A Visit to South Carolina in 1860

In the early spring of the year before the outbreak of the war of the rebellion, the harbingers of that red dawn were already in the sky, but few under­stood what they foretold. Transfigured by their light, the everyday incidents of a college vacation seem now to have a meaning little dreamed of by the care­less students who spent a pleasant month amid scenes and objects soon to take on a strange significance. Even the steam­er which bore them from New York to Charleston, then a peaceful messenger of commerce, was speedily metamorphosed into the Confederate man-of-war Nashville. We who had passed merry hours in her cabin, had paced her decks from stem to stern, and had weathered in her a mighty gale “off Hatteras,” could not but feel a certain interest in her after-fortunes; and though loyalty required us to disapprove of her course, and to rejoice at her discomfiture, it was hard to repress a kind of admiration for the saucy craft which so cleverly ran the blockade again and again, and was the first to fly the rebel flag in English waters. We were even conscious of a faint pang when, but two years later, the embryo pirate was reduced to a mass of smoking ruins by the shells of the monitor Montauk.

Surely no one could have predicted such a fate for the staunch little vessel on that bright morning in April, when she steamed gayly up Charleston harbor, and, passing the frowning guns of Fort Moultrie on the right and the unfinished works of Fort Sumter on the left, brought us safely to our port. The handsome city, rising proudly from the bay, between its twin rivers, with its Battery Square at their junction, reminded us in situation of the great metropolis we had just left; but its beautifully shaded streets, its quaint old houses, with wealth of veranda and balcony, standing at an angle to the street the better to catch the sea breeze, and surrounded by high-walled gardens, its semi-tropical air, were all its own, and had no parallel at the North.

So, too, the multitude of negroes was a distinctive feature; and there was to us a great variety and novelty about the Southern specimens of the article. It was the custom to visit the public market in the very early morning, to see to the best advantage one of the sights of the place. Few were more attractive or more picturesque than the long building, filled with stalls of fruit and flowers, presided over by portly colored women wearing gay turbans, each one of whom was invariably addressed as “auntie.” Again, the household servants, fully three times as numerous as in similar establishments at the North, were an amusing study. Their phenomenal slowness may be illustrated by a single incident. Our host, as we were going to drive, found no whip in the carriage, and said to the groom at the horse’s head, “Sam, go to the stable, and bring me the whip!” “Yes, massa!” replied Sam, as he leisurely disappeared. Hardly was he out of sight, when the master, addressing another negro, said, “Tom, go and stir up Sam!” “Yes, massa!” answered Tom, as he slowly followed in the wake of Sam. No sooner had he faded from view than our friend, in the most matter-of-course way, called to one more of his people, “Jim, you go and stir up Tom!” “Yes, massa!” was the obedient response, as the third messenger shuffled along the stable path. After we had waited long enough for a Northern man to make a whip, the three negroes returned together, the last sent carrying the desired article. And yet, despite such experiences, which must have been the rule of their daily life, the patience of the masters seemed never to fail, and their care of their servants, as we saw it, was something wonderful. In almost every house we visited, there was a group of old and utterly useless slaves, who were maintained by their owner in comfort. The relation between the family and the servants of the house was one of friendship, and seemingly almost of equality.

The term abolitionist had evidently been used to alarm the blacks, and the younger ones, especially, were firmly convinced that it meant a terrible creature, intent upon evil to them. Some waggish youths spread the story among the African members of the households in which we visited that we were what they called “Bobolitionists.” For some time our appearance at the gateway of any of these houses was the signal for the instant disappearance of the crowd of young negroes who but a moment before had been basking on the steps or on the piazza, or in the doorway; and our entrance to the mansion was enlivened by the frightened glances of the sooty images hiding behind hat stands, or peeping around corners. On one occasion, when a specially bright young darkey had been sent for to give us a specimen of a plantation dance and song, he bolted at the parlor door, and firmly refused to enter the room, lest the “Bobolitionists” should carry him “Norf.”

Very earnest efforts were made by our friends to convince us that the patriarchal institution was absolutely the best possible arrangement for the black man. In fact, we even suspected, sometimes, that picturesque tableaux had been arranged for our particular benefit. After a dinner party, for instance, at which slavery had been demonstrated, from Scripture and nature alike, to be wholly right, and just at the point when our eloquent host was asserting that his negroes were treated like his own children, an apparently accidental drawing aside of the cloth revealed his little son and a black boy, each about six years of age, fast asleep in one another’s arms, under the table.

There was, however, another side to this matter, which could not escape our attention, although we were left to find it out for ourselves. The city of Charleston had at this time a population of forty thousand, almost equally divided between the two races. There were several large stone barracks in different parts of the city, each one a fort in itself. These were manned by policemen, drilled and armed as soldiers. The men were mainly of Irish birth, and were required to be unmarried and to live in the barracks. After sunset each block was patrolled by one member of this force, and a mounted guard was assigned to each three blocks. The signals and communications were perfect. The officers were graduates of the South Carolina military schools, and their discipline was rigid. At night the whole city was under martial law, so far as the blacks were concerned. Any negro found in the streets after nine in the evening, without a pass from his master, was arrested forthwith. At ten minutes before nine, a drummer in front of each police station began to beat ,the long roll, and at once the streets were full of colored men, women, and children, flying to their homes. During the last minute a succession of sharp taps was given, and as these rang out the confusion increased. This was the opportunity for young and active darkies to have a little sport at the expense of the police. It so happened that the duties of scavengers, about the markets and other parts of the city, were performed by useful but unsightly birds, called buzzards. The negroes used to apply this name to the policemen, whose fiercest wrath was aroused by the unsavory title. A juvenile African, having, with masterly generalship, provided a safe line of retreat, would sally from his entrenchment just at the forbidden hour, dancing, turning somersaults, and shouting the hated name of buzzard, as the patrolmen came in sight. The maligned officials, after securing the gateway whence the offender had emerged, would close in upon him, apparently leaving no chance for escape; but at the critical moment, a sudden rush for tree, or vine, or some footway known only to the boy, would carry him safely over the garden wall, from which, as he disappeared from view, a parting cry of “Good-night, buzzard!” taunted the baffled pursuers.

But woe to the unhappy slave who was caught, and not released in the morning by his master’s intercession. A sound flogging was the penalty for male and female alike. We did not soon forget the cries and shrieks which came from one of those grim bastiles, when a party of unhappy victims, captured late the night before on their return from some merry-making, thus expiated their offense; and pitiful was the appearance of the forlorn women, in their ruined finery, who issued from its somber portals, and went sobbing to their homes. What wonder that under such a system the possibility of a rising of the slaves was ever before the masters minds! It was well understood, therefore, that a drumbeat after nine o’clock at night meant a negro insurrection. When the band of the New York delegation to the Charleston convention began, at ten o’clock, one evening, to serenade some distinguished visitors to the city, it was stopped in the midst of its performance, and forbidden to use its drums. We stood in the moonlight, listening to the music, when suddenly the chief of police, in full uniform, appeared on the scene, and commanded silence. Addressing himself to the leader, he politely explained the rule, and the reason of it, saying, “Play any music you like, if you can dispense with your drums. Their sound at this hour would arouse the whole city.” This trivial incident simply showed the existence of a state of things like that which Jefferson described, when he said, “If the alarm-bell sound in Richmond at night, every mother clasps her babe more closely in her arms, fearing for their very lives.”

The ever-present dread of a revolt of the subject race could have originated among such a people only in a sense of real danger, for in all other respects their self-confidence was boundless. Their superiority to the citizens of the other states was mentioned, not boastfully, but in a quiet and axiomatic way. This was curiously exemplified in their Revolutionary traditions, and in their accounts of the part which South Carolina played in that great struggle. It was easy to sympathize with the patriotic feeling manifested, when the houses in which Marion and Sumter had lived were pointed out, or the scene of Sergeant Jasper’s famous exploit was shown. But when one was practically informed that the success of the colonies in the war of the Revolution was almost wholly due to South Carolina, that her partisan leaders were greater generals than Washington and Greene, and that her irregulars were better soldiers than the old continentals, such abnormal conceit was difficult to tolerate. Every chance incident was seized upon to uphold the assumption of South Carolina’s independence of the rest of the world. Other people might need her aid; she needed none of theirs. A rumor that gold and silver had been discovered in the mountainous region of the state was taken to be proof positive that she could be indebted to no other community for a supply of the precious metals. A foreign vessel, compelled by stress of weather to put in to Charleston, and there dispose of its cargo, was heralded as the forerunner of direct trade between South Carolina and all the nations. The excellence of the products of her sea islands was so unrivaled that it was claimed that within her borders alone King Cotton wore his royal crown and maintained his sovereign state. Elsewhere, he was represented only by viceroys, at best. And the culmination of this sentiment was reached when the Northern visitor was taken to the grave of John C. Calhoun. Then, if never before, was he expected to feel a due sense of his inferiority to the natives of the soil, which the presence of that superhuman individual had made more sacred than aught else of Mother Earth.

This intense local pride, however, had its good effect in the interest which it excited in matters of the common weal. The public institutions were admirably managed, and the best citizens gave to these their time and means without stint. Their standard of duty in municipal and state affairs was lofty, and sharply in contrast with that by which the era of reconstruction was governed. Bitter, indeed, must have been the reflections of the older citizens of the proud little state in after times, when they compared the stainless honor, the high sense of responsibility, and the efficient performance of their duties, which distinguished their officials in the palmy days before the war, with the exactly opposite characteristics of the office-holders of the carpet-bag period.

It seems surprising now that the many indications of a popular sentiment in favor of secession, which were apparent at the time of our visit, did not make more impression upon us; but when it is remembered how deaf the whole North was to the mutterings of the tempest, we may perhaps appear to have fairly represented our section in this regard. Among our acquaintances in Charleston (and we made many) the disunion feeling was universal. The air was redolent of rebellion, and secession was a household word. Even men of Northern birth, old merchants long domiciled there, told us that the separation was inevitable, and the sooner it came the better. We were repeatedly informed that there was but one Union man in the city, and we were taken to see him as a living curiosity. This was the famous lawyer James L. Pettigru, then in his seventy-second year, the leader of the bar of the state, so respected and honored that he, alone, perhaps, in that community, was permitted to hold what opinions he pleased. We called upon him at his office, a single-story building, with wide verandas and spacious rooms lined with books, standing in the midst of a lovely garden. It was an ideal law office, beautiful in situation, perfect in appointments and surroundings, and pervaded with the atmosphere of study, of intellect, and of character. Not even the presence of clients could have made it more delightful! The attendant informed us that Mr. Pettigru was somewhere in the inclosure, and we shortly saw him approaching, slowly pacing a shaded path, as Plato might have walked in the groves of the Academy.

A venerable figure, with a noble face, his snowy hair falling on his shoulders, with something ancient in the fashion of his dress, he seemed like one of the Revolutionary fathers returned to earth to warn his countrymen of approaching woe. The political situation was uppermost in his thoughts, and he could talk of nothing else. We especially remember the sad solemnity with which he said, “My unhappy fellow citizens talk of seceding from the Union. It is impossible, but they will not hear reason. I foresee nothing but disaster and ruin for them.”

It was during our stay in Charleston that a clergyman, at the morning service, one Sunday, prayed for the dissolution of the Union. Mr. Pettigru was present, occupying one of the most prominent pews; and hardly had the words been uttered, when he arose and left the church, in emphatic disapproval of such doctrine. All admired the tall, old man, as he strode down the main aisle and forth from the sanctuary, though few, perhaps, felt as he did. If such there were, they feared to follow his example, for it was commonly said that he was the only person in Charleston who dared to do such a thing.

One other Union man there was in the neighborhood, though not in the city, an aged gentleman named Talbot, residing on his plantation, a few miles away. In nullification times he had sturdily supported Andrew Jackson, and, being then a merchant in Charleston, had fortified his warehouse, floated the Union flag above it, and repelled an attack by the mob. From that engagement dated his title of colonel. When we saw him he was passing a quiet old age in a charming country home, to which he gave us a cordial welcome.

The conversation soon turned upon the state of the country, and he said to the Southern gentlemen who accompanied us, “You all have gone mad together. There is no end to this separation business. You want to separate the South from the North; and then you will want to separate South Carolina from North Carolina; and then the district south of the Ashley River front the district north of the Ashley River; and then the district south of the Cooper River from the district north of the Cooper River; and then, sir, by Jove, sir! you will want to separate husband and wife!”

The colonel soon mentioned that he had a great partiality to cherry bounce, which he called “the sovereignest drink on earth,” and begged us to taste some of his own special distillation. He led the way to his dining room, and our glasses were filled with his favorite beverage. One of the party asked him to give a toast. He promptly responded, “Gentlemen, in times like these I have but one toast to give, and that is Andrew Jackson’s: ‘The Federal Union: by the Eternal, it must and shall be preserved!’ ” The colonel and his Northern visitors drank the toast; but his Southern guests only raised their glasses to their lips, in courtesy to their host, and returned them to the table with their contents untouched.

When we left the hospitable mansion, its venerable owner accompanied its to the carriage; and as we drove away we saw him standing, bareheaded, under a magnificent live-oak tree, waving his hand in farewell, and caught his parting words, which were,“Remember, friends! the Union forever!”

The two men were of very different types, and very unlike they seemed. Mr. Pettigru was a majestic prophet, with the sail and awe-inspiring mien of one to whom the secrets of a gloomy future had been revealed. Colonel Talbot was a gay old warrior, whose blood was up at the thought of danger to the flag he had once defended, and for which he was eager to strike another blow. But they were alike in their love for the Union; and if they were the only two in that locality who were faithful to it, yet was their patriotism of so fine a quality that it might almost have saved even that city from the retribution which came upon it.

We were shown through the Military Institute, a training school for cadets, in which, as in happened, the ordinance of secession of South Carolina was passed in the following year. It was maintained at the expense of the state; the state flag floated over the building, and the scholars wore the state uniform. There was a similar establishment at Columbia, and a third in another part of the state; each said to have a larger attendance than the United States Military Academy at West Point. These facts were mentioned, with the intimation that if war should come South Carolina would be amply supplied with trained officers to lead her hosts to victory. On another occasion, an excursion to the forts in the harbor was made, and the ease with which Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie could be taken, from the city side, was alluded to. The latter was supposed to be especially vulnerable, because it had not been constructed with any anticipation of a fire in the rear. Fort Sumter, then uncompleted and un-garrisoned, was considered to be the easiest capture of all; and the folly of the United States government in continuing to spend money upon it for the benefit of South Carolina was a subject of comment.

Our Charleston friends, neither then nor at any other time, seemed for one moment to imagine that any serious opposition would or could be made by the North to any overt acts tending to the disruption of the Union. Candor compels the admission that they were not more mistaken in this regard than we were as to the attempt being made. They considered themselves so invincible that they believed that they had but to speak the word, and this great nation would fall into pieces. We thought the assumption so ridiculous that we could not conceive that there was the slightest danger that the experiment would ever be tried. In all of their intercourse with us they showed the most careful regard for our feelings, the most punctilious observance of the rites of hospitality; and yet withal our meetings were sometimes such as occur under a flag of truce, the exchange of civilities by those who were, or were soon to be, foreigners to each other.

From Charleston we took our course to Columbia, the capital of the state. In the fields, as we passed on the railroad, we saw slaves at work, both men and women, under the eye of the overseer, armed with his weapon of office. On the train with us were many men of position and influence, on their way to the state convention, called to choose delegates to the National Democratic Convention soon to assemble at Charleston. At the several stations they met friends, who seemed inclined to make sport of their journey as an entirely useless undertaking. We were informed that their differences related to the means to be used, but not to the end to be attained. All were in favor of secession but some held it better to continue their party organization, and thus at any rate to secure concert of action on the part of the whole South; the others were so assured of the power of their State and the sufficiency of her resources for every purpose that they simply pro- posed to have South Carolina secede alone. By such fiery spirits the citizens of the other Southern States were openly spoken of as submissionists.

Fine plantations and handsome mansions, with rows of slave huts near at hand, were pointed out to us as we swept by, and the continued increase in the number of slaves in that part of the state was dwelt upon with satisfaction. It was argued that the black race was not without representation in their government, because the political power of each parish was proportioned to the number of slaves in it. But the masters wielded the power! Thus in one district five planters owned all of the land and the thousands of negroes upon it, and these five men elected one state senator.

For thirty years their custom had been to have in turn a dinner party on each election day, and to elect one of their number to the senate, by a viva voce vote at the table, over their wine. It was a simple and beautiful system for the few. No thought of the rights of the many ever entered the minds of these old feudal barons. The soil was theirs. Their chattels tilled it. All power was in the masters hands. What wonder that such autocrats deemed themselves invincible! It will be remembered that the brutal assault upon Charles Sumner in the senate chamber of the United States had occurred before the period of which we speak. It was significant of the estimation in which that act was held in South Carolina that two engines, which we saw at a railway junction, had been named in honor of the perpetrators of that outrage: the one Preston S. Brooks, and the other Lawrence M Keitt.

In Columbia we met a recent graduate of our college, who had come to that belligerent region to prepare for the ministry of peace and goodwill to men. He told us some of the trials to which he had been subjected because of his previous residence in New England. His letters were tampered with, and serious exception was taken to his receiving Northern periodicals through the mails. He was repeatedly notified to terminate his subscription to the —, and was finally escorted to the post office, where he saw the current number of the magazine taken from his box and burned on the sidewalk before his eyes!

We attended the convention held in the old State House building, near the beautiful marble columns of the new State House, then uncompleted. James L. Orr, a politician of some note in his day, was chosen president, and the speeches and resolutions were more guarded than the current talk of the time. The leaders either were not ready to throw off the mask, or else, as is the wont of politicians, did not see fit to declare themselves until quite sure as to the most popular course. The worthy Orr made a moderate address, which could hardly have given offense even to an ardent lover of the Union. It was a surprise to read in after-years a declaration from his pen that during this period, and for years before, all of his public acts and words had been openly and avowedly in favor of secession!

We visited the beautiful home of Wade Hampton, and also the University of South Carolina, and our experience here made our stay in Columbia especially interesting. We were naturally inclined to acquaint ourselves with the ways of such an institution, and the students received us as brother collegians. We attended their recitations and lectures, were introduced to their professors and spent pleasant evenings in their rooms. We met many bright and agreeable young fellows, and enjoyed their society exceedingly, save that we wearied of the talk about secession. This topic was often upon their tongues, and we thought them out of their minds in that regard. When they spoke, in tones of conviction, of the near approach of disunion and the possibility of war, they appeared to us to be living in a strange, unreal atmosphere, created by their own disordered imaginations. But they were wiser than we. They had recently resolved to show their patriotism by wearing clothing made of South Carolina fabrics, and the sudden demand had severely taxed the limited manufacturing resources of the state.

A small supply of shoddy blue cloth, woven at one mill for the use of the poor whites in its neighborhood, was exhausted before one quarter of the students had been supplied, and the rest went to the most reckless extremes. The only other dry goods actually manufactured in the state were some cheap and gaudy calicoes, intended for negro wear; and of these the crazy youngsters ordered whole suits of clothes. The effect was actually astounding. Here would go one youth, striped like a barber’s pole, and glowing like a meteor in his fiery red and yellow garb; there, another, completely covered with bright green leaves upon an intensely blue ground; yonder, two abreast, clad in patterns of gigantic vines and flowers; then, a whole company, arrayed from head to foot in the most startling colors, diversified, with the most singular figures. Since the days of Jacob’s ring-streaked and spotted cattle, such a spectacle had never been seen. So grotesque was this masquerade, and so abiding its impression, that to this day the mention of Columbia brings up at once a vision of this swarm of ridiculous boys in their indescribable garments, striding loftily about the little town, the wonder and the admiration of the inhabitants thereof.​

From Columbia we came back to Charleston in time to attend the sessions of the National Democratic Convention, which assembled on Monday, the 23rd of April, 1860. Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, was elected perma­nent chairman; probably because in the whole country no better example could have been found of a Northern man with Southern principles. The polit­ical cauldron soon was boiling fiercely, and the excitement rapidly rose to fever heat. The struggle between the friends and the opponents of Stephen A. Doug­las grew daily more intense. We were, fortunately privileged to be present at the meetings of the Douglas men in their headquarters in Hibernia Hall, and there witnessed rare devotion to a great chieftain. When it became evident that he could not be the nominee of the convention, their grief was real and deep. Indeed, one of his leading adherents, Hendrick B. Wright, broke down completely in announcing their failure, and sobbed aloud. Rumors of the probable disruption of the convention were afloat from the first, until one day it was semi­-officially announced that an agreement among the representatives of all shades of feeling had been reached, and that harmony would prevail thereafter. In the evening Joins Slidell, of Louisiana, arrived, and to the busy machinations of that arch-plotter during the hours of darkness was ascribed the fact that the next day concord was destroyed, and the factions drifted farther and farther apart. Their differences as to the party platform became unreconcilable; the point was quickly reached when they could no longer remain under the same roof, and their separation followed.

This was a striking spectacle, and one of historic moment; for it was in a sense the first overt act of secession, and the forerunner of the division between the States. Just one week after the first assembling of the convention, we looked down from the crowded galleries upon the members, all in their seats, and waited breathlessly for the drama to commence. At the expected time, the chairman of the Alabama delegation arose, after presenting a protest, and said “Mr. Chairman, Alabama retires from this convention.” Then, bowing low to the bewildered Cushing, who sat like one paralyzed, he led the way down the aisle, followed by his associates, all gravely shaking hands with the Northern delegates, as if bidding a solemn goodbye to the Union.

The chairman of the Mississippi delegation announced that his state, stood by Alabama. Similar statements were made on behalf of Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas, and the action was suited to the word; the chairman gazing blankly at the retiring forms, as if he feared that he would be left to hold a convention all alone by himself. A minority of several of the Southern delegations remained, and even in that from South Carolina two courageous men refused to make her action unanimous. These were Benjamin F. Perry, afterwards provisional governor of the State in Andrew Johnson’s time, and John F. Boody. They had need of all their courage, for a storm of wrath and execration arose from the galleries above their heads, and the taunts of “submissionist” and “traitor” were fiercely hurled at them from hundreds of angry throats. Their action was inexpressibly maddening to the populace, since it had been asserted on every hand that no South Carolinian would remain in the convention. After the seceders had departed, Francis B. Flournoy, of Arkansas, who had been temporary chairman of the convention, took the platform, and made an impassioned speech in favor of the Union, shouting, as he strode back and forth and waved a large red handkerchief like a flag above his head, “Don’t give up the ship! Don't give up the ship!” It is said that he afterwards became a general in the Confederate army; but, however, that may be, his heart beat true that day to the music of the Union; and doubtless he was but a type of the many throughout the South who opposed secession until forced to yield to the madness of the hour.

On the following day portions of other Southern delegations withdrew, including Mr. Bayard and one colleague from Delaware. The gloom which had settled upon the convention was temporarily dispelled by a cheery speech from a frank and jovial Georgian planter. He had chosen to remain after the majority of the representatives of his State had departed, because of his attachment to slavery, which he thought they were taking the very course to injure; and he seized the opportunity to advocate the peculiar institution upon high moral grounds, and to extol the men engaged in the direct slave trade from Africa, as real philanthropists.  The slave traders, he argued, brought the heathen to civilization, a much more certain and expeditious process than that of the missionaries, who sought to bring civilization to the heathen, and often failed in the attempt. Warming with his subject, he cordially invited all of his fellow delegates to pay a visit to his plantation in Georgia where he promised to show them negroes from Maryland, negroes from Virginia, negroes from North Carolina, negroes from Georgia, and negroes direct from Africa by the yacht Wanderer, the noblest Romans of them all! The Wanderer was then lying in a Southern port, in the hands of the United States officials for breach of the laws against the African slave-trade.

The seceding delegates formed a convention of their own in St. Andrew’s Hall, where it was very difficult to gain admission, as none but the Simon-pure Southern men were expected to attend. Fernando Wood, of New York, who attempted to make common cause with them was politely shown the door. Their proceedings were enlivened by an application of the same principle upon which they had acted, and Mr. Bayard, having seceded from the original convention, now accomplished the feat of seceding from the seceders’ convention. So thus early in the history of the movement was the proof given of the truth of one of Colonel Talbot’s descriptions of secession as “a road that there is no stopping on when once you get started.” When a representative of the smallest state in the Union — and he but one of several delegates from it — took part in a secession movement, only to secede from the seceders. it seemed to give to the whole business a suggestion of the reductio ad absurdum.

It is not easy to describe the scenes in the street, of Charleston during the continuance of the convention, and particularly towards its close. By day, knots of earnest men were talking and gesticulating on every corner, circulators of alarming rumors were hurrying to and fro, and crowds of excited people were thronging the convention halls. By night, torchlight processions, with defiant banners, were moving through the streets; fiery orators, denouncing the Union, were swaying their hearers at will in open-air meetings in the public squares: and over all the quiet stars were looking down in wonder at the unwonted uproar. It was a relief to every one when the convention, unable to agree upon a nominee, adjourned, to meet at Baltimore, and the seceding body decided to reconvene at Richmond. We had overstayed our time in order to see the outcome, and hurried northward by Wilmington, Petersburg, Richmond, and Fredericksburg, all soon to become memorable in the civil war.

And now, in the after-time, when we recall our stay in the South and think of the people whom there we met, it is with a vivid recollection of their many noble qualities, a hearty sympathy for their sorrows, self caused though they may have been, and an earnest wish for the true prosperity of the New South, which has risen from the ashes of that which we saw in the year before the war.