Return to Baltimore--Colonel Carroll--A Priest’s view of the
Abolition of Slavery--Slavery in Maryland--Harper’s Ferry--John
Brown--Back by train to Washington--Further accounts of Bull
Run--American Vanity--My own unpopularity for speaking the
truth--Killing a “Nigger” no murder--Navy Department.
On the 17th August I returned to Baltimore on my way to Drohoregan
Manor, the seat of Colonel Carroll, in Maryland, where I had been
invited to spend a few days by his son-in-law, an English gentleman
of my acquaintance. Leaving Baltimore at 5.40 p.m., in company
with Mr. Tucker Carroll, I proceeded by train to Ellicott’s Mills,
a station fourteen miles on the Ohio and Baltimore railroad, from
which our host’s residence is distant more than an hour’s drive. The
country through which the line passes is picturesque and undulating,
with hills and valleys and brawling streams, spreading in woodland
and glade, ravine, and high uplands on either side, haunted by cotton
factories, poisoning air and water; but it has been a formidable
district for the engineers to get through, and the line abounds
in those triumphs of engineering which are generally the ruin of
shareholders.
All these lines are now in the hands of the military. At the
Washington terminus there is a guard placed to see that no
unauthorised person or unwilling volunteer is going north; the
line is watched by patrols and sentries; troops are encamped along
its course. The factory chimneys are smokeless; half the pleasant
villas which cover the hills or dot the openings in the forest have
a deserted look and closed windows. And so these great works, the
Carrolton viaduct, the Thomas viaduct, and the high embankments and
great cuttings in the ravine by the river side, over which the line
passes, have almost a depressing effect, as if the people for whose
use they were intended had all become extinct. At Ellicott’s Mills,
which is a considerable manufacturing town, more soldiers and Union
flags. The people are Unionists, but the neighbouring gentry and
country people are Seceshers.
This is the case wherever there is a manufacturing population in
Maryland, because the workmen are generally foreigners, or have
come from the Northern States, and feel little sympathy with States
rights’ doctrines, and the tendencies of the landed gentry to a
Conservative action on the slave question. There was no good-will
in the eyes of the mechanicals as they stared at our vehicle; for
the political bias of Colonel Carroll was well known, as well as the
general sentiments of his family. It was dark when we reached the
manor, which is approached by an avenue of fine trees. The house is
old-fashioned, and has received additions from time to time. But for
the black faces of the domestics, one might easily fancy he was in
some old country house in Ireland. The family have adhered to their
ancient faith. The founder of the Carrolls in Maryland came over with
the Catholic colonists led by Lord Baltimore, or by his brother,
Leonard Calvert, and the colonel possesses some interesting deeds of
grant and conveyance of the vast estates, which have been diminished
by large sales year after year, but still spread over a considerable
part of several counties in the State.
Colonel Carroll is an immediate descendant of one of the leaders in
the revolution of 1776, and he pointed out to me the room in which
Carroll, of Carrolton, and George Washington, were wont to meet when
they were concocting their splendid treason. One of his connections
married the late Marquis Wellesley, and the colonel takes pleasure
in setting forth how the daughter of the Irish recusant, who fled
from his native country all but an outlaw, sat on the throne of the
Queen of Ireland, or, in other words, held court in Dublin Castle
as wife of the Viceroy. Drohoregan is supposed to mean “Hall of the
Kings,” and is called after an old place belonging, some time or
other, to the family, the early history of which, as set forth in
the Celtic authorities and Irish antiquarian works, possesses great
attractions for the kindly, genial old man--kindly and genial to all
but the Abolitionists and black republicans; nor is he indifferent
to the reputation of the State in the Revolutionary War, where the
“Maryland line” seems to have differed from many of the contingents
of the other States in not running away so often at critical moments
in the serious actions. Colonel Carroll has sound arguments to prove
the sovereign independence and right of every State in the Union,
derived from family teaching and the lessons of those who founded the
Constitution itself.
On the day after my arrival the rain fell in torrents. The weather
is as uncertain as that of our own isle. The torrid heats at
Washington, the other day, were succeeded by bitter cold days; now
there is a dense mist, chilly and cheerless, seeming as a sort of
strainer for the even down pour that falls through it continuously.
The family after breakfast slipped round to the little chapel which
forms the extremity of one wing of the house. The coloured people on
the estate were already trooping across the lawn and up the avenue
from the slave quarters, decently dressed for the most part, having
due allowance for the extraordinary choice of colours in their gowns,
bonnets, and ribbons, and for the unhappy imitations, on the part
of the men, of the attire of their masters. They walked demurely
and quietly past the house, and presently the priest, dressed like
a French curé, trotted up, and service began. The negro houses were
of a much better and more substantial character than those one
sees in the south, though not remarkable for cleanliness and good
order. Truth to say, they were palaces compared to the huts of Irish
labourers, such as might be found, perhaps, on the estates of the
colonel’s kinsmen at home. The negroes are far more independent
than they are in the south. They are less civil, less obliging,
and, although they do not come cringing to shake hands as the field
hands on a Louisianian plantation, less servile. They inhabit a
small village of brick and wood houses, across the road at the end
of the avenue, and in sight of the house. The usual swarms of little
children, poultry, pigs, enlivened by goats, embarrassed the steps of
the visitor, and the old people, or those who were not finely dressed
enough for mass, peered out at the strangers from the glassless
windows.
When chapel was over, the boys and girls came up for catechism, and
passed in review before the ladies of the house, with whom they
were on very good terms. The priest joined us in the verandah when
his labours were over, and talked with intelligence of the terrible
war which has burst over the land. He has just returned from a tour
in the Northern States, and it is his belief the native Americans
there will not enlist, but that they will get foreigners to fight
their battles. He admitted that slavery was in itself an evil, nay,
more, that it was not profitable in Maryland. But what are the
landed proprietors to do? The slaves have been bequeathed to them as
property by their fathers, with certain obligations to be respected,
and duties to be fulfilled. It is impossible to free them, because,
at the moment of emancipation, nothing short of the confiscation
of all the labour and property of the whites would be required to
maintain the negroes, who would certainly refuse to work unless they
had their masters’ land as their own. Where is white labour to be
found? Its introduction must be the work of years, and meantime many
thousands of slaves, who have a right to protection, would canker the
land.
In Maryland they do not breed slaves for the purpose of selling
them as they do in Virginia, and yet Colonel Carroll and other
gentlemen who regarded the slaves they inherited almost as members
of their families, have been stigmatised by abolition orators as
slave-breeders and slave-dealers. It was these insults which stung
the gentlemen of Maryland and of the other Slave States to the quick,
and made them resolve never to yield to the domination of a party
which had never ceased to wage war against their institutions and
their reputation and honour.
A little knot of friends and relations joined Colonel Carroll at
dinner. There are few families in this part of Maryland which have
not representatives in the other army across the Potomac; and if
Beauregard could but make his appearance, the women alone would give
him welcome such as no conqueror ever received in liberated city.
Next day the rain fell incessantly. The mail was brought in by a
little negro boy on horseback, and I was warned by my letters that
an immediate advance of M‘Clellan’s troops was probable. This is an
old story. “Battle expected to-morrow” has been a heading in the
papers for the last fortnight. In the afternoon I was driven over
a part of the estate in a close carriage, through the windows of
which, however, I caught glimpses of a beautiful country, wooded
gloriously, and soft, sylvan, and well-cultivated as the best parts
of Hampshire and Gloucestershire, the rolling lands of which latter
county, indeed, it much resembled in its large fields, heavy with
crops of tobacco and corn. The weather was too unfavourable to admit
of a close inspection of the fields; but I visited one or two tobacco
houses, where the fragrant Maryland was lying in masses on the
ground, or hanging from the rafters, or filled the heavy hogsheads
with compressed smoke.
Next day I took the train, at Ellicott’s Mills, and went to Harper’s
Ferry. There is no one spot, in the history of this extraordinary
war, which can be well more conspicuous. Had it nothing more to
recommend it than the scenery, it might well command a visit from the
tourist; but as the scene of old John Brown’s raid upon the Federal
arsenal, of that first passage of arms between the abolitionists
and the slave conservatives, which has developed this great contest;
above all, as the spot where important military demonstrations have
been made on both sides, and will necessarily occur hereafter,
this place, which probably derives its name from some wretched old
boatman, will be renowned for ever in the annals of the civil war of
1861. The Patapsco, by the bank of which the rail is carried for some
miles, has all the character of a mountain torrent, rushing through
gorges or carving out its way at the base of granite hills, or
boldly cutting a path for itself through the softer slate. Bridges,
viaducts, remarkable archways, and great spans of timber trestle
work leaping from hill to hill, enable the rail to creep onwards
and upwards by the mountain side to the Potomac at Point of Rocks,
whence it winds its way over undulating ground, by stations with
eccentric names to the river’s bank once more. We were carried on
to the station next to Harper’s Ferry on a ledge of the precipitous
mountain range which almost overhangs the stream. But few civilians
were in the train. The greater number of passengers consisted of
soldiers and sutlers, proceeding to their encampments along the
river. A strict watch was kept over the passengers, whose passes were
examined by officers at the various stations. At one place an officer
who really looked like a soldier entered the train, and on seeing
my pass told me in broken English that he had served in the Crimea,
and was acquainted with me and many of my friends. The gentleman who
accompanied me observed, “I do not know whether he was in the Crimea
or not, but I do know that till very lately your friend the Major was
a dancing master in New York.” A person of a very different type
made his offers of service, Colonel Gordon of the 2nd Massachusetts
Regiment, who caused the train to run on as far as Harper’s Ferry,
in order to give me a sight of the place, although in consequence of
the evil habit of firing on the carriages in which the Confederates
across the river have been indulging, the locomotive generally halts
at some distance below the bend of the river.
Harper’s Ferry lies in a gorge formed by a rush of the Potomac
through the mountain ridges, which it cuts at right angles to its
course at its junction with the river Shenandoah. So trenchant and
abrupt is the division that little land is on the divided ridge to
build upon. The precipitous hills on both sides are covered with
forest, which has been cleared in patches here and there on the
Maryland shore, to permit of the erection of batteries. On the
Virginian side there lies a mass of blackened and ruined buildings,
from which a street lined with good houses stretches up the hill.
Just above the junction of the Shenandoah with the Potomac, an
elevated bridge or viaduct 300 yards long leaps from hill side to
hill side. The arches had been broken--the rails which ran along the
top torn up, and there is now a deep gulf fixed between the shores
of Maryland and Virginia. The rail to Winchester from this point has
been destroyed, and the line along the Potomac has also been ruined.
But for the batteries which cover the shoal water at the junction
of the two rivers below the bridge, there would be no difficulty in
crossing to the Maryland shore, and from that side the whole of the
ground around Harper’s Ferry is completely commanded. The gorge is
almost as deep as the pass of Killiecranckie, which it resembles in
most respects except in breadth and the size of the river between,
and if ever a railroad finds its way to Blair Athol, the passengers
will find something to look at very like the scenery on the route to
Harper’s Ferry. The vigilance required to guard the pass of the river
above and below this point is incessant, but the Federals possess
the advantage on their side of a deep canal parallel to the railway
and running above the level of the river, which would be a more
formidable obstacle than the Potomac to infantry or guns. There is
reason to believe that the Secessionists in Maryland cross backwards
and forwards whenever they please, and the Virginians coming down at
their leisure to the opposite shore, inflict serious annoyance on the
Federal troops by constant rifle practice.
Looking up and down the river the scenery is picturesque, though it
is by no means entitled to the extraordinary praises which American
tourists lavish upon it. Probably old John Brown cared little for the
wild magic of streamlet or rill, or for the blended charm of vale and
woodland. When he made his attack on the arsenal now in ruins, he
probably thought a valley was as high as a hill, and that there was
no necessity for water running downwards--assuredly he saw as little
of the actual heights and depths around him when he ran across the
Potomac to revolutionize Virginia. He has left behind him millions
either as clear-sighted or as blind as himself. In New England
parlours a statuette of John Brown may be found as a pendant to the
likeness of our Saviour. In Virginia his name is the synonym of all
that is base, bloody, and cruel.
Harper’s Ferry at present, for all practical purposes, may be
considered as Confederate property. The few Union inhabitants remain
in their houses, but many of the Government workmen and most of
the inhabitants have gone off South. For strategical purposes its
possession would be most important to a force desiring to operate
on Maryland from Virginia. The Blue Ridge range running up to the
Shenandoah divides the country so as to permit a force debouching
from Harper’s Ferry to advance down the valley of the Shenandoah on
the right, or to move to the left between the Blue Ridge and the
Katoctin mountains towards the Manassas railway at its discretion.
After a false alarm that some Secesh cavalry were coming down to
renew the skirmishing of the day before, I returned, and travelling
to Relay House just saved the train to Washington, where I arrived
after sunset. A large number of Federal troops are employed along
these lines, which they occupy as if they were in a hostile country.
An imperfectly formed regiment broken up into these detachments and
placed in isolated posts, under ignorant officers, may be regarded as
almost worthless for military operations. Hence the constant night
alarms--the mistakes--the skirmishes and instances of misbehaviour
which arise along these extended lines.
On the journey from Harper’s Ferry, the concentration of masses of
troops along the road, and the march of heavy artillery trains,
caused me to think a renewal of the offensive movement against
Richmond was immediate, but at Washington I heard that all M‘Clellan
wanted or hoped for at present, was to make Maryland safe and to gain
time for the formation of his army. The Confederates appear to be
moving towards their left, and M‘Clellan is very uneasy lest they
should make a vigorous attack before he is prepared to receive them.
In the evening the New York papers came in with the extracts from
the London papers containing my account of the battle of Bull’s Run.
Utterly forgetting their own versions of the engagement, the New
York editors now find it convenient to divert attention from the
bitter truth that was in them, to the letter of the foreign newspaper
correspondent, who, because he is a British subject, will prove not
only useful as a conductor to carry off the popular wrath from the
American journalists themselves, but as a means by induction of
charging the vials afresh against the British people, inasmuch as
they have not condoled with the North on the defeat of armies which
they were assured would, if successful, be immediately led to effect
the disruption of the British empire. At the outset I had foreseen
this would be the case, and deliberately accepted the issue; but when
I found the Northern journals far exceeding in severity anything I
could have said, and indulging in general invective against whole
classes of American soldiery, officers, and statesmen, I was foolish
enough to expect a little justice, not to say a word of the smallest
generosity.
_August 21st._--The echoes of Bull Run are coming back with a
vengeance. This day a month ago the miserable fragments of a beaten,
washed out, demoralised army, were flooding in disorder and dismay
the streets of the capital from which they had issued forth to
repel the tide of invasion. This day month and all the editors and
journalists in the States, weeping, wailing, and gnashing their
teeth, infused extra gall into their ink, and poured out invective,
abuse, and obloquy on their defeated general and their broken hosts.
The President and his ministers, stunned by the tremendous calamity,
sat listening in fear and trembling for the sound of the enemy’s
cannon. The veteran soldier, on whom the boasted hopes of the nation
rested, heart-sick and beaten down, had neither counsel to give
nor action to offer. At any moment the Confederate columns might
be expected in Pennsylvania Avenue to receive the welcome of their
friends and the submission of their helpless and disheartened enemies.
All this is forgotten--and much more, which need not now be repeated.
Saved from a great peril, even the bitterness of death, they forget
the danger that has passed, deny that they uttered cries of distress
and appeals for help, and swagger in all the insolence of recovered
strength. Not only that, but they turn and rend those whose writing
has been dug up after thirty days, and comes back as a rebuke to
their pride.
Conscious that they have insulted and irritated their own army, that
they have earned the bitter hostility of men in power, and have
for once inflicted a wound on the vanity to which they have given
such offensive dimensions, if not life itself, they now seek to run
a drag scent between the public nose and their own unpopularity,
and to create such an amount of indignation and to cast so much
odium upon one who has had greater facilities to know, and is more
willing to tell the truth, than any of their organs, that he will
be unable henceforth to perform his duties in a country where
unpopularity means simply a political and moral atrophy or death. In
the telegraphic summary some days ago a few phrases were picked out
of my letters, which were but very faint paraphrases of some of the
sentences which might be culled from Northern newspapers, but the
storm has been gathering ever since, and I am no doubt to experience
the truth of De Tocqueville’s remark, “that a stranger who injures
American vanity, no matter how justly, may make up his mind to be a
martyr.”
_August 22nd._--
“The little dogs and all,
Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart,
See they bark at me.”
The North have recovered their wind, and their pipers are blowing
with might and main. The time given them to breathe after Bull Run
has certainly been accompanied with a greater development of lung
and power of blowing than could have been expected. The volunteer
army which dispersed and returned home to receive the _Io Pæans_ of
the North, has been replaced by better and more numerous levies,
which have the strong finger and thumb of General M‘Clellan on their
windpipe, and find it is not quite so easy as it was to do as they
pleased. The North, besides, has received supplies of money, and is
using its great resources, by land and sea, to some purpose, and as
they wax fat they kick.
A general officer said to me, “Of course you will never remain, when
once all the press are down upon you. I would not take a million
dollars and be in your place.” “But is what I’ve written untrue?”
“God bless you! do you know in this country if you can get enough
of people to start a lie about any man, he would be ruined, if the
Evangelists came forward to swear the story was false. There are
thousands of people who this moment believe that M‘Dowell, who never
tasted anything stronger than a water melon in all his life, was
helplessly drunk at Bull’s Run. Mind what I say; they’ll run you
into a mud hole as sure as you live.” I was not much impressed with
the danger of my position further than that I knew there would be
a certain amount of risk from the rowdyism and vanity of what even
the Americans admit to be the lower orders, for which I had been
prepared from the moment I had despatched my letter; but I confess
I was not by any means disposed to think that the leaders of public
opinion would seek the small gratification of revenge, and the petty
popularity of pandering to the passions of the mob, by creating
a popular cry against me. I am not aware that any foreigner ever
visited the United States who was injudicious enough to write one
single word derogatory to their claims to be the first of created
beings, who was not assailed with the most viperous malignity and
rancour. The man who says he has detected a single spot on the face
of their sun should prepare his winding sheet.
The _New York Times_, I find, states “that the terrible epistle
has been read with quite as much avidity as an average President’s
message. We scarcely exaggerate the fact when we say, the first and
foremost thought on the minds of a very large portion of our people
after the repulse at Bull’s Run was, what will Russell say?” and then
they repeat some of the absurd sayings attributed to me, who declared
openly from the very first that I had not seen the battle at all, to
the effect “that I had never seen such fighting in all my life, and
that nothing at Alma or Inkerman was equal to it.” An analysis of the
letter follows, in which it is admitted that “with perfect candour
I purported to give an account of what I saw, and not of the action
which I did not see,” and the writer, who is, if I mistake not, the
Hon. Mr. Raymond, of the _New York Times_, like myself a witness
of the facts I describe, quotes a passage in which I say, “There
was no flight of troops, no retreat of an army, no reason for all
this precipitation,” and then declares “that my letter gives a very
spirited and perfectly just description of the panic which impelled
and accompanied the troops from Centreville to Washington. He does
not, for he cannot, in the least exaggerate its horrible disorder,
or the disgraceful behaviour of the incompetent officers by whom it
was aided, instead of being checked. He saw nothing whatever of the
fighting, and therefore says nothing whatever of its quality. He
gives a clear, fair, perfectly just and accurate, as it is a spirited
and graphic account of the extraordinary scenes which passed under
his observation. Discreditable as those scenes were to our army, we
have nothing in connection with them whereof to accuse the reporter;
he has done justice alike to himself, his subject, and the country.”
_Ne nobis blandiar_, I may add, that at least I desired to do
so, and I can prove from Northern papers that if their accounts
were true, I certainly much “extenuated and nought set down in
malice”--nevertheless, Philip drunk is very different from Philip
sober, frightened, and running away, and the man who attempts to
justify his version to the inebriated polycephalous monarch is sure
to meet such treatment as inebriated despots generally award to their
censors.
_August 23rd._--The torrent is swollen to-day by anonymous letters
threatening me with bowie knife and revolver, or simply abusive,
frantic with hate, and full of obscure warnings. Some bear the
Washington post-mark, others came from New York, the greater
number--for I have had nine--are from Philadelphia. Perhaps they may
come from the members of that “gallant” 4th Pennsylvania Regiment.
_August 24th._--My servant came in this morning, to announce a
trifling accident--he was exercising my horse, and at the corner of
one of those charming street crossings, the animal fell and broke
its leg. A “vet” was sent for. I was sure that such a portent had
never been born in those Daunian woods. A man about twenty-seven
or twenty-eight stone weight, middle-aged and active, with a fine
professional feeling for distressed horseflesh; and I was right
in my conjectures that he was a Briton, though the vet had become
Americanised, and was full of enthusiasm about “our war for the
Union,” which was yielding him a fine harvest. He complained there
were a good many bad characters about Washington. The matter is
proved beyond doubt by what we see, hear, and read. To-day there
is an account in the papers of a brute shooting a negro boy dead,
because he asked him for a chew of tobacco. Will he be hanged? Not
the smallest chance of it. The idea of hanging a white man for
killing a nigger! It is more preposterous here than it is in India,
where our authorities have actually executed whites for the murder of
natives.
Before dinner I walked down to the Washington navy yard. Captain
Dahlgren was sorely perplexed with an intoxicated Senator, whose name
it is not necessary to mention, and who seemed to think he paid
me a great compliment by expressing his repeated desire “to have a
good look at” me. “I guess you’re quite notorious now. You’ll excuse
me because I’ve dined, now--and so you are the Mr. &c., &c., &c.”
The Senator informed me that he was “none of your d----d blackfaced
republicans. He didn’t care a d---- about niggers--his business
was to do good to his fellow white men, to hold our glorious Union
together, and let the niggers take care of themselves.”
I was glad when a diversion was effected by the arrival of Mr. Fox,
Assistant-Secretary of the Navy, and Mr. Blair, Postmaster-General,
to consult with the Captain, who is greatly looked up to by all
the members of the Cabinet--in fact he is rather inconvenienced by
the perpetual visits of the President, who is animated by a most
extraordinary curiosity about naval matters and machinery, and is
attracted by the novelty of the whole department, so that he is
continually running down “to have a talk with Dahlgren” when he is
not engaged in “a chat with George.” The Senator opened such a smart
fire on the Minister that the latter retired, and I mounted and
rode back to town. In the evening Major Clarence Brown, Lieutenant
Wise, a lively, pleasant, and amusing little sailor, well-known in
the States as the author of “Los Gringos,” who is now employed in
the Navy Department, and a few of the gentlemen connected with the
Foreign Legations came in, and we had a great international reunion
and discussion till a late hour. There is a good deal of agreeable
banter reserved for myself, as to the exact form of death which I am
most likely to meet. I was seriously advised by a friend not to stir
out unarmed. The great use of a revolver is that it will prevent the
indignity of tarring and feathering, now pretty rife, by provoking
greater violence. I also received a letter from London, advising
me to apply to Lord Lyons for protection, but that could only be
extended to me within the walls of the Legation.
_August 25th._--I visited the Navy Department, which is a small
red-brick building two storeys high, very plain and even humble.
The subordinate departments are conducted in rooms below stairs.
The executive are lodged in the rooms which line both sides of the
corridor above. The walls of the passage are lined with paintings in
oil and water colours, engravings and paintings in the worst style
of art. To the latter considerable interest attaches, as they are
authentic likenesses of naval officers who gained celebrity in the
wars with Great Britain--men like Perry, M‘Donough, Decatur, and
Hull, who, as the Americans boast, was “the first man who compelled a
British frigate of greater force than his own to strike her colours
in fair fight.” Paul Jones was not to be seen, but a drawing is
proudly pointed to of the attack of the American fleet on Algiers
as a proof of hatred to piracy, and of the prominent part taken by
the young States in putting an end to it in Europe. In one room are
several swords, surrendered by English officers in the single frigate
engagements, and the duplicates of medals, in gold and silver, voted
by Congress to the victors. In Lieutenant Wise’s room, there are
models of the projectiles, and a series of shot and shell used in
the navy, or deposited by inventors. Among other relics was the flag
of Captain Ward’s boat just brought in which was completely riddled
by the bullet marks received in the ambuscade in which that officer
was killed, with nearly all of his boat’s crew, as they incautiously
approached the shore of the Potomac, to take off a small craft placed
there to decoy them by the Confederates. My business was to pave the
way for a passage on board a steamer, in case of any naval expedition
starting before the army was ready to move, but all difficulties
were at once removed by the promptitude and courtesy of Mr. Fox, the
Assistant-Secretary, who promised to give me an order for a passage
whenever I required it. The extreme civility and readiness to oblige
of all American officials, high and low, from the gate-keepers and
door porters up to the heads of departments, cannot be too highly
praised, and it is ungenerous to accept the explanation offered by an
English officer to whom I remarked the circumstance, that it is due
to the fact that each man is liable to be turned out at the end of
four years, and therefore makes all the friends he can.
In the afternoon I rode out with Captain Johnson, through some
charming woodland scenery on the outskirts of Washington, by a
brawling stream, in a shady little ravine, that put me in mind of
the Dargle. Our ride led us into the camps, formed on the west of
Georgetown, to cover the city from the attacks of an enemy advancing
along the left bank of the Potomac, and in support of several strong
forts and earthworks placed on the heights. One regiment consists
altogether of Frenchmen--another is of Germans--in a third I saw an
officer with a Crimean and Indian medal on his breast, and several
privates with similar decorations. Some of the regiments were on
parade, and crowds of civilians from Washington were enjoying the
novel scene, and partaking of the hospitality of their friends. One
old lady, whom I have always seen about the camps, and who is a sort
of ancient heroine of Saragossa, had an opportunity of being useful.
The 15th Massachusetts, a fine-looking body of men, had broken up
camp, and were marching off to the sound of their own voices chanting
“Old John Brown,” when one of the enormous trains of baggage waggons
attached to them was carried off by the frightened mules, which
probably had belonged to Virginian farmers, and one of the soldiers,
in trying to stop it, was dashed to the ground and severely injured.
The old lady was by his side in a moment, and out came her flask of
strong waters, bandages, and medical comforts and apparatus. “It’s
well I’m here for this poor Union soldier; I’m sure I always have
something to do in these camps.” On my return late, there was a
letter on my table requesting me to visit General M‘Clellan, but it
was then too far advanced to avail myself of the invitation, which
was only delivered after I left my lodgings.