Journalist William Russell visits Doughoregan, Fall of 1861

Account by William Russell, special correspondent of the London Times, of a visit to Doughoregan.

(Although Col. Carroll is not named in this article, William Russell names him elsewhere. Russell had made his name reporting on the Crimean War and would spend months in 1861 and 1862 touring North and South. The British subject had become “infamous” in the estimation of the Lincoln administration only a few months before this article by his blisteringly accurate account of the way in which the Federal troops broke and ran at Bull Run. William Russell was horrified by what he saw of American slavery in places like Louisiana, but was softened somewhat by his visit to Doughoregan. The “blow” Marylanders had sustained was the imposition of martial law and the crackdown against all States Rights elements in Maryland.)

The article was also in the London Times and reprinted widely, though without identifying the slave-owner in question. There are some differences in each version, and this is the most complete from the point of view of a portrait of the colonel and his land.

From The Catholic Mirror, November 2, 1861, p. 4.

“It is but a month since I was driving through magnificent undulating fields, hemmed in by broad belts of forest, and heavy with crops of Indian corn and tobacco. The rough wooden and brick huts huddled together in the neighborhood of the country seats were peopled by men, women and children with black faces, but for which they might have done duty easily for Hungarian or Lithuanian peasantry, attired in uncouth cloths and great lumbering boots, shuffling and hulking through the fields as if in search of moonstones. Their master, a good, easy, kind-hearted gentleman, polished and well-read, looking on them very much as the Irish squires of the old time regarded squatters—creatures who ought to be useful, who were not profitable, who had no business to be where they were, and who, nevertheless, could not be got rid of without imputations of cruelty which would make him be odious in the land. He was perfectly satisfied the free labor of whites would be more profitable, but what was he to do with his blacks? Where was he to get even the white labor he wanted?

With these sentiments, he felt bitterly the insults of the abolitionists who called him a slave-driver or “nigger breeder”. In his case, most of the fathers of these blacks had been transmitted to him by his ancestors, and had lived as families on the estate for several generations. To look at the fields, luxuriant with weeds and filled with stones, was to be satisfied the system of agriculture was patriarchal if the system of labor was not. But in fact, their condition was very different from that of the slaves on the Southern plantation. The proprietor of these broad domains is is, like many of the Maryland gentry, a Roman Catholic, and a priest, belonging to a religious and educational institution founded by the piety of his forefathers, is engaged to look after the religious welfare of his flock, and I saw a full congregation of the slaves trooping through the meadows t chapel, looking, in their gay dresses and natural groupings, very unlike the beings who are cribbed up like rabbits in the hatches of the South.

Then, after service was over, came the flocks of wooly-headed children of both sexes to the priest, for examination in the Catechism. The houses in which they lived were larger and better than the slave quarters on most plantations, but were not cleaner or more tidy, and it appeared to me as if the inhabitants were a little less respectful in their demeanor. In the name of crinoline, yellow shawls, pink and white dresses, wonderful bonnetry and very quaint-looking, how did the proprietor afford to turn out such gay nymphs of Africa? He did not afford it at all.—Grant that home-reared chickens and pigs paid for some of it, still enough came out of his pocket, in addition to feeding and supporting them, to leave very little between their labor and positive loss. It was no use to call them early, for they dawdled about the fields all the more. Here, in fact, was a state of things which would soon cure itself, if let alone.

The greater part of the estate, indeed, was farmed out to others, on the principle of one-half or one-third of the produce in lieu of rent, and I suspect that was far the most profitable mode of dealing with these wide-spread acres. I am assured that there are many estates in Maryland in the same condition. It may be imagined how their proprietors resent the propaganda which threatens to ruin them utterly, and how this last blow, dealt at the Legislature of the State in which they feel so much pride, is felt by men as tenacious and haughty as any Magyar or Pole who ever lived. If there be any large Union element in Maryland, let it be developed now, or the world will not believe in its existence.”

Although Russell does not identify Col. Carroll as the “gentleman” to whom he spoke about Confederate relatives, the article may answer some questions about exactly when and how Harper and Albert left for Virginia. Harper was a member of the Howard County Dragoons, a militia unit commanded (I believe) by his father and whose captain was George Gaither, with whom Harper would go across the river to the Confederacy. The “General at Baltimore” was likely Benjamin Butler; "Beauregardism” refers to the hero of Sumter and Manassass, P. G. T. Beuregard, who had pledged to some Baltimore belles to plant the Confederate flag atop Monument Square in that city.

This account is in the same article:

“Some considerable towns have spring up in the State recently which are the rallying points for the Union men, and which are thorns in the side of the country gentlemen; but, generally speaking, the majority of the people in most of the counties are opposed to the Government, and there are few landed proprietors who are not Southern Rights men. Many families have representatives in the army of the Confederate States, and all the efforts of the Federalists have not sufficed to prevent intelligence and aid from being sent across the Potomac into Virginia, and could not frustrate the attempts of bodies of armed gentlemen and others, on horse and on foot, to join their friends.

It was only the other day I was speaking to a gentleman who mentioned that he had a large number of relatives in the Southern army, as if it were a matter of common notoriety. ‘And how did they get there?’ Why they belonged to a body of cavalry which we have had for many years composed of the young gentlemen of the country to keep down negro insurrection. They hear one night that the negroes were going to rise, and appearances justified the rumor. So they assembled and sent in word to the General at Baltimore that they had met, and that they would probably require some aid. He ordered them at once to disband or to wait till he sent out an officer to make each of them take the oath of allegiance. Deeply offended by this conduct, nearly all of them rode off, crossed the river that night and joined the enemy. The women have embraced Beauregardism with the greatest devotion, and their beauty and grace render them powerful proselytizers.

It may be true that the State has been nearly disarmed by frequent and rigid searches, but if there are not bows, and flags and rosettes of the orthodox colors forthcoming in profusion whenever the Confederates make their appearance, I am much deceived at the ingenuity and zeal of the fair Marylanders.”