the edge of which is constructed a breastwork of cotton bales, which no infantry could get at, and which would offer no resistance to vertical, and but little to horizontal fire. It is placed so close to the edge of the bluff at various places that shell and shot would knock away the bank from under it. The river runs below deep and strong, and across the roads or watercourses leading to it are feeble barricades of plank, which a howitzer could shiver to pieces in a few rounds. Higher up the bank, on a commanding plateau, there is a breastwork and parapet, within which are six guns, and the general informed me he intended to mount thirteen guns at this part of the river, which would certainly prove very formidable to such steamers as they have on these waters, if any attempt were made to move down from Cairo. In the course of the day I was introduced to exactly seventeen colonels and one captain. My happiness was further increased by an introduction to a youth of some twenty-three years of age, with tender feet, if I may judge from prunella slippers, dressed in a green cutaway, jean pants, and a tremendous sombrero with a plume of ostrich feathers, and gold tassels looped at the side, who had the air and look of an apothecary’s errand boy. This was “General” Maggles (let us say), of Arkansas. Freighted deeply with the brave, the Ingomar started for her voyage, and we came alongside the bank at Chickasaw Bluffs too late to visit the camp, as it was near midnight before we arrived. I forgot to say that a large number of steamers were lying at Memphis, which had been seized by General Pillow, and he has forbidden all traffic in boats to Cairo. Passengers must go round by rail to Columbus.