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WASHINGTON AND THE CIVIL WAR.
Many an obscure man of ability was raised to prominence by the Civil
War. So it was with the astronomer, Asaph Hall. A year after the war
broke out, the staff of workers at the U.S. Naval Observatory was much
depleted. Some resigned to go South; others were ordered elsewhere by
the Federal Government. In the summer of 1862, while his wife was
visiting her people in Rodman, Mr. Hall went to Washington, passed an
examination, and was appointed an “Aid” in the Naval Observatory.
The city was in a turmoil. On August 27, three weeks after he entered
the observatory, Mr. Hall wrote to his wife:
When I see the slack, shilly-shally, expensive way the Government
has of doing everything, it appears impossible that it should ever
succeed in beating the Rebels.
He soon became disgusted at the wire-pulling in Washington, and wrote
contemptuously of the “_American_ astronomy” then cultivated at the
Naval Observatory. But he decided to make the best of a bad bargain; and
his own work at Washington has shed a lustre on American astronomy.
When he left Cambridge, thanks to his frugal wife, he had three hundred
dollars in the bank, although his salary at the Harvard Observatory was
only six hundred a year. The Bonds hated to lose him, and offered him
eight hundred in gold if he would stay. This was as good as the
Washington salary of one thousand a year in paper money which he
accepted, to say nothing of the bad climate and high prices of that
city, or of the uncertainties of the war.
The next three years were teeming with great events. In less than a
month after his arrival in Washington, the second battle of Bull Run was
fought. At the observatory he heard the roar of cannon and the rattle of
musketry; and it was his heart-rending task to hunt for wounded friends.
His wife, still at the North, wrote under date of September 4, 1862:
DEAREST ASAPH: ... I wish I could go right on to you, I feel so
troubled about you. You will write to me, won’t you, as soon as you
get this, and tell me whether to come on now or not. If there is
danger I had rather share it with you.
What are you doing now? Does the excitement stop your business?
Little A says he does not want papa to get shot. Cried about it last
night, and put his arms round my neck. He says he is going to take
care of mamma. There is a terrible excitement in Boston.
To this her husband replied, September 6:
DEAREST ANGIE: I have just got your letter.... You must not give
yourself any uneasiness about me. I shall keep along about my
business. We are now observing the planet Mars in the morning, and I
work every other night.
Don’t tell little A that I am going to be shot. Don’t expect
anything of that kind. You had better take your time and visit at
your leisure now. Things will be more settled in a couple of weeks.
Capt. Fox [his room-mate at McGrawville] seems to be doing well. The
ball is in his chest and probably lodged near his lungs. It may kill
him, but I think not....
Observing Mars every other night, and serving Mars the rest of the time!
His wife’s step-brothers Constant and Jasper Woodward were both wounded.
Jasper, the best of the Woodward brothers, was a lieutenant, and led his
company at Bull Run, the captain having scalded himself slightly with
hot coffee in order to keep out of the fight. Jasper was an exceedingly
bashful fellow, but a magnificent soldier, and he fairly gloried in the
battle. When he fell, and his company broke in retreat, Constant paused
to take a last shot in revenge, and was himself wounded. Mr. Hall found
them both, Constant fretful and complaining, though not seriously
wounded, and Jasper still glorying in the fight. The gallant fellow’s
wound did not seem fatal; but having been left in a damp stone church,
he had taken cold in it, so that he died.
Next followed the battle of Antietam, and the astronomer’s wife, unable
to find out who had won, and fearful lest communication with Washington
might be cut off if she delayed, hastened thither. Now Col. A. J.
Warner, a McGrawville schoolmate, whose family lived with the Halls in
Georgetown, was brought home shot through the hip. To add to the trials
of the household, little A. and the colonel’s boy Elmer came down with
diphtheria. Through the unflagging care and nursing of his mother,
little A. lived. But Elmer died. Mr. Hall, exhausted by the hot,
unwholesome climate no less than by his constant exertions in behalf of
wounded friends, broke down, and was confined within doors six weeks
with jaundice. Indeed, it was two years before he fully recovered.
Strange that historians of the Civil War have not dwelt upon the
enormous advantage to the Confederates afforded by their hot, enervating
climate, so deadly to the Northern volunteer.
In January, 1863, the Halls and Warners moved to a house in Washington,
on I Street, between 20th and 21st Streets, N.W. Here a third surgical
operation on the wounded colonel proved successful. Though he nearly
bled to death, the distorted bullet was at last pulled out through the
hole it had made in the flat part of the hip bone. Deceived by the
doctors before, the poor man cried: “Mr. Hall, is the ball out? Is the
ball out?”
Soon after this, in March, small-pox, which was prevalent in the city,
broke out in the house, and Mr. Hall sent his wife and little boy to
Cambridge, Mass. There she stayed with her friend Miss Sarah Waitt; and
there she wrote the following letter to Captain Gillis, Superintendent
of the Naval Observatory:
CAMBRIDGE, Apr. 17, 1863.
_Capt. Gillis._
DEAR SIR: I received a letter from Mr. Hall this morning saying that
Prof. Hesse has resigned his place at the Observatory. I wish Mr.
Hall might have the vacant place.
If the question is one of ability, I should be more than willing
that he with all other competitors should have a thorough and
impartial examination. I know I should be proud of the result. If on
the other hand the question is who has the greatest number of
influential friends to push him forward whether qualified or
unqualified, I fear, alas! that he will fail. He stands alone on his
merits, but his success is only a question of time. I, more than any
one, know of all his long, patient and faithful study. A few years,
and he, like Johnson, will be beyond the help of some Lord
Chesterfield.
Mr. Hall writes me that he shall do nothing but wait. I could not
bear not to have his name at least proposed.
Truly,
ANGELINE S. HALL.
On the 3rd of May Mr. Hall wrote to his wife from Washington:
DEAREST ANGIE: Yesterday afternoon Capt. Gillis told me to tell you
that the best answer he could make to your letter is that hereafter
you might address me as Prof. A. Hall....
You wrote to Capt. Gillis, did you? What did you write?
Yours,
A. HALL.
And so it was that Asaph Hall entered permanently into the service of
the United States Government. His position in life was at last secure,
and the rest of his days were devoted completely to science. His wife,
grown stronger and more self-reliant, took charge of the family affairs
and left him free to work. That summer he wrote to her, “It took me a
long time to find out what a good wife I have got.”
Some fifteen years afterward Mrs. Hall rendered a similar service to the
famous theoretical astronomer, Mr. George W. Hill, who for several years
was an inmate of her house. Knowing Mr. Hill’s rare abilities, and his
extreme modesty, Mrs. Hall took it upon herself to urge his appointment
to the corps of Professors of Mathematics, U.S. Navy, to which her
husband belonged. There were two vacancies at the time, and Mr. Hill,
having brilliantly passed a competitive examination, was designated for
appointment. But certain influences deprived the corps of the lustre
which the name of Hill would have shed upon it.
In the fall of 1863 the Halls settled down again in the house on I
Street. Here the busy little wife made home as cheerful as the times
permitted, celebrating her husband’s birthday with a feast. But the I
Street home was again invaded by small-pox. Captain Fox, having been
appointed to a government clerkship, was boarding with them, when he
came down with varioloid. And Mr. Hall’s sister, on a visit to
Washington, caught the small-pox from him. However, she recovered
without spreading the disease.
In May, 1864, they rented rooms in a house on the heights north of the
city. Their landlord, a Mr. Crandle, was a Southern sympathizer; but
when General Jubal A. Early threatened the city he was greatly alarmed.
On the morning of July 12 firing was heard north of the city. Crandle,
with a clergyman friend, had been out very early reconnoitering, and
they appeared with two young turkeys, stolen somewhere in anticipation
of the sacking of the city. For the Confederates were coming, and the
house, owned as it was by a United States officer, would surely be
burned. A hiding place for the family had been found in the Rock Creek
valley.
Mr. Hall went to his work that morning as usual; but he did not return.
Mrs. Hall, who was soon to give birth to another son, took little Asaph
and went in search of her husband. He was not at the observatory, but
the following note explained his absence:
July 12, 1864.
DEAR ANGIE: I am going out to Fort Lincoln. Don’t know how long I
shall stay. Am to be under Admiral Goldsborough. We all go. Keep
cool and take good care of little A.
Yours truly,
A. HALL.
Together with other Observatory officials, Mr. Hall was put in command
of workmen from the Navy Yard, who manned an intrenchment near Fort
Lincoln. Many of the men were foreigners, and some of them did not know
how to load a gun. Had the Confederates charged upon them they might
have been slaughtered like sheep. But in a day or two Union troops
arrived in sufficient force to drive Early away.
Before the summer was over, the Halls moved to a house in Georgetown, on
the corner of West and Montgomery Streets. It was an old-fashioned brick
house, with a pleasant yard fenced by iron pickets. These were made of
old gun barrels, and gave the place the name of “Gunbarrel Corner.”
Here, on the 28th of September, 1864, their second child, Samuel, was
born. And here the family lived for three years, renting rooms to
various friends and relatives. One of these was Mr. Hall’s sister, Mrs.
Charles Kennon, whose soldier husband lost his life in the Red River
expedition, leaving her with three noble little sons. Mr. Kennon and the
Halls had been neighbors in Cambridge, where he studied at the Harvard
Divinity School.
From the beginning Mr. Hall had objected to having a home in Washington,
and had looked to New England as a fitter place for his family to live;
but his wife would not be separated from him. The curse of war was upon
the city. Crowded with sick and wounded soldiers, idle officers and
immoral women, it was scourged by disease. Forty cases of small-pox were
at one time reported within half a mile of the place where Mr. Hall
lived. But people had become so reckless as to attend a ball at a
small-pox hospital. Most of the native population were Southern
sympathizers, and some of the women were very bitter. They hated all
Yankees—people who had lived upon saw-dust, and who came to Washington
to take the Government offices away from Southern gentlemen. As Union
soldiers were carried, sick and wounded, to the hospital, these women
would laugh and jeer at them.
But there were people in Washington who were making history. One day Mr.
Hall saw Grant—short, thin, and stoop-shouldered, dressed in his
uniform, a slouch hat pulled over his brow—on his way to take command of
the Army of the Potomac. That venerable patriot John Pierpont, whom she
had seen and admired at McGrawville, became attached to Mrs. Hall, and
used to dine at her house. She took her little boy to one of Lincoln’s
receptions, and one night Lincoln and Secretary Stanton made a visit to
the Naval Observatory, where Mr. Hall showed them some objects through
his telescope. At the Cambridge Observatory the Prince of Wales had once
appeared, but on that occasion the young astronomer was made to feel
less than nobody. Now the great War President, who signed his commission
in the United States Navy, talked with him face to face. One night soon
afterward, when alone in the observing tower, he heard a knock at the
trap door. He leisurely completed his observation, then went to lift the
door, when up through the floor the tall President raised his head.
Lincoln had come unattended through the dark streets to inquire why the
moon had appeared inverted in the telescope. Surveyors’ instruments,
which he had once used, show objects in their true position.
At length the war was over, and the Army of the Potomac and Sherman’s
Army passed in review through the city. Mrs. Hall was one of those who
witnessed these glorious spectacles—rank after rank, regiment after
regiment of seasoned veterans, their battle-flags torn and begrimed,
their uniforms shabby enough but their arms burnished and glistening,
the finest soldiers in the world! Among the officers was General
Osborne, an old Jefferson County acquaintance.
Among all the noble men of those heroic times, I, for my part, like to
think of old John Pierpont, the minister poet, who broke bread at my
mother’s table. Whether this predilection is due to prenatal causes,
some Oliver Wendell Holmes may decide. Certain it is that I was born in
September, 1868, and in the preceding April my mother wrote:
O dear anemone, and violet fair,
Beloved hepatica, arbutus sweet!
Two years ago I twined your graces rare,
And laid the garland at the poet’s feet.
The grand old poet on whose brow the snow
Of eighty winters lay in purest white,
But in whose heart was held the added glow
Of eighty summers full of warmth and light.
Like some fair tree within the tropic clime
In whose green boughs the spring and autumn meet,
Where wreaths of bloom around the ripe fruits twine,
And promise with fulfilment stands complete,
So twined around the ripeness of his thought
An ever-springing verdure and perfume,
All his rich fullness from October caught
And all her freshness from the heart of June.
But last year when the sweet wild flowers awoke
And opened their dear petals to the sun,
He was not here, but every flow’ret spoke
An odorous breath of him the missing one.
Of this effusion John Greenleaf Whittier—to whom the verses were
addressed—graciously wrote:
The first four verses of thy poem are not only very beautiful from
an artistic point of view, but are wonderfully true of the man they
describe.
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