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| Secession rosette and badge.2 |
December 7, 1860. |
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[347]
everywhere seen, but nowhere the flag of the Union.
The latter would not be tolerated.
The reign of terror had commenced in earnest.
The voices of Union men were silenced; and the fact of a revolution accomplished seemed painfully apparent when we saw these strange banners, and heard, in a Protestant Episcopal Church, a prayer for “the President of the Confederate States of America.”
On Monday, the President's call for seventy-five thousand men was placarded on the bulletin-boards.
That proclamation was unexpected.
It exhibited an unsuspected resoluteness in the Government that threatened trouble for the insurgents.
The effect . was marked.
The groups around the placards were no longer jubilant.
There was visible uneasiness in the mind of every looker-on, and all turned away thoughtful.
There was a menace of war, and war would ruin the business of New Orleans.
Even the marching of troops through the streets when they departed for Pensacola failed to excite much enthusiasm; and when, on the 17th, the subscription-books for the fifteen millions of dollars loan, authorized by the Convention of conspirators at Montgomery,1 were opened, there were very few bona-fide bids for large amounts.
But .that proclamation gave heart-felt satisfaction to the Union men of New Orleans, and they were counted by thousands among the best citizens.
These were silent then.
The editor of the True Delta, a Union journal, had
been compelled to fling out the secession flag, to prevent the demolition of his office by a mob. “No one dares to speak out now,” said the venerable Jacob Barker, the banker, as he stealthily placed in the writer's hand a broadside, which he had had printed on his eighty-first birthday,
as a gift of good for his countrymen, containing a series of argumentative letters against secession, first published in a Natchez newspaper.
“If,” said another, one of the oldest citizens of New Orleans, “the Northern people shall respond to that call, and the United States shall ‘repossess and hold’ the forts and other public property — if the power of the Government shall pull down the detested secession flags now flaunting in our faces over our Mint and Custom House, and show that it has power to maintain the old banner in their places,3 the Union men in the South will take Kentucky hemp, and hang every traitor between the Gulf and the Ohio and Potomac!”
1 See page 263.
2 the rosette was made of blue satin ribbon, surrounding a disk, containing two circles. On one were the words, “our first President. The right man in the right place.” on the other, seven stars and the words “Jeff. Davis.” on the badge of white satin was printed, in proper colors, the “Confederate” flag. Over it were the words, “the South forever. Southern Confederation.” below it, “Jiff. Davis, President. A. H. Stephens, Vice-President.”
3 The last time the National Flag had been publicly displayed in New Orleans was on Washington's Birthday, the 22d of February. A citizen flung out one on Front Levee Street, on which were two clasped hands and the words, “United we stand; divided we fall.” The enraged secessionists went to pull it down? but found armed men there to defend it, and it was kept flying until evening, when it was taken down voluntarily.
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