<h3><SPAN name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</SPAN></h3>
<div class="chapquot">
<div>
<p>There's villany a broad; this letter shall tell you
more.</p>
<p class="citation">Love's Labor Lost.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sidenote">Northerners and the Minute Men.</div>
<p>Nearly every northerner whom I heard of in the South, as suffering
from the suspicion of Abolitionism, was really a pro-slavery man,
who had been opposing the Abolitionists all his life. I recollect
an amusing instance of a man, originally from a radical little
town in Massachusetts, who had been domiciled for several years in
Mississippi. While in New England, during the campaign after which
Mr. Lincoln was elected, he expressed pro-slavery sentiments so
odious that he was with difficulty protected from personal violence.</p>
<p>He was fully persuaded in his heart of hearts of the divinity of
Slavery; and, I doubt not, willing to fight for it. But his northern
birth made him an object of suspicion; and, immediately after the
outbreak of Secession, the inexorable Minute Men waited upon him,
inviting him, if he wished to save his life, to prepare to quit the
State in one hour. He was compelled to leave behind property to the
amount of twenty thousand dollars. His case was one of many.</p>
<p>Even from a Rebel standpoint, there was an unpleasant injustice about
this. Perhaps Democrats were almost the only northerners now in the
South—Republicans and Abolitionists staying away, in the exercise of
that discretion which is the better part of valor.</p>
<p>I well remember thinking, as I strolled down to the post-office one
evening, with a long letter in my pocket, which gave a minute and
bitterly truthful description of the slave auctions: </p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote">A Lively Discussion.</div>
<p>"If the Minute Men were to pounce upon me now, and find this
dispatch, no amount of plausible talking could save me. There would
be a vacancy on <cite>The Tribune</cite> staff within the next hour."</p>
<p>But when the message was safely deposited in the letter-box, I
experienced a sort of relief in the feeling that if the Rebels were
now to mob or imprison me, I should at least have the satisfaction
of knowing they were not mistaking souls; and that, if I were forced
to emulate Saint Paul in "labors more abundant, in stripes above
measure, in pains more frequent, in deaths oft," I should, in their
code, most richly have earned martyrdom.</p>
<p class="quotdate"><span class="smcap">New Orleans</span>, <i>March 17, 1861</i>.</p>
<p>Yesterday was a lively day in the Convention. Mr. Bienvenu threw
a hot shot into the Secession camp, in the shape of an ordinance
demanding a report of the official vote in each parish (county) by
which the delegates were elected. This would prove that the popular
vote of the State was against immediate Secession by a majority of
several hundred. The Convention would not permit such exposure of its
defiance of the popular will; and, by seventy-three to twenty-two,
refused to consider the question.</p>
<p>A warm discussion ensued, on the ordinance for submitting the
"Constitution of the Confederate States of America" to the popular
vote, for ratification or rejection. The ablest argument against it
was by Thomas J. Semmes, of New Orleans, formerly attorney-general of
Louisiana. He is a keen, wiry-looking, spectacled gentleman, who, in
a terse, incisive speech, made the best of a bad cause. The pith of
his argument was, that Republican Governments are not based upon pure
Democracy, but upon what Mr. Calhoun termed "concurring
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</SPAN></span>
majorities." The voters had delegated full powers to the Convention,
which was the "sublimated, concentrated quintessence of the
sovereignty of the people."</p>
<div class="sidenote">Boldness of Union Members.</div>
<p>The speaker's lip curled with ineffable scorn as he rang the changes
upon the words "mere numerical majorities." Just now, this is a
favorite phrase with the Rebels throughout the South. Yet they all
admit that a majority, even of one vote, in Mississippi or Virginia,
justly controls the action of the State, and binds the minority.
I wish they would explain why a "mere numerical majority" is more
oppressive in a collection of States than in a single commonwealth.</p>
<p>Mr. Add Rozier, of New Orleans, in a bold speech, advocated
submitting the constitution to the people. On being asked by a
member—"Did you vote for the Secession ordinance several weeks ago?"
he replied, emphatically:—</p>
<p>"No; and, so help me God, I never will!"</p>
<p>A spontaneous outburst of applause from the lobby gave an index
of the stifled public sentiment. Mr. Rozier charged that the
Secessionists knew they were acting against the popular will, and
dared not appeal to the people. Until the Montgomery constitution
should become the law of the land, he utterly spurned it, spat upon
it, trampled it under his feet.</p>
<p>Mr. Christian Roselius, also of this city, advocated the ordinance
with equal boldness and fervor. He insisted that it was based on
the fundamental principle of Republicanism—that this Convention
was no Long Parliament to rule Louisiana without check or limit;
and he ridiculed with merciless sarcasm Mr. Semmes's theory of the
"sublimated, concentrated quintessence of the sovereignty of the
people."</p>
<p>The inexorable majority here cut off debate, calling
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</SPAN></span>
the previous question, and defeated the ordinance by a vote of
seventy-three to twenty-six.</p>
<p>This body is a good specimen of the Secession Oligarchy. It
appointed, from its own members, the Louisiana delegates to the
Convention of all the seceded States which framed the Montgomery
Constitution, and now it proposes to pass finally upon their action,
leaving the people quite out of sight.</p>
<p class="quotdate"><i>March 21.</i></p>
<div class="sidenote">Another Exciting Discussion.</div>
<p>Another exciting day in the Convention. Subject: "The adoption of
the Montgomery Constitution." Five or six Union members fought it
very gallantly, and denounced unsparingly the plan of a Cotton
Confederacy, and the South Carolina policy of trampling upon the
rights of the people. The majority made little attempt to refute
these arguments, but some of the angry members glared fiercely upon
Messrs. Roselius, Rozier, and Bienvenu, who certainly displayed
high moral and physical courage. It is easy for you in the North to
denounce Secession; but to oppose it here, as those gentlemen did,
requires more nerve than most men possess.</p>
<p>The speech of Mr. Roselius was able and bitter. This was not a
constitution; it was merely a league—a treaty of alliance. It sprung
from an audacious, unmitigated oligarchy. It was a retrogression of
six hundred years in the science of government. We were told (here
the speaker's sarcasm of manner was ludicrous and inimitable, drawing
shouts of laughter even from the leading Secessionists) that this
body represented the "sublimated, concentrated quintessence of the
sovereignty of the people!"</p>
<p>He supposed that Cæsar, when he crossed the Rubicon—Augustus, when
he overthrew the Roman Republic—Cromwell,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</SPAN></span>
when he broke up the Long Parliament—Bonaparte, when he
suppressed the Council of Five Hundred at the point of the
bayonet—Louis Napoleon, when he violated his oath to the
republic, and ascended the imperial throne—were each the
"sublimated, concentrated quintessence of the sovereignty of the
people."</p>
<div class="sidenote">Secession in a Nutshell.</div>
<p>Like the most odious tyrannies of history, it preserved the forms of
liberty; but its spirit was crushed out. The Convention from which
this creature crept into light had imitated the odious government of
Spain—the only one in the world taxing exports—by levying an export
duty upon cotton. He was surprised that the Montgomery legislators
failed to introduce a second Spanish feature—the Inquisition. One
was as detestable as the other.</p>
<p>Mr. Roselius concluded in a broken voice and with great feeling. His
heart grew sad at this overthrow of free institutions. The Secession
leaders had dug the grave of republican liberty, and we were called
upon to assist at the funeral! He would have no part in any such
unhallowed business.</p>
<p>Mr. Rozier, firm to the last, now offered an amendment:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>That in adopting the Montgomery Constitution, "the
sovereign State of Louisiana <em>does expressly reserve
the right to withdraw from the Union created by that
Constitution, whenever, in the judgment of her citizens,
her paramount interests may require it</em>."</p>
</div>
<p>This, of course, is Secession in a nutshell—the fundamental
principle of the whole movement. But the leaders refused to take
their own medicine, and tabled the proposition without discussion.</p>
<p>Mr. Bienvenu caused to be entered upon the journal his protest
against the action of the Convention, denouncing it as an ordinance
which "strips the people of
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</SPAN></span>
their sovereignty, reduces them to a state of vassalage, and places
the destinies of the State, and of the new Republic, at the mercy of
an uncommissioned and irresponsible oligarchy."</p>
<p>The final vote was then taken, and resulted in one hundred and one
yeas to seven nays; so "the Confederate Constitution" is declared
ratified by the State of Louisiana.</p>
<p class="quotdate"><i>March 25.</i></p>
<div class="sidenote">Despotic Theories of the Rebels.</div>
<p>The Revolutionists can not be charged with any lack of frankness.
<cite>The Delta</cite>, lamenting that the Virginia Convention will
not take that State out of the Union, predicts approvingly that "some
Cromwellian influence will yet disperse the Convention, and place the
Old Dominion in the Secession ranks." <cite>De Bow's Review</cite>,
a leading Secession oracle, with high pretensions to philosophy and
political economy, says, in its current issue:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"All government begins with usurpation, and is continued
by force. Nature puts the ruling elements uppermost, and
the masses below, and subject to those elements. Less than
this is not a government. The right to govern resides with
a very small minority, and the duty to obey is inherent
with the great mass of mankind."</p>
</div>
<p>To-day's <cite>Crescent</cite> discusses the propriety of
admitting northern States into the Southern Confederacy, "when
they find out, as they soon will, that they can not get along by
themselves." It is quite confident that they will, ere long, beg
admission—but predicts for them the fate of the Peri, who</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i4">——"At the gate<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Of Eden stood, disconsolate,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">And wept to think her recreant race<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Should e'er have lost that glorious place."<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>They must not be permitted to enter. Upon this point it is inexorable.
It will permit no compunctious visitings of nature to shake its fell
purpose.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The Northwest to Join Them.</div>
<p>I know all this sounds vastly like a joke; but <cite>The Crescent</cite> is
lugubriously in earnest. In sooth, these Rebels are gentlemen of
magnificent expectations. "Sir," remarked one of them, a judge, too,
while conversing with me this very day, "in seven years, the Southern
Confederacy will be the greatest and richest nation on earth. We
shall have Cuba, Central America, Mexico, and every thing west of the
Alleghanies. We are the natural market of the northwestern States,
and they are bound to join us!"</p>
<p>Think of that, will you! Imagine Father Giddings, Carl Schurz, and
Owen Lovejoy—the stanch Republican States of Wisconsin, Michigan,
and even young Kansas—whose infant steps to Freedom were over the
burning plowshare and through the martyr's blood—knocking for
admission at the door of a Slave Confederacy! Is not this the very
ecstasy of madness?</p>
<p class="quotdate"><i>March 26.</i></p>
<p>That virtuous and lamented body, the Louisiana Convention, after
a very turbulent session to-day, has adjourned until the 1st of
November.</p>
<p><cite>The Crescent</cite> is exercised at the presence here of
"correspondents of northern papers, who indite <em>real falsehoods
and lies</em> as coolly as they would eat a dinner at the Saint
Charles." <cite>The Crescent's</cite> rhetoric is a little limping;
but its watchfulness and patriotism are above all praise. The matter
should certainly be attended to.</p>
<div class="sidenote">
<span class="smcap">The Swamp—a Trip through Louisiana.</span></div>
<p>We are still enjoying the delights of summer. The air is fragrant
with daffodils, violets, and roses, the buds of the sweet olive and
the blossoms of the orange. I
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</SPAN></span>
have just returned from a ride through the swamp—that great
cesspool of this metropolis, which generates, with the recurrence of
summer, the pestilence that walketh in darkness.</p>
<p>It is full of sights strange to northern eyes. The stagnant pools
of black and green water harmonize with the tall, ghastly dead
trees, from whose branches depend long fleeces of gray Spanish moss,
with the effect of Gothic architecture. It is used in lounges and
mattresses; but when streaming from the branches, in its native
state, reminds one of the fantastic term which the Choctaw Indians
apply to leaves—"tree-hair."</p>
<p>The weird dead trunks, the moss and the water, contrast strikingly
with the rich, bright foliage of the deciduous trees just glowing
into summer life. The balmy air makes physical existence delicious,
and diffuses a luxurious languor through the system. Remove your hat,
close your eyes, and its strong current strokes your brow lovingly
and nestles against your cheek like a pillow.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>During the last week in March, I went by the New Orleans and Great
Northern Railway to Jackson, Mississippi, where the State Convention
was in session.</p>
<p>There is not in Louisiana a hill two hundred feet high. Along the
railroad, smooth, grassy everglades give place to gloomy swamps, dark
with the gigantic cypress and the varnished leaves of the laurel.</p>
<p>On the plantations, the white one-story cabins of the negroes stood
in long double rows, near the ample porched and balconied residences
of the planters. Young sugar-cane, resembling corn two or three weeks
old, was just peering through the ground. Noble live-oaks
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</SPAN></span>
waved their drooping boughs above the fields. The Pride-of-China
tree was very abundant about the dwellings. It produces a berry on
which the birds eagerly feed, though its juice is said to intoxicate
them. As they do not wear revolvers or bowie-knives, it is rather a
harmless form of dissipation.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Life in the City of Jackson.</div>
<p>Jackson was not a paradise for a man of my vocation. Containing four
or five thousand people, it was one of those delightful villages,
calling themselves cities, of which the sunny South by no means
enjoys a monopoly—where everybody knows everybody's business, and
where, upon the advent of a stranger, the entire community resolves
itself into a Committee of the Whole to learn who he is, where he
came from, and what he wants.</p>
<p>In a great metropolis, espionage was easily baffled; but in Jackson,
an unknown chiel, who looked capable of "takin' notes," to say
nothing of "prentin' 'em," was subject to constant and uncomfortable
scrutiny.</p>
<p>Contrasted with the bustle of New Orleans, existence seemed an
unbroken seventh-day rest, though a dire certainty possessed me, that
were my errand suspected, e'en Sunday would shine no Sabbath day for
me.</p>
<p>Some months later, a refugee, who had resided there, pictured
vividly to me the indignant and bewildered astonishment of the
Jacksonians, when, through a stray copy of <cite>The Tribune</cite>,
they learned that one of its correspondents had not only walked with
them, talked with them, and bought with them, but, less scrupulous
than Shylock, had been ready to eat with them, drink with them, and
pray with them.</p>
<p>At this time the Charleston papers and some northern journals
declared <cite>The Tribune's</cite> southern correspondence fictitious, and
manufactured at the home office. To
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</SPAN></span>
remove that impression touching my own letters, I wrote, on certain
days, the minutest records of the Convention, and of affairs in
Jackson, which never found their way into the local prints.</p>
<p>Mournfully metropolitan was Jackson in one respect—the price of
board at its leading hotel. The accommodations were execrable;
but I suppose we were charged for the unusual luxury of an
unctuous Teutonic landlord, who bore the formidable patronymic of
H-i-l-z-h-e-i-m-e-r!</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"—— Phœbus, what a name,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">To fill the speaking-trump of future fame!"<br/></span></div>
</div>
<div class="sidenote">
<span class="smcap">Reporting the Mississippi Convention.</span></div>
<p>The Convention was discussing the submission of the Montgomery
Constitution to the people. The chief clerk, with whom I formed a
chance acquaintance, kindly invited me to a chair beside his desk,
and as I sat facing the members, explained to me their capacity,
views, and antecedents. Whether an undue inquisitiveness seemed to
him the distinguishing quality of the New Mexican mind, he did not
declare; but once he asked me abruptly if I was connected with the
press? With the least possible delay, I disabused his mind of that
peculiarly unjust misapprehension.</p>
<p>After a long discussion, the Convention, by a vote of fifty-three to
thirty-two, refused to submit the Constitution to the people, and
ratified it in the name of Mississippi. Seven Union members could
not be induced to follow the usual practice of making the action
unanimous, but to the last steadfastly refused their adherence. </p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</SPAN></span></p>
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