June 12, 1861 - Roads "bristling with armed men moving towards Virginia"

Countdown to the Battle of Bull Run, still more than five weeks away.

Her Majesty's Consul Robert Bunch, Our Man in Charleston, to Lord John Russell, Foreign Secretary:

                                   British Consulate

                                   Charleston, June 12, 1861

My Lord,

            ... The feeling of the people of this Consular District towards the government and people of the United States has in no way diminished in violence or intensity of hatred during the period which has elapsed since the fall of Fort Sumter. On the contrary, there exists at this moment  a bitterness of sentiment and a fierce determination that the issue between the two sections of the country shall be left to the arbitrament of the sword such as I could scarcely have believed possible, and have certainly never witnessed in the milder forms of revolutionary excitement to which I have been accustomed during my public service in South America.

            From all the information which reaches me from other portions of the Confederate States,  I am convinced that the same feelings prevail to a degree quite as intense throughout the Southern Country. A friend who has just arrived here from New Orleans tells me that the entire road, fifteen hundred miles in length, is bristling with armed men moving towards Virginia, and the sternest resolution is avowed by all to die rather than to be subjugated.

            Your Lordship can imagine the horrors through which this unhappy country is infallibly destined to pass unless some change shall speedily come over the spirit of both Rulers & People on either side of the question. ...

            

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