MR. RUSSELL'S DIARY NORTH AND SOUTH.*
MR. Russett's Diary is the heaviest blow yet administered to English sympathy with the South. He went out as the Times correspondent in the very beginning of the war, with his mind on the whole slightly biassed in favour of the South. He says it was a tabula rasa, but that is a phrase; for no correspondent, however impartial, is ever unconscious of a wish to find the opinion of the journal he represents, in essentials correct. To the last hour of his stay, he never imbibed any. prejudice in favour of the Federal side. He disliked all Yankee peculiarities, disbelieved in all Yankee bombast ; saw the worst side of Yankee officials, and satirizes mercilessly the ignorance, incom- petence, and vanity of Yankee statesmen. But Mr. Russell, whatever his personal bias, possesses one faculty in a degree not granted to any other litterateur, and we suspect in great measure beyond his control. His mind is a photographic plate, which cannot pervert the outlines of any scenes visible through the lens. Much of this may be, and we believe is, due to a high sense of personal honour. It would have been much pleasanter for him not to have explained the condition of the army in the Crimea, infinitely easier to have remained silent on the short- comings of English officers in India towards the natives. In both cases he braved the obloquy and the attacks of men who were for the time being his own comrades, and in the second instance Without the faintest inducement beyond his own sense of right. The poor camp followers whom his descriptions protected, had neither thanks nor rewards to offer, never heard of his letters, and would probably have despised him for his philanthropy. People at horns were not by any means thankful to have all that dirty linenwashed inpublic, and people in India became as savagely critical as it is in the nature of the habitually apathetic Anglo- Indian lobe. Still he persevered, with this at least for reward, that the educated classes in England, often criticizing his style, and always doubtful as to his opinions, rely on him implicitly for any statement of facts. That reliance will, in this instance, tell heavily against the South. Mr. Russell has repeated no libels against the slaveholding interest. He does full justice or more than justice to their chiefs, and is eager to specify the high qualities which slavery throws into such terrible relief. He sketches no Legrees, draws no pictures in sepia, tells us as little about the slaves as in a slaveholding state is consistent with fidelity. Yet no account of Southern life, not even Mr. Olmsted's, has ever demonstrated so conclusively that slavery and modem civilization cannot be made to co-exist. Order may be esta- blished, but it must be the order of a camp, enforced by terrible penalties, and allowing no scope or opportunity for even the theory of freedom. That order has not yet been instituted, and throughout the South slavery has, according to Mr. Russell, pro- duced its natural consequence, contempt for human life.
The system culminates on the Mississippi, where, if anywhere, we might expect to see the domestic institution in its perfection. Louisiana is full of great planters, French and English, has two great staples, and is controlled by an aristocracy better educated and better born than the majority of whites out of Virginia and Maryland. Yet New Orleans was described by its sheriff as "a hell upon earth," which nothing would ever cleanse except a law making it penal to carry arms. The prisons are as bad as those which John Howard visited and reformed, prisoners under capital sentence being confined in full view of the female maniacs, and the elections openly influenced by men who argue with the revolver. "The other night, as I eat in the olub-house, I heard a discussion in reference to the operations of the Thugs in this city, a band of native-born Americans, who at election times were wont deliberately to shoot down Irish and German voters My Diary North and South, By W. H. ]tusselL Two Pols, Bradbtu7 Sad EMU& occupying positions as leaders of their mobs. These Thugs were only suppressed by an armed vigilance committee, of which a physician who sat at table was one of the members." In Jackson, again (Mississippi), the average is a murder a month," and the conversation left on Mr. Russell the impression that "the yeti air seemed to become purple as he spoke, the land around a veri- table Aceldama.' There may, indeed, be security for property, but there is none for the life of its owner in difficulties, who may be shot by a stray bullet from a pistol as he walks up the street." Mr. Russell was warned that the bullets of his revolver should be large, for otherwise a man, even if wounded, might rip him up. "Many illustrations, too, were given of the value of practical lessons of this sort. One particularly struck me. If a gentleman with whom you are engaged in altercation moves his band towards his breeches pocket, or behind his back, you must smash him or shoot him at once, for he is either going to draw his six- shooter, to pull out a bowie knife, or to shoot you through the lining of his pocket. The latter practice is considered rather ungentlemanly, but it has been somewhat more honoured lately in the observance than in the breach. In fact, the savage prac- tice of walking about with pistols, knives, and poniards, in bar- rooms and gambling-saloons, with passions ungoverned, because there is no law to punish the deeds to which they lead, affords facilities for crime which an uncivilized condition of society leaves too often without punishment, but which must be put down, or the country in which it is tolerated will become as barbarous as a jungle inhabited by wild beasts." The great planters, the real governing men of the South, dislike this state of affairs as much as Englishmen could do. They want order on the French system, but they admit the impossibility of getting rid as yet of the rowdy. element through which, in fact, they govern. They themselves, moreover, act on a ferocious idea of the necessity of the duel ; and Mr. Russell met one man, a senator, who had killed five men; and heard a frightful story of another who, after what seems to Englishmen a deliberate murder, has been appointed to a high office under the Confederate Government. Of the former gentleman Mr. Russell draws the following extraordinary picture :— " klis face was one not to be forgotten—a straight, broad brow, from which the hair rose up like the vegetation on a river bank, beetling black eyebrows—a mouth coarse and grim, yet full of power, a square jaw—a thick argumentative nose—s new growth of scrubby beard and moustache—these were relieved by eyes of wonderful depth and light, such as I never saw before but in the head of a wild boast. If you look some day when the sun is not too bright into the eye of the Bengal tiger, in the Regent's Park, as the keeper is coming round, you will form some notion of the expression I mean. It was flashing, fierce, yet calm—with s well of fire burning behind and spouting through it, an eye pitiless in anger, which now and then sought to conceal its expression beneath half-closed lids, and then burst out with an angry glare, as if disdaining concealment."
Imagine being such a man's slave ! All alike expressed a bitter hatred and contempt for Yankees, a free press, and republican institutions, and were full of a vain-glorions confidence that the South would thrash the North in every engagement, and control England and Europe through the monopoly of cotton. Even Mr. Benjamin, the Jewish Attorney-General of the new Govern- ment, an able and unusually frank speaker, could not conceive that England could survive the failure of her cotton supply. All believed that slavery was a divine institution, and expressed them- selves ready, if necessary, to perish in its defence. Oddly enough, too, all asserted that the negroes were the happiest people on the face of the earth, a fact which Mr. Russell takes it on himself to question a few score times through his book. He gives few stories of slaves, but the general impression he leaves is that the whole slave race—except, perhaps, in Maryland—is weighed down with a permanent incurable sadness, overworked, badly fed, and deprived of the slightest opportunity of developing their faculties, or establishing any distinction between themselves and the beasts of the field. They work always in dead silence, crouch when a white man speaks to them, and affect profound ignorance about the present war. Their labour is, moreover, far more profitable than it is believed to be in Europe, a field hand on a sugar plantation frequently earning his whole cost in a single year. The great planters are consequently a really wealthy cless,—men, for example, giving 300,000L for an estate; and they are devoted to the institution which, as they feel, secures atones their posulon and their fortunes. Mr. Russell satisfied himself that the slave trade was still carried on, though not, perhaps, to any great extent, and saw himself negroes who bad been " run " by a captain, who, after securing them, dared his partners to claim their share of men procured by a capital crime.
The sketches of the North in the Diary ere valuable chiefly for
a,number of kitcat sketches of prominent individuals touched. with exceeding skill. President Lincoln is too well known to need repetition, but we must quote the portrait of General
till the last few weeks the idol of the North, and still the hope of the democratic party.
"He is a very squarely-built, thick-throated, broad-chested man, under the middle height, with slightly bowed legs, a tendency to em- bonpoint. His head, covered with a closely cut crop of dark auburn hair, is well set on his shoulders. His features are regular and pre- posseasing—the brow small, contracted, and farrowod ; the eyes deep and sexless-looking. A short., thick, reddish moustache conceals his mouth ; the rest of his face is clean shaven. He has made his father- in-law, Major Marcy, chief of his staff, and is a good deal influenced by his opinions, which are entitled to some weight, as Major Marcy is a soldier, and has seen frontier wars, and is a great traveller. The task of licking this army into shape is of Herculean magnitude. Every one, however, is willing to do as he bids: the President confides in him, and ' Georges ' him; the press fawn upon him, the people trust him • he is the little corporal' of =fought fields —mums. ignotua pro miritico, here. He looks like a stout little captain of dragoons, but for his American seat and saddle. The latter is adapted to a man who can- not rids; if a squadron so mounted were to attempt a fence or ditch half of them would be ruptured or spilled."
Mr. Russell's account of Mr. Seward confirms the impresaioa left by the Secretary of State's despatches. He is a man of some ability, and more shrewdness, in whom patriotism has taken form which can only be described as self-conceit. He would die for his country very likely, but he firmly believes that the Union "could whip the universe," and the more severe the reverses of the North, the greater becomes Mr. Seward's acerbity towards the rest of the world.
We have left ourselves no space for further extracts, but we can- not part from Mr. Russell without a cordial recommendation of his Diary, to which, as a readable book, our review of necessity does injustice. The two volumes are perfect mines of anecdote, all characteristic, all excellently told, and all pervaded by a spirit of tolerance and simplicity, which is of itself sufficient guaran- tee for their truth. Mr. Russell has ventured on no opinion as to the result of the war ; does not bore us with the history of the constitutional questions involved, but simply paints what he saw, without malice, but with exceedingly little extenuation. His Diary is consequently as pleasant and as intelligible as a gos- sippy letter from an old friend, recalling scenes and people with which and whom the reader has passed a life.
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