"Jasper" Escapes from Charleston, April 12-13, 1861

John Hartwell

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Since shortly after midnight on the morning of April 12, 1861, New York Times correspondent George H. C. Salter (who wrote under the name “Jasper”), had been perched atop a cotton bale on Adger Pier, opera-glass in hand, awaiting the opening guns of the bombardment of Fort Sumter. He had been in South Carolina some three months, telegraphing almost daily reports to New York, about the gathering crisis. He had developed some sympathy for the southern point of view, to the extent that letters to the Times had insisted that he be fired, and the N.Y. Daily Tribune correspondent Charles Brigham, had openly accused him of being a secessionist. A more friendly writer noted only that his reports were “as favorable to the secessionists as a regard for truth permitted.”

For weeks, correspondents of northern papers had been under surveillance as possible spies. With his somewhat sympathetic pen, Salter might have hoped for more favorable treatment. But it was not to be so. As soon as the bombardment began (at 6:30 a.m.), the telegraph offices were all closed to reporters, and the trains were held at the stations to prevent anyone from leaving. Roving bands of armed “Vigilants” began scouring the city with order to arrest the suspect Yankee “scribblers.”

For six hours, Salter watched the effects of the firing on the distant fort, and also on the people of the city around him, shocked out of their peaceful beds by the sudden din. He had been awake and alert for nearly 36 hours, and at 10:30 decided to go to his King Street rooming house for a late breakfast, and, perhaps, a brief nap.

The following is from “Jasper’s” own account of the ensuing events.

I left Adger Pier at half-past 10 o’clock and proceeded to my rooms in King street to obtain a little refreshment before returning to my labors. While thus employed, I heard the hurried tread of armed men on the stairs, and then a hasty knock; when I opened the door I saw a crowd of ten rough customers, armed with revolvers, which protruded from their coats. On asking what this meant, and by what authority they acted, they pointed to their six-shooters as sufficient warrant for their proceedings. They evidently had fortified their courage with copious glasses of whiskey, and expected a terrific combat with that peaceable gentleman, the Times’ correspondent.

To gain time for thought, I incited them all in, and requested them to partake of the hospitalities of my private locker. -- Abashed at my quiet manner, they seemed inclined to back out, and all but one went down stairs. He informed me that I was arrested by order of the government of South Carolina, being suspected of furnishing information to the Federal Government at Washington, and that I must go to the guard-house. He would not permit me to call on friends who could effectually disabused of this false charge, but hurried me off.
To be continued....
 
George ("Jasper") Salter's account continues:

Arriving at the office, I was ordered to take off every article of value, watch, purse, pocket-book, etc. Even private letters from dear friends were consigned to his black list, and then I was thoroughly thumped and percussed, to see if I had any secret pockets, with cyphers, etc. I was thrust into a foul dungeon reeking with bad rum, and worse tobacco, and my only vouch a couple of blankets black with filth and alive with vermin.

By standing on extreme tip-toe at the end of the lounge, I could just look out on the yard, where I could hear the policemen talking about the spy they had just got hold of. One of them said that I would probably be hung on the next morning at sunrise in the prison yard, and the frequent sound of the hammer during these remarks close under my window, the infernal cannonading of Fort Sumter brought close to my ears by the fresh inland breeze, and surrounded by rats, mice, bed-bugs, and other vermin, I passed the night.

I found from the conversation of those men that I had been under their constant surveillance for the past three months, and that hey had orders to bring the
Times daily to the leading officials of Charleston. Pacing my cell, unable to sleep, worn out with constant duty for the past fifty-two hours, at last morning dawned. At 9 o’clock I was waited upon by a somewhat cherry-faced official., who facetiously asked me if I felt hungry. I told him that he must be aware that I had not tasted food for twenty-four hours, and that I had come to the conclusion that the chivalrous people of Charleston meant to reduce me by a slow process of starvation. He seemed ashamed of the acts of his superiors, and said that I should not suffer for food. He cooked a nice breakfast, and brought it himself, leading me to infer that he was not a brute, if his masters were. At 10, the under-keeper came, and I told him that it was an infamous disgrace to the people of Charleston to thrust a gentleman into a reeking cell, intended only for drunken Irish and negroes, and promised him that if he would work for me he would not lose anything by it.

At 12 he brought a man who said he had orders from Gov. Pickens to send me away from the city at once. I urged him to let me call on my banker’s, and get some funds, but he peremptorily declined, and said that if the soldiers saw me in the streets, they would tear me to pieces. At the office they returned my property, minus that famous editorial, “Wanted, a Policy,” a piece of petty larceny which I did not think South Carolina would be guilty of. I found that they had examined everything. Among the articles were several clippings from the bogus Charleston correspondence of the Tribune, wherein I was charged with being a Secessionist. These must have nonplussed them exceedingly.
Jasper's story to be concluded in the next post:
 
Jasper's journey North:

Forcing me to thrust my things in my trunks in the most hurried manner, I was conveyed to the Northeastern Railroad station, with only $15 to take me to New York. I expected that I would be spotted on the road by the self-appointed blood-hounds, and took measures accordingly. I felt sure that South Carolina knew that if an open and avowed correspondent of the leading daily sheet of the North was murdered openly in the streets of Charleston, that the act would **** her in the eyes of the whole civilized world; but she had not the slightest compunctions about telegraphing to every leading station North, South, East and West in the C.S.A., to “catch, mob, seize, hold, and possess, at any hazard, the body of Jasper.” I determined, therefore, to openly state to any interrogatives that I was from Charleston, and bound to New York. I surmised that this would throw them off their guard, as they would naturally suppose that the man they were in search of would not dare to avow this. It answered admirably. Ten miles from the city a well-dressed man with a very suspicious air, approached, and asked as follows:

Stranger --- “Are you the
Times correspondent?”

Jasper -- “No, sir. My impression is that he is still in jail; in fact, Gov. Perkins told me so just before I left.”

S. -- “Ah, you know Gov. Perkins?

J. -- “Oh yes, very well.”

S. -- “I beg your pardon, sir. I evidently have made a great mistake. But don’t you think he is abroad?”

J.-- “I do not” (exit Mr. Nonplussed.)

Just beyond, four old men were seated whom I recognized as members of the Convention that had just adjourned, and also ex-members of Congress, who had fed freely from the Federal pap. They were slightly winy, and at every station ran out and shouted to the crazy crowd “Fort Sumter is taken, the d--d Doubleday is killed.” As they were talking very loudly, I resolved to listen closely. The most bloated one of the crowd told his companions that he was sure I was the man -- he would swear to it. “It would not do for us old fellows to be engaged in it but let us pass him on, and if the Vigilants catch him at the next station, by God they’ll hang him to the first tree.”

At Florence, where we stopped for supper, I found that every one was rudely staring at me, and therefore thought it expedient not to expose myself. I had just obtained a seat, when several ruffians approached, and the spokesman said, “Will you give me your name, Sir, your business, where you come from, and where you are going? It is necessary that you speak the truth; if you don’t you will swing for it. Answer every question.” I then went through all sorts of questions; they made me stand up and examined my points as they would a slave at the “Mart.”

They could elicit nothing. I have not been in Charleston three months for nothing, and parried every question. The whistle sounded, and they hurried off, swearing that “there was something wrong about me, but they’d be d--d if I hadn’t bluffed them somehow.” Intolerably disgusted with this last exhibition of Palmetto Chivalry, I determined to put on a “secession cap” give my mustache a Southern twist and rant about secession with everyone that came along. At every station until I had reached the United States of South Carolina, the spies came in, but I had foiled them fully with this last arrangement, and reached Wilmington, N.C., in safety.

I wish here to thank in the warmest manner, Mr. Fanning, of the telegraph office, and Mr. Price of the
Daily Journal, for their courtesies, material and otherwise. Mr. F. said that telegrams had been sent to all points of the compass, and evidently thought that I had a narrow escape.
The above is Salter's account as reprinted in the Newark Daily Advertiser of April 17, 1861.
 
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