Chap.XVII. "In Tennessee and Arkansas I was assured by Federal officers of high rank that the Union feeling which they had hoped to develope no longer existed; and in Missouri it was calculated that four-fifths of the State would vote for Secession. I believe, however, that other causes have been at work to produce this result. The outrages committed by the half-disciplined Federal troops on friend and foe alike have alienated the former and embittered the latter, and have greatly contributed towards producing the state of things which it is now too late to remedy. "So many instances of this came under my own observation that I cannot doubt that there is very great foundation for the statements that are made on this head. At Memphis there was no security beyond the immediate precincts of the town. The town itself was deserted, no business of any sort being transacted; the stores were kept open because it was so ordered by the authorities: if a store was closed, or a private house left without occupants, an official at once took possession and leased the premises, to anybody who came forward, at a nominal rent. Hence the inhabitants who wished to avoid this kept up a show of business, but with no reality; not a ship lay at the wharves, and not a waggon was to be seen in the streets. "The last year before the war Memphis exported 400,000 bales of cotton; this year I am told not 2,000 have been shipped. This, however, is the natural result of the war; but in the surrounding country houses were nightly broken open, property of every description stolen, life sacrificed, and no attempt made to repress these excesses. As Unionists and Secessionists fared alike, the former were driven to make common cause with the latter, and to enter the Confederate ranks or to join some of the guerilla bands with which the country swarmed. "I had a good deal of conversation on this subject with an officer who felt very strongly on the subject. He had done his utmost to enforce respect for private property, and he assured me that, when by this course he had restored confidence, he found that in both States considerable Union feeling began to develope itself. A column of Federal troops marched through Arkansas, destroying everything in their track, pillaging houses, destroying plantations, carrying off slaves, and committing even worse outrages. My informant said that following up afterwards in a portion of this line, he found that the whole Union feeling had disappeared. This account was corroborated by some Arkansas planters whom I met at various times, and from whose account the State seemed to have relapsed almost into a state of barbarism. My informant told me that his experience was the same; his successors had given every license to their soldiers, and his Union friends had disappeared." These feelings were exasperated still further by President Lincoln's Proclamation of 1st January, 1863, by which all slaves in the States or parts of States Chap. XVII. deemed to be in revolt at the time were declared free; an act, however, which did not produce the effects apprehended from it, since the negroes remained quiet, apparently content to let their future lot be decided by the fortune of war. Meanwhile the hopes of the Southern people were kept alive by the many vicissitudes of the contest, and especially by the successes gained over the Federal armies in Virginia; and exaggerated reports of the difficulties experienced by the Northern Government in raising money and enforcing the drafts for the militia encouraged the delusive expectation, to which they tenaciously clung, that every fresh campaign would be the last. During the latter part of the war the character of the Confederacy, which had suffered from the machinations of its agents in Europe, was tarnished by other acts more desperate and far more indefensible. A steamer, the Chesapeake, carrying passengers and goods between New York and Portland-a second, the Joseph Gerrity, freighted with cotton from Matamoros - a third, the Roanoke, running to New York from Havana - and a fourth, plying on Lake Erie, were seized and plundered one after another, by small parties of Confederates, who had paid their passage - money and gone on board without attracting notice. The Chesapeake, deserted by her captors, was found in an unfrequented bay on the coast of New Brunswick by a Federal gun-boat, which took possession of her and carried her into Halifax; and a decree of the local Vice-Admiralty Court afterwards restored her to her owners, with so much of her cargo as had escaped pillage. The Joseph Gerrity was navigated into Belize in Honduras. The Roanoke, after an attempt to obtain coal at Bermuda had been frustrated, was burnt at sea; the Lake Erie steamer was scuttled, and another small vessel, which she had been made instru Chap.XVII. mental in taking, shared the same fate. In October 1864 a handful of desperadoes sallied from Canada into Vermont, and met, at the little town of St. Alban's, another party from Chicago, where the plan of the expedition seems to have been laid. They mixed unsuspected with the inhabitants, and at a favourable moment threw off their disguise, made ineffectual attempts to set the place on fire, robbed one or two banks of all the specie they could find, and succeeded in re-crossing the frontier with their booty. Several unarmed persons were killed or wounded in these treacherous enterprises. Although they do not seem to have been inspired by any meaner motive than hostility to the United States, they were exploits more worthy of straggling marauders than of men engaged in fair and honourable warfare; and the perpetrators of them, had they fallen into the hands of the Federal authorities, would have had no claim to be treated as prisoners of war. That the neutrality of Canada was not seriously compromised, was due to the vigour and alacrity displayed by the local authorities, as well as by the Canadian Government. The depredators were arrested and stripped of their plunder; a detective police, under special stipendiary magistrates, was stationed along the border; and thirty companies of volunteers were called out and embodied for permanent duty.1 These measures were effectual in preventing any renewed violation of the territory of the Dominion. These occurrences gave rise, as was to be expected, to 1 "I think," wrote Lord Monck, "it is not a little creditable to the volunteers, and to those who conducted the arrangements, that the first intimation the force received that their services would be required was by the General Order of 19th December, and that the three battalions are now at their respective stations; some of the companies of which they are composed having had to travel a distance of nearly 700 miles in order to reach their destinations. I have had offers of service from various corps all over the province; and I should have had no difficulty, were it desirable, in raising a large force." - Viscount Monck to Mr. Cardwell, 29th December, 1864. some correspondence between the British and American Chap. XVII. Governments. The commander of the Federal gun-boat which had been instrumental in recovering the Chesapeake had acted incautiously in not only seizing her in British waters but boarding and searching a British schooner which lay hard by, and taking out of her one of the men concerned in the capture of the Chesapeake. The American Government censured and disavowed these acts; and the President also disapproved and revoked a departmental order, issued after the incursion into Vermont, by which United States' officers had been directed to pursue marauders, if necessary, across the Canadian frontier. The failure, on the other hand, of Mr. Seward's endeavours to obtain the extradition of the persons who had taken part in these various enterprises became a subject of dissatisfaction and complaint.1 In Europe, and by the English people in particular, the progress of the contest was watched with varied feelings. That the division of sentiment which had armed a large section of the American people against the remainder should be reflected in England, and that both North and South should find sympathizers and partisans here, was natural and inevitable. Opinion in England had been generally more abolitionist than opinion in the United States; and no one will now dispute that the 1 The reasons for this failure were tersely expressed by Mr. Justice Blackburn, in the case of Patrick Ternan, who was arrested at Liverpool on a charge of having been concerned in the seizure of the Joseph Gerrity: "The case is either one of piracy by the law of nations in which case the men cannot be given up, because they can be tried here or it is a case of an act of warfare, in which case they cannot be tried at all." The St. Alban's raiders (as they were called) were held in Canada to belong to the second of these two classes. There was evidence that their leader held a commission in the Confederate army. They were arrested, but discharged on the ground of a supposed informality in the warrant. Such of them as could be found were immediately afterwards arrested again, and discharged, after lengthened argument, for the reason above stated. A full report of the proceedings, compiled by L. N. Benjamin, B.C.L., was published at Montreal in 1865. Chap. XVII. existence of slavery in America was the true cause of the war, created the dissensions which led to it, and inspired the South with the fatal ambition to be independent. But the war itself was not presented to Europe in the light of a contest for the abolition of slavery, nor was it such in fact: independence on the one side, the integrity of the Union on the other, were its true, as they were its avowed, objects. Had the Southern people relinquished their project of independence, they would certainly have been permitted to retain their slaves; had they been never so willing to abandon slavery, it is equally certain that they would not have been suffered to become independent. The average level of information about American politics in England is no higher than the average level of information about English politics in America; and in both countries opinion is liable to be misled by merely incidental circumstances which can be apprehended with ease, and by appeals to established prejudice and unreflecting sentiment. The friends and advocates in the North in this conflict were zealous and very numerous: they spoke at public meetings, and wrote freely and earnestly in the public journals. But there were also many who, heartily detesting slavery, nevertheless thought the cause of the South just, and that of the North unjust; and no one who mixed at the time with different classes of men will dispute that this opinion was assisted by the natural inclination to lean towards the weaker side, the natural horror excited by accounts of devastation and carnage, the natural admiration for a striking display of courage and endurance. It was assisted also by the idea, openly expressed by some and warmly condemned by others, that the establishment of an independent Southern Confederacy would be a fortunate event for England and for the world. And these opposing views were brought, as the war proceeded, into sharper relief by a cause familiar in this country, and which can hardly be unknown in the United States. |