“THE CITY OF MAGNIFICENT DISTANCES.”
WASHINGTON City is styled the “City of Magnificent Distances,” because
it is laid out to cover a space four and a half miles long by two and a
half miles wide, that is, eleven square miles. It is the Capital of the
United States of America, and is composed of the Capitol building, the
Treasury building, the Post-Office building, the Patent Office building,
the Executive Mansion, War and State Department buildings, the
Smithsonian Institute, Willard’s Hotel and five thousand gin-mills. Such
is the Capital of our country, the “City of Magnificent Distances:” and
if it were a magnificent distance from the Country, the Country would be
much better off and much more well-to-do in the world. I regret that a
city which bears the name of that noble and pure man, George Washington,
should be such a concentration of vice, corruption, intrigue, fraud and
iniquity, as it has become of late years.
It was night when I reached Washington, and going to an hotel and
registering my name, John Smith, Major U. S. Army—I never go below the
rank of major—I received every attention. While there, my bill was only
twenty-five or thirty dollars a week, which they did not ask me to pay
till I was ready to leave, several weeks after, and then I paid it
without being asked. Meantime all the _attaches_ of the hotel were so
attentive, obliging and polite, that I did not find it necessary to kill
a single one of them.
The day following my arrival in Washington, the weather being fine, I
walked out to Tenallytown, three miles from Georgetown, to visit the old
ground on which I had been encamped for several months, while a soldier,
early in the war. I found the ground without difficulty, as well as a
handsome earthwork our division had thrown up while there, and which I
myself had worked on. It had been originally named Fort Pennsylvania,
but was now called Fort Reno. Thinking I should like to walk in I
approached the entrance, and found it guarded by a negro soldier, with
musket and bayonet; while a sable corporal stood talking to him.
“You can’t come in dis place, sah,” said the corporal with an insolent
grin, before I was near enough to solicit admittance.
I could not help feeling cut by such a greeting as this, from a negro,
at the entrance of a fort I had helped to build. I smothered my rising
indignation, however, and with a sunny smile replied:
“No admittance, eh?”
“No, sah; guess not,” was the taunting reply.
“I did not know that,” I rejoined, still keeping down my wrath. “I
helped to build the fort, and thought I would like to take a look
through it. However, I suppose you are ordered to allow no one to
enter.”
“Guess we is. You helped to build it, eh?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tink den us cullud fellahs ’d git possession!” he said, with
an insolent laugh.
Without replying I turned and walked away.
I cannot imagine why this black brute should thus wantonly insult an
inoffensive person like me, and especially a crippled ex-soldier who had
walked all the way from Georgetown to see his old camping-ground: but I
have given the words as he spoke them. I do not relate the incident
because it will please or displease any political party: I simply tell
the truth. No one will fail to admit that it was humiliating and
mortifying to me, after having helped to build the fort, to be
insolently turned away from it by a coarse and ignorant negro. Had a
white soldier been on post there, he would have received me cordially,
and if his orders not to admit any one had been very strict, he would
have sent some one to his officer and asked permission to let me go in.
There is always a certain sympathy between soldiers of one race; but I
never yet saw any between white and black soldiers.
Although I had been in Washington many times, I had never yet ascended
the dome of the Capitol, or visited the embryo “Washington Monument;”
so, next day, I determined to visit both. In the Capitol, at the base of
the stairway leading to the dome, the doorkeeper asked me if I had a
pass to go up.
“No,” I replied; “I was not aware that any was required.”
“Yes, visitors are not admitted to the dome without passes.”
“If you will tell me where to get one,” I rejoined, “I will go and——”
“O, never mind,” he interrupted. “I won’t send _you_ for a pass. But can
you walk to the top?”
“O, yes.”
“Go ahead then, and never mind the pass. Don’t fall.”
“Thank you,” I replied, beginning the ascent.
I must say this much for my race—for this was a _white_ man—that it is
not made up entirely of selfishness. I frequently meet with little
courtesies like this, and they are very gratifying to me: not for their
intrinsic merit, alone, but because they show cheerful little gleamings
of the bright side of the human heart.
When I reached the top of the dome, I felt a little tired; but probably
not much more so than others who ascended. It is a fatiguing task for
any one, to ascend to the height of three hundred feet, by means of a
winding stairway.
That same afternoon I visited the unfinished monument erected to the
memory of George Washington. This monument is beautiful in design. It
was to have been five hundred feet high, surrounded at the base by a
pantheon one hundred feet high and two hundred and fifty feet in
diameter. But it has only reached the height of one hundred and seventy
feet, having there abruptly stopped. It stands now a monument of the
forgetfulness and ingratitude of the American people. Till it is
finished—which I fear will never be—the whole land ought to be covered
with one broad blush of shame.
The monument was commenced years ago, by a certain “Association” which
collected large sums of money for the purpose; and for a short time the
work went on so actively that had it thus continued till now, the grand
column of stone would have pierced the clouds, and there would have been
no way of getting at the top except by means of a balloon. It stopped
short, however, at the height mentioned; and its square blunt-looking
top is covered with boards, to keep the rain off; the poorly protected
walls are cracking; and the stray swine are rooting and wallowing about
in the mud at its base. Not seventy years have elapsed since George
Washington, without whom we would probably never have been an
independent nation, passed from earth, and now, alas! it seems that his
memory has also passed from the hearts of his unworthy countrymen. Take
John Smith’s word for it, reader, a nation that can thus soon forget its
father and founder, the very author of its being, must, at no very
distant day, lose sight of itself. Byron says:
“There is the moral of all human tales;
Tis but the same rehearsal of the past;
First freedom, and then glory—when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption, barbarism at last.”
In the Revolutionary war we gained our freedom, in the war of 1812 we
perpetuated it; in the Mexican war we gained glory; then followed
wealth, in the acquisition of California, Texas and other territory: in
the recent civil war, we almost reached the vice, corruption and
barbarism.
Next day I rode out to Georgetown, in a street-car and then hired a
riding-horse, to visit Camp Pierpont, Virginia, several miles from the
Chain Bridge, where I had spent my first winter in the army. The
proprietor of the livery stable, as he led the horse out, saddled and
bridled, said:
“You can ride a horse, eh?”
“With ease,” I replied.
“How will you manage to get on?” he asked.
“This way,” I replied; and I placed one hand on the saddle and the other
on my crutch, and sprung up with ease.
He opened his eyes with astonishment.
“Whew! You get on a horse easier than I can. But don’t get thrown off.”
“I won’t,” I replied. “Get up, old hoss!” And touching the animal with a
spur I had put on—I only wear one, on ordinary occasions—darted away
toward the river at a brisk gallop.
I visited the old camping-ground, and had the satisfaction of finding
the exact spot—now lonely and deserted—on which the cabin of our mess
had stood during the first winter of the war, and on which I had slept
many a night, with a thin blanket and hard puncheon floor under me, a
wood fire in the chimney near my feet—I had two of the articles then—and
my knapsack, containing an extra shirt and pair of drawers, a few
writing-materials, letters and photographs of friends, under my head.
How the old scenes did come back to me! How vividly I saw, in
imagination, the forms and faces that have passed away, and heard the
merry voices that are hushed forever! How distinctly I saw and heard
around me a hundred of the liveliest boys of my old regiment, who sleep
in unmarked graves before Richmond, at Bull Run, South Mountain,
Antietam, Fredericksburg and Gettysburg! I had visited the old ground
because I thought it would be a pleasure, but somehow, when the scenes
of the past came crowding back upon me, and I remembered so many of my
jovial comrades, now no more, a melancholy settled over me; and when I
turned away toward Washington, it was with a sadness of heart that I
cannot express.