Interview with Mr. Seward--My passport--Mr. Seward’s views
as to the war--Illumination at Washington--My “servant”
absents himself--New York journalism--The Capitol--Interior of
Congress--The President’s Message--Speeches in Congress--Lord
Lyons--General M‘Dowell--Low standard in the army--Accident to
the “Stars and Stripes”--A street row--Mr. Bigelow--Mr. N.P.
Willis.
When the Senate had adjourned, I drove to the State Department and
saw Mr. Seward, who looked much more worn and haggard than when I saw
him last, three months ago. He congratulated me on my safe return
from the South in time to witness some stirring events. “Well, Mr.
Secretary, I am quite sure that, if all the South are of the same
mind as those I met in my travels, there will be many battles before
they submit to the Federal Government.”
“It is not submission to the Government we want; it is to assent to
the principles of the Constitution. When you left Washington we had
a few hundred regulars and some hastily-levied militia to defend the
national capital, and a battery and a half of artillery under the
command of a traitor. The Navy-yard was in the hands of a disloyal
officer. We were surrounded by treason. Now we are supported by
the loyal States which have come forward in defence of the best
Government on the face of the earth, and the unfortunate and
desperate men who have commenced this struggle will have to yield or
experience the punishment due to their crimes.”
“But, Mr. Seward, has not this great exhibition of strength been
attended by some circumstances calculated to inspire apprehension
that liberty in the free States may be impaired; for instance, I hear
that I must procure a passport in order to travel through the States
and go into the camps in front of Washington.”
“Yes, sir; you must send your passport here from Lord Lyons, with his
signature. It will be no good till I have signed it, and then it must
be sent to General Scott, as Commander-in-Chief of the United States
army, who will subscribe it, after which it will be available for all
legitimate purposes. You are not in any way impaired in your liberty
by the process.”
“Neither is, one may say, the man who is under surveillance of the
police in despotic countries in Europe; he has only to submit to a
certain formality, and he is all right; in fact, it is said by some
people, that the protection afforded by a passport is worth all the
trouble connected with having it in order.”
Mr. Seward seemed to think it was quite likely. There were
corresponding measures taken in the Southern States by the rebels,
and it was necessary to have some control over traitors and disloyal
persons. “In this contest,” said he, “the Government will not shrink
from using all the means which they consider necessary to restore
the Union.” It was not my place to remark that such doctrines were
exactly identical with all that despotic governments in Europe have
advanced as the ground of action in cases of revolt, or with a view
to the maintenance of their strong Governments. “The Executive,”
said he, “has declared in the inaugural that the rights of the
Federal Government shall be fully vindicated. We are dealing with
an insurrection within our own country, of our own people, and the
Government of Great Britain have thought fit to recognise that
insurrection before we were able to bring the strength of the Union
to bear against it, by conceding to it the status of belligerent.
Although we might justly complain of such an unfriendly act in
a manner that might injure the friendly relations between the
two countries, we do not desire to give any excuse for foreign
interference; although we do not hesitate, in case of necessity, to
resist it to the uttermost, we have less to fear from a foreign war
than any country in the world. If any European Power provokes a war,
we shall not shrink from it. A contest between Great Britain and the
United States would wrap the world in fire, and at the end it would
not be the United States which would have to lament the results of
the conflict.”
I could not but admire the confidence--may I say the coolness?--of
the statesman who sat in his modest little room within the sound of
the evening’s guns, in a capital menaced by their forces who spoke
so fearlessly of war with a Power which could have blotted out the
paper blockade of the Southern forts and coast in a few hours, and,
in conjunction with the Southern armies, have repeated the occupation
and destruction of the capital.
The President sent for Mr. Seward whilst I was in the State
Department, and I walked up Pennsylvania Avenue to my lodgings,
through a crowd of men in uniform who were celebrating Independence
Day in their own fashion--some by the large internal use of
fire-water, others by an external display of fireworks.
Directly opposite my lodgings are the head-quarters of General
Mansfield, commanding the district, which are marked by a guard
at the door and a couple of six-pounder guns pointing down the
street. I called upon the General, but he was busy examining certain
inhabitants of Alexandria and of Washington itself, who had been
brought before him on the charge of being Secessionists, and I left
my card, and proceeded to General Scott’s head-quarters, which I
found packed with officers. The General received me in a small room,
and expressed his gratification at my return, but I saw he was so
busy with reports, despatches, and maps, that I did not trespass on
his time. I dined with Lord Lyons, and afterwards went with some
members of the Legation to visit the camps, situated in the public
square.
All the population of Washington had turned out in their best to
listen to the military bands, the music of which was rendered nearly
inaudible by the constant discharge of fireworks. The camp of the
12th New York presented a very pretty and animated scene. The men
liberated from duty were enjoying themselves out and inside their
tents, and the sutlers’ booths were driving a roaring trade. I was
introduced to Colonel Butterfield, commanding the regiment, who was
a merchant of New York; but notwithstanding the training of the
counting-house, he looked very much like a soldier, and had got
his regiment very fairly in hand. In compliance with a desire of
Professor Henry, the Colonel had prepared a number of statistical
tables in which the nationality, height, weight, breadth of chest,
age, and other particulars respecting the men under his command
were entered. I looked over the book, and as far as I could judge,
but two out of twelve of the soldiers were native-born Americans,
the rest being Irish, German, English, and European-born generally.
According to the commanding officer they were in the highest state
of discipline and obedience. He had given them leave to go out as
they pleased for the day, but at tattoo only 14 men out of 1000 were
absent, and some of those had been accounted for by reports that they
were incapable of locomotion owing to the hospitality of the citizens.
When I returned to my lodgings, the coloured boy whom I had hired
at Niagara was absent, and I was told he had not come in since the
night before. “These free coloured boys,” said my landlord, “are a
bad set; now they are worse than ever; the officers of the army are
taking them all away from us; it’s just the life they like; they get
little work, have good pay; but what they like most is robbing and
plundering the farmers’ houses over in Virginia; what with Germans
Irish, and free niggers, Lord help the poor Virginians, I say; but
they’ll give them a turn yet.”
The sounds in Washington to-night might have led one to believe the
city was carried by storm. Constant explosion of firearms, fireworks,
shouting, and cries in the streets, which combined, with the heat
and the abominable odours of the undrained houses and mosquitoes, to
drive sleep far away.
_July 5th._--As the young gentleman of colour, to whom I had given
egregious ransom as well as an advance of wages, did not appear
this morning, I was, after an abortive attempt to boil water for
coffee and to get a piece of toast, compelled to go in next door, and
avail myself of the hospitality of Captain Cecil Johnson, who was
installed in the drawing-room of Madame Jost. In the forenoon, Mr.
John Bigelow, whose acquaintance I made, much to my gratification in
time gone by, on the margin of the Lake of Thun, found me out, and
proffered his services; which, as the whilom editor of the _Evening
Post_ and as a leading Republican, he was in a position to render
valuable and most effective; but he could not make a Bucephalus to
order, and I have been running through the stables of Washington
in vain, hoping to find something up to my weight--such flankless,
screwy, shoulderless, cat-like creatures were never seen--four of
them would scarcely furnish ribs and legs enough to carry a man, but
the owners thought that each of them was fit for Baron Rothschild;
and then there was saddlery and equipments of all sorts to be got,
which the influx of officers and the badness and dearness of the
material put quite beyond one’s reach. Mr. Bigelow was of opinion
that the army would move at once; “but,” said I, “where is the
transport--where the cavalry and guns?” “Oh,” replied he “I suppose
we have got everything that is required. I know nothing of these
things, but I am told cavalry are no use in the wooded country
towards Richmond.” I have not yet been able to go through the camps,
but I doubt very much whether the material or commissariat of the
grand army of the North is at all adequate to a campaign.
The presumption and ignorance of the New York journals would be
ridiculous were they not so mischievous. They describe “this horde
of battalion companies--unofficered, clad in all kinds of different
uniform, diversely equipped, perfectly ignorant of the principles of
military obedience and concerted action,”--for so I hear it described
by United States officers themselves--as being “the greatest army the
world ever saw; perfect in officers and discipline; unsurpassed in
devotion and courage; furnished with every requisite; and destined on
its first march to sweep into Richmond, and to obliterate from the
Potomac to New Orleans every trace of rebellion.”
The Congress met to-day to hear the President’s Message read. Somehow
or other there is not such anxiety and eagerness to hear what Mr.
Lincoln has to say as one could expect on such a momentous occasion.
It would seem as if the forthcoming appeal to arms had overshadowed
every other sentiment in the minds of the people. They are waiting
for deeds, and care not for words. The confidence of the New York
papers, and of the citizens, soldiers, and public speakers, contrast
with the dubious and gloomy views of the military men; but of this
Message itself there are some incidents independent of the occasion
to render it curious, if not interesting. The President has, it
is said, written much of it in his own fashion, which has been
revised and altered by his Ministers; but he has written it again
and repeated himself, and after many struggles a good deal of pure
Lincolnism goes down to Congress.
At a little after half-past eleven I went down to the Capitol.
Pennsylvania Avenue was thronged as before, but on approaching
Capitol Hill, the crowd rather thinned away, as though they shunned,
or had no curiosity to hear, the President’s Message. One would
have thought that, where every one who could get in was at liberty
to attend the galleries in both Houses, there would have been an
immense pressure from the inhabitants and strangers in the city, as
well as from the citizen soldiers, of which such multitudes were in
the street; but when I looked up from the floor of the Senate, I was
astonished to see that the galleries were not more than three parts
filled. There is always a ruinous look about an unfinished building
when it is occupied and devoted to business. The Capitol is situated
on a hill, one face of which is scarped by the road, and has the
appearance of being formed of heaps of rubbish. Towards Pennsylvania
Avenue the long frontage abuts on a lawn shaded by trees, through
which walks and avenues lead to the many entrances under the
porticoes and colonnades; the face which corresponds on the other
side looks out on heaps of brick and mortar, cut stone, and a waste
of marble blocks lying half buried in the earth and cumbering the
ground, which, in the magnificent ideas of the founders and planners
of the city, was to be occupied by stately streets. The cleverness of
certain speculators in land prevented the execution of the original
idea, which was to radiate all the main avenues of the city from
the Capitol as a centre, the intermediate streets being formed by
circles drawn at regularly-increasing intervals from the Capitol,
and intersected by the radii. The speculators purchased up the land
on the side between the Navy-yard and the site of the Capitol; the
result--the land is unoccupied, except by paltry houses, and the
capitalists are ruined.
The Capitol would be best described by a series of photographs.
Like the Great Republic itself, it is unfinished. It resembles it
in another respect: it looks best at a distance; and, again, it is
incongruous in its parts. The passages are so dark that artificial
light is often required to enable one to find his way. The offices
and bureaux of the committees are better than the chambers of the
Senate and the House of Representatives. All the encaustics and the
white marble and stone staircases suffer from tobacco juice, though
there is a liberal display of spittoons at every corner. The official
messengers, doorkeepers, and porters wear no distinctive badge or
dress. No policemen are on duty, as in our Houses of Parliament; no
soldiery, gendarmerie, or sergens-de-ville in the precincts; the
crowd wanders about the passages as it pleases, and shows the utmost
propriety, never going where it ought not to intrude. There is a
special gallery set apart for women; the reporters are commodiously
placed in an ample gallery, above the Speaker’s chair; the diplomatic
circle have their gallery facing the reporters, and they are placed
so low down in the somewhat depressed Chamber, that every word can
be heard from speakers in the remotest parts of the house very
distinctly.
The seats of the members are disposed in a manner somewhat like
those in the French Chambers. Instead of being in parallel rows to
the walls, and at right angles to the Chairman’s seat, the separate
chairs and desks of the Senators are arranged in semicircular rows.
The space between the walls and the outer semicircle is called
the floor of the house, and it is a high compliment to a stranger
to introduce him within this privileged place. There are leather
cushioned seats and lounges put for the accommodation of those who
may be introduced by Senators, or to whom, as distinguished members
of Congress in former days, the permission is given to take their
seats. Senators Sumner and Wilson introduced me to a chair, and made
me acquainted with a number of Senators before the business of the
day began.
Mr. Sumner, as the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, is
supposed to be viewed with some jealousy by Mr. Seward, on account
of the disposition attributed to him to interfere in diplomatic
questions; but if he does so, we shall have no reason to complain,
as the Senator is most desirous of keeping the peace between the two
countries, and of mollifying any little acerbities and irritations
which may at present exist between them. Senator Wilson is a man
who has risen from what would be considered in any country but a
republic the lowest ranks of the people. He apprenticed himself to
a poor shoemaker when he was twenty-two years of age, and when he
was twenty-four years old he began to go to school, and devoted all
his earnings to the improvement of education. He got on by degrees,
till he set up as a master shoe maker and manufacturer, became a
“major-general” of State militia; finally was made Senator of the
United States, and is now “Chairman of the Committee of the Senate on
Military Affairs.” He is a bluff man, of about fifty years of age,
with a peculiar eye and complexion, and seems honest and vigorous.
But is he not going ultra crepidam in such a post? At present he is
much perplexed by the drunkenness which prevails among the troops,
or rather by the desire of the men for spirits, as he has a New
England mania on that point. One of the most remarkable-looking men
in the House is Mr. Sumner. Mr. Breckinridge and he would probably
be the first persons to excite the curiosity of a stranger, so far
as to induce him to ask for their names. Save in height--and both
are a good deal over six feet--there is no resemblance between the
champion of States Rights and the orator of the Black Republicans.
The massive head, the great chin and jaw, and the penetrating eyes of
Mr. Breckinridge convey the idea of a man of immense determination,
courage, and sagacity. Mr. Sumner’s features are indicative of a
philosophical and poetical turn of thought, and one might easily
conceive that he would be a great advocate, but an indifferent leader
of a party.
It was a hot day; but there was no excuse for the slop coats and
light-coloured clothing and felt wide-awakes worn by so many Senators
in such a place. They gave the meeting the aspect of a gathering
of bakers or millers; nor did the constant use of the spittoons
beside their desks, their reading of newspapers and writing letters
during the dispatch of business, or the hurrying to and fro of the
pages of the House between the seats, do anything but derogate from
the dignity of the assemblage, and, according to European notions,
violate the respect due to a Senate Chamber. The pages alluded to
are smart boys, from twelve to fifteen years of age, who stand below
the President’s table, and are employed to go on errands and carry
official messages by the members. They wear no particular uniform,
and are dressed as the taste or means of their parents dictate.
The House of Representatives exaggerates all the peculiarities I have
observed in the Senate, but the debates are not regarded with so
much interest as those of the Upper House; indeed, they are of far
less importance. Strong-minded statesmen and officers--Presidents
or Ministers--do not care much for the House of Representatives, so
long as they are sure of the Senate; and, for the matter of that,
a President like Jackson does not care much for Senate and House
together. There are privileges attached to a seat in either branch
of the Legislature, independent of the great fact that they receive
mileage and are paid for their services, which may add some incentive
to ambition. Thus the members can order whole tons of stationery for
their use, not only when they are in session, but during the recess.
Their frank covers parcels by mail, and it is said that Senators
without a conscience have sent sewing-machines to their wives and
pianos to their daughters as little parcels by post. I had almost
forgotten that much the same abuses were in vogue in England some
century ago.
The galleries were by no means full, and in that reserved for the
diplomatic body the most notable person was M. Mercier, the Minister
of France, who, fixing his intelligent and eager face between both
hands, watched with keen scrutiny the attitude and conduct of the
Senate. None of the members of the English Legation were present.
After the lapse of an hour, Mr. Hay, the President’s Secretary, made
his appearance on the floor, and sent in the Message to the Clerk of
the Senate, Mr. Forney, who proceeded to read it to the House. It
was listened to in silence, scarcely broken except when some Senator
murmured “Good, that is so;” but in fact the general purport of it
was already known to the supporters of the Ministry, and not a
sound came from the galleries. Soon after Mr. Forney had finished,
the galleries were cleared, and I returned up Pennsylvania Avenue,
in which the crowds of soldiers around bar-rooms, oyster shops,
and restaurants, the groups of men in officers’ uniform, and the
clattering of disorderly mounted cavaliers in the dust, increased my
apprehension that discipline was very little regarded, and that the
army over the Potomac had not a very strong hand to keep it within
bounds.
As I was walking over with Captain Johnson to dine with Lord Lyons,
I met General Scott leaving his office and walking with great
difficulty between two aides-de-camp. He was dressed in a blue frock
with gold lace shoulder straps, fastened round the waist by a yellow
sash, and with large yellow lapels turned back over the chest in the
old style, and moved with great difficulty along the pavement. “You
see I am trying to hobble along, but it is hard for me to overcome my
many infirmities. I regret I could not have the pleasure of granting
you an interview to-day, but I shall cause it to be intimated to you
when I may have the pleasure of seeing you; meantime I shall provide
you with a pass and the necessary introductions to afford you all
facilities with the army.”
After dinner I made a round of visits, and heard the diplomatists
speaking of the Message; few, if any of them, in its favour. With
the exception perhaps of Baron Gerolt, the Prussian Minister,
there is not one member of the Legations who justifies the attempt
of the Northern States to assert the supremacy of the Federal
Government by the force of arms. Lord Lyons, indeed, in maintaining
a judicious reticence whenever he does speak, gives utterance to
sentiments becoming the representative of Great Britain at the court
of a friendly Power, and the Minister of a people who have been
protagonists to slavery for many a long year.
_July 6th._--I breakfasted with Mr. Bigelow this morning, to meet
General M‘Dowell, who commands the army of the Potomac, now so soon
to move. He came in without an aide-de-camp, and on foot, from his
quarters in the city. He is a man about forty years of age, square
and powerfully built, but with rather a stout and clumsy figure and
limbs, a good head covered with close-cut thick dark hair, small
light-blue eyes, short nose, large cheeks and jaw, relieved by an
iron-grey tuft somewhat of the French type, and affecting in dress
the style of our gallant allies. His manner is frank, simple, and
agreeable, and he did not hesitate to speak with great openness of
the difficulties he had to contend with, and the imperfection of all
the arrangements of the army.
As an officer of the regular army he has a thorough contempt for what
he calls “political generals”--the men who use their influence with
President and Congress to obtain military rank, which in time of war
places them before the public in the front of events, and gives them
an appearance of leading in the greatest of all political movements.
Nor is General M‘Dowell enamoured of volunteers, for he served in
Mexico, and has from what he saw there formed rather an unfavourable
opinion of their capabilities in the field. He is inclined, however,
to hold the Southern troops in too little respect; and he told me
that the volunteers from the slave states, who entered the field
full of exultation and boastings, did not make good their words,
and that they suffered especially from sickness and disease, in
consequence of their disorderly habits and dissipation. His regard
for old associations was evinced in many questions he asked me about
Beauregard, with whom he had been a student at West Point, where the
Confederate commander was noted for his studious and reserved habits,
and his excellence in feats of strength and athletic exercises.
As proof of the low standard established in his army, he mentioned
that some officers of considerable rank were more than suspected of
selling rations, and of illicit connections with sutlers for purposes
of pecuniary advantage. The General walked back with me as far as my
lodgings, and I observed that not one of the many soldiers he passed
in the streets saluted him, though his rank was indicated by his
velvet collar and cuffs, and a gold star on the shoulder strap.
Having written some letters, I walked out with Captain Johnson and
one of the attachés of the British Legation, to the lawn at the
back of the White House, and listened to the excellent band of the
United States Marines, playing on a kind of dais under the large
flag recently hoisted by the President himself, in the garden. The
occasion was marked by rather an ominous event. As the President
pulled the halyards and the flag floated aloft, a branch of a tree
caught the bunting and tore it, so that a number of the stars and
stripes were detached and hung dangling beneath the rest of the flag,
half detached from the staff.
I dined at Captain Johnson’s lodgings next door to mine. Beneath us
was a wine and spirit store, and crowds of officers and men flocked
indiscriminately to make their purchases, with a good deal of tumult,
which increased as the night came on. Later still, there was a
great disturbance in the city. A body of New York Zouaves wrecked
some houses of bad repute, in one of which a private of the regiment
was murdered early this morning. The cavalry patrols were called
out and charged the rioters, who were dispersed with difficulty
after resistance in which men on both sides were wounded. There is
no police, no provost guard. Soldiers wander about the streets, and
beg in the fashion of the mendicant in “Gil Blas” for money to get
whisky. My coloured gentleman has been led away by the Saturnalia and
has taken to gambling in the camps, which are surrounded by hordes of
rascally followers and sutlers’ servants, and I find myself on the
eve of a campaign, without servant, horse, equipment, or means of
transport.
_July 7th._--Mr. Bigelow invited me to breakfast, to meet Mr. Senator
King, Mr. Olmsted, Mr. Thurlow Weed, a Senator from Missouri, a
West Point professor, and others. It was indicative of the serious
difficulties which embarrass the action of the Government to hear Mr.
Wilson, the Chairman of the Military Committee of the Senate, inveigh
against the officers of the regular army, and attack West Point
itself. Whilst the New York papers were lauding General Scott and his
plans to the skies, the Washington politicians were speaking of him
as obstructive, obstinate, and prejudiced--unfit for the times and
the occasion.
General Scott refused to accept cavalry and artillery at the
beginning of the levy, and said that they were not required; now
he was calling for both arms most urgently. The officers of the
regular army had followed suit. Although they were urgently pressed
by the politicians to occupy Harper’s Ferry and Manassas, they
refused to do either, and the result is that the enemy have obtained
invaluable supplies from the first place, and are now assembled in
force in a most formidable position at the second. Everything as
yet accomplished has been done by political generals--not by the
officers of the regular army. Butler and Banks saved Baltimore in
spite of General Scott. There was an attempt made to cry up Lyon
in Missouri; but in fact it was Frank Blair, the brother of the
Postmaster-General, who had been the soul and body of all the actions
in that State. The first step taken by M‘Clellan in Western Virginia
was atrocious--he talked of slaves in a public document as property.
Butler, at Monroe, had dealt with them in a very different spirit,
and had used them for State purposes under the name of contraband.
One man alone displayed powers of administrative ability, and that
was Quartermaster Meigs; and unquestionably from all I heard, the
praise was well bestowed. It is plain enough that the political
leaders fear the consequences of delay, and that they are urging
the military authorities to action, which the latter have too much
professional knowledge to take with their present means. These
Northern men know nothing of the South, and with them it is _omne
ignotum pro minimo_. The West Point professor listened to them with a
quiet smile, and exchanged glances with me now and then, as much as
to say, “Did you ever hear such fools in your life?”
But the conviction of ultimate success is not less strong here than
it is in the South. The difference between these gentlemen and
the Southerners is, that in the South the leaders of the people,
soldiers and civilians, are all actually under arms, and are ready to
make good their words by exposing their bodies in battle.
I walked home with Mr. N.P. Willis, who is at Washington for the
purpose of writing sketches to the little family journal of which
he is editor, and giving war “anecdotes;” and with Mr. Olmsted, who
is acting as a member of the New York Sanitary Commission, here
authorised by the Government to take measures against the reign
of dirt and disease in the Federal camp. The Republicans are very
much afraid that there is, even at the present moment, a conspiracy
against the Union in Washington--nay, in Congress itself; and regard
Mr. Breckenridge, Mr. Bayard, Mr. Vallandigham, and others as most
dangerous enemies, who should not be permitted to remain in the
capital. I attended the Episcopal church and heard a very excellent
discourse, free from any political allusion. The service differs
little from our own, except that certain euphemisms are introduced in
the Litany and elsewhere, and the prayers for Queen and Parliament
are offered up _nomine mutato_ for President and Congress.