VIRGINIA.

One of the most curious and interesting results of that eclectic spirit

which has brought into suggestive relations the different spheres of

human knowledge and inquiry, is the application of geographical facts to

historical interpretation. The comprehensive researches of Ritter and

the scientific expositions of Humboldt enable us to recognize the vast

influence of local conditions upon social development, and to account

for the peculiar traits of special civilization by the distribution of

land and water, and the agency of climate and position. In the calm

retrospect of the present crisis of our national history, when the

philosopher takes the place of the partisan and the exciting incidents

of the present are viewed in the chastened light of the past, it will be

seen and felt that a kind of poetical justice and moral necessity made

Virginia the scene of civil and physical strife. Of all the States, she

represents, both in her annals and her resources, her scenery, and her

social character, the average national characteristics: natives of each

section of the land find within her limits congenial facts of life and

nature, of manners and industry: like her Southern sisters, she has

known all the consequences of slavery--but at certain times and places,

free labor has thriven; commerce and agriculture, the miner, the

mariner, the tradesman, not less than the planter, found therein scope

for their respective vocations; the life of the sea coast, of the

mountains, and of the interior valleys--the life of the East, West, and

Middle States was there reproduced in juxtaposition with that of the

South. Nowhere in the land could the economist more distinctly trace the

influence of free and slave labor upon local prosperity: nowhere has the

aristocratic element been more intimately in contact with the

democratic. Her colonial record indicates a greater variety in the

original population than any other province: she has given birth to more

eminent statesmen, has been the arena of more fierce conflicts of

opinion, and is associated most directly with problems of government, of

society, and of industrial experiment. On her soil were first landed

African captives; and when the curse thus entailed was dying out, it was

renewed and aggravated by the inducement to breed slaves for the cotton

and sugar plantations. From Virginia flowed the earliest stream of

immigration to the West, whereby a new and mighty political element was

added to the Republic: there are some of the oldest local memorials of

American civilization: for a long period she chiefly represented

Southern life and manners to the North: placed between the extremes of

climate--producing the staples of all the States, except those bordering

on the Gulf--earlier colonized, prominent in legislation, fruitful in

eminent men, she was more visited by travellers, more written about,

better known, and therefore gathered to and grafted upon herself more of

the rich and the reckless tendencies and traits of the country; and

became thus a central point and a representative State--which destiny

seems foreshadowed by her physical resources and her local situation.

Except New England, no portion of our country has been more fully and

faithfully illustrated as to its scenery, domestic life, and social

traits, by popular literature, than Virginia. The original affinity of

her colonial life with the ancestral traditions of England, found apt

expression in Spenser's dedication of his peerless allegory to

Elizabeth, wherein the baptism of her remote territory, in honor of her

virginal fame, was recognized. The first purely literary work achieved

within her borders was that of a classical scholar, foreshadowing the

long dependence of her educated men upon the university culture of Great

Britain; and those once admired sketches of scenery and character which

gave to William Wirt, in his youth, the prestige of an elegant writer,

found there both subjects and inspiration; while the American school of

eloquence traces its early germs to the bar and legislature of the Old

Dominion, where the Revolutionary appeals of Patrick Henry gave it a

classic fame. The most prolific and kindhearted of English novelists,

when he had made himself a home among us and looked round for a

desirable theme on which to exercise his facile art, chose the

Southampton Massacre as the nucleus for a graphic story of family life

and negro character. The 'Swallow Barn' of Kennedy is a genuine and

genial picture of that life in its peaceful and prosperous phase, which

will conserve the salient traits thereof for posterity, and already has

acquired a fresh significance from the contrast its pleasing and naive

details afford to the tragic and troublous times which have since almost

obliterated the traces of all that is characteristic, secure, and

serene. The physical resources and amenities of the State were recorded

with zest and intelligence by Jefferson before Clinton had performed a

like service for New York, or Flint for the West, or any of the numerous

scholars and writers of the Eastern States for New England. The very

fallacy whereon treason based her machinations and the process whereby

the poison of Secession was introduced into the nation's life-blood,

found exposition in the insidious fiction of a Virginian--Mr. George

Tucker--secretly printed years ago, and lately brought into renewed

prominence by the rebellion. 'Our Cousin Veronica,' a graceful and

authentic family history, from the pen of an accomplished lady akin to

the people and familiar with their life, adds another vivid and

suggestive delineation thereof to the memorable illustrations by Wirt,

Kennedy, and James; while a score of young writers have, in verse and

prose, made the early colonial and the modern plantation and waterplace

life of the Old Dominion, its historical romance and social and scenic

features, familiar and endeared; so that the annals and the aspects of

no State in the Union are better known--even to the local peculiarities

of life and language--to the general reader, than those of Virginia,

from negro melody to picturesque landscape, from old manorial estates to

field sports, and from improvident households to heroic beauties; and

among the freshest touches to the historical and social picture are

those bestowed by Irving in some of the most charming episodes of his

'Life of Washington.'

When the river on whose banks was destined to rise the capital of the

State received the name of the English monarch in whose reign and under

whose auspices the first settlers emigrated, and the Capes of the

Chesapeake were baptized by Newport for his sons Charles and Henry, the

storm that washed him beyond his proposed goal revealed a land of

promise, which thenceforth beguiled adventure and misfortune to its

shores. Captain John Smith magnified the scene of his romantic escape

from the savages: 'Heaven and earth,' he wrote, 'seemed never to have

agreed better to frame a place for man's commodious and delightful

habitation.' To the wonderful reports of majestic forests, rare wild

flowers, and strange creatures, such as the opossum, the hummingbird,

the flying squirrel, and the rattlesnake--to the pleasures of the chase,

and the curious traits of aboriginal life--were soon added the

attractions of civic immunities and possibilities--free trade, popular

legislative rule, and opportunities of profitable labor and social

advancement. Ere long, George Sandys, a highly educated employée of the

Government, was translating Ovid on the banks of the James river;

industry changed the face of the land; a choice breed of horses, the

tobacco culture, hunting, local politics, hospitality--churches after

the old English model, manor houses with lawns, bricks, and portraits

significant of ancestral models, justified the pioneer's declaration

that Virginia 'was the poor man's best country in the world.' Beautiful,

indeed, were the natural features of the country as described by the

early travellers; auspicious of the future of the people as it expanded

to the eye of hope, when the colony became part of a great and free

nation. Connected at the north and east, by thoroughfare and

watercourse, with the industrial and educated States of New England, the

fertile and commercial resources of New York, and the rich coal lands

and agricultural wealth of Pennsylvania; Maryland and the Atlantic

providing every facility to foreign trade, and the vast and then

partially explored domains of Kentucky and Ohio inviting the already

swelling tide of immigration, and their prolific valleys destined to be

the granary of the two hemispheres--all that surrounded Virginia seemed

prophetic of growth and security within, the economist and the lover of

nature found the most varied materials; with three hundred and

fifty-five miles of extent, a breadth of one hundred and eighty-five,

and a horizontal area of sixty-five thousand six hundred and twenty-four

square miles--one district embracing the sea coast to the head of

tidewater, another thence to the Blue Ridge, a third the valley region

between the latter range and that of the Alleghanies, and a fourth the

counties beyond them--every kind of soil and site, from ocean margin to

river slope, from mountain to plain, are included within her limits:

here, the roads stained with oxides, indicative of mineral wealth;

there, the valleys plumed with grain and maize; the bays white with

sails; the forest alive with game; lofty ridges, serene nooks, winding

rivers, pine barrens, alluvial levels, sterile tracts, primeval

woods--every phase and form of natural resource and beauty to invite

productive labor, win domestic prosperity, and gratify the senses and

the soul. Rivers, whose names were already historical--the James, the

York, the Rappahannock, the Potomac, and the peaceful Shenandoah,

flowing through its beautiful valley and connecting the base of the Blue

Ridge with the Potomac; Chesapeake bay, a hundred and ninety miles from

its entrance through Maryland and Virginia, on the one side, and the

Roanoke, finding an outlet in Albemarle sound, while the Kanawha and

Monongahela, as tributaries of the Ohio, on the other, keep up that

communication and natural highway which links, in a vast silver chain,

the separate political unities of the land. The hills ribbed with fine

marble and pierced by salubrious springs; picturesque natural bridges,

cliffs, and caves, described with graphic zeal by Jefferson, and the

wild and mysterious Dismal Swamp, sung by Moore; the tobacco of the

eastern counties, the hemp of lands above tidewater, the Indian corn,

wheat, rye, red clover, barley, and oats, of the interior, and the fine

breeds of cattle and horses raised beyond the Alleghany--are noted by

foreign and native writers, before and immediately after the Revolution,

as characteristic local attractions and permanent economical resources;

and with them glimpses of manorial elegance, hospitality, and

culture--which long made the life and manners of the State one of the

most congenial social traditions of the New World.

Yet, as if prophetic of the long political issues of which she was

destined to be the scene of conflict, the colonial star of Virginia was

early obscured by misfortune. When John Smith left her shores for the

last time in 1609, discontent and disaster had already marred the

prospects of the new settlement; and, in half a year, Gates, Somers,

Newport arrived to find but sixty colonists remaining, and they resolved

to abandon the enterprise; but on encountering Delaware, they were

induced to return, and Jamestown was again the scene of life and labor.

Ten years of comparative success ensued; and then one hundred and sixty

poor women were imported for wives, at a cost of about the same number

of pounds of tobacco; but simultaneously with this requisite provision

for domestic growth and comfort, the germ of Virginia's ruin came: a

Dutch vessel entered the James river, bringing twenty African captives,

which were purchased by the colonists. Two years later the Indians made

a destructive foray upon the thriving village; the king became alarmed

at the freedom of political discussion, dissolved the Virginia company,

and appointed a governor and twelve councillors to rule the

province;--the father's policy was followed by Charles the First, many

of whose zealous partisans found a refuge from Cromwell in the province.

At last came the Revolution and the Union. Meantime slavery was dying

out; its abolition was desired; and had free labor then and there

superseded it, far different would have been the destiny of the fair

State; whose western portion affords such a contrast to that wherein

this blight induced improvidence and deterioration, the tokens whereof

were noted by every visitor in the spare and desultory culture of the

soil, the neglected resources, the dilapidated fences and dwellings, and

the absence of that order and comfort which inevitably attaches to

legitimate industry and self-reliance. This melancholy perversion of

great natural advantages was the result of slave breeding for the

Southern market. Otherwise Virginia would have continued the prosperous

development initiated in her colonial days. The exigencies of the cotton

culture, rendered immensely profitable by a mechanical invention which

infinitely lessened the cost of preparing the staple for the market, had

thus renewed and prolonged the original and fast-decaying social and

political bane of a region associated with the noblest names and most

benign prospects. Chief-Justice Marshall aptly described to an English

traveller this sad and fatal transition:

'He said he had seen Virginia the leading State for half his life;

he had seen her become the second, and sink to be the fifth. Worse

than this, there was no arresting her decline if her citizens did

not put an end to slavery; and he saw no signs of any intention to

do so, east of the mountains at least. He had seen whole groups of

estates, populous in his time, lapse into waste. He had seen

agriculture exchanged for human stock breeding; and he keenly felt

the degradation. The forest was returning over the fine old

estates, and the wild creatures which had not been seen for

generations were reappearing; numbers and wealth were declining,

and education and manners were degenerating. It would not have

surprised him to be told that on that soil would the main battles

be fought when the critical day should come which he foresaw.'

That day it is our lot to behold. Forced at the point of the bayonet to

arrogate to herself the illegal claims she had vainly sought to

establish by popular suffrage, as reserved rights, in 1787, and the

resolutions of 1798, the Secession Ordinance was nominally passed and

summarily enforced, despite the protests of the citizens and the

withdrawal of the western counties; and thus the traitors of the Cotton

States made Virginia the battle field between slaveocracy and

constitutional government. As early as 1632 a fierce controversy for

territorial rights occurred on the Chesapeake, when that portion of

Virginia, now Maryland, was brought into dispute by Claiborne, who began

to trade, notwithstanding the grant which Lord Baltimore had secured:

this, the first conflict between the whites, and two Indian massacres,

made desolate the region so lately devastated by the civil war. Nor was

the original enjoyment of remarkable political rights coincident with

American independence; for, while Charles the Second was an exile, and

Parliament demoralized, the fugitive king still held nominal sway in

Virginia; and when the flight of Richard Cromwell left the kingdom

without a head, that distant colony was ruled by its own assembly, and

enjoyed free suffrage and free trade: then came what is called Bacon's

rebellion--an effective protest against oppressive prohibitions. Nor did

these civil discords end with the Restoration; many old soldiers of

Cromwell emigrated to Virginia, and, under their auspices, an

insurrection 'against the tobacco plot' was organized; and this was

followed by numerous difficulties in home legislation, by violent

controversies with royal governors; deputies continually were sent to

England to remonstrate with the king against 'intolerable grants' and

the exportation of jailbirds. Their despotic master over the sea

appropriated the lands of the colonists, while their own representatives

monopolized the profits; cruel or obstinate was the sway of Berkeley,

Spottwood, Dinwiddie, and Dunmore; and after the people had succumbed as

regards military opposition, they continued to maintain their rights by

legislative action. Under James the Second, Lord Howard repealed many of

these conservative acts and prorogued the House of Burgesses. A respite,

attested by glad acclaim, marked the accession of William and Mary, and

the recall of Howard. Andros was sent over in 1692. The skirmish with

Junonville initiated the French war and introduced upon the scene its

most hallowed name and character, when Colonel Washington appeared first

as a soldier, strove in vain against the ignorance and self-will of

Dinwiddie, and shared Braddock's defeat, to be signally preserved for

the grandest career in history.

And when the war of the Revolution gave birth to the nation, not only

was Virginia the native State of its peerless chief, but some of its

memorable scenes and heroes there found scope; Steuben and Lafayette

there carried on military operations, there the traitor Arnold was

wounded, Hamilton and Rochambeau gained historic celebrity, and there

the great drama was closed by the surrender of Cornwallis. In the

debates incident to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, there was

manifested in Virginia that jealousy of a strong central government,

which thwarted the wise advocacy and ignored the prophetic warnings of

the best statesmen, thereby confirming the fundamental error destined,

years after, to give facility to treasonable usurpation: the

Constitution was only ratified, at last, by a majority of ten. In the

war of 1812, Hampton, Craney Island, White House, and various places on

and near the Potomac, since identified with fierce encounters and forays

in the war of the rebellion, witnessed gallant deeds in behalf of the

Republic. In 1829 a convention assembled in Virginia to modify the

Constitution. Long having the most extensive territory and largest

slaveholders, the aristocratic element disturbed and overmastered

democratic principles. During Cromwell's rule, when virtually

independent, Virginia proffered a fleet to the fugitive monarch; who,

when restored, in gratitude ordered her arms to be quartered with those

of England, Scotland, and Ireland; in exile even accepted her invitation

to migrate thither and assume the privileges of royalty: coins of the

Old Dominion yet testify this projected despotism. Instead of Dissenters

as in New England, Quakers as in Pennsylvania, or Romanists as in

Maryland, Virginia, from her earliest colonization, was identified with

the Church of England. It was regarded, says one of her historians, as

an 'unrighteous compulsion to maintain teachers; and what they called

religious errors were deeply felt during the regal government:' the

children of the more prosperous colonists were sent to England to be

educated; their pursuits and habits, on returning, were unfavorable to

study; and, therefore, the advantage thus gained was, for the most part,

confined to 'superficial good manners,' and the ideal standard attained

that of 'true Britons and true churchmen;' the former was a more

cherished distinction there than elsewhere in America. In 1837 was

copied from a tombstone in an old-settled part of the State, this

inscription: 'Here lyes the body of Lieut. William Harris, who died May

ye 16, 1608--a good soldier, husband, and neighbor: _by birth a

Briton_.' In these facts of the past and normal tendencies we find ample

means and motives to account for the anomalous political elements

involved in the history--social and civic--of Virginia. While boasting

the oldest university where four Presidents of the United States were

educated, she sustained a slave code which was a bitter satire on

civilized society: the law of entail long prevailed in a community

ostensibly democratic, and only by the strenuous labors of Jefferson was

church monopoly abolished. It is not surprising, in the retrospect, that

her roll of famous citizens includes the noblest and the basest names

which illustrate the political transitions of the land; the architects

and subverters of free polity, the magnanimous and the perfidious. When

the ameliorating influence of time and truth had, in a degree,

harmonized the incongruous elements of opinion and developed the

economical resources, while they liberalized the sentiments and

habitudes of the people; when, says Caines, 'slavery, by exhausting the

soil, had eaten away its own profits, and the recolonization by free

settlers had actually begun, came suddenly the prohibition of the

African slave trade, and nearly at the same time, the vast enlargement

of the field for slavery, by the purchase of Louisiana; and these two

events made Virginia again profitable as a means of breeding for

exportation and sale at the South.

The future geographer who elaborately applies the philosophy of that

science, as interpreted by its modern professors, to our own history,

will find in the events of the last few years in Virginia the richest

and most impressive illustrations of local and physical causes in

determining political and social destinies. Between the eastern and

western portion of that State it will be demonstrated that nature placed

irreconcilable barriers to the supremacy of slave labor and slave

property; and the economical value of each will be shown thus and there

tested with emphatic truth; so that by the laws of physical geography

the first effect of an appeal to arms to maintain the one, was to

alienate, as a civic element, the other, and give birth to a new State,

by virtue of the self assertion incident to the violation of a normal

instinct and necessity of civilization.

What a change came over the scene when the grave civic interests so long

and recklessly involved in the conflict of opinion were submitted to the

arbitrament of battle! Along the river on whose shores the ashes of

Washington had slept for more than half a century in honored security,

batteries thundered upon each passing craft that bore the flag of the

nation: every wood became a slaughter pen, every bluff a shrine of

patriotic martyrdom; bridges were destroyed and rebuilt with alacrity;

the sentinel's challenge broke the stillness of midnight; the earth was

honeycombed with riflepits; campfires glowed on the hills; thousands

perished in the marshes; creeks were stained with human blood; here sank

the trench; there rose a grave mound or a fortress; pickets challenged

the wanderer; every ford and mountain pass witnessed the clash of arms

and echoed with the roar of artillery; the raid, the skirmish, the

bivouac, the march, and the battery successively spread desolation and

death; Arlington House, full of peaceful trophies, once dear to national

pride, was the headquarters of an army; balloons hung in the sky, whence

the movements of the foe were watched. Gaps and junctions were contested

unto death; obscure towns gained historic names and bloody memories; and

each familiar court-house and village came to be identified with

valorous achievements or sanguinary disaster.

And this land of promise, this region which so long witnessed the

extremes of political magnanimity and turpitude, this arena where the

vital question of labor, as modified by involuntary servitude, and free

activity, found its most practical solution--was, and is, legitimately,

appropriately, and naturally, the scene of the fiercest strife for

national existence--where the claims and the climax of freedom and faith

culminated in all the desolation of civil war. A more difficult country

for military operations can scarcely be imagined. Early in the struggle

it was truly said:

'Virginia is the Switzerland of the continent--a battle field every

three miles--a range of hills streaming where Hill may retire five

miles by five miles till he reaches Richmond--a conquest,

undoubtedly, if the North perseveres, but won at such a cost and

with such time as to prolong unnecessarily the struggle. The

Richmond of the South lies in the two millions of blacks that are

within the reach of cannon of our gunboats in the rivers that empty

into the Gulf.'

How wearisome the delays and how constant the privations of the army of

occupation in such a region, wrote an experienced observer:

'Dwelling in huts, surrounded by a sea of mud, may appear to be

very romantic--on paper--to some folks, but the romance of this

kind of existence with the soldiers soon wears away, and to them

any change must necessarily be for the better; they therefore hail

with delight, as a positive relief, the opportunity once more to

practise their drill which the recent change of weather has

afforded them. For the last three months, the time of the soldier

has passed heavily enough, with the long winter nights, and little

else to relieve the monotony of his life but stereotyped guard

duty.'

It would require volumes to describe the ravages of war in Virginia: let

a few pictures, selected from sketches made on the spot, indicate the

melancholy aspect of a domain, a few weeks or months before smiling in

peace and productiveness. The following facetious but faithful

statement, though confined to a special, applies to many districts:

'The once neat court-house stands by the roadside a monument to

treason and rebellion, deprived of its white picket fence, stripped

of window blinds, cases, and dome, walls defaced by various

hieroglyphics, the judge's bench a target for the 'expectorating'

Yankee;' the circular enclosure occupied by the jury was besmeared

with mud, and valuable documents, of every description, scattered

about the floor and yard--it is, indeed, a sad picture of what an

infatuated people will bring upon themselves. In one corner of the

yard stands a house of records, in which were deposited all the

important deeds and papers pertaining to this section for a

generation past. When our advance entered the building, they were

found lying about the floor to the depth of fifteen inches or more

around the doorsteps and in the dooryard. It is impossible to

estimate the inconvenience and losses which will be incurred by

this wholesale destruction of deeds, claims, mortgages, etc. I

learned that a squadron of exasperated cavalry, who passed this way

not long since, committed the mischief. The jail across the way,

where many a poor fugitive has doubtless been imprisoned for

striking out for freedom, is now used as a guardhouse. As I write,

the bilious countenance of a culprit is peeping through the iron

grates of a window, who, may be, is atoning for having invaded a

henroost or bagged an unsuspecting pig. Our soldiers have rendered

animal life almost extinct in this part of the Old Dominion.

Indeed, wherever the army goes, there can be heard on every side

the piercing wail of expiring pork, the plaintive lowing of a

stricken bovine, or suppressed cry of an unfortunate gallinacious.'

Here is a scene familiar to many a Union soldier who gazed at sunset

upon the vast encampment:

'Along the horizon a broad belt of richest amber spread far away

toward north and south; and above, the spent, ragged rain clouds of

deep purple, suffused with crimson, were woven and braided with

pure gold. Slowly from the face of the heavens they melted and

passed away as darkness came on, leaving the clear sky studded with

stars, and the crescent moon shedding a soft radiance below. I

climbed to the top of a hill not far off, and looked across the

country. On every eminence, in every little hollow almost, were

innumerable lights shining, some thick and countless as stars,

indicating an encampment; others isolated upon the outskirts; here

and there the glowing furnace of a bakery; the whole land as far as

the eye could see looking like another heaven wherein some

ambitious archangel, covetous of creative power, had attempted to

rival the celestial splendors of the one above us. There was no

sound of drum or fife or bugle; the sweet notes of the 'good-night'

call had floated into space and silence a half hour before; only on

the still air were heard the voices of a hand of negroes chanting

solemnly and slowly, to a familiar sacred tune, the words of some

pious psalm.'

We may realize the effect of the armed occupation upon economical and

social life by a few facts noted after a successful raid:

'In the counties visited there were but few rebels found at home,

except the very old and the very young. In nine days' travel I did

not see fifty able-bodied men who were not in some way connected

with the army. Nearly every branch of business is at a standstill.

The shelves in stores are almost everywhere empty; the shop of the

artisan is abandoned and in ruins. The people who are to be seen

passively submit to all that emanates from Richmond without a

murmur; they are for the most part simple minded, and ignorant of

all that is transpiring in the great theatre about them. An

intelligent-looking man in Columbia laughed heartily when told that

Union troops occupied New Orleans--Jefferson Davis would let them

know it were such the fact; and I could not find a man who would

admit that the Confederates had ever been beaten in a single

engagement. These people do not even read the Richmond papers, and

about all the information they do obtain is what is passed about in

the primitive style, from mouth to mouth. Before this raid they

believed that the Union soldiers were anything but civilized

beings, and were stricken with terror when their approach was

heralded. Of six churches seen in one day, in only one had there

been religious services held within six months. One half at least

of the dwelling houses are unoccupied, and fast going to decay.'

Not all the land is ill adapted to cool actions and strategy; there are

sections naturally fortified, and these have been the scenes of military

vicissitudes memorable, extreme, picturesque, and fatal. Here is an

instance:

'There is no town in the United States which exhibits more

deplorably the ravages of war than Harper's Ferry. More than half

the buildings are in ruins, and those now inhabited are occupied by

small dealers and peddlers, who follow troops, and sell at

exorbitant prices, tarts and tinware, cakes and crockery, pipes and

poultry, shoes and shirts, soap and sardines. The location is one

of peculiar beauty. The Potomac receives the Shenandoah at this

point; each stream flowing through its own deep, wild, winding

valley, until it washes the base of the promontory, on the sides

and summit of which are scattered the houses and ruins of the town.

The rapids of the rivers prevent navigation, and make the fords

hazardous. The piers of an iron bridge and a single section still

remaining, indicate a once beautiful structure; and a pontoon

substitute shows the presence of troops. An occasional canal boat

suggests a still continued effort at traffic, and transport

railcars prove action in the quartermaster's department. The

mountains are 'high and hard to climb.' The jagged sides of slate

rock rise vertically, in many places to lofty heights, inducing the

sensation of fear lest they should fall, while riding along the

road which winds under the threatening cliffs. The mountains are

crowned with batteries, 'like diadems across the brow,' and the

Hottentoty-Sibley tents dot the ridges like miniature anthills.'

But within and around the capital of Virginia cluster the extreme

associations of her history: these memories and memorials of patriotism

hallow the soil whereon the chief traitors inaugurated their infamous

rule; the trial of Burr and the burning of the theatre are social

traditions which make Richmond a name fraught with tragic and political

interest; her social and forensic annals are illustrious; and,

hereafter, among the many anomalies of the nation's history, few will

more impress the thoughtful reminiscent than that a city eminent for

social refinement and long the honored resort of the most eminent

American statesmen and jurists, the seat of elegant hospitality and the

shrine of national fame, was, for years, desecrated by the foulest

prisons, filled with brave American citizens, who were subjected to

insults and privations such as only barbarians could inflict, for no

cause but the gallant defence of the national honor and authority

against a slaveholders' rebellion.

But perhaps no coincidence is more impressive in the late experience of

a Union soldier in Virginia than the associations then and there

awakened by the recurrence of the anniversary of the birth of her

noblest son and our matchless patriot:

'The 22d of February, 1863--the anniversary of Washington's

birthday--will long be remembered,' writes one, 'by the Army of the

Potomac. Encamped, as it is, on the very spot where he--'whom God

made childless that a nation might call him father'--passed most of

his youthful days, the thoughts of all naturally revert to the

history of that great man, and particularly to that part of his

early life, when, within the sacred precincts of home, a mother's

care laid the foundation of that high moral character which in

after life gave tone to both his civil and military career. Within

one mile of the spot where I am now writing these lines, George

Washington lived from the fourth to the sixteenth year of his age.

The river, the hills, and dales, now so familiar to the soldiers

composing this army, were the same then as to-day, and were the

scene of his early gambols, his youthful joys and sorrows. Over

these hills he wandered in the manly pursuits for which he was at

that early period distinguished above his fellows, and which

prepared him for enduring the hardships of the position he was

destined to fill; here, too, is where tradition says he

accomplished the feat of throwing a stone across the Rappahannock,

and here, too, stood the traditional cherry tree, about the

destruction of which with his little hatchet he would not utter a

falsehood. Yonder, just across the Rappahannock, in a small,

unostentatious burying ground, the immortal remains of 'Mary,

mother of Washington,' were buried--sacred spot, now desecrated by

the presence of the enemies of those principles which her honored

son spent the energies of his life to establish for the benefit of

all mankind. When we think for what Washington took up arms against

the mother country, and what, by his example and teachings, he

sought to perpetuate forever, and see the fratricidal hand raised

to destroy the fair fabric he helped to rear, we feel something as

though an omnipotent power would here intervene, and here on this

sacred spot overthrow the enemies of this land without the further

sacrifice of blood.'

Quite a different and more recent local association is thus recorded:

'The second time that I stood here was nigh three years ago, when I

spoke to you in relation to John Brown, then in a Virginia jail.

How great the result of that idea which he pressed upon the

country! Do you know with what poetic justice Providence treats

that very town where he lay in jail when I spoke to you before? The

very man who went down from Philadelphia to bring his body back to

his sad relatives--insulted every mile of the road, his life

threatened, the bullets whistling around his head--that very man,

for eight or ten months, is brigadier-general in command of the

town of Charlestown and Harper's Ferry. By order of his superior

officers, he had the satisfaction of finding it his duty, with his

own right hand, to put the torch to that very hotel into which he

had been followed with insult and contumely, as the friend of John

Brown; and when his brigade was under orders to destroy all the

buildings of that neighborhood, with reverential care he bade the

soldiers stop to spare that engine house that once sheltered the

old hero. I do not know any history more perfectly poetic than of

that single local instance given us in three short years. Hector

Tindale, the friend of John Brown, who went there almost with his

life in his right hand, commands, and his will is law, his sword is

the guarantee of peace, and by his order the town is destroyed,

with the single exception of that hall which John Brown's presence

has rendered immortal.'

The graphic details furnished by the army correspondents to the daily

press of the North, reveal to us in vivid and authentic terms the change

which war has wrought in Virginia. The condition of one 'fine old

mansion' is that of hundreds. On the banks of the Rappahannock and in

the vicinity of Fredericksburg is, for instance, an estate, now called

the Lacy House, the royal grant whereof is dated 1690. The bricks and

the mason work of the main edifice are English; the situation is

beautiful; the furniture, conservatories, musical instruments, every

trait and resource suggest luxury. After the battle of Fredericksburg,

the Lacy House became a hospital: and a spectator of the scene thus

describes it:

'The parlors, where so often had the fairest and brightest of

Virginia's daughters, and her bravest and most chivalric sons, met

to enjoy the hospitalities of the liberal host, and to join in the

mazy dance 'from eve till rosy morn'--the dining room, where so

many lordly feasts had been served--the drawing room, wherein the

smiling host and hostess had received so many a welcome guest--the

bed rooms, from the bridal chamber where the eldest scion of the

house had first clasped in his arms the wife of his bosom, to the

low attic where the black cook retired after her greasy labors of

the day, all were closely crowded with the low iron hospital beds.

These halls, which had so often reëchoed the sound of music, and of

gayest voices, and also of those lower but more sacred tones that

belong to lovers, now resounded with shrieks of pain, and with the

lower, weaker groans of dying men.

'The splendid furniture was put to strange uses--the sideboard of

solid rosewood, made in those honest days before cabinet makers had

learned the rogue's trick of veneering, instead of being crowded

with generous wines, or with good spirits that had mellowed for

years in the cellars, was now crowded in every shelf with

forbidding-looking bottles of black draughts, with packages of salt

and senna, and with ill-omened piles of raking pills, perhaps not

less destructive in their way than shot and shell of a more

explosive sort. The butler's pantry and store rooms had their

shelves and drawers and boxes filled, not with jellies and

marmalades and preserves, and boxes of lemons and preserved ginger

and drums of figs, and all sorts of original packages of all sorts

of things toothsome and satisfying to the palate--but even her

scammony and gamboge, and aloes and Epsom salts, and other dire

weapons, only wielded by the medical profession, had obtained

exclusive sway.

'On many a retired shelf, and in many an odd corner, too, I saw

neglected cartridge boxes, cast-off belts, discarded caps, etc.,

which told, not of the careless and heedless soldier, who had lost

his accoutrements, but of the _dead_ soldier, who had gone to a

land where it is to be hoped he will have no further use for Minié

rifle balls or pipe-clayed crossbelts. I saw, too, with these other

laid-aside trappings, dozens and hundreds of Minié and other

cartridges, never now to be fired at an enemy by the hand that had

placed them in the now discarded cartridge box.

'The walls of the various rooms of the Lacy House, like those of

most of the old houses in Virginia, are ceiled up to the top with

wood, which is painted white. There is a heavy cornice in each

room; there are the huge old-fashioned fireplaces, the marble

mantelpieces over the same, and in the main dining room, where it

was the custom for the men to remain after dinner, and after the

ladies had retired, was a curious feature to be observed, that I

have never seen but once or twice. Over the marble mantel, but

quite within reach, runs a mahogany framework intended for the

reception of the toddy glasses, after the various guests shall have

finished the generous liquor therein contained.

'There are still some vestiges of the family furniture

remaining--some rosewood and mahogany sideboards, tables,

bedsteads, etc., which the family have not been able to remove, and

which the occupying soldiers have found no use for. The most

notable of these articles is a musical instrument, which may be

described as a compound harp-organ. It is, in fact, an upright

harp, played by keys which strike the wires by a pianoforte action,

which has an ordinary piano keyboard. This is, in fact, the

earliest form of the modern pianoforte. Then, in the same

instrument is an organ bellows and pipes, the music from which is

evoked by means of a separate keyboard, the bellows is worked by a

foot treadle, like that most detestable abomination known to

moderns as a melodeon. Thus, in the same instrument, the performer

is supposed to get the powers and effect both of an upright piano

and a small organ. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that

this instrument (which, doubtless, originally cost at least $3,000)

is now utterly useless, the wires, many of them, being broken, and

the whole machine being every way out of order. The maker's name is

set down as 'Longman & Broderup, 26 Cheapside, No. 13 Haymarket,

London.' The poor old thing has doubtless been in the Lacy House

for more than a hundred years. It has been rudely dragged from its

former place of honor, and now stands in the middle of the floor.

The spot it formerly occupied has been lately filled by a hospital

bed, on which a capital operation was performed. The spouting blood

from the bleeding arteries of some poor patient has covered the

wall with crimson marks. In fact, everywhere all over the house,

every wall and floor is saturated with blood, and the whole house,

from an elegant gentleman's residence, seems to have been suddenly

transformed into a butcher's shamble. The old clock has stopped;

the child's rocking horse is rotting away in a disused balcony; the

costly exotics in the garden are destroyed, or perhaps the hardiest

are now used for horse posts. All that was elegant is wretched; all

that was noble is shabby; all that once told of civilized elegance

now speaks of ruthless barbarism.'

Take another illustration--that of the incongruous juxtaposition of old

family sepulchres and fresh soldiers' graves--the associations of the

past and the sad memorials of recent strife even among the dead:

'Yesterday,' writes a thoughtful observer, from near Stafford Court

House, in December, 1862, 'for the first time since leaving

Harper's Ferry, I met with an evidence of the old-time aristocracy,

of which the present race of Virginians boast so much and possess

so little. About four miles from here, standing remote and alone in

the centre of a dense wood, I found an antiquated house of worship,

reminding one of the old heathen temples hidden in the recesses of

some deep forest, whither the followers after unknown gods were

wont to repair for worship or to consult the oracles. On every side

are seen venerable trees overtowering its not unpretentious

steeple. The structure is built of brick (probably brought from

England), in the form of a cross, semi-gothic, with entrances on

three sides, and was erected in the year 1794. On entering, the

first object which attracted my attention was the variously carved

pulpit, about twenty-five feet from the floor, with a winding

staircase leading to it. Beneath were the seats for the attendants,

who, in accordance with the customs of the old English Episcopacy,

waited upon the dominie. The floor is of stone, a large cross of

granite lying in the centre, where the broad aisles intersect. To

to the left of this is a square enclosure for the vestrymen, whose

names are written on the north side of the building. The reader, if

acquainted with Virginia pedigrees, will recognize in them some of

the oldest and most honorable names of the State--Thomas Fitzhugh,

John Lee, Peter Hedgman, Moot Doniphan, John Mercer, Henry Tyler,

William Mountjoy, John Fitzhugh, John Peyton. On the north hall are

four large tablets containing Scriptural quotations. Directly

beneath is a broad flagstone, on which is engraved with letters of

gold, 'In memory of the House of Moncure.' This smacks of royalty.

Parallel to it lies a tombstone with the following inscription:

* * * * *

Sacred to the memory of William Robison, the fourth son of H. and

E. Moncure, of Windsor Forest, born the 27th of January, 1806, and

died 13th of April, 1828, of a pulmonary disease, brought on by

exposure to the cold climate of Philadelphia, where he had gone to

prepare himself for the practice of medicine. Possessed of a mind

strong and vigorous, and of a firmness of spirit a stranger to

fear, he died manifesting that nobleness of soul which

characterized him while living, the brightest promise of his

parents, and the fondest hopes of their afflicted family.

* * * * *

'Led, doubtless, by the expectation of discovering buried

valuables, some one has removed the stone from its original

position, and excavated the earth beneath. Close by the entrance on

the north side are three enclosed graves, where sleep those of

another generation. The brown, moss-covered tombstones appear in

strong contrast to a plain pine board at the head of a fresh-made

grave alongside, and bearing the following inscription: 'Henry

Basler, Company H, One Hundred and Eighteenth Pennsylvania

Volunteers.'

Loyal during the civil war of England, virtually an independent State

under Cromwell, it is the remarkable destiny of Virginia, so called in

honor of Queen Elizabeth's unmarried state, to have given birth to the

spotless chief who conducted to a triumphant issue the American

Revolution--to the orator who, more than any individual, by speech alone

kindled the patriotic flame thereof--to the jurist whose clear and

candid mind and sagacious integrity gave dignity and permanence to

constitutional law--and to the statesman who advocated and established

the democratic principle and sentiment which essentially modified and

moulded the political character and career of the Republic, and he was

the author of that memorable Declaration of Independence which became

the charter of free nationality. From 1606, when three small vessels,

with a hundred or more men, sailed for the shores of Virginia under the

command of Christopher Newport, and Smith planned Jamestown, to the last

pronunciamento of the rebel congress of Richmond, the documentary

history of Virginia includes in charter, code, report, chronicle, plea,

and protest, almost every possible element and form of political

speculation, civic justice, and seditious arrogance: and therein the

philosopher may find all that endears and hallows and all that

disintegrates and degrades the State as a social experiment and a moral

fact: so that of all the States of the Union her antecedents, both noble

and infamous, indicate Virginia as the most appropriate arena for the

last bitter conflict between the great antagonistic forces of civil

order with those of social peace and progress. There where Washington, a

young surveyor, became familiar with toil, exposure, and responsibility,

he passed the crowning years of his spotless career; where he was born,

he died and is buried; where Patrick Henry roamed and mused until the

hour struck for him to rouse, with invincible eloquence, the instinct of

free citizenship; where Marshall drilled his yeoman for battle, and

disciplined his judicial mind by study; where Jefferson wrote his

political philosophy and notes of a naturalist; where Burr was tried,

Clay was born, Wirt pleaded, Nat Turner instigated the Southampton

massacre, Lord Fairfax hunted, and John Brown was hung, Randolph

bitterly jested, and Pocahontas won a holy fame--there treason reared

its hydra head and profaned the consecrated soil with vulgar insults and

savage cruelty; there was the last battle scene of the Revolution and

the first of the Civil War; there is Mount Vernon, Monticello, and

Yorktown, and there also are Manassas, Bull Run, and Fredericksburg;

there is the old graveyard of Jamestown and the modern Golgotha of Fair

Oaks; there is the noblest tribute art has reared to Washington, and the

most loathsome prisons wherein despotism wreaked vengeance on

patriotism; and on that soil countless martyrs have offered up their

lives for the national existence, whose birth-pangs Virginia's peerless

son shared, and over whose nascent being he kept such holy and intrepid

vigil, bequeathing it as the most solemn of human trusts to those

nearest to his local fame, by whom, with factious and fierce scorn, it

has been infamously betrayed on its own hallowed ground; whose best

renown shall yet be that it is the scene, not only of Freedom's

sacrifice, but of her most pure and permanent triumph.