The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861

On the eastern side of the fort two or three dozen negroes were engaged in filling canvas bags with sand, to be used in forming temporary embrasures. One lad of eighteen, a dark mulatto, presented the very remarkable peculiarity of chest-nut hair, only slightly curling. The others were nearly all of the true field-hand type, aboriginal black, with dull faces, short and thick forms, and an air of animal contentment or at least indifference. They talked little, but giggled a great deal, snatching the canvas bags from each other, and otherwise showing their disbelief in the doctrine of all work and no play. When the barrows were sufficiently filled to suit their weak ideal of a load, a procession of them set off along a plank causeway leading into the fort, observing a droll semblance of military precision and pomp, and forcing a passage through lounging unmilitary buckras with an air of, "Out of de way, Ole Dan Tucker!" We glanced at the yet unfinished ditch, half full of water, and walked on to the gateway. A grinning, skipping negro drummer was showing a new pair of shoes to the tobacco-chewing, jovial youth who stood, or rather sat, sentinel.

"How'd you get hold of them?" asked the latter, surveying the articles admiringly.

"Got a special order frum the Cap'm fur 'um. That ee way to do it. Won't wet through, no matter how it rain. He, he! I'm all right now."

Here he showed ivory to his ears, cut a caper, and danced into the fort.

"D-a-m' nig-ger!" grinned the sentinel, approvingly, looking at us to see if we also enjoyed the incident. Thus introduced to the temporary guardian of the fort, we told him that we were from the Columbia, which he was glad to bear of, wanting to know if she was damaged, how she went ashore, whether she could get off, etc., etc. He was a fair specimen of the average country Southerner, lounging, open to address, and fond of talk.

"I've no authority to let you in," he said, when we asked that favor; "but I'll call the corporal of the guard."

"If you please."

"Corporal of the guard!"

Appeared the corporal, who civilly heard us, and went for the lieutenant of the guard. Presently a blonde young officer, with a pleasant face, somewhat Irish in character, came out to us, raising his forefinger in military salute.

"We should like to go into the fort, if it is proper," I said. "We ask hospitality the more boldly, because we are shipwrecked people."

"It is against the regulations. However, I venture to take the responsibility," was the obliging answer.

We passed in, and wandered unwatched for half an hour about the irregular, many-angled fortress. One-third of the interior is occupied by two brick barracks, covered with rusty stucco, and by other brick buildings, as yet incomplete, which I took to be of the nature of magazines. On the walls, gaping landward as well as seaward, are thirty or thirty-five iron cannon, all en barbette, but protected toward the harbor by heavy piles of sand-bags, fenced up either with barrels of sand or palmetto-logs driven firmly into the rampart. Four eight-inch columbiads, carrying sixty-four pound balls, pointed at Fort Sumter. Six other heavy pieces, Paixhans, I believe, faced the neck of the harbor. The remaining armament of lighter calibre, running, I should judge, from forty-twos down to eighteens. Only one gun lay on the ground destitute of a carriage. The place will stand a great deal of battering; for the walls are nearly bidden by the sand-covered glacis, which would catch and smother four point-blank shots out of five, if discharged from a distance. Against shells, however, it has no resource; and one mortar would make it a most unwholesome residence.

"What's this?" asked a volunteer, in homespun gray uniform, who, like ourselves, had come in by courtesy.

"That's the butt of the old flag-staff," answered a comrade. "Cap'n Foster cut it down before he left the fort, damn him I It was a dam' sneaking trick. I've a great mind to shave off a sliver and send it to Lincoln."

The idea of getting a bit of the famous staff as a memento struck me, and I attempted to put it in practice; but the exceedingly tough pitch-pine defied my slender pocket-knife.

"Jim, cut the gentleman a piece," said one of the volunteers, Jim drew a toothpick a foot long and did me the favor, for which I here repeat my thanks to him.

They were good-looking, healthy fellows, these two, like most of their comrades, with a certain air of frank gentility and self-respect about them, being probably the sons of well-to-do planters. It would be a great mistake to suppose that the volunteers are drawn, to any extent whatever, from the "poor white trash." The secession movement, like all the political action of the State at all times, is independent of the crackers, asks no aid nor advice of them, and, in short, ignores them utterly.

"I was here when the Star of the West was fired on," the Lieutenant told us. "We only had powder for two hours. Anderson could have put us out in a short time, if he had chosen."

"How rapidly can these heavy guns be fired?"

"About ten times an hour."

"Do you think the defences will protect the garrison against a bombardment?"

"I think the palmetto stockades will answer. I don't know about that enormous pile of barrels, however. If a shot hits the mass on the top, I am afraid it will come down, bags and barrels together, bury the gun and perhaps the gunners."

"What if Sumter should open now?" I suggested.

"We should be here to help," answered the Georgian.

"We should be here to run away," amended my comrade from Brooklyn.

"Well, I suppose we should be of mighty little use, and might as well clear out," was the sober second-thought of the Georgian.

Having satisfied our curiosity, we thanked the Lieutenant and left Fort Moultrie. The story of our visit to it excited much surprise, when we recounted it in the city. Members of the Legislature and other men high in influence had desired the privilege, but had not applied for it, expecting a repulse.

A walk down a winding street, bordered by scattered cottages, inclosed by brown board-fences or railings, and tracked by a horse-railroad built for the Moultrie House, led us to the ferry-wharf, where we found our baggage piled together, and our fellow-passengers wandering about in a state of bored expectation. Sullivan's Island in winter is a good spot for an economical man, inasmuch as it presents no visible opportunities of spending money. There were houses of refreshment, as we could see by their signs; but if they did business, it was with closed doors and barred shutters. After we had paid a newsboy five cents for the "Mercury," and five more for the "Courier," we were at the end of our possibilities in the way of extravagance. At half-past one arrived the ferry-boat with a few passengers, mostly volunteers, and a deck-load of military stores, among which I noticed Boston biscuit and several dozen new knapsacks. Then, from the other side, came the "dam' nigger," that is to say, the drummer of the new shoes, beating his sheepskin at the head of about fifty men of the Washington Artillery, who were on their way back to town from Fort Moultrie. They were fine-looking young fellows, mostly above the middle size of Northerners, with spirited and often aristocratic faces, but somewhat more devil-may-care in expression than we are accustomed to see in New England. They poured down the gangway, trailed arms, ascended the promenade-deck, ordered arms, grounded arms, and broke line. The drill struck me as middling, which may be owing to the fact that the company has lately increased to about two hundred members, thus diluting the old organization with a large number of new recruits. Military service at the South is a patrician exercise, much favored by men of "good family," more especially at this time, when it signifies real danger and glory.

Our rajpoots having entered the boat, we of lower caste were permitted to follow. At two o'clock we were steaming over the yellow waters of the harbor. The volunteers, like everybody else in Charleston, discussed Secession and Fort Sumter, considering the former as an accomplished fact, and the latter as a fact of the kind called stubborn. They talked uniform, too, and equipments, and marksmanship, and drinks, and cigars, and other military matters. Now and then an awkwardly folded blanket was taken from the shoulders which it disgraced, refolded, packed carefully in its covering of India-rubber, and strapped once more in its place, two or three generally assisting in the operation. Presently a firing at marks from the upper deck commenced. The favorite target was a conical floating buoy, showing red on the sunlit surface of the harbor, some four hundred yards away. With a crack and a hoarse whiz the minié-balls flew towards it, splashing up the water where they first struck and then taking two or three tremendous skips before they sank. A militiaman from New York city, who was one of my fellow-passengers, told me that he "never saw such good shooting." It seemed to me that every sixth ball either hit the buoy full, or touched water but a few yards this side of it, while not more than one in a dozen went wild.

"It is good for a thousand yards," said a volunteer, slapping his bright, new piece, proudly.

A favorite subject of argument appeared to be whether Fort Sumter ought to be attacked immediately or not. A lieutenant standing near me talked long and earnestly regarding this matter with a civilian friend, breaking out at last in a loud tone,—

"Why, good Heaven, Jim! do you want that place to go peaceably into the hands of Lincoln?"

"No, Fred, I do not. But I tell you, Fred, when that fort is attacked, it will be the bloodiest day,—the bloodiest day!—the bloodiest–!!"

And here, unable to express himself in words, Jim flung his arms wildly about, ground his tobacco with excitement, spit on all sides, and walked away, shaking his head, I thought, in real grief of spirit.

We passed close to Fort Pinckney, our volunteers exchanging hurrahs with the garrison. It is a round, two-storied, yellow little fortification, standing at one end of a green marsh known as Shute's Folly Island. What it was put there for no one knows: it is too close to the city to protect it; too much out of the harbor to command that. Perhaps it might keep reinforcements for Anderson from coming down the Ashley, just as the guns on the Battery were supposed to be intended to deter them from descending the Cooper.

On the wharf of the ferry three drunken volunteers, the first that I had seen in that condition, brushed against me. The nearest one, a handsome young fellow of six feet two, half turned to stare back at me with a—

"How are ye, Cap'm? Gaw damn ye! Haw, haw, aw!"—and reeled onward, brimful of spirituous good-nature.

Four days more had I in Charleston, waiting from tide to tide for a chance to sail to New York, and listening from hour to hour for the guns of Fort Sumter. Sunday was a day of excitement, a report spreading that the Floridians had attacked Fort Pickens, and the Charlestonians feeling consequently bound in honor to fight their own dragon. Groups of earnest men talked all day and late into the evening under the portico and in the basement-rooms of the hotel, besides gathering at the corners and strolling about the Battery. "We must act." "We cannot delay." "We ought not to submit." Such were the phrases that fell upon the ear oftenest and loudest.

As I lounged, after tea, in the vestibule of the reading-room, an eccentric citizen of Arkansas varied the entertainment. A short, thin man, of the cracker type, swarthy, long-bearded, and untidy, he was dressed in well-worn civilian costume, with the exception of an old blue coat showing dim remnants of military garniture. Heeling up to a gentleman who sat near me, he glared stupidly at him from beneath a broad-brimmed hat, demanding a seat mutely, but with such eloquence of oscillation that no words were necessary. The respectable person thus addressed, not anxious to receive the stranger into his lap, rose and walked away, with that air of not, having seen anything so common to disconcerted people who wish to conceal their disturbance. Into the vacant place dropped the stranger, stretching out his feet, throwing his head back against the wall, and half closing his eyes with the drunkard's own leer of self-sufficiency. During a few moments of agonizing suspense the world waited. Then from those whiskey-scorched and tobacco-stained lips came a long, shrill "Yee-p!"

It was his exordium; it demanded the attention of the company; and though he had it not, he continued:—

"I'm an Arkansas man, I am. I'm a big su-gar planter, I am. All right! Go a'ead! I own fifty niggers, I do. Yee-p!"

He lifted both feet and slammed them on the floor energetically, pausing for a reply. He had addressed all men; no one responded, and he went on:—

"I'm for straightout, immedit shession, I am. I go for 'staining coursh of Sou' Car'lina, I do. I'm ready to fight for Sou' Car'lina. I'm a Na-po-le-on Bonaparte. All right! Go a'ead! Yee-p! Fellahs don't know me here. I'm an Arkansas man, I am. Sou' Car'lina won't kill an Arkansas man. I'm an immedit shessionist. Hurrah for Sou' Car'lina! All right! Yee-p!"

There was a lingering, caressing accent on his "I am," which told how dear to him was his individuality, drunk or sober. He looked at no one; his hat was drawn over his eyes; his hands were deep in his pockets; his feet did all needful gesturing. I stepped in front of him to get a fuller view of his face, and the action aroused his attention. He surveyed my gray Inverness wrapper and gave me a chuckling nod of approbation.

"How are ye, Bub? I like that blanket, I do."

In spite of this noble stranger's goodwill and prowess, we still found Fort Sumter a knotty question. In a country which for eighty years has not seen a shot fired in earnest, it is not wonderful that a good deal of ignorance should exist concerning military matters, and that second-class plans should be hatched for taking a first-class fortification. While I was in Charleston, the most popular proposition was to bombard continuously for two whole days and nights, thereby demoralizing the garrison by depriving it of sleep and causing it to surrender at the first attempt to escalade. Another plan, not in general favor, was to smoke Anderson out by means of a raft covered with burning mixtures of a chemical and bad-smelling nature. Still another, with perhaps yet fewer adherents, was to advance on all sides in such a vast number of row-boats that the fort could not sink them all, whereupon the survivors should land on the wharf and proceed to take such further measures as might be deemed expedient. The volunteers from the country always arrived full of faith and defiance. "We want to get a squint at that Fort Sumter," they would say to their city friends. "We are going to take it. If we don't plant the palmetto on it, it's because there's no such tree as the palmetto." Down the harbor they would go in the ferry-boats to Morris or Sullivan's Island. The spy-glass would be brought out, and one after another would peer through it at the object of their enmity. Some could not sight it at all, confounded the instrument, and fell back on their natural vision. Others, more lucky, or better versed in telescopic observations, got a view of the fortress, and perhaps burst out swearing at the evident massiveness of the walls and the size of the columbiads.

"Good Lord, what a gun!" exclaimed one man. "D'ye see that gun? What an almighty thing! I'll be –, if I ever put my head in front of it!"

The difficulties of assault were admitted to be very great, considering the bad footing, the height of the ramparts, and the abundant store of muskets and grenades in the garrison. As to breaches, nobody seemed to know whether they could be made or not. The besieging batteries were neither heavy nor near, nor could they be advanced as is usual in regular sieges, nor had they any advantage over the defence except in the number of gunners, while in regard to position and calibre they were inferior. To knock down a wall nearly forty feet high and fourteen feet thick at a distance of more than half a mile seemed a tough undertaking, even when unresisted. It was discovered also that the side of the fortification towards Fort Johnstone, its only weak point, had been strengthened so as to make it bomb-proof by means of interior masonry constructed from the stones of the landing-place. Then nobody wanted to knock Fort Sumter down, inasmuch as that involved either the labor of building it up again, or the necessity of going without it as a harbor-defence. Finally, suppose it should be attacked and not taken? Really, we unlearned people in the art of war were vastly puzzled as we thought tins whole matter over, and we sometimes doubted whether our superiors were not almost equally bothered with ourselves.

This fighting was a sober, sad subject; and yet at times it took a turn toward the ludicrous. A gentleman told me that he was present when the steamer Marion was seized with the intention of using her in pursuing the Star of the West. A vehement dispute arose as to the fitness of the vessel for military service.

"Fill her with men, and put two or three eighteen-pounders in her," said the advocates of the measure.

"Where will you put your eighteen-pounders?" demanded the opposition.

"On the promenade-deck, to be sure."

"Yes, and the moment you fire one, you'll see it go through the bottom of the ship, and then you'll have to go after it."

During the two days previous to my second and successful attempt to quit Charleston, the city was in full expectation that the fort would shortly be attacked. News had arrived that Federal troops were on their way with reinforcements. An armed steamer had been seen off the harbor, both by night and day, making signals to Anderson. The Governor went down to Sullivan's Island to inspect the troops and Fort Moultrie. The volunteers, aided by negroes and even negro women, worked all night on the batteries. Notwithstanding we were close upon race-week, when the city is usually crowded, the streets had a deserted air, and nearly every acquaintance I met told me he had been down to the islands to see the preparations. Yet the whole excitement, like others which had preceded, ended even short of smoke. News came that reinforcements had not been sent to Anderson; and the destruction of that most inconvenient person was once more postponed. People fell back on the old hope that the Government would be brought to listen to reason,—that it would give up to South Carolina what it could not keep from her with justice, —that it would grant, in short, the incontrovertible right of peaceable secession. For, in the midst of all these labors and terrors, this expense and annoyance, no one talked of returning into the Union, and all agreed in deprecating compromise.

Once more, this time in the James Adger, I set sail from Charleston. The boat lost one tide, and consequently one day, because at the last moment the captain found himself obliged to take out a South Carolina clearance. As I passed down the harbor, I counted fourteen square-rigged vessels at the wharves, and one lying at anchor, while three others had just passed the bar, outward-bound, and two were approaching from the open sea. Deterred from the Ship Channel by the sunken schooners, and from Maffitt's Channel by the fate of the Columbia, we tried the Middle Channel, and glided over the bar without accident.

"Sailing to Charleston is very much like going foreign," I said to a middle-aged sea-captain whom we numbered among our passengers. "What with heaving the lead, and doing without beacons, and lying off the coast o' nights, it makes one think of trading to new countries."

I had, it seems, unintentionally pulled the string which jerked him. Springing up, he paced about excitedly for a few moments, and then broke out with his story.

"Yes,—I know it,—I know as much about it as anybody, I reckon. I lay off there nine days in a nor'easter and lost my anchors; and here I am going on to New York to buy some more; and all for those cursed Black Republicans!"

In South Carolina they see but one side of the shield,—which is quite different, as we know, from the custom of the rest of mankind.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

1. Descriptive Ethnology. By R.G. LATHAM. 2 vols. London. 1859.

2. Anthropologie der Naturvölker. Von Dr. T. WAIZ. 2 Bänder. Leipzig. 1860.

Some writers have the remarkable faculty of making the subject which they may happen to treat forever more distasteful and wearisome to their readers. Whether the cause be in the style, or the point of view, or the method of treatment, or in all together, they seem able to force the student away in disgust from the whole field on which they labor, with vows never again to cross it.

Such an author, it seems to us, is pre-eminently R.G. Latham, in his treatment of Ethnology. Happy the man who has any such philosophic interest in Human Races, that he can ever care to hear again of the subject, after perusing Mr. Latham's various volumes on "Descriptive Ethnology." We wonder that the whole English reading public; has not consigned the science to the shelf of Encyclopedias of Useful Knowledge, or of Year-Books of Fact, or any other equally philosophic and connected works, after the treatment which this modern master of Ethnology has given to the subject.

Such disconnected masses of facts are heaped together in these works, such incredible dulness is shown in presenting them, such careful avoidance of any generalization or of any interesting particular, such a bald and conceited style, and such a cockneyish and self-opinionated view of human history, as our soul wearies even to think of. Mr. Latham disdains any link of philosophy, or any classification, among his "ten thousand facts," as being a fault of the "German School" (whatever that may be) of Ethnology. It seems to him soundly "British" to disbelieve all the best conclusions of modern scholarship, and to urge his own fanciful or shallow theories. He treats all human superstitions and mythologies as if he were standing in the Strand and judging them by the ideas of modern London. His is a Cockney's view of antiquity. He cannot imagine that a barbarous and infant people, groping in the mysteries of the moral universe, might entertain some earnest and poetic views which were not precisely in the line of thought of the Londoners of the nineteenth century, and yet which might be worth investigating. To his mind, there is no grand march of humanity, slow, but certain, towards higher ideals, through the various lines of race,—but rather innumerable ripples on the surface of history, which come and pass away without connection and without purpose.

The reader wades slowly through his books, and leaves them with a feeling of intense disgust. Such a vast gathering of facts merely to produce this melancholy confusion of details! You feel that his eminence in the science must be from the circumstance that no one else is dull enough and patient enough to gather such a museum of facts in regard to human beings. The mind is utterly confused as to divisions of human races, and is ready to conclude that there must be almost as many varieties of man as there are tribes or dialects, and that Ethnology has not yet reached the position of a science.

The reader must pardon the bitterness of our feelings; but we are just smarting from a prolonged perusal of all Mr. Latham's works, especially the two volumes whose title is given above; and that we may have sympathy, if only in a faint degree, from our friends, we quote a few passages, taken at random, though we cannot possibly thus convey an adequate conception of the infinite dulness of the work.

The following is his elegant introduction:—

"I follow the Horatian rule, and plunge, at once, in medias res. I am on the Indus, but not on the Indian portion of it. I am on the Himalayas, but not on their southern side. I am on the northwestern ranges, with Tartary on the north, Bokhara on the west, and Hindostan on the south. I am in a neighborhood where three great religions meet: Mahometanism, Buddhism. Brahminism. I must begin somewhere; and here is my beginning."– Vol. i. p. 1.

The following is his analysis of the beautiful Finnish Kalevala:—