129
		A Street Affray.
 	 x

[newspaper clipping continued: first column]
vestige of them remaining.  In point of fact
Charleston harbor cannot be blockaded; a swift
westerly wind will remove any obstructions.  The
Emily St. Pierre, drawing sixteen feet of water
came in with perfect impunity.  Suppose, now, a
vessel with a commander determined to avail him-
self of this fact, by night, steering directly up to
the walls of Fort Sumter, or disembarking troops
by means of boats?  There is a light always burn-
ing nocturnally on the fortress, which we, South
Carolinians, are at present unable to extinguish.
	             COTTON SHIPMENTS.
  You will be surprised to learn that a good deal
of cotton has been sent off from our wharves dur-
ing the past week, cleared, provisionally, in Eng-
lish vessels.  Georgia, however, shrewd, solid, long-
headed Georgia, is garnering the principal business
advantages of secession.  In a letter recently re-
ceived by me from a friend at Savannah, he states
that that harbor never presented such a lively
spectacle, that secession constitutes only the second
topic in men�s minds, everybody being intent on
getting rich as fast as possible.

[newspaper clipping continued: second column]
	             THE NEW FLAG.
  We have reconsidered the arrangement of our
street flag and its colors, and decided finally upon
them.  It is to consist of a deep blue field with a
white, palmetto tree in the middle and a crescent
moon, the horns upwards, in the top angle, near
the flag-staff�a design at once tasty and conspicu-
ous.  Such a flag now floats over the arsenal.  In
the discarded one, which I have described in a for-
mer letter, the golden palmetto on a white oval was
found to be almost invisible.
	                   FREE TRADE.
  Secretary Memminger�s letter, in yesterday�s Mer-
cury, is an exemplification of the inevitable aban-
donment of the ideas of free trade, of which we
heard so much as a primary inducement to seces-
sion.  He proposes an ad valorem duty on cotton of
10 per cent., �if that be not too high.�  His letter
is extensively discussed among the merchants here.
It contains also an incitement to immediate attack
upon Fort Sumter, confirmatory of much that I
have advanced in this letter.

[Gunn�s diary continued]
each other with pistols, one being badly hit in the
leg, the other pretending injury and the pavement
puddled with blood.             Back to supper, anon
a walk down town where I introduced Ramsay
to the Courier sanctum, in which we found Car-
lyle, young Mitchel and a third person.        Vit-
roil junior spake despitefully of his non-appoint-
ment by Governor Pickens, to his staff, but was
going to set off for Virginia on the morrow on
a special mission. (?)    Carlyle and the other
person presently went out, Mitchel following,
leaving us, two correspondents of �Black Republi-
	��������������������������
  x The information included in this paragraph I
got from Bunch, the Consul, in my yesterday�s call.
It was kept out of the Charleston papers, of course.