ABSTRACT
The M. T. Williams letter was written by the Englishman in New Orleans in 1861, only a week after the battle of Fort Sumter took place. This makes it a rare look at the city during a tumultuous time. It is posted to Sydney Williams – apparently a relative – and records that, already on 19 April, ‘the war fever has pretty nearly put a stop to business’. Interestingly, he accepts the Southern view of the outbreak: ‘The attack upon Sumpter was necessitated, though doubtless Northerners will endeavour to make out that the South was wrong in striking the first blow’. He is anti-abolitionist, and rightly predicts that ‘The secession of Virginia will bring Kentucky, Tenessee, Missouri, Arkansas and North Carolina in the course of a few weeks’. Most interesting, perhaps, is his observation that ‘All foreigners resident here are joining and even the English have come foreward in masse – it is a remarkable thing that no foreigner who has been here more than a month or two but sides heart and hand with the South – Although Englishmen never became American citizens’. Accordingly, Williams joined the home guard (the Esplanade Guards) ‘As a married man and an Englishman’. He was confident in victory and was convinced that Lincoln would flee Washington.
