My Diary North and South
description: “William Howard Russell in March 1861 arrived in the United States as a special correspondent for the London Times. Landing in New York, he entered the South in April and traveled by train to the Alabama River and then to Mobile, Pensacola, and Fort Pickens; back to Mobile, by steamboat to New Orleans and Columbus, KY, and by boat to Cairo, IL. Leaving the South, he went to Chicago, Niagara Falls, PA, and Washington, with various trips thereafter. Russell was a caustic and penetrating critic of both the North and South and succeeded in stirring up a storm of hostility in both sections by his continuous faultfinding with hotels and travel facilities. He stirred up hostility in the South by his phobia against slavery, which he denounced as barbarism. Yet he found much to praise in the South, where he met all the principal officials, civil and military, thought highly of them, and felt that the South would probably never be conquered. He found universal acclaim of the Confederacy, saw none of the Union feelings which Seward and Lincoln had often mentioned, and seemed to enjoy the planters' hospitality showered upon him in the South. Discounting his bias and highly critical attitude toward all things American, he recorded a remarkably vivid picture of life in the South for three months in the early period of the Confederacy. He wrote without restraint, scruples, or delicacy in describing his association with individual Southerners.”
creator: William Howard Russell
publisher: T.O.H.P. Burnham
date: 1863
type: Book