Four Years in Rebel Capitals Part 33

These proud southern cities had ever been famed throughout the land, for purity, high tone and unyielding pride. At the first bugle-blast, their men had sprung to arms with one accord; and the best blood of Georgia and the Carolinas was poured out from Munson's Hill to Chickamauga. Their devoted women pinched themselves and stripped their homes, to aid the cause so sacred to them; and on the burning sand-hills of Charleston harbor, grandsire and grandson wrought side by side under blistering sun and galling fire alike!

How bitter, then, for those devoted and mourning cities to see their sacred places made mere marts; their cherished fame jeopardied by refuse stay-at-homes, or transient aliens; while vile speculation--ineffably greedy, when not boldly dishonest--smirched them with lowest vices of the l.u.s.t for gain! Shot-riddled Charleston--exposed and devastated--invited nothing beyond the sterner business of money-getting. There, was offered neither the leisure nor safety for that growth of luxury and riotous living, which at one time possessed Wilmington.

Into that blockade mart would enter four s.h.i.+ps to one at any other port; speculators of all grades and greediness flocked to meet them; and money was poured into the once-quiet town by the million. And, with tastes restricted elsewhere, these alien crowds reveled in foreign delicacies, edibles and liquors, of which every cargo was largely made up. The lowest attache of a blockade-runner became a man of mark and lived in luxury; the people caught the infection and--where they could not follow--envied the fearful example set by the establishments of the "merchant princes."

Was it strange that the people of leaguered Richmond--that the worn hero starving in the trench at Petersburg--came to execrate those vampires fattening on their life-blood; came to regard the very name of blockade-runner as a stench and the government that leagued with it as a reproach? For strangely-colored exaggerations of luxury and license were brought away by visitors near the centers of the only commerce left. Well might the soul of the soldier--frying his scant ration of moldy bacon and grieving over still more scant supply at his distant home--wax wroth over stories of Southdown mutton, brought in ice from England; of dinners where the _pates_ of Strasbourg and the fruits of the East were washed down with rare Champagne.

Bitter, indeed, it seemed, that--while he crawled, footsore and faint, to slake his thirst from the roadside pool--while the dear ones at home kept in s.h.i.+vering life with cornbread--degenerate southerners and foreign leeches reveled in luxury untold, from the very gain that caused such privation!

This misuse of that blockade-running--which strongly handled had proved such potent agency for good--bred infinite discontent in army and in people alike. That misdirection--and its twin, mismanagement of finance--aided to strangle prematurely the young giant they might have nourished into strength;--

"And the spirit of murder worked in the very means of life!"

But the Chinese-wall blockade was tripart.i.te; not confined to closing of the ocean ports. Almost as damaging, in another regard, were the occupation of New Orleans, and the final stoppage of communication with the trans-Mississippi by the capture of Vicksburg.

The Heroic City had long been sole point of contact with the vast productive tracts, beyond the great river. The story were twice-told of a resistance--unequaled even by that at Charleston and beginning with first Union access to the river, by way of New Orleans. But, in May, '62, the combined fleets of Porter and Farragut from the South, and Davis from the North, rained shot and sh.e.l.l into the coveted town for six terrible weeks. Failing reduction, they withdrew on June 24th; leaving her banners inscribed--_Vicksburg victrix!_

In May of the next year, another concentration was made on the "key of the Mississippi;" General Grant marching his army one hundred and fifty miles from its base, to get in rear of Vicksburg and cut off its relief. The very audacity of this plan may blind the careless thinker to its bad generals.h.i.+p; especially in view of the success that at last crowned its projector's hammer-and-tongs style of tactics. His reckless and ill-handled a.s.saults upon the strong works at Vicksburg--so freely criticised on his own side, by army and by press--were but preface of a volume, so bloodily written to the end before Petersburg.

Under ordinary combinations, Johnston had found it easy to crush Grant and prevent even his escape to the distant base behind him. But, unhappily, Government would not re-enforce Johnston--even to the very limited extent it might; and Mr. Davis promoted Pemberton to a lieutenant-generalcy and sent him to Vicksburg. But this is no place to discuss General Pemberton's abilities--his alleged disobedience of orders--the disasters of Baker's creek and Big Black; or his shutting up in Vicksburg, hopeless of relief from Johnston. Suffice it, the dismal echo of falling Vicksburg supplemented the gloom after Gettysburg; and the swift-following loss of Port Hudson completed the blockade of the Mississippi; and made the trans-river territory a foreign land!

The coast of Maine met the waters of the Ohio, at the mouth of the Mississippi; and two sides of the blockade triangle were completed, almost impervious even to rebel ingenuity and audacity. It needed but careful guard over the third side--the inland border from river to coast--to seal up the South hermetically, and perfect her isolation.

That perfection had long been attempted. Fleets of gunboats ploughed the Potomac and all inland water-approaches to the southern frontier. A shrewd detective system, ramifying from Was.h.i.+ngton, penetrated the "disaffected" counties of Maryland; spying equally upon sh.o.r.e and household. The borders of Tennessee and Kentucky were closely picketed; and no means of cunning, or perseverance, were omitted to prevent the pa.s.sage of anything living, or useful, into the South. But none of this availed against the untiring pluck and audacity of the inland blockade-breakers. Daily the lines were forced, spies evaded, and bold "Johnny Reb" pa.s.sed back and forth, in almost guaranteed security.

Such ventures brought small supplies of much-needed medicines, surgical instruments and necessaries for the sick. They brought northern newspapers--and often despatches and cipher letters of immense value; and they ever had tidings from home that made the heart of exiled Marylander, or border statesman sing for joy, even amid the night-watches of a winter camp.

Gradually this system of "running the bloc." systematized and received governmental sanction. Regular corps of spies, letter-carriers and small purchasing agents were organized and recognized by army commanders. Naturally, these also made hay while the sun shone; coming back never--whatever their mission--with empty hands. Shoes, cloth, even arms--manufactured under the very noses of northern detectives and, possibly, with their connivance--found ever-ready sale. The runners became men of mark--many of them men of money; for, while this branch never demoralized like its big rival on the coast, the service of Government was cannily mixed with the service of Mammon.

Late in the war--when all ports were closed to its communication with agents abroad, the Richmond Government perfected this spy system, in connection with its signal corps. This service gave scope for tact, fertility of resource and cool courage; it gave many a brave fellow, familiar with both borders, relief from camp monotony, in the fresh dangers through which he won a glimpse of home again; and it gave a vast ma.s.s of crude, conflicting information, such as must come from rumors collected by men in hiding. But its most singular and most romantic aspect was the well-known fact, that many women essayed the breaking of the border blockade. Almost all of them were successful; more than one well nigh invaluable, for the information she brought, sewed in her riding-habit, or coiled in her hair. Nor were these coa.r.s.e camp-women, or reckless adventurers. Belle Boyd's name became historic as Moll Pitcher; but others are recalled--petted belles in the society of Baltimore, Was.h.i.+ngton and Virginia summer resorts of yore--who rode through night and peril alike, to carry tidings of cheer home and bring back news that woman may best acquire. New York, Baltimore and Was.h.i.+ngton to-day boast of three beautiful and gifted women, high in their social ranks, who could--if they would--recite tales of lonely race and perilous adventure, to raise the hair of the budding beaux about them.

But it may be that the real benefits of "running the bloc." were counterbalanced by inseparable evils. The enhancement of prices and consequent depreciation of currency may not have felt this system appreciably; but it tempted immigration of the adventurous and vicious cla.s.ses, while it presented the anomaly of a government trading on its enemy's currency to depreciation of its own. For the trade demanded greenbacks; and the Confederacy bought these--often the product of illicit traffic--from the runners themselves, at from twenty to _one thousand_ dollars C.S., for one U.S.!

Such is the brief, and necessarily imperfect, glance at the triple blockade, which steadily aided the process of exhaustion and ruin at the South. Such were its undeniable effects upon the Government and the people. And that these, in part at least, might have been averted by bold foresight and prompt action--while the blockade was yet but paper--is equally undeniable!

With this, as with most salient features of that bitter--gallant--enduring struggle for life; with it, as in most mundane retrospects--the saddest memories must ever cl.u.s.ter about the "might have been!"

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

PRESS, LITERATURE AND ART.

However much of ability may have been engaged upon it, the press of the South--up to the events just preceding the war--had scarcely been that great lever which it had elsewhere become. It was rather a local machine than a great engine for shaping and manufacturing public opinion.

One main cause for this, perhaps, was the decentralization of the South. Tracts of country surrounding it looked up only to their chief city, and thence drew their information, and even their ideas on the topics of the day. But there it ceased. The princ.i.p.al trade of the South went directly to the North; and in return were received northern manufactures, northern books and northern ideas. Northern newspapers came to the South; and except for matters of local information, or local policy, a large cla.s.s of her readers drew their inspiration chiefly from journals of New York--catholic in their scope as unreliable in their principles.

These papers were far ahead of those of the South--except in very rare instances--in their machinery for collecting news and gossip; for making up a taking whole; and in the no less important knowledge of manipulating their circulation and advertising patronage. The newspaper system of the North had been reduced to a science. Its great object was _to pay_; and to accomplish this it must force its circulation in numbers and in radius, and must become the medium of communicating with far distant points. Great compet.i.tion--application of _il faut bien vivre_--drove the drones from the field and only the real workers were allowed to live.

In the South the case was entirely different. Even in the large cities, newspapers were content with a local circulation; they had a little-varying clientele which looked upon them as infallible; and their object was to consider and digest ideas, rather than to propagate, or manufacture them.

The deep and universal interest in questions immediately preceding the war, somewhat changed in the scope of the southern press. People in all sections had intense anxiety to know what others, in different sections, felt on vital questions that agitated them; and papers were thus forced, as it were, into becoming the medium for interchange of sentiment.

An examination of the leading journals of the South at this period will show that--whatever their mismanagement and want of business success--there was no lack of ability in their editorial columns. Such organs as the New Orleans _Delta_, Mobile _Advertiser_, Charleston _Mercury_ and Richmond _Examiner_ and _Whig_ might have taken rank alongside of the best-edited papers of the country. Their literary ability was, perhaps, greater than that of the North; their discussions of the questions of the hour were clear, strong and scholarly, and possessed, besides, the invaluable quality of honest conviction. Unlike the press of the North, the southern journals were not hampered by any business interests; they were unbiased, unbought and free to say what they thought and felt. And say it they did, in the boldest and plainest of language.

Nowhere on the globe was the freedom of the press more thoroughly vindicated than in the Southern States of America. And during the whole course of the war, criticisms of men and measures were constant and outspoken. So much so, indeed, that in many instances the operations of the Government were embarra.s.sed, or the action of a department commander seriously hampered, by hostile criticism in a paper. In naval operations, and the workings of the Conscript Law, especially was this freedom felt to be injurious; and though it sprang from the perfectly pure motive of doing the best for the cause--though the smallest southern journal, printed on straw paper and with worn-out type, was above purchase, or hush money--still it might have been better at times had gag-law been applied.

For, with a large proportion of the population of different sections gathered in huge army communities, their different newspapers reached the camps and were eagerly devoured. Violent and hostile criticisms of Government--even expositions of glaring abuses--were worse than useless unless they could be remedied; and when these came to be the text of camp-talk, they naturally made the soldiers think somewhat as they did.

Now, the greatest difficulty with that variously-const.i.tuted army, was to make its individuals the perfect machines--unthinking, unreasoning, only obeying--to which the perfect soldier must be reduced. "Johnny Reb" _would_ think; and not infrequently, he would talk. The newspapers gave him aid and comfort in both breaches of discipline; and in some instances, their influence against the conscription and impressments was seriously felt in the interior. Still these hostilities had their origin in honest conviction; and abuses were held up to the light, that the Government might be made to see and correct them.

The newspapers but reflected the ideas of some of the clearest thinkers in the land; and they recorded the real and true history of public opinion during the war. In their columns is to be found the only really correct and indicative "map of busy life, its fluctuations and its vast concerns" in the South, during her days of darkness and of trial.

These papers held their own bravely for a time, and fought hard against scarcity of labor, material and patronage--against the depreciation of currency and their innumerable other difficulties. Little by little their numbers decreased; then only the princ.i.p.al dailies of the cities were left, and these began to print upon straw paper, wall papering--on any material that could be procured. Cramped in means, curtailed in size, and dingy in appearance, their publishers still struggled bravely on for the freedom of the press and the freedom of the South.

Periodical literature--as the vast flood of ill.u.s.trated and unill.u.s.trated monthlies and weeklies that swept over the North was misnamed--was unknown in the South. She had but few weeklies; and these were st.u.r.dy and heavy country papers--relating more to farming than to national matters. Else they were the weekly editions of the city papers, intended for country consumption. Few monthly magazines--save educational, religious, or statistical ventures, intended for certain limited cla.s.ses, were ever born in the South; and most of those few lived weakly and not long.

De Bow's _Review_, the _Southern Quarterly_, and the _Literary Messenger_, were the most noteworthy exceptions. The business interests of the larger towns supported the first--which, indeed, drew part of its patronage from the North. Neither its great ability nor the taste of its clientele availed to sustain the second; and the _Messenger_--long the chosen medium of southern writers of all ages, s.e.xes and conditions--dragged on a wearisome existence, with one foot in the grave for many years, only to perish miserably of starvation during the war.

But any regular and systematized periodical literature the South never had. The princ.i.p.al reason doubtless is, that she had not the numerous cla.s.s of readers for amus.e.m.e.nt, who demand such food in the North; and of the not insignificant cla.s.s who did indulge in it, nine-tenths--for one reason, or another, preferred northern periodicals. This is not altogether unnatural, when we reflect that these latter were generally better managed and superior in interest--if not in tone--to anything the South had yet attempted. They were gotten up with all the appliances of mechanical perfection; were managed with business tact, and forced and puffed into such circulation as made the heavy outlay for first-cla.s.s writers in the end remunerative.

On the contrary, every magazine attempted in the South up to that time had been born with the seeds of dissolution already in it. _Voluntary contributions_--fatal poison to any literary enterprise--had been their universal basis. There was ever a crowd of men and women among southern populations, who would write anywhere and anything for the sake of seeing themselves in print. And while there were many able and accomplished writers available, they were driven off by these Free-Companions of the quill--preferring not to write in such company; or, if forced to do it, to send their often anonymous contributions to northern journals. These two reasons--especially the last--availed to kill the few literary ventures attempted by more enterprising southern publishers. The first of these two in a great measure influenced the scarcity of book-producers, among a people who had really very few readers among them; and even had the number of these been larger, it seems essential to the increase of authors that there should be the constant friction of contact in floating literature.

Good magazines are the nurseries and forcing houses for authors; and almost every name of prominence in modern literature may be traced back along its course, as that of magazinist, or reviewer.

The South--whether these reasons for it be just or not, the fact is patent--had had but few writers of prominence; and in fiction especially the names that were known could be numbered on one's fingers. W. Gilmore Simms was at once the father of southern literature and its most prolific exemplar. His numerous novels have been very generally read; and, if not placing him in the highest ranks of writers of fiction, at least vindicate the claims of his section to force and originality. He had been followed up the th.o.r.n.y path by many who stopped half-way, turned back, or sunk forgotten even before reaching that far.

Few, indeed, of their works ever went beyond their own boundaries; and those few rarely sent back a record. Exceptions there were, however, who pressed Mr. Simms hard for his position on the topmost peak; and most of these adventurous climbers were of the softer s.e.x.

John Esten Cooke had written a very clever novel of the olden society, called "Virginia Comedians." It had promised a brilliant future, when his style and method should both ripen; a promise that had not, so far, been kept by two or three succeeding ventures launched on these doubtful waters. Hon. Jere Clemens, of Alabama, had commenced a series of strong, if somewhat convulsive, stories of western character.

"Mustang Gray" and "Bernard Lile," scenting strongly of camp-fire and pine-top, yet had many advantages over the majority of successful novels, then engineered by northern publishers. Marion Harland, as her _nom de plume_ went, was, however, the most popular of southern writers.

Her stories of Virginia home-life had little pretension to the higher flights of romance; but they were pure, graphic and not unnatural scenes from every-day life. They introduced us to persons we knew, or might have known; and the people read them generally and liked them.

Mrs. Ritchie (Anna Cora Mowatt) was also prolific of novels, extracted princ.i.p.ally from her fund of stage experience. Piquant and bright, with a dash of humor and more than a dash of sentiment, Mrs. Ritchie's books had many admirers and more friends. The South-west, too, had given us the "Household of Bouverie" and "Beulah;" and it was reserved for Miss Augusta Evans, author of the latter, to furnish the _only_ novel--almost the only book--published within the South during continuance of the war. The only others I can now recall--emanating from southern pens and entirely made in the South--were Mrs. A. de V. Chaudron's translation of Mulbach's "Joseph II.," and Dr. Wm. Sheppardson's collection of "War Poetry of the South."

This is not an imposing array of prose writers, and it may be incomplete; but it is very certain that there are not many omissions.

In poetry, the warmer clime of the South would naturally have been expected to excel; but, while the list of rhymsters was longer than Leporello's, the _poets_ hardly exceeded in number the writers of prose. Thompson, Meek, Simms, Hayne, Timrod and McCord were the few names that had gone over the border. Up to that time, however, the South had never produced any great poem, that was to stand _aere perennius_. But that there was a vast amount of latent poetry in our people was first developed by the terrible friction of war.

In the dead-winter watches of the camp, in the stricken homes of the widow and the childless, and in the very prison pens, where they were crushed under outrage and contumely--the souls of the southrons rose in song.

The varied and stirring acts of that terrible drama--its trying suspense and harrowing shocks--its constant strain and privations must have graven deep upon southern hearts a picture of that time; and there it will stand forever, distinct--indelible--etched by the mordant of sorrow!

Where does history show more stirring motives for poetry? Every rood of earth, moistened and hallowed with sacred blood, sings to-day a n.o.ble dirge, wordless, but how eloquent! No whitewashed ward in yonder hospital, but has written in letters of life its epic of heroism, of devotion, and of triumphant sacrifice!

Every breeze that swept from those ravished homes, whence peace and purity had fled before the sword, the torch and that far blacker--nameless horror!--each breeze bore upon its wing a pleading prayer for peace, mingled and drowned in the hoa.r.s.e notes of a stirring cry to arms!

But not only did our people feel all this. They spoke it with universal voice--in glowing, burning words that will live so long as strength and tenderness and truth shall hold their own in literature.