of the young men of the city at the
islands, and because of the supposed necessity of keeping a strong hand
over the negroes. A malicious citizen assured me that it was in training
to take Fort Sumter by charging upon it at low water. On the opposite
side of the square from where I stood rose the Citadel, or military
academy, a long and lofty reddish-yellow building, stuccoed and
castellated, which, by the way, I have seen represented in one of our
illustrated papers as the United States Arsenal. Under its walls
were half a dozen iron cannon which I judged at that distance to be
twenty-four pounders. A few negroes, certainly the most leisurely part
of the population at this period, and still fewer white people, leaned
over the shabby fence and stared listlessly at the horsemen, with the
air of people whom habit had made indifferent to such spectacles. Near
me three men of the middle class of Charleston talked of those two
eternal subjects, Secession and Fort Sumter. One of them, a rosy-faced,
kindly-eyed, sincere, seedy, pursy gentleman of fifty, congratulated the
others and thanked God because of the present high moral stand of South
Carolina, so much loftier than if she had seized the key to her main
harbor, when she had the opportunity. Her honor was now unspotted; her
good faith and her love of the right were visible to the whole world;
while the position of the Federal Government was disgraced and sapped by
falsity. Better Sumter treacherously in the hands of the United States
than in the hands of South Carolina; better suffer for a time under
physical difficulties than forever under moral dishonor.

Simple-hearted man, a fair type of his fellow-citizens, he saw but his
own side of the question, and might fairly claim in this matter to
be justified by his faith. His bald crown, sandy side-locks, reddish
whiskers, sanguineous cheeks, and blue eyes were all luminous with
confidence in the integrity of his State, and with scorn for the
meanness and wickedness of her enemies. No doubt had he that the fort
ought to be surrendered to South Carolina; no suspicion that the
Government could show a reason for holding it, aside from low
self-interest and malice. He was the honest mouthpiece of a most
peculiar people, local in its opinions and sentiments beyond anything
known at the North, even in self-poised Boston. Changing his subject, he
spoke with hostile, yet chivalrous, respect of the pluck of the Black
Republicans in