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March 5, 1861 – Washington Correspondence

Special to the New Orleans Crescent

Washington, February 22, 1861

The “natal day” has been celebrated here in grand style. People from the adjoining cities and counties gathered here by thousands, more to witness the parade of the small federal army than anything else. This came off about 3 o’clock P. M. on Pennsylvania Avenue. The troops posted themselves opposite the Center Market, near Seventh street, and made an imposing display with their cannon and horses. Suddenly the bugle sounded a charge, and away the cavalry and howitzers dashed up towards the President’s House, making a great noise, kicking up a mighty dust, but eliciting no cheers. The populace was too scared for that. All feel as if war must come, and that a military despotism is inevitable. Out of some thousand citizen soldiery (including the militia) only one company refused to join in the celebration. The National Rifles turned out, but took no part in the general procession. The men who compose this company, by far the best drilled in the city, are Southern, and do not intend to light for Marse Abe. Lincoln’s speeches at Trenton and Philadelphia leave little room to hope that he will not practice coercion. “It may he necessary to set the foot down firm.” And the New Jerseymen, the truest of all the Northerners to the South, applauded loudly and long. He is willing to live and die by the “indiscreet things” he uttered at Indianapolis, and would “rather be assassinated—even shot“—notice the anti-climax ! ” than abandon the principles which gave liberty to all the world”—negroes not excepted, of course.

That villainous sheet, the Washington Star, thinks that Arkansas has initiated the counter revolution in the Confederate States, and the States and Union quotes a recent Union-shrieking article, letter or item, which appeared in the Picayune of your city, the tendency of which is to confirm Lincoln in his coercive policy. Nothing would please the fanatics of the North more than to see Southerners cutting each other’s throats for the sake of getting back into this glorious Union.

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March 4, 1861 – Letter from Lieutenant A. J. Slemmer to his Brother

Photograph of Adam Jacoby Slemmer by Brady, 1864

February 20, 1861.— Dear Brother—As a special messenger will leave here for Washington to-morrow I will ask him to carry some private letters, with his public ones, and let you know some little about Fort Pickens and the inhabitants thereof. I only wish it were not so much of a one-sided arrangement, as we need letters down here more than you fortunate people up North can. The papers come through sometimes, but letters never. It quite surprises me to see my name figuring so extensively in the newspapers. I have simply done my duty; but I suppose the doing it, under such a pressure of opposition, makes it appear creditable. The troops are leaving the opposite shore, disgusted at playing soldier, I suppose. They say there are only about three hundred remaining, and these are regulars, haying enlisted for one year. My messenger to the yard, this morning, said they were afraid we would attack them now. We could do so, and get possession again of everything in an hour, if we were only permitted to take such a course.

I have now mounted nearly all the guns—that is, all that are really necessary to enable this work to be defended by a force of five hundred men. We have worked like horses to accomplish this, but great tbings can be done by small means when one knows how. This small command has done more than Chase or Lomax could have done with their two thousand men, and they know it. Having seen our guns go up so rapidly, they swear we have bad reinforcements. In fact, the papers say, nothing else could be expected—that we nave smuggled in men from the vessels. It is true we could have done so, and they be none the wiser; but not a man has been added to this command from them. In fact, so particular are we, that not even an officer has come ashore, with the exception of Captain Vogdes, and he only once, when the vessels first came.

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March 3, 1861 – The Border Slave States

In the following article the Baltimore Clipper tells some truths which should be seriously considered :

In the Presidential canvass all parties in the Southern border States proclaimed themselves for the Union without qualification. The Union party men stood upon their platform of the Union, the Constitution and the laws; the democrats ridiculed this platform, and asserted that they too were in favor of the Union, the Constitution and the enforcement of the laws, and declared themselves as good Union men as any others. By a solemn vote in the United States Senate the Southern men almost without exception had declared that protection to slavery in the territories was not needed, and the whole population, at least of the border States of the South, went into the canvass and through it upon this hypothesis and with this declaration.