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Civil War Harper's Weekly, November 23, 1861

The Son of the South WEB site contains online, readable versions of all the Harper's Weekly newspapers printed during the Civil War. We hope you will sit back, relax, and really dive into this incredible Civil War resource. These pages show you the war unfold, and you can follow it just as the people of the day did.

 

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Missouri

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HARPER'S WEEKLY.

[NOVEMBER 23, 1861.

738

GEN. LANE AND HIS ARMY.

OUR artist with the army in Missouri, Mr. Alexander Simplot, lately visited the Camp of General Jim Lane, the famous Kansas General, the terror of Missouri, and has sent us the sketches which we reproduce on the preceding page. The correspondent of the New York Times, who accompanied him, thus describes the General, the Indian Scouts, and the Camp :

Lane is a man of some fifty years of age, of medium height, and at first sight rather unprepossessing. His figure is slight, his head wide at the top and narrowing down to the jaw, like an inverted pyramid; his brow wide and high; his eyes small, black, and overhung by cliff-like eyebrows ; his mouth sensual, and, combined with a gleam of fun in his eyes, has an expression of great good-humor and enjoyment that wins one irresistibly to the conclusion that he is the best fellow in the world. His hair is thin, slightly tinged with gray, and shoved away from his head in every direction, as if he had just come in from running bareheaded against a strong wind. In conversation he is ready, full of a rollicking sort of humor; and, in short, in his whole style of conversation, his looks, etc., reminded me of some Joe Bagstock Nero fiddling and laughing over the burning of some Missourian Rome.

Proceeding a few hundred yards below Lane's encampment, I came upon another of a different character. Huge fires blazed up, throwing great flashes of light upon the brown autumn woods, and making a play-ground for fantastic shadows across the prairie and the woodland, around which lay in supreme indolence, or sat comfortably inhaling the fragrant weed, a motley crowd of aborigines. I soon had the honor of taking by the hand a copper-colored gentleman, who, stretched upon his right side before the genial fire, was inhaling tobacco-smoke through the handle of his tomahawk, and who rejoiced in the expressive title of Wa-ne-pagh-kugh. He replied to my " Good-morning, Sir; glad and happy to make your acquaintance," with a guttural "Ugh?" and the Indian salutation "How." After addressing a few remarks to him, to which he listened with profound attention, I found that he did not know a word of English, and turned my attention to other braves. I next had the honor of an introduction to a gentleman in ministerial black, with a tall "plug hat," from which towered upward a dozen peacock and goose feathers, who, I was informed, was John Conners, head Chief of the Delawares. Mr. Conners indulged in a slight knowledge of English, and, after the usual commonplaces, I left him, and was presented to a little, good-looking young fellow in citizen's dress, who, I was informed, was John Johnnycake, interpreter of the Delaware braves. John Johnnycake, Req., I found to be a young gentleman of great intelligence and modesty, and who spoke most excellently both English and French, and I suppose also the Delaware vernacular.

He informed me that Wa-ne-pagh-kugh was war-chief of the Delawares; that there were 54 of his tribe in the field; that they were armed with tomahawks, scalping-knives, and rifles ; that their principal business was scouting; and that almost all of the crowd had good horses, and had accompanied General Fremont once before in some of his expeditions across the plains and over the mountains. Mr. Johnnycake (whose Indian name I did not learn) stated that a much larger force from his tribe would soon take the field, and also that delegations from various other Indian tribes in Kansas would soon unite their arms and lives with the Union cause.

GENERAL HUNTER,

COMMANDING OUR ARMY IN MISSOURI.

WE publish on page 741 a portrait of GENERAL HUNTER, who has succeeded General Fremont in the command of our army in Missouri. General Hunter is about sixty years of age. He graduated at West Point in 1822, the twenty-fifth in rank in a class numbering forty, and was appointed Second Lieutenant in infantry. Having risen to a First Lieutenancy, he was in 1836 made Captain of cavalry, but shortly after resigned. In 1842 he rejoined the army as Paymaster, in which position, with the rank of Major, the present Administration found him. He accompanied Mr. Lincoln from Springfield, on his tour to Washington, as far as Buffalo, where, owing to the pressure of the crowd, he suffered a dislocation of the collar-bone. Shortly after he was made Colonel of the Third Cavalry, and then Brigadier-General. He commanded a leading division at the battle of Bull Run, but was wounded early in the day.

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1861.

THE STARS AND STRIPES IN
SOUTH CAROLINA.

AT length we have the pleasure to report that the Stars and Stripes float once more over the disloyal soil of South Carolina. Though we are without direct or authentic intelligence from the fleet, the reports which reach its through hostile channels agree too well to be the work of fraud or mere baseless rumor. There is no reason to doubt that at this time General Sherman is in possession of the town of Beaufort, South Carolina, and of the forts which guarded the entrance to Port Royal Inlet.

It will be time enough to discuss the important considerations suggested by this event when the full report of the affair reaches us. Meanwhile three thoughts force themselves on the mind :

It was known at New Orleans as long ago as 17th October, long before the Northern public knew any thing about the expedition, that it was destined for Port Royal, and that it would consist of the vessels which actually sailed. The first authentic statement of the destination of the fleet was contained in a Richmond paper published about the end of October. The rebels were therefore thoroughly warned and prepared. If our expedition was nevertheless successful, what can the rebels expect hereafter?

The occupation of Port Royal will test the amount of Union feeling which lingers at the South ; will verify the statement that the planters will not ship cotton ; and, finally, will teach the rebels the practical danger which they court by making war upon the North while holding 4,000,000 slaves.

Lastly, the occupation of Beaufort is the

first step toward a geographical redistribution of population, trade, and industry in the Southern country. The Government will never relinquish Beaufort. It will be an open port and a place of trade and activity long before the seals are loosed from the harbors of Savannah and Charleston. People will fly to Beaufort from the two latter cities, which will decay and die out just as the cities of ancient Chaldea have perished—a memorable monument of the cost and folly of treason.

ABOLITIONISTS AT THE SOUTH.

MR. MEMMINGER, Secretary of the Treasury under Mr. Jefferson Davis, advises the Southern planters to abandon the culture of cotton, and to devote their land to the production of food. Similar advice is urged upon them by the leading journals of Richmond, New Orleans, and Memphis. It is very justly argued that, pending the blockade, cotton will be useless, while corn, wheat, and pork will be inestimable.

Such sensible counsel the planters can not well disregard. They have on hand at present nearly three million bales of cotton, much of which can not be sent forward to market for want of bagging, and none of which can be sold at a price which would pay the planter for growing it. It would argue great folly on their part to increase their stock under such circumstances.

This diversion of land and labor, however, from the culture of cotton to that of cereals, must produce a remarkable change in the Southern mind on the questions which have led to the pending rebellion.

Negro Slavery in our Southern States depends directly on the production of cotton. It does not pay to raise any thing but cotton with slave labor. Wherever cotton is not raised slavery can not be maintained—except for the purpose of supplying the cotton-fields with fresh hands. Experience has shown that this is a mere question of figures. The price of slaves at the South depends upon the price of cotton. It is usual to say that male field-hands are worth one hundred dollars for every cent the pound of middling uplands commands. When middling uplands is worth twelve cents—as was the average last year—good field-hands could not be bought for less than $1200. If middling uplands fell to six cents, good field-hands could be bought for $600. If middling uplands could not be sold at all, there would be no market for slaves. This is precisely the condition of affairs at the South at present.

Its political significance arises from the fact that, when the price of slaves falls below a certain point it ceases to be a gain, and becomes a loss, to be a slave-owner. When, thirty years ago, male adult slaves fell to $400 in Virginia, the leading men of that State became emancipationists, and slavery would have been abolished if the development of cotton culture at the far South had not suddenly created a demand for negro labor, and caused the price of slaves to advance one hundred per cent in a few years.

The blockade is now going to reproduce, over the whole revolted section, the state of things which existed in Virginia in 1830. There is no market for cotton, and consequently none for slaves. It is becoming a burden to be a slave-owner. Instead of rating men's wealth by the number of their slaves, as usual hitherto, Southern society will estimate those planters the richest who have the fewest slaves to support in these trying times. And the estimate will be sound. If the North only persevere in its purpose for a year or two, no Southern man will be found at the end of that time rich enough to own slaves. The system will break down of its own weight. The planters will pray for the abolition of slavery as the only means of rescuing themselves and their families from starvation.

Growing corn and wheat with slave labor is like manuring the earth with pates de foie gras. The harvest will be fine, no doubt ; but every ear of corn will cost its weight in gold. Mr. Memminger is the most radical abolitionist of the day.

THE LOUNGER.

GENERAL FREMONT.

THE right of the President and Commander-in-Chief to remove any subordinate officer is unquestionable. The duty of removal, when he is persuaded of the dishonesty or incompetency of any such officer, is equally clear. Obedience is the indispensable point of discipline, and discipline is essential to military success.

While, therefore, every loyal citizen will acquiesce in the removal of General Fremont from the Western Department, every thoughtful man in the country can not but consider the moment chosen for his removal most unfortunate. Had the order followed the fall of Lexington, it would have been received in silence : with regret, indeed, for a noble man who was thought inadequate to a peculiar position, but without any general impression of undue harshness.

But two months have essentially changed the aspect of affairs in Missouri. From the moment the General left St. Louis his course has been onward. Lexington has been retaken; Springfield is ours once more. Operations which military men pronounced impossible have been quietly accomplished

by Fremont. He has crossed rivers safely. He has mewed a large army without apparent means. His Body-Guard, which is simply the name for a picked body of men, like Scott's Body-Guard in Mexico, has achieved a brilliant victory, due alike to military skill and to personal courage. With his army flushed with conscious power, and devoted to him with that enthusiasm which insures honorable success ; with the enemy before him, and an attack momently expected, the General in whom so many hopes centred—whose operations during the last few weeks had silenced even slander—who, for some reason, had been selected as the scape-goat of our complaints and discontents—is summarily removed.

He does what every faithful soldier and patriot should do. He bows with serene dignity to the command; addresses a few earnest words of natural regret, of sympathy, of encouragement, and of patriotic appeal to his soldiers, who, dismayed and indignant, threaten insubordination ; remains, at the request of the officers, to lead the army should the battle be offered that night; then retires with the same manly simplicity which has marked every act of his life.

For the honor of his country and for his own honor, General Fremont will, of course, at the proper time, demand a Court of Inquiry. And the honor of all good citizens is involved. Are charges and statements like those in General Thomas's report, of which the obvious tendency, if not intention, is to ruin the military character of a general, and to imperil the safety of the country by causing a want of public confidence, to come to the newspapers " in regular course from the War Department with authority to give it to the public," before any authorized statement of the removal of the General has been made? The authorization by the War Department of the publication of the ex parte memoranda of General Thomas against General Fremont is a more flagrant dereliction of duty than any thing those memoranda charge upon the General. And if such statements, so many of which have been already shown to be erroneous, have been the grounds of the removal of the Commander of the Western Department, how many such breaches of good faith with our soldiers are necessary to furnish adequate grounds for the removal of the Secretary of War?

The nation, which confides implicitly in the honesty and singleness of purpose of the President, will acquiesce in his action in this case. But it has a vital interest in knowing why a leader of its armies so dear to the popular heart, from whose path the mists of doubt were rolling away, and who stood with all the prestige of triumph before a dispirited and retreating enemy, was disgraced upon the very eve of battle. It is a just curiosity which nothing but the revelations of a Court of Inquiry can satisfy.

REUTER'S TELEGRAMS AND MASON'S COMMISSION.

THE telegraph for American news in England is in the hands of a person named Reuter, and Mr. Reuter serves up precisely such news from America as England desires. His bulletins are the unfailing records of disaster to the Government of the United States. Rebellion flashes rosy along his wires. The inevitable consequence is that the worst possible impression of our condition is constantly conveyed.

One of his latest performances was the announcement that "the veteran General Wool had been surprised by General Mansfield at Fort Monroe. This is the all-important fort which commands the entrance of the Bay of Chesapeake, and which the Federalists have held so long."

This is the kind of news which is read by those who live by the river of Thames. And yet the favorable change of sentiment, even in the newspapers, is very marked. There is, however, one thing to be borne in mind in all English discussion of our affairs ; and that is, that they are made matters of party argument. Of course, the present condition of this country is held by Tories to be " a settler" of what Major Beresford calls " the horrible reform mania." Let us do the Major the justice to say that he insists upon strict neutrality.

In fact, those who are clamorous for open interference by England are too few to be noticed. The last great hope of the rebellion—that of foreign aid—is withering away. When Mr. Mason, the author of the Fugitive Slave bill, distinguished in the Senate of the United States for his insolent plantation manners, arrives in London, he will find himself in exactly the position that a commissioner from Nena Sahib would have found himself in Washington.

Upon this subject it is delightful to agree with the Richmond Examiner—that "he is the very best man we could send abroad to show foreign nations that the Southerner is a different type altogether from the Yankee." Of course the reasons for our agreement are not the assertions of the Examiner, that Yankees lie, fawn, bully, brag ; and are mean, canting, and vulgar. And when the paper says, " We are glad to be able to contrast such a gentleman with Charles Francis Adams, the Puritan representative of freedom at the Court of St. James," what American, who loves Milton and Hampden, and honors Oliver Cromwell, who fought Charles Stuart for the same great cause in which we are fighting Jefferson Davis, will not cry with all his heart, Amen!

WOMEN AND LAW.

THE readers of this column will remember that there has been the warmest commendation here of two or three little books by Mrs. Dall, treating with admirable temper, scholarship, and delicacy the question of the chances and protection which women have in modern society. The results of her investigation are precisely those which every body who knows any thing at all of the subject is sure to reach, and which every reader of Mrs. Norton's pamphlet, and the discussion in the British House of Lords upon the Divorce Bill, and the terrible stories of Duchatelet and Sangar, and

the sad stories of Henry Mayhew, has already suspected.

In her new work, "Woman's Rights under the Law," Mrs. Dail discusses the question so earnestly and candidly, with such good sense and good taste, in so humane and religious a spirit, that her little book is sure to awaken interest as well as to help the reader to a just conclusion. There is certainly no harm in asking the question whether the social and legal position of women is as fair as that of men. If it be so, a candid statement will show it. If it be not so, every honest man will wish to remedy a wrong. Why, for instance, the most intelligent and capable women in the land should be allowed by law to hold property, and to be taxed for that property, and yet forbidden to have a voice in the disposition of the taxes—in other words, a vote—while the dullest clodhopper who comes from a foreign country and works in her fields, but who has and can have no intelligent idea of the necessities of our Government or of any Government, should be permitted to dispose of those taxes and his mistress's share of them, is one of the practical absurdities which is defended only by a prejudice. Let any intelligent man ask himself why his mother should not vote, and the man drunk at the corner grocery should, and the answer would be amusing to hear.

The sphere of woman, we all know, is the nursery; at least, if we do not know it, it is not for lack of telling ; and to no holier sphere could any human being be called. The sphere of man is the office and shop ; and to no more useful sphere could any person be summoned. Since, then, both men and women have a divinely-ordained sphere, who is to make laws for society ?

It is manifestly a question that will be discussed, and the law of the different States is constantly yielding more and more to the pressure of the principle that taxation and representation must go together. We men make the laws. Like all lawgivers, we please ourselves. In this case those who are displeased can not right themselves by the strong arm. It is, therefore, only the most patient and charitable consideration of the whole subject that can secure any change; and it is as the most faithful and attractive contributions to that calm and wise consideration that the books of Mrs. Dall are so valuable. They abound in the most curious and interesting information, gathered from many sources. Their tone is the reverse of truculent. They are most womanly books about women.

A WORD WITH CORRESPONDENTS.

THE Lounger, with many thanks, declines the following : "Immolatus;" "Violets;" and the proposition of "Marye." To the correspondent who writes from Maine the Lounger can only say, with all the force at his command, that considerations of the personal necessities of an author ought never to be urged upon an editor or publisher. That a man is starving is the best reason in the world for giving him food ; but it is no more reason for buying his manuscript than for buying his old shoes. Writers are asked to contribute to magazines and other publications, not because they state that they need the price of their articles, but because their articles are considered to be worth paying for, and would be so if they were written by Croesus or Rothschild.

Nor let any poor youth or shrinking woman in the least misunderstand this statement. A generous man buys matches of a match-girl, not because he wants them or is going to use them, but that he may give alms under cover of a bargain. That is what you ask a publisher to do when you say to him : " Sir, here is my essay, or poem, or story, and I have nothing in the house for dinner." If he likes your story for his purpose, he buys it, not because you lack a dinner, but because it is a good bargain for him. If he does not like it, but takes it and pays you, it is alms for you to buy food.

Suppose you went to a shoemaker and said, "I am starving, I wish you would give me work." He asks if you are a skilled hand. You answer, " Oh no! I never worked at the business, but I should like to try my hand." And suppose that a thousand starving people said the same thing to him. The shoemaker would naturally reply : " I am very sorry, and here is as much as I can afford to give to buy soup for you. But as for shoes, they can only be made by shoemakers."

So with literary publications. If you can do the work, you are welcome, limited only by the demand. But you have less reason to expect success as an author than as a shoemaker. Probably any handy person can learn to make shoes. But something more than writing a story is essential to literary success.

It is an old story. For you, friend who ask, it is a sad story. But for all of us it is a true story.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE AND VOLUNTEERS.

A RECENT letter of Florence Nightingale's to her brother-in-law, Sir H. Verney, who had invited a large body of volunteers to a banquet at his house, has been already mentioned in most of the papers, but only a single extract has been published.

There are thousands of our soldiers now in camp who will like to see the whole letter:

" Oct. 9.

"I should have thought it presumption to write to the volunteers if not desired by you. My point, if there was one, was to tell them that one who has seen more than any man what a horrible thing war is, yet feels more than any man that the military spirit in a good cause, 'that of one's country,' is the finest leaven which exists for the national spirit. I have known intimately the Sardinian soldier, the French soldier, the British soldier. The Sardinian was much better appointed than we were. The French were both more numerous and more accustomed to war than we were, yet I have no hesitation in saying that we had the better military spirit, the true volunteer spirit to endure hardship for our country's sake. I remember a sergeant, who, on picket, the rest of the picket killed and himself battered about the head, stumbled back to camp, and on his way picked up a wounded man and brought him on his shoulders to the lines, when he fell down insensible. When, after many hours, he recovered his senses, I believe, after trepanning, his first words were to ask after his comrade, 'Is he alive?' 'Comrade, indeed, yes, he's alive—it is the general.' At that moment the general, though badly wounded, appeared at the bedside. ' Oh, general, it's you, is it, I brought in? I'm so (Next Page)


 

 

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