The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sketches and Studies, by Nathaniel Hawthorne This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Sketches and Studies Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8091] This file was first posted on June 13, 2003 Last Updated: December 15, 2016 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKETCHES AND STUDIES *** Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger
* * * * * *
General Pierce’s journal here terminates. In its clear and simple
narrative the reader cannot fail to see—although it was written with
no purpose of displaying them—the native qualities of a born
soldier, together with the sagacity of an experienced one. He had proved
himself, moreover, physically apt for war, by his easy endurance of the
fatigues of the march; every step of which (as was the case with few other
officers) was performed either on horseback or on foot. Nature, indeed,
has endowed him with a rare elasticity both of mind and body; he springs
up from pressure like a well-tempered sword. After the severest toil, a
single night’s rest does as much for him, in the way of refreshment, as a
week could do for most other men.
His conduct on this adventurous march received the high encomiums of
military men, and was honored with the commendation of the great soldier
who is now his rival in the presidential contest. He reached the main army
at Puebla on the 7th of August, with twenty-four hundred men, in fine
order, and without the loss of a single wagon.
* * * * * *
We found one man, however, at the Capitol, who was satisfactorily adequate
to the business which brought him thither. In quest of him, we went
through halls, galleries, and corridors, and ascended a noble staircase,
balustraded with a dark and beautifully variegated marble from Tennessee,
the richness of which is quite a sufficient cause for objecting to the
secession of that State. At last we came to a barrier of pine boards,
built right across the stairs. Knocking at a rough, temporary door, we
thrust a card beneath; and in a minute or two it was opened by a person in
his shirt-sleeves, a middle-aged figure, neither tall nor short, of
Teutonic build and aspect, with an ample beard of a ruddy tinge and
chestnut hair. He looked at us, in the first place, with keen and somewhat
guarded eyes, as if it were not his practice to vouchsafe any great warmth
of greeting, except upon sure ground of observation. Soon, however, his
look grew kindly and genial (not that it had ever been in the least degree
repulsive, but only reserved), and Leutze allowed us to gaze at the
cartoon of his great fresco, and talked about it unaffectedly, as only a
man of true genius can speak of his own works. Meanwhile the noble design
spoke for itself upon the wall. A sketch in color, which we saw
afterwards, helped us to form some distant and flickering notion of what
the picture will be, a few months hence, when these bare outlines, already
so rich in thought and suggestiveness, shall glow with a fire of their
own,—a fire which, I truly believe, will consume every other
pictorial decoration of the Capitol, or, at least, will compel us to
banish those stiff and respectable productions to some less conspicuous
gallery. The work will be emphatically original and American, embracing
characteristics that neither art nor literature have yet dealt with, and
producing new forms of artistic beauty from the natural features of the
Rocky-Mountain region, which Leutze seems to have studied broadly and
minutely. The garb of the hunters and wanderers of those deserts, too,
under his free and natural management, is shown as the most picturesque of
costumes. But it would be doing this admirable painter no kind office to
overlay his picture with any more of my colorless and uncertain words; so
I shall merely add that it looked full of energy, hope, progress,
irrepressible movement onward, all represented in a momentary pause of
triumph; and it was most cheering to feel its good augury at this dismal
time, when our country might seem to have arrived at such a deadly
stand-still.
It was an absolute comfort, indeed, to find Leutze so quietly busy at this
great national work, which is destined to glow for centuries on the walls
of the Capitol, if that edifice shall stand, or must share its fate, if
treason shall succeed in subverting it with the Union which it represents.
It was delightful to see him so calmly elaborating his design, while other
men doubted and feared, or hoped treacherously, and whispered to one
another that the nation would exist only a little longer, or that, if a
remnant still held together, its centre and seat of government would be
far northward and westward of Washington. But the artist keeps right on,
firm of heart and hand, drawing his outlines with an unwavering pencil,
beautifying and idealizing our rude, material life, and thus manifesting
that we have an indefeasible claim to a more enduring national existence.
In honest truth, what with the hope-inspiring influence of the design, and
what with Leutze’s undisturbed evolvement of it, I was exceedingly
encouraged, and allowed these cheerful auguries to weigh against a
sinister omen that was pointed out to me in another part of the Capitol.
The freestone walls of the central edifice are pervaded with great cracks,
and threaten to come thundering down, under the immense weight of the iron
dome,—an appropriate catastrophe enough if it should occur on the
day when we drop the Southern stars out of our flag.
Everybody seems to be at Washington, and yet there is a singular dearth of
imperatively noticeable people there. I question whether there are half a
dozen individuals, in all kinds of eminence, at whom a stranger, wearied
with the contact of a hundred moderate celebrities, would turn round to
snatch a second glance. Secretary Seward, to be sure,—a pale,
large-nosed, elderly man, of moderate stature, with a decided originality
of gait and aspect, and a cigar in his mouth,—etc., etc. [We are
again compelled to interfere with our friend’s license of personal
description and criticism. Even Cabinet Ministers (to whom the next few
pages of the article were devoted) had their private immunities, which
ought to be conscientiously observed,—unless, indeed, the writer
chanced to have some very piquant motives for violating them.]
* * * * * *
Of course, there was one other personage, in the class of statesmen, whom
I should have been truly mortified to leave Washington without seeing;
since (temporarily, at least, and by force of circumstances) he was the
man of men. But a private grief had built up a barrier about him, impeding
the customary free intercourse of Americans with their chief magistrate;
so that I might have come away without a glimpse of his very remarkable
physiognomy, save for a semi-official opportunity of which I was glad to
take advantage. The fact is, we were invited to annex ourselves, as
supernumeraries, to a deputation that was about to wait upon the
President, from a Massachusetts whip-factory, with a present of a splendid
whip.
Our immediate party consisted only of four or five (including Major Ben
Perley Poore, with his note-book and pencil), but we were joined by
several other persons, who seemed to have been lounging about the
precincts of the White House, under the spacious porch, or within the
hall, and who swarmed in with us to take the chances of a presentation.
Nine o’clock had been appointed as the time for receiving the deputation,
and we were punctual to the moment; but not so the President, who sent us
word that he was eating his breakfast, and would come as soon as he could.
His appetite, we were glad to think, must have been a pretty fair one; for
we waited about half an hour in one of the antechambers, and then were
ushered into a reception-room, in one corner of which sat the Secretaries
of War and of the Treasury, expecting, like ourselves, the termination of
the Presidential breakfast. During this interval there were several new
additions to our group, one or two of whom were in a working-garb, so that
we formed a very miscellaneous collection of people, mostly unknown to
each other, and without any common sponsor, but all with an equal right to
look our head-servant in the face.
By and by there was a little stir on the staircase and in the passage-way,
and in lounged a tall, loose-jointed figure, of an exaggerated Yankee port
and demeanor, whom (as being about the homeliest man I ever saw, yet by no
means repulsive or disagreeable) it was impossible not to recognize as
Uncle Abe.
Unquestionably, Western man though he be, and Kentuckian by birth,
President Lincoln is the essential representative of all Yankees, and the
veritable specimen, physically, of what the world seems determined to
regard as our characteristic qualities. It is the strangest and yet the
fittest thing in the jumble of human vicissitudes, that he, out of so many
millions, unlooked for, unselected by any intelligible process that could
be based upon his genuine qualities, unknown to those who chose him, and
unsuspected of what endowments may adapt him for his tremendous
responsibility, should have found the way open for him to fling his lank
personality into the chair of state,—where, I presume, it was his
first impulse to throw his legs on the council-table, and tell the Cabinet
Ministers a story. There is no describing his lengthy awkwardness, nor the
uncouthness of his movement; and yet it seemed as if I had been in the
habit of seeing him daily, and had shaken hands with him a thousand times
in some village street; so true was he to the aspect of the pattern
American, though with a certain extravagance which, possibly, I
exaggerated still further by the delighted eagerness with which I took it
in. If put to guess his calling and livelihood, I should have taken him
for a country schoolmaster as soon as anything else. He was dressed in a
rusty black frock-coat and pantaloons, unbrushed, and worn so faithfully
that the suit had adapted itself to the curves and angularities of his
figure, and had grown to be an outer skin of the man. He had shabby
slippers on his feet. His hair was black, still unmixed with gray, stiff,
somewhat bushy, and had apparently been acquainted with neither brush nor
comb that morning, after the disarrangement of the pillow; and as to a
night-cap, Uncle Abe probably knows nothing of such effeminacies. His
complexion is dark and sallow, betokening, I fear, an insalubrious
atmosphere around the White House; he has thick black eyebrows and an
impending brow; his nose is large, and the lines about his mouth are very
strongly defined.
The whole physiognomy is as coarse a one as you would meet anywhere in the
length and breadth of the States; but, withal, it is redeemed,
illuminated, softened, and brightened by a kindly though serious look out
of his eyes, and an expression of homely sagacity, that seems weighted
with rich results of village experience. A great deal of native sense; no
bookish cultivation, no refinement; honest at heart, and thoroughly so,
and yet, in some sort, sly,—at least, endowed with a sort of tact
and wisdom that are akin to craft, and would impel him, I think, to take
an antagonist in flank, rather than to make a bull-run at him right in
front. But, on the whole, I like this sallow, queer, sagacious visage,
with the homely human sympathies that warmed it; and, for my small share
in the matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe for a ruler as any man whom it
would have been practicable to put in his place.
Immediately on his entrance the President accosted our member of Congress,
who had us in charge, and, with a comical twist of his face, made some
jocular remark about the length of his breakfast. He then greeted us all
round, not waiting for an introduction, but shaking and squeezing
everybody’s hand with the utmost cordiality, whether the individual’s name
was announced to him or not. His manner towards us was wholly without
pretence, but yet had a kind of natural dignity, quite sufficient to keep
the forwardest of us from clapping him on the shoulder and asking him for
a story. A mutual acquaintance being established, our leader took the whip
out of its case, and began to read the address of presentation. The whip
was an exceedingly long one, its handle wrought in ivory (by some artist
in the Massachusetts State Prison, I believe), and ornamented with a
medallion of the President, and other equally beautiful devices; and along
its whole length there was a succession of golden bands and ferrules. The
address was shorter than the whip, but equally well made, consisting
chiefly of an explanatory description of these artistic designs, and
closing with a hint that the gift was a suggestive and emblematic one, and
that the President would recognize the use to which such an instrument
should be put.
This suggestion gave Uncle Abe rather a delicate task in his reply,
because, slight as the matter seemed, it apparently called for some
declaration, or intimation, or faint foreshadowing of policy in reference
to the conduct of the war, and the final treatment of the Rebels. But the
President’s Yankee aptness and not-to-be-caughtness stood him in good
stead, and he jerked or wiggled himself out of the dilemma with an uncouth
dexterity that was entirely in character; although, without his
gesticulation of eye and month,—and especially the flourish of the
whip, with which he imagined himself touching up a pair of fat horses,—I
doubt whether his words would be worth recording, even if I could remember
them. The gist of the reply was, that he accepted the whip as an emblem of
peace; not punishment; and, this great affair over, we retired out of the
presence in high good-humor, only regretting that we could not have seen
the President sit down and fold up his legs (which is said to be a most
extraordinary spectacle), or have heard him tell one of those delectable
stories for which he is so celebrated. A good many of them are afloat upon
the common talk of Washington, and are certainly the aptest, pithiest, and
funniest little things imaginable; though, to be sure, they smack of the
frontier freedom, and would not always bear repetition in a drawing-room,
or on the immaculate page of the Atlantic.
[The above passage relating to President Lincoln was one of those omitted
from the article as originally published, and the following note was
appended to explain the omission, which had been indicated by a line of
points:—
We are compelled to omit two or three pages, in which the author describes
the interview, and gives his idea of the personal appearance and
deportment of the President. The sketch appears to have been written in a
benign spirit, and perhaps conveys a not inaccurate impression of its
august subject; but it lacks reverence, and it pains us to see a gentleman
of ripe age, and who has spent years under the corrective influence of
foreign institutions, falling into the characteristic and most ominous
fault of Young America.]
Good Heavens! what liberties have I been taking with one of the potentates
of the earth, and the man on whose conduct more important consequences
depend than on that of any other historical personage of the century! But
with whom is an American citizen entitled to take a liberty, if not with
his own chief magistrate? However, lest the above allusions to President
Lincoln’s little peculiarities (already well known to the country and to
the world) should be misinterpreted, I deem it proper to say a word or two
in regard to him, of unfeigned respect and measurable confidence. He is
evidently a man of keen faculties, and, what is still more to the purpose,
of powerful character. As to his integrity, the people have that intuition
of it which is never deceived. Before he actually entered upon his great
office, and for a considerable time afterwards, there is no reason to
suppose that he adequately estimated the gigantic task about to be imposed
on him, or, at least, had any distinct idea how it was to be managed; and
I presume there may have been more than one veteran politician who
proposed to himself to take the power out of President Lincoln’s hands
into his own, leaving our honest friend only the public responsibility for
the good or ill success of the career. The extremely imperfect development
of his statesmanly qualities, at that period, may have justified such
designs. But the President is teachable by events, and has now spent a
year in a very arduous course of education; he has a flexible mind,
capable of much expansion, and convertible towards far loftier studies and
activities than those of his early life; and if he came to Washington a
backwoods humorist, he has already transformed himself into as good a
statesman (to speak moderately) as his prime-minister.
Among other excursions to camps and places of interest in the neighborhood
of Washington, we went, one day, to Alexandria. It is a little port on the
Potomac, with one or two shabby wharves and docks, resembling those of a
fishing-village in New England, and the respectable old brick town rising
gently behind. In peaceful times it no doubt bore an aspect of decorous
quietude and dulness; but it was now thronged with the Northern soldiery,
whose stir and bustle contrasted strikingly with the many closed
warehouses, the absence of citizens from their customary haunts, and the
lack of any symptom of healthy activity, while army-wagons trundled
heavily over the pavements, and sentinels paced the sidewalks, and mounted
dragoons dashed to and fro on military errands. I tried to imagine how
very disagreeable the presence of a Southern army would be in a sober town
of Massachusetts; and the thought considerably lessened my wonder at the
cold and shy regards that are cast upon our troops, the gloom, the sullen
demeanor, the declared or scarcely hidden sympathy with rebellion, which
are so frequent here. It is a strange thing in human life, that the
greatest errors both of men and women often spring from their sweetest and
most generous qualities; and so, undoubtedly, thousands of warm-hearted,
sympathetic, and impulsive persons have joined the Rebels, not from any
real zeal for the cause, but because, between two conflicting loyalties,
they chose that which necessarily lay nearest the heart. There never
existed any other government against which treason was so easy, and could
defend itself by such plausible arguments, as against that of the United
States. The anomaly of two allegiances (of which that of the State comes
nearest home to a man’s feelings, and includes the altar and the hearth,
while the General Government claims his devotion only to an airy mode of
law, and has no symbol but a flag) is exceedingly mischievous in this
point of view; for it has converted crowds of honest people into traitors,
who seem to themselves not merely innocent but patriotic, and who die for
a bad cause with as quiet a conscience as if it were the best. In the vast
extent of our country,—too vast by far to be taken into one small
human heart,—we inevitably limit to our own State, or, at farthest,
to our own section, that sentiment of physical love for the soil which
renders an Englishman, for example, so intensely sensitive to the dignity
and well-being of his little island, that one hostile foot, treading
anywhere upon it, would make a bruise on each individual breast. If a man
loves his individual State, therefore, and is content to be ruined with
her, let us shoot him if we can, but allow him an honorable burial in the
soil he fights for.
[We do not thoroughly comprehend the author’s drift in the foregoing
paragraph, but are inclined to think its tone reprehensible, and its
tendency impolitic in the present stage of our national difficulties.]
In Alexandria we visited the tavern in which Colonel Ellsworth was killed,
and saw the spot where he fell, and saw the stairs below, whence Jackson
fired the fatal shot, and where he himself was slain a moment afterwards;
so that the assassin and his victim must have met on the threshold of the
spirit-world, and perhaps came to a better understanding before they had
taken many steps on the other side. Ellsworth was too generous to bear an
immortal grudge for a deed like that, done in hot blood, and by no
skulking enemy. The memorial-hunters have completely cut away the original
wood-work around the spot, with their pocket-knives; and the staircase,
balustrade, and floor, as well as the adjacent doors and door-frames, have
recently been renewed; the walls, moreover, are covered with new
paper-hangings, the former having been torn off in tatters; and thus it
becomes something like a metaphysical question whether the place of the
murder actually exists.
Driving out of Alexandria, we stopped on the edge of the city to inspect
an old slave-pen, which is one of the lions of the place, but a very poor
one; and a little farther on, we came to a brick church, where Washington
used sometimes to attend service,—a pre-Revolutionary edifice, with
ivy growing over its walls, though not very luxuriantly. Reaching the open
country, we saw forts and camps on all sides; some of the tents being
placed immediately on the ground, while others were raised over a basement
of logs, laid lengthwise, like those of a log-hut, or driven vertically
into the soil in a circle,—thus forming a solid wall, the chinks
closed up with Virginia mud, and above it the pyramidal shelter of the
tent. Here were in progress all the occupations, and all the idleness, of
the soldier in the tented field: some were cooking the company-rations in
pots hung over fires in the open air; some played at ball, or developed
their muscular power by gymnastic exercise; some read newspapers; some
smoked cigars or pipes; and many were cleaning their arms or
accoutrements,—the more carefully, perhaps, because their division
was to be reviewed by the Commander-in-Chief that afternoon; others sat on
the ground, while their comrades cut their hair,—it being a
soldierly fashion (and for excellent reasons) to crop it within an inch of
the skull; others, finally, lay asleep in breast-high tents, with their
legs protruding into the open air.
We paid a visit to Fort Ellsworth, and from its ramparts (which have been
heaped up out of the muddy soil within the last few months, and will
require still a year or two to make them verdant) we had a beautiful view
of the Potomac, a truly majestic river, and the surrounding country. The
fortifications, so numerous in all this region, and now so unsightly with
their bare, precipitous sides, will remain as historic monuments,
grass-grown and picturesque memorials of an epoch of terror and suffering:
they will serve to make our country dearer and more interesting to us, and
afford fit soil for poetry to root itself in: for this is a plant which
thrives best in spots where blood has been spilt long ago, and grows in
abundant clusters in old ditches, such as the moat around Fort Ellsworth
will be a century hence. It may seem to be paying dear for what many will
reckon but a worthless weed; but the more historical associations we can
link with our localities, the richer will be the daily life that feeds
upon the past, and the more valuable the things that have been long
established: so that our children will be less prodigal than their fathers
in sacrificing good institutions to passionate impulses and impracticable
theories. This herb of grace, let us hope, will be found in the old
footprints of the war.
Even in an aesthetic point of view, however, the war has done a great deal
of enduring mischief, by causing the devastation of great tracts of
woodland scenery, in which this part of Virginia would appear to be very
rich. Around all the encampments, and everywhere along the road, we saw
the bare sites of what had evidently been tracts of hard-wood forest,
indicated by the unsightly stumps of well-grown trees, not smoothly felled
by regular axe-men, but hacked, haggled, and unevenly amputated, as by a
sword or other miserable tool, in an unskilful hand. Fifty years will not
repair this desolation. An army destroys everything before and around it,
even to the very grass; for the sites of the encampments are converted
into barren esplanades, like those of the squares in French cities, where
not a blade of grass is allowed to grow. As to the other symptoms of
devastation and obstruction, such as deserted houses, unfenced fields, and
a general aspect of nakedness and ruin, I know not how much may be due to
a normal lack of neatness in the rural life of Virginia, which puts a
squalid face even upon a prosperous state of things; but undoubtedly the
war must have spoilt what was good, and made the bad a great deal worse.
The carcasses of horses were scattered along the wayside.
One very pregnant token of a social system thoroughly disturbed was
presented by a party of contrabands, escaping out of the mysterious depths
of Secessia; and its strangeness consisted in the leisurely delay with
which they trudged forward, as dreading no pursuer, and encountering
nobody to turn them back. They were unlike the specimens of their race
whom we are accustomed to see at the North, and, in my judgment, were far
more agreeable. So rudely were they attired,—as if their garb had
grown upon them spontaneously,—so picturesquely natural in manners,
and wearing such a crust of primeval simplicity (which is quite polished
away from the Northern black man), that they seemed a kind of creature by
themselves, not altogether human, but perhaps quite as good, and akin to
the fawns and rustic deities of olden times. I wonder whether I shall
excite anybody’s wrath by saying this. It is no great matter. At all
events, I felt most kindly towards these poor fugitives, but knew not
precisely what to wish in their behalf, nor in the least how to help them.
For the sake of the manhood which is latent in them, I would not have
turned them back; but I should have felt almost as reluctant, on their own
account, to hasten them forward to the stranger’s land; and I think my
prevalent idea was, that, whoever may be benefited by the results of this
war, it will not be the present generation of negroes, the childhood of
whose race is now gone forever, and who must henceforth fight a hard
battle with the world, on very unequal terms. On behalf of my own race, I
am glad and can only hope that an inscrutable Providence means good to
both parties.
There is an historical circumstance, known to few, that connects the
children of the Puritans with these Africans of Virginia in a very
singular way. They are our brethren, as being lineal descendants from the
Mayflower, the fated womb of which, in her first voyage, sent forth a
brood of Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, and, in a subsequent one, spawned
slaves upon the Southern soil,—a monstrous birth, but with which we
have an instinctive sense of kindred, and so are stirred by an
irresistible impulse to attempt their rescue, even at the cost of blood
and ruin. The character of our sacred ship, I fear, may suffer a little by
this revelation; but we must let her white progeny offset her dark one,—and
two such portents never sprang from an identical source before.
While we drove onward, a young officer on horseback looked earnestly into
the carriage, and recognized some faces that he had seen before; so he
rode along by our side, and we pestered him with queries and observations,
to which he responded more civilly than they deserved. He was on General
McClellan’s staff; and a gallant cavalier, high-booted, with a revolver in
his belt, and mounted on a noble horse, which trotted hard and high
without disturbing the rider in his accustomed seat. His face had a
healthy hue of exposure and an expression of careless hardihood; and, as I
looked at him, it seemed to me that the war had brought good fortune to
the youth of this epoch, if to none beside; since they now make it their
daily business to ride a horse and handle a sword, instead of lounging
listlessly through the duties, occupations, pleasures—all tedious
alike—to which the artificial state of society limits a peaceful
generation. The atmosphere of the camp and the smoke of the battle-field
are morally invigorating; the hardy virtues flourish in them, the nonsense
dies like a wilted weed. The enervating effects of centuries of
civilization vanish at once, and leave these young men to enjoy a life of
hardship, and the exhilarating sense of danger,—to kill men
blamelessly, or to be killed gloriously,—and to be happy in
following out their native instincts of destruction, precisely in the
spirit of Homer’s heroes, only with some considerable change of mode. One
touch of Nature makes not only the whole world, but all time, akin. Set
men face to face, with weapons in their hands, and they are as ready to
slaughter one another now, after playing at peace and good-will for so
many years, as in the rudest ages, that never heard of peace-societies,
and thought no wine so delicious as what they quaffed from an enemy’s
skull. Indeed, if the report of a Congressional committee may be trusted,
that old-fashioned kind of goblet has again come into use at the expense
of our Northern head-pieces,—a costly drinking-cup to him that
furnishes it! Heaven forgive me for seeming to jest upon such a subject!—only,
it is so odd, when we measure our advances from barbarism, and find
ourselves just here! [We hardly expected this outbreak in favor of war
from the Peaceable Man; but the justness of our cause makes us all
soldiers at heart, however quiet in our outward life. We have heard of
twenty Quakers in a single company of a Pennsylvania regiment.]
We now approached General McClellan’s head-quarters, which, at that time,
were established at Fairfield Seminary. The edifice was situated on a
gentle elevation, amid very agreeable scenery, and, at a distance, looked
like a gentleman’s seat. Preparations were going forward for reviewing a
division of ten or twelve thousand men, the various regiments composing
which had begun to array themselves on an extensive plain, where,
methought, there was a more convenient place for a battle than is usually
found in this broken and difficult country. Two thousand cavalry made a
portion of the troops to be reviewed. By and by we saw a pretty numerous
troop of mounted officers, who were congregated on a distant part of the
plain, and whom we finally ascertained to be the Commander-in-Chief’s
staff, with McClellan himself at their head. Our party managed to
establish itself in a position conveniently close to the General, to whom,
moreover, we had the honor of an introduction; and he bowed, on his
horseback, with a good deal of dignity and martial courtesy, but no airs
nor fuss nor pretension beyond what his character and rank inevitably gave
him.
Now, at that juncture, and in fact, up to the present moment, there was,
and is, a most fierce and bitter outcry, and detraction loud and low,
against General McClellan, accusing him of sloth, imbecility, cowardice,
treasonable purposes, and, in short, utterly denying his ability as a
soldier, and questioning his integrity as a man. Nor was this to be
wondered at; for when before, in all history, do we find a general in
command of half a million of men, and in presence of an enemy inferior in
numbers and no better disciplined than his own troops, leaving it still
debatable, after the better part of a year, whether he is a soldier or no?
The question would seem to answer itself in the very asking. Nevertheless,
being most profoundly ignorant of the art of war, like the majority of the
General’s critics, and, on the other hand, having some considerable
impressibility by men’s characters, I was glad of the opportunity to look
him in the face, and to feel whatever influence might reach me from his
sphere. So I stared at him, as the phrase goes, with all the eyes I had;
and the reader shall have the benefit of what I saw, —to which he is
the more welcome, because, in writing this article, I feel disposed to be
singularly frank, and can scarcely restrain myself from telling truths the
utterance of which I should get slender thanks for.
The General was dressed in a simple, dark-blue uniform, without epaulets,
booted to the knee, and with a cloth cap upon his head; and, at first
sight, you might have taken him for a corporal of dragoons, of
particularly neat and soldier-like aspect, and in the prime of his age and
strength. He is only of middling stature, but his build is very compact
and sturdy, with broad shoulders and a look of great physical vigor,
which, in fact, he is said to possess,—he and Beauregard having been
rivals in that particular, and both distinguished above other men. His
complexion is dark and sanguine, with dark hair. He has a strong, bold,
soldierly face, full of decision; a Roman nose, by no means a thin
prominence, but very thick and firm; and if he follows it (which I should
think likely), it may be pretty confidently trusted to guide him aright.
His profile would make a more effective likeness than the full face,
which, however, is much better in the real man than in any photograph that
I have seen. His forehead is not remarkably large, but comes forward at
the eyebrows; it is not the brow nor countenance of a prominently
intellectual man (not a natural student, I mean, or abstract thinker), but
of one whose office it is to handle things practically and to bring about
tangible results. His face looked capable of being very stern, but wore,
in its repose, when I saw it, an aspect pleasant and dignified; it is not,
in its character, an American face, nor an English one. The man on whom he
fixes his eye is conscious of him. In his natural disposition, he seems
calm and self-possessed, sustaining his great responsibilities cheerfully,
without shrinking, or weariness, or spasmodic effort, or damage to his
health, but all with quiet, deep-drawn breaths; just as his broad
shoulders would bear up a heavy burden without aching beneath it.
After we had had sufficient time to peruse the man (so far as it could be
done with one pair of very attentive eyes), the General rode off, followed
by his cavalcade, and was lost to sight among the troops. They received
him with loud shouts, by the eager uproar of which—now near, now in
the centre, now on the outskirts of the division, and now sweeping back
towards us in a great volume of sound—we could trace his progress
through the ranks. If he is a coward, or a traitor, or a humbug, or
anything less than a brave, true, and able man, that mass of intelligent
soldiers, whose lives and honor he had in charge, were utterly deceived,
and so was this present writer; for they believed in him, and so did I;
and had I stood in the ranks, should have shouted with the lustiest of
them. Of course I may be mistaken; my opinion on such a point is worth
nothing, although my impression may be worth a little more; neither do I
consider the General’s antecedents as bearing very decided testimony to
his practical soldiership. A thorough knowledge of the science of war
seems to be conceded to him; he is allowed to be a good military critic;
but all this is possible without his possessing any positive qualities of
a great general, just as a literary critic may show the profoundest
acquaintance with the principles of epic poetry without being able to
produce a single stanza of an epic poem. Nevertheless, I shall not give up
my faith in General McClellan’s soldiership until he is defeated, nor in
his courage and integrity even then.
Another of our excursions was to Harper’s Ferry,—the Directors of
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad having kindly invited us to accompany them
on the first trip over the newly laid track, after its breaking up by the
Rebels. It began to rain, in the early morning, pretty soon after we left
Washington, and continued to pour a cataract throughout the day; so that
the aspect of the country was dreary, where it would otherwise have been
delightful, as we entered among the hill-scenery that is formed by the
subsiding swells of the Alleghanies. The latter part of our journey lay
along the shore of the Potomac, in its upper course, where the margin of
that noble river is bordered by gray, over-hanging crags, beneath which—and
sometimes right through them—the railroad takes its way. In one
place the Rebels had attempted to arrest a train by precipitating an
immense mass of rock down upon the track, by the side of which it still
lay, deeply imbedded in the ground, and looking as if it might have lain
there since the Deluge. The scenery grew even more picturesque as we
proceeded, the bluffs becoming very bold in their descent upon the river,
which, at Harper’s Ferry, presents as striking a vista among the hills as
a painter could desire to see. But a beautiful landscape is a luxury, and
luxuries are thrown away amid discomfort; and when we alighted in the
tenacious mud and almost fathomless puddle, on the hither side of the
Ferry (the ultimate point to which the cars proceeded, since the railroad
bridge had been destroyed by the Rebels), I cannot remember that any very
rapturous emotions were awakened by the scenery.
We paddled and floundered over the ruins of the track, and, scrambling
down an embankment, crossed the Potomac by a pontoon-bridge, a thousand
feet in length, over the narrow line of which—level with the river,
and rising and subsiding with it—General Banks had recently led his
whole army, with its ponderous artillery and heavy laden wagons. Yet our
own tread made it vibrate. The broken bridge of the railroad was a little
below us, and at the base of one of its massive piers, in the rocky bed of
the river, lay a locomotive, which the Rebels had precipitated there.
As we passed over, we looked towards the Virginia shore, and beheld the
little town of Harper’s Ferry, gathered about the base of a round hill and
climbing up its steep acclivity; so that it somewhat resembled the
Etruscan cities which I have seen among the Apennines, rushing, as it
were, down an apparently breakneck height. About midway of the ascent
stood a shabby brick church, towards which a difficult path went
scrambling up the precipice, indicating, one would say; a very fervent
aspiration on the part of the worshippers, unless there was some easier
mode of access in another direction. Immediately on the shore of the
Potomac, and extending back towards the town, lay the dismal ruins of the
United States arsenal and armory, consisting of piles of broken bricks and
a waste of shapeless demolition, amid which we saw gun-barrels in heaps of
hundreds together. They were the relics of the conflagration, bent with
the heat of the fire, and rusted with the wintry rain to which they had
since been exposed. The brightest sunshine could not have made the scene
cheerful, nor have taken away the gloom from the dilapidated town; for,
besides the natural shabbiness, and decayed, unthrifty look of a Virginian
village, it has an inexpressible forlornness resulting from the
devastations of war and its occupation by both armies alternately. Yet
there would be a less striking contrast between Southern and New England
villages, if the former were as much in the habit of using white paint as
we are. It is prodigiously efficacious in putting a bright face upon a bad
matter.
There was one small shop which appeared to have nothing for sale. A single
man and one or two boys were all the inhabitants in view, except the
Yankee sentinels and soldiers, belonging to Massachusetts regiments, who
were scattered about pretty numerously. A guard-house stood on the slope
of the hill; and in the level street at its base were the offices of the
Provost-Marshal and other military authorities, to whom we forthwith
reported ourselves. The Provost-Marshal kindly sent a corporal to guide us
to the little building which John Brown seized upon as his fortress, and
which, after it was stormed by the United States marines, became his
temporary prison. It is an old engine-house, rusty and shabby, like every
other work of man’s hands in this God-forsaken town, and stands fronting
upon the river, only a short distance from the bank, nearly at the point
where the pontoon-bridge touches the Virginia shore. In its front wall, on
each side of the door, are two or three ragged loop-holes, which John
Brown perforated for his defence, knocking out merely a brick or two, so
as to give himself and his garrison a sight over their rifles. Through
these orifices the sturdy old man dealt a good deal of deadly mischief
among his assailants, until they broke down the door by thrusting against
it with a ladder, and tumbled headlong in upon him. I shall not pretend to
be an admirer of old John Brown, any farther than sympathy with Whittier’s
excellent ballad about him may go; nor did I expect ever to shrink so
unutterably from any apophthegm of a sage, whose happy lips have uttered a
hundred golden sentences, as from that saying (perhaps falsely attributed
to so honored a source), that the death of this blood-stained fanatic has
“made the Gallows as venerable as the Cross!” Nobody was ever more justly
hanged. He won his martyrdom fairly, and took it firmly. He himself, I am
persuaded (such was his natural integrity), would have acknowledged that
Virginia had a right to take the life which he had staked and lost;
although it would have been better for her, in the hour that is fast
coming, if she could generously have forgotten the criminality of his
attempt in its enormous folly. On the other hand, any common-sensible man,
looking at the matter unsentimentally, must have felt a certain
intellectual satisfaction in seeing him hanged, if it were only in
requittal of his preposterous miscalculation of possibilities. [Can it be
a son of old Massachusetts who utters this abominable sentiment? For
shame.]
But, coolly as I seem to say these things, my Yankee heart stirred
triumphantly when I saw the use to which John Brown’s fortress and
prison-house has now been put. What right have I to complain of any other
man’s foolish impulses, when I cannot possibly control my own? The
engine-house is now a place of confinement for Rebel prisoners.
A Massachusetts soldier stood on guard, but readily permitted our whole
party to enter. It was a wretched place. A room of perhaps twenty-five
feet square occupied the whole interior of the building, having an iron
stove in its centre, whence a rusty funnel ascended towards a hole in the
roof, which served the purposes of ventilation, as well as for the exit of
smoke. We found ourselves right in the midst of the Rebels, some of whom
lay on heaps of straw, asleep, or, at all events, giving no sign of
consciousness; others sat in the corners of the room, huddled close
together, and staring with a lazy kind of interest at the visitors; two
were astride of some planks, playing with the dirtiest pack of cards that
I ever happened to see. There was only one figure in the least military
among all these twenty prisoners of war,—a man with a dark,
intelligent, moustached face, wearing a shabby cotton uniform, which he
had contrived to arrange with a degree of soldierly smartness, though it
had evidently borne the brunt of a very filthy campaign. He stood erect,
and talked freely with those who addressed him, telling them his place of
residence, the number of his regiment, the circumstances of his capture,
and such other particulars as their Northern inquisitiveness prompted them
to ask. I liked the manliness of his deportment; he was neither ashamed,
nor afraid, nor in the slightest degree sullen, peppery, or contumacious,
but bore himself as if whatever animosity he had felt towards his enemies
was left upon the battle-field, and would not be resumed till he had again
a weapon in his hand.
Neither could I detect a trace of hostile feeling in the countenance,
words, or manner of any prisoner there. Almost to a man, they were simple,
bumpkin-like fellows, dressed in homespun clothes, with faces singularly
vacant of meaning, but sufficiently good-humored: a breed of men, in
short, such as I did not suppose to exist in this country, although I have
seen their like in some other parts of the world. They were peasants, and
of a very low order; a class of people with whom our Northern rural
population has not a single trait in common. They were exceedingly
respectful,—more so than a rustic New-Englander ever dreams of being
towards anybody, except perhaps his minister; and had they worn any hats
they would probably have been self-constrained to take them off, under the
unusual circumstance of being permitted to hold conversation with
well-dressed persons. It is my belief that not a single bumpkin of them
all (the moustached soldier always excepted) had the remotest
comprehension of what they had been fighting for, or how they had deserved
to be shut up in that dreary hole; nor, possibly, did they care to inquire
into this latter mystery, but took it as a godsend to be suffered to lie
here in a heap of unwashed human bodies, well warmed and well foddered
to-day, and without the necessity of bothering themselves about the
possible hunger and cold of to-morrow. Their dark prison-life may have
seemed to them the sunshine of all their lifetime.
There was one poor wretch, a wild-beast of a man, at whom I gazed with
greater interest than at his fellows; although I know not that each one of
them, in their semi-barbarous moral state, might not have been capable of
the same savage impulse that had made this particular individual a horror
to all beholders. At the close of some battle or skirmish, a wounded Union
soldier had crept on hands and knees to his feet, and besought his
assistance,—not dreaming that any creature in human shape, in the
Christian land where they had so recently been brethren, could refuse it.
But this man (this fiend, if you prefer to call him so, though I would not
advise it) flung a bitter curse at the poor Northerner, and absolutely
trampled the soul out of his body, as he lay writhing beneath his feet.
The fellow’s face was horribly ugly; but I am not quite sure that I should
have noticed it if I had not known his story. He spoke not a word, and met
nobody’s eye, but kept staring upward into the smoky vacancy towards the
ceiling, where, it might be, he beheld a continual portraiture of his
victim’s horror-stricken agonies. I rather fancy, however, that his moral
sense was yet too torpid to trouble him with such remorseful visions, and
that, for his own part, he might have had very agreeable reminiscences of
the soldier’s death, if other eyes had not been bent reproachfully upon
him and warned him that something was amiss. It was this reproach in other
men’s eyes that made him look aside. He was a wild-beast, as I began with
saying,—an unsophisticated wild-beast,—while the rest of us
are partially tamed, though still the scent of blood excites some of the
savage instincts of our nature. What this wretch needed, in order to make
him capable of the degree of mercy and benevolence that exists in us, was
simply such a measure of moral and intellectual development as we have
received; and, in my mind, the present war is so well justified by no
other consideration as by the probability that it will free this class of
Southern whites from a thraldom in which they scarcely begin to be
responsible beings. So far as the education of the heart is concerned, the
negroes have apparently the advantage of them; and as to other schooling,
it is practically unattainable by black or white.
Looking round at these poor prisoners, therefore, it struck me as an
immense absurdity that they should fancy us their enemies; since, whether
we intend it so or no, they have a far greater stake on our success than
we can possibly have. For ourselves, the balance of advantages between
defeat and triumph may admit of question. For them, all truly valuable
things are dependent on our complete success; for thence would come the
regeneration of a people,—the removal of a foul scurf that has
overgrown their life, and keeps then in a state of disease and
decrepitude, one of the chief symptoms of which is, that, the more they
suffer and are debased, the more they imagine themselves strong and
beautiful. No human effort, on a grand scale, has ever yet resulted
according to the purpose, of its projectors. The advantages are always
incidental. Man’s accidents are God’s purposes. We miss the good we
sought, and do the good we little cared for. [The author seems to imagine
that he has compressed a great deal of meaning into these little, hard,
dry pellets of aphoristic wisdom. We disagree with him. The counsels of
wise and good men are often coincident with the purposes of Providence;
and the present war promises to illustrate our remark.]
Our Government evidently knows when and where to lay its finger upon its
most available citizens; for, quite unexpectedly, we were joined by some
other gentlemen, scarcely less competent than ourselves, in a commission
to proceed to Fortress Monroe and examine into things in general. Of
course, official propriety compels us to be extremely guarded in our
description of the interesting objects which this expedition opened to our
view. There can be no harm, however, in stating that we were received by
the commander of the fortress with a kind of acid good-nature, or mild
cynicism, that indicated him to be a humorist, characterized by certain
rather pungent peculiarities, yet of no unamiable cast. He is a small,
thin, old gentleman, set off by a large pair of brilliant epaulets,—the
only pair, so far as my observation went, that adorn the shoulders of any
officer in the Union army. Either for our inspection, or because the
matter had already been arranged, he drew out a regiment of Zouaves that
formed the principal part of his garrison, and appeared at their head,
sitting on horseback with rigid perpendicularity, and affording us a vivid
idea of the disciplinarian of Baron Steuben’s school.
There can be no question of the General’s military qualities; he must have
been especially useful in converting raw recruits into trained and
efficient soldiers. But valor and martial skill are of so evanescent a
character (hardly less fleeting than a woman’s beauty), that Government
has perhaps taken the safer course in assigning to this gallant officer,
though distinguished in former wars, no more active duty than the
guardianship of an apparently impregnable fortress. The ideas of military
men solidify and fossilize so fast, while military science makes such
rapid advances, that even here there might be a difficulty. An active,
diversified, and therefore a youthful, ingenuity is required by the quick
exigencies of this singular war. Fortress Monroe, for example, in spite of
the massive solidity of its ramparts, its broad and deep moat, and all the
contrivances of defence that were known at the not very remote epoch of
its construction, is now pronounced absolutely incapable of resisting the
novel modes of assault which may be brought to bear upon it. It can only
be the flexible talent of a young man that will evolve a new efficiency
out of its obsolete strength.
It is a pity that old men grow unfit for war, not only by their incapacity
for new ideas, but by the peaceful and unadventurous tendencies that
gradually possess themselves of the once turbulent disposition, which used
to snuff the battle-smoke as its congenial atmosphere. It is a pity;
because it would be such an economy of human existence, if time-stricken
people (whose value I have the better right to estimate, as reckoning
myself one of them) could snatch from their juniors the exclusive
privilege of carrying on the war. In case of death upon the battle-field,
how unequal would be the comparative sacrifice! On one part, a few
unenjoyable years, the little remnant of a life grown torpid; on the
other, the many fervent summers of manhood in its spring and prime, with
all that they include of possible benefit to mankind. Then, too, a bullet
offers such a brief and easy way, such a pretty little orifice, through
which the weary spirit might seize the opportunity to be exhaled! If I had
the ordering of these matters, fifty should be the tenderest age at which
a recruit might be accepted for training; at fifty-five or sixty, I would
consider him eligible for most kinds of military duty and exposure,
excluding that of a forlorn hope, which no soldier should be permitted to
volunteer upon, short of the ripe age of seventy. As a general rule, these
venerable combatants should have the preference for all dangerous and
honorable service in the order of their seniority, with a distinction in
favor of those whose infirmities might render their lives less worth the
keeping. Methinks there would be no more Bull Runs; a warrior with gout in
his toe, or rheumatism in his joints, or with one foot in the grave, would
make a sorry fugitive!
On this admirable system, the productive part of the population would be
undisturbed even by the bloodiest war; and, best of all, those thousands
upon thousands of our Northern girls, whose proper mates will perish in
camp-hospitals or on Southern battle-fields, would avoid their doom of
forlorn old-maidenhood. But, no doubt, the plan will be pooh-poohed down
by the War Department; though it could scarcely be more disastrous than
the one on which we began the war, when a young army was struck with
paralysis through the age of its commander.
The waters around Fortress Monroe were thronged with a gallant array of
ships of war and transports, wearing the Union flag,—“Old Glory,” as
I hear it called in these days. A little withdrawn from our national fleet
lay two French frigates, and, in another direction, an English sloop,
under that banner which always makes itself visible, like a red portent in
the air, wherever there is strife. In pursuance of our official duty
(which had no ascertainable limits), we went on board the flag-ship, and
were shown over every part of her, and down into her depths, inspecting
her gallant crew, her powerful armament, her mighty engines, and her
furnaces, where the fires are always kept burning, as well at midnight as
at noon, so that it would require only five minutes to put the vessel
under full steam. This vigilance has been felt necessary ever since the
Merrimack made that terrible dash from Norfolk. Splendid as she is,
however, and provided with all but the very latest improvements in naval
armament, the Minnesota belongs to a class of vessels that will be built
no more, nor ever fight another battle,—being as much a thing of the
past as any of the ships of Queen Elizabeth’s time, which grappled with
the galleons of the Spanish Armada.
On her quarter-deck, an elderly flag-officer was pacing to and fro, with a
self-conscious dignity to which a touch of the gout or rheumatism perhaps
contributed a little additional stiffness. He seemed to be a gallant
gentleman, but of the old, slow, and pompous school of naval worthies, who
have grown up amid rules, forms, and etiquette which were adopted
full-blown from the British navy into ours, and are somewhat too cumbrous
for the quick spirit of to-day. This order of nautical heroes will
probably go down, along with the ships in which they fought valorously and
strutted most intolerably. How can an admiral condescend to go to sea in
an iron pot? What space and elbow-room can be found for quarter-deck
dignity in the cramped lookout of the Monitor, or even in the twenty-feet
diameter of her cheese-box? All the pomp and splendor of naval warfare are
gone by. Henceforth there must come up a race of enginemen and
smoke-blackened cannoneers, who will hammer away at their enemies under
the direction of a single pair of eyes; and even heroism— so deadly
a gripe is Science laying on our noble possibilities—will become a
quality of very minor importance, when its possessor cannot break through
the iron crust of his own armament and give the world a glimpse of it.
At no great distance from the Minnesota lay the strangest-looking craft I
ever saw. It was a platform of iron, so nearly on a level with the water
that the swash of the waves broke over it, under the impulse of a very
moderate breeze; and on this platform was raised a circular structure,
likewise of iron, and rather broad and capacious, but of no great height.
It could not be called a vessel at all; it was a machine,—and I have
seen one of somewhat similar appearance employed in cleaning out the
docks; or, for lack of a better similitude, it looked like a gigantic
rat-trap. It was ugly, questionable, suspicious, evidently mischievous,
—nay, I will allow myself to call it devilish; for this was the new
war-fiend, destined, along with others of the same breed, to annihilate
whole navies and batter down old supremacies. The wooden walls of Old
England cease to exist, and a whole history of naval renown reaches its
period, now that the Monitor comes smoking into view; while the billows
dash over what seems her deck, and storms bury even her turret in green
water, as she burrows and snorts along, oftener under the surface than
above. The singularity of the object has betrayed me into a more ambitious
vein of description than I often indulge; and, after all, I might as well
have contented myself with simply saying that she looked very queer.
Going on board, we were surprised at the extent and convenience of her
interior accommodations. There is a spacious ward-room, nine or ten feet
in height, besides a private cabin for the commander, and sleeping
accommodations on an ample scale; the whole well lighted and ventilated,
though beneath the surface of the water. Forward, or aft (for it is
impossible to tell stem from stern), the crew are relatively quite as well
provided for as the officers. It was like finding a palace, with all its
conveniences, under the sea. The inaccessibility, the apparent
impregnability, of this submerged iron fortress are most satisfactory; the
officers and crew get down through a little hole in the deck, hermetically
seal themselves, and go below; and until they see fit to reappear, there
would seem to be no power given to man whereby they can be brought to
light. A storm of cannon-shot damages them no more than a handful of dried
peas. We saw the shot-marks made by the great artillery of the Merrimack
on the outer casing of the iron tower; they were about the breadth and
depth of shallow saucers, almost imperceptible dents, with no
corresponding bulge on the interior surface. In fact, the thing looked
altogether too safe; though it may not prove quite an agreeable
predicament to be thus boxed up in impenetrable iron, with the
possibility, one would imagine, of being sent to the bottom of the sea,
and, even there, not drowned, but stifled. Nothing, however, can exceed
the confidence of the officers in this new craft. It was pleasant to see
their benign exultation in her powers of mischief, and the delight with
which they exhibited the circumvolutory movement of the tower, the quick
thrusting forth of the immense guns to deliver their ponderous missiles,
and then the immediate recoil, and the security behind the closed
port-holes. Yet even this will not long be the last and most terrible
improvement in the science of war. Already we hear of vessels the armament
of which is to act entirely beneath the surface of the water; so that,
with no other external symptoms than a great bubbling and foaming, and
gush of smoke, and belch of smothered thunder out of the yeasty waves,
there shall be a deadly fight going on below,—and, by and by, a
sucking whirlpool, as one of the ships goes down.
The Monitor was certainly an object of great interest; but on our way to
Newport News, whither we next went, we saw a spectacle that affected us
with far profounder emotion. It was the sight of the few sticks that are
left of the frigate Congress, stranded near the shore,—and still
more, the masts of the Cumberland rising midway out of the water, with a
tattered rag of a pennant fluttering from one of them. The invisible hull
of the latter ship seems to be careened over, so that the three masts
stand slantwise; the rigging looks quite unimpaired, except that a few
ropes dangle loosely from the yards. The flag (which never was struck,
thank Heaven!) is entirely hidden under the waters of the bay, but is
still doubtless waving in its old place, although it floats to and fro
with the swell and reflex of the tide, instead of rustling on the breeze.
A remnant of the dead crew still man the sunken ship, and sometimes a
drowned body floats up to the surface.
That was a noble fight. When was ever a better word spoken than that of
Commodore Smith, the father of the commander of the Congress, when he
heard that his son’s ship was surrendered? “Then Joe’s dead!” said he; and
so it proved. Nor can any warrior be more certain of enduring renown than
the gallant Morris, who fought so well the final battle of the old system
of naval warfare, and won glory for his country and himself out of
inevitable disaster and defeat. That last gun from the Cumberland, when
her deck was half submerged, sounded the requiem of many sinking ships.
Then went down all the navies of Europe and our own, Old Ironsides and
all, and Trafalgar and a thousand other fights became only a memory, never
to be acted over again; and thus our brave countrymen come last in the
long procession of heroic sailors that includes Blake and Nelson, and so
many mariners of England, and other mariners as brave as they, whose
renown is our native inheritance. There will be other battles, but no more
such tests of seamanship and manhood as the battles of the past; and,
moreover, the Millennium is certainly approaching, because human strife is
to be transferred from the heart and personality of man into cunning
contrivances of machinery, which by and by will fight out our wars with
only the clank and smash of iron, strewing the field with broken engines,
but damaging nobody’s little finger except by accident. Such is obviously
the tendency of modern improvement. But, in the mean while, so long as
manhood retains any part of its pristine value, no country can afford to
let gallantry like that of Morris and his crew, any more than that of the
brave Worden, pass unhonored and unrewarded. If the Government do nothing,
let the people take the matter into their own hands, and cities give him
swords, gold boxes, festivals of triumph, and, if he needs it, heaps of
gold. Let poets brood upon the theme, and make themselves sensible how
much of the past and future is contained within its compass, till its
spirit shall flash forth in the lightning of a song!
From these various excursions, and a good many others (including one to
Manassas), we gained a pretty lively idea of what was going on; but, after
all, if compelled to pass a rainy day in the hall and parlors of Willard’s
Hotel, it proved about as profitably spent as if we had floundered through
miles of Virginia mud, in quest of interesting matter. This hotel, in
fact, may be much more justly called the centre of Washington and the
Union than either the Capitol, the White House, or the State Department.
Everybody may be seen there. It is the meeting-place of the true
representatives of the country,—not such as are chosen blindly and
amiss by electors who take a folded ballot from the hand of a local
politician, and thrust it into the ballot-box unread, but men who
gravitate or are attracted hither by real business, or a native impulse to
breathe the intensest atmosphere of the nation’s life, or a genuine
anxiety to see how this life-and-death struggle is going to deal with us.
Nor these only, but all manner of loafers. Never, in any other spot, was
there such a miscellany of people. You exchange nods with governors of
sovereign States; you elbow illustrious men, and tread on the toes of
generals; you hear statesmen and orators speaking in their familiar tones.
You are mixed up with office-seekers, wire-pullers, inventors, artists,
poets, prosers (including editors, army-correspondents, attaches of
foreign journals, and long-winded talkers), clerks, diplomatists,
mail-contractors, railway-directors, until your own identity is lost among
them. Occasionally you talk with a man whom you have never before heard
of, and are struck with the brightness of a thought, and fancy that there
is more wisdom hidden among the obscure than is anywhere revealed among
the famous. You adopt the universal habit of the place, and call for
mint-julep, a whiskey-skin, a gin-cocktail, a brandy smash, or a glass of
pure Old Rye; for the conviviality of Washington sets in at an early hour,
and, so far as I had opportunity of observing, never terminates at any
hour, and all these drinks are continually in request by almost all these
people. A constant atmosphere of cigar-smoke, too, envelops the motley
crowd, and forms a sympathetic medium, in which men meet more closely and
talk more frankly than in any other kind of air. If legislators would
smoke in session, they might speak truer words, and fewer of them, and
bring about more valuable results.
It is curious to observe what antiquated figures and costumes sometimes
make their appearance at Willard’s. You meet elderly men with frilled
shirt-fronts, for example, the fashion of which adornment passed away from
among the people of this world half a century ago. It is as if one of
Stuart’s portraits were walking abroad. I see no way of accounting for
this, except that the trouble of the times, the impiety of traitors, and
the peril of our sacred Union and Constitution have disturbed, in their
honored graves, some of the venerable fathers of the country, and summoned
them forth to protest against the meditated and half-accomplished
sacrilege. If it be so, their wonted fires are not altogether extinguished
in their ashes,—in their throats, I might rather say,—for I
beheld one of these excellent old men quaffing such a horn of Bourbon
whiskey as a toper of the present century would be loath to venture upon.
But, really, one would be glad to know where these strange figures come
from. It shows, at any rate, how many remote, decaying villages and
country-neighborhoods of the North, and forest-nooks of the West, and old
mansion-houses in cities, are shaken by the tremor of our native soil, so
that men long hidden in retirement put on the garments of their youth and
hurry out to inquire what is the matter. The old men whom we see here have
generally more marked faces than the young ones, and naturally enough;
since it must be an extraordinary vigor and renewability of life that can
overcome the rusty sloth of age, and keep the senior flexible enough to
take an interest in new things; whereas hundreds of commonplace young men
come hither to stare with eyes of vacant wonder, and with vague hopes of
finding out what they are fit for. And this war (we may say so much in its
favor) has been the means of discovering that important secret to not a
few.
We saw at Willard’s many who had thus found out for themselves, that, when
Nature gives a young man no other utilizable faculty, she must be
understood as intending him for a soldier. The bulk of the army had moved
out of Washington before we reached the city; yet it seemed to me that at
least two thirds of the guests and idlers at the hotel were one or another
token of the military profession. Many of them, no doubt, were
self-commissioned officers, and had put on the buttons and the
shoulder-straps, and booted themselves to the knees, merely because
captain, in these days, is so good a travelling-name. The majority,
however, had been duly appointed by the President, but might be none the
better warriors for that. It was pleasant, occasionally, to distinguish a
grizzly veteran among this crowd of carpet-knights,—the trained
soldier of a lifetime, long ago from West Point, who had spent his prime
upon the frontier, and very likely could show an Indian bullet-mark on his
breast,—if such decorations, won in an obscure warfare, were worth
the showing now.
The question often occurred to me,—and, to say the truth, it added
an indefinable piquancy to the scene,—what proportion of all these
people, whether soldiers or civilians, were true at heart to the Union,
and what part were tainted, more or less, with treasonable sympathies and
wishes, even if such had never blossomed into purpose. Traitors there were
among them,—no doubt of that,—civil servants of the public,
very reputable persons, who yet deserved to dangle from a cord; or men who
buttoned military coats over their breasts, hiding perilous secrets there,
which might bring the gallant officer to stand pale-faced before a file of
musketeers, with his open grave behind him. But, without insisting upon
such picturesque criminality and punishment as this, an observer, who kept
both his eyes and heart open, would find it by no means difficult to
discern that many residents and visitors of Washington so far sided with
the South as to desire nothing more nor better than to see everything
reestablished a little worse than its former basis. If the cabinet of
Richmond were transferred to the Federal city, and the North awfully
snubbed, at least, and driven back within its old political limits, they
would deem it a happy day. It is no wonder, and, if we look at the matter
generously, no unpardonable crime. Very excellent people hereabouts
remember the many dynasties in which the Southern character has been
predominant, and contrast the genial courtesy, the warm and graceful
freedom of that region, with what they call (though I utterly disagree
with them) the frigidity of our Northern manners, and the Western
plainness of the President. They have a conscientious, though mistaken
belief, that the South was driven out of the Union by intolerable wrong on
our part, and that we are responsible for having compelled true patriots
to love only half their country instead of the whole, and brave soldiers
to draw their swords against the Constitution which they would once have
died for,—to draw them, too, with a bitterness of animosity which is
the only symptom of brotherhood (since brothers hate each other best) that
any longer exists. They whisper these things with tears in their eyes, and
shake their heads, and stoop their poor old shoulders, at the tidings of
another and another Northern victory, which, in their opinion, puts
farther off the remote, the already impossible, chance of a reunion.
I am sorry for them, though it is by no means a sorrow without hope. Since
the matter has gone so far, there seems to be no way but to go on winning
victories, and establishing peace and a truer union in another generation,
at the expense, probably, of greater trouble, in the present one, than any
other people ever voluntarily suffered. We woo the South “as the Lion
wooes his bride;” it is a rough courtship, but perhaps love and a quiet
household may come of it at last. Or, if we stop short of that blessed
consummation, heaven was heaven still, as Milton sings, after Lucifer and
a third part of the angels had seceded from its golden palaces,—and
perhaps all the more heavenly, because so many gloomy brows, and soured,
vindictive hearts, had gone to plot ineffectual schemes of mischief
elsewhere.
[We regret the innuendo in the concluding sentence. The war can never be
allowed to terminate, except in the complete triumph of Northern
principles. We hold the event in our own hands, and may choose whether to
terminate it by the methods already so successfully used, or by other
means equally within our control, and calculated to be still more speedily
efficacious. In truth, the work is already done.
We should be sorry to cast a doubt on the Peaceable Man’s loyalty, but he
will allow us to say that we consider him premature in his kindly feelings
towards traitors and sympathizers with treason. As the author himself says
of John Brown (and, so applied, we thought it an atrociously cold-blooded
dictum), “any common-sensible man would feel an intellectual satisfaction
in seeing them hanged, were it only for their preposterous miscalculation
of possibilities.” There are some degrees of absurdity that put Reason
herself into a rage, and affect us like an intolerable crime,—which
this Rebellion is, into the bargain.]
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