Mid-summer at the Capitol.
No party ever made a graver mistake than did the one that had elected
the Administration during the summer after the assassination of Mr.
Lincoln and the surrender of the Rebel armies. Representatives,
senators, leading men of the party in other official stations or in
private life, abandoned their new President before he was lost.
Dissatisfied with the North Carolina proclamation, they made little
effort to convince the President of the justice of their
dissatisfaction. Whispering to one another their fears that his Southern
prejudices would lead him over to the side of the returning Rebels, they
made little effort to retain him. Occasionally some prominent Unionist
came down to Washington to see the President, found the ante-room filled
with pardon-seeking Rebels, and the city rife with the old Rebel talk,
became disgusted and hurried back to the North.
All summer long the capital was filled with the late leaders in Rebel
councils, or on Rebel battle-fields. They filled all avenues of approach
to the White House. They kept the Southern President surrounded by an
atmosphere of Southern geniality, Southern prejudices, Southern
aspirations. Mr. Johnson declared that treason must be humbled—they
convinced him that they were humble. That traitors must be punished—they
showed him how they had suffered. That only loyal men should rule—they
were all loyal now.
He had been a “poor white,” with all the hatred of his class to the
negroes. They showed him how the “Radicals” wanted to make the negroes
as good as the white men. As a Tennessee politician, it had been
necessary for him to denounce the “Abolitionists and fanatics of the
North;” to declare, in the stereotyped phrase of the stump, that he had
equal hatred for the Secessionists of South Carolina and the
Abolitionists of Massachusetts. They asked him if he was going to let
Massachusetts Abolitionists lead him now and control his Administration,
while his own native South lay repentant and bleeding at his feet. He
was ambitious, proud of his elevation, but stung by the sneer that after
all he was only an accidental President. They cunningly showed him how
he could secure the united support of the entire South and of the great
Democratic party of the North, with which all his own early history was
identified, for the next Presidency.
Such were the voices, day by day and week by week, sounding in the
President’s ears. He heard little else, was given time to think little
else. And meanwhile the party that had elected him, simply—let him
alone. The history of our politics shows no graver blunder.
* * * * *
Every day the White House presented the same scene. Passing through the
ante-room to the public staircase, one always encountered a throng of
coarsely-dressed bronzed Southerners, carrying heavy canes,
tobacco-ruminant, and full of political talk. The unfurnished
desolate-looking room in which visitors gather, while waiting their
turns for interviews with the President, was always crowded. One day I
saw there two or three Rebel Generals, as many members of the Rebel
Congress, and at least a score of less noted leaders. In a corner,
occupying the only chair which the room contains, sat a former Secretary
of War of the Rebel Confederacy. Not far from him stood Henry W.
Hilliard, once United States Congressman from Alabama, and subsequently
prominent in the plots which Andrew Johnson so sternly resisted for
seducing Tennessee into rebellion.
From nine o’clock until three the President sat in the room adjacent,
conversing with one or another as the doorkeeper admitted them. Pardons
were discussed, policies of reorganization were canvassed. The
pardon-seekers were the counsellors on reorganization—there were none
others there with whom to consult. Thus the weary day passed, with a
steady stream of Rebel callers. At three o’clock the doorkeeper’s hands
were full of cards not yet presented to the President, and the ante-room
was thronged; then the door was thrown open, and the crowd rushed in as
if scrambling for seats in a railroad car. The President stood by his
desk; to his left, at another table, stood General Mussey and Colonel
Browning, his two private secretaries. On the table in the center of the
room lay a pile of pardons, a foot high, watched by a young Major in
uniform.
“How the newspapers slandered the President,” said a Congressman,[43]
after witnessing such a scene. “Treason is a crime and must be pardoned!
_That_ was the rallying cry with which he assumed his office, and the
odious newspapers reported him wrong.”
A few Union soldiers had been waiting all day to see the President about
pardons for desertion, restoration of bounties, and the like. One after
another approached, presented his case, received a prompt and generally
a kindly answer and retired. A stooped, prematurely old person, wearing
several foreign decorations, thin, with nervous face and weary
expression, wanted back pay for services as a hospital steward. He gave
his name as Geo. Gordon Di Luna Byron, and claimed to be a son of the
poet. Hospital-steward Byron was persuaded to seek in the
Quartermaster’s Department for an investigation and decision of his
claims. Sundry gentlemen would be greatly obliged if they could be
handed their pardons now. The President was not quite ready; they were
made out and lying on the table, but he wasn’t just prepared to deliver
them yet. “Were not the cases decided?” “Oh, yes; it was all right; they
would get their pardons in due time.”
“They’re not quite enough humiliated yet,” whispered an official
on-looker.
Others had only called to thank the President for his kindness
concerning their pardons. They were about to start home, and it would
afford them the greatest pleasure to co-operate in the work of
reconstruction, and especially to do all in their power in support of
the President’s policy.
The District Attorney of Tennessee wanted to know what course to pursue
about confiscations. He had been endeavoring to discharge his duties
under the confiscation law, but before he had been able to get through
the proceedings in any case, the President’s pardon had put a stop to
it. He was told to call to-morrow.
So the crowd thinned out, one by one. By half-past five Mr. Johnson was
alone with his secretaries—only a few idlers still passing before the
open door for a stolen look at the Chief-Magistrate of the Republic.
* * * * *
At the other end of the avenue, in a large, pleasantly-furnished suite
of rooms in the basement of the capitol, was a curious contrast. Whoever
chose, whatever the degree of his treachery, might go in to stare at the
President or ask for a pardon. At the rooms of the Court of Claims, a
poor, friendless, cowardly, and cruel Swiss mercenary was on trial for
his life for cruelties to National prisoners, known to have been fully
reported to the Rebel officials the President was pardoning.
Near one end of the connecting rooms stood a long table, at the head of
which, sat the small, nervous figure of Major General Lew. Wallace, and
around which were grouped the members of his Military Commission. Among
them was General Thomas, the grey-headed Adjutant General of the United
States Army; hearty and companionable, General Geary of Pennsylvania;
and General Fessenden, of Maine, still limping from his wounds. Opposite
General Wallace, at a little cross-table, sat young, long-bearded,
pleasant-faced Colonel Chipman, the Judge Advocate of the Commission.
Near the latter, shrinking down upon his chair, and mostly seeking to
avoid the gaze of the crowd, sat the cringing prisoner on trial for
atrocities almost without a parallel in the history of modern warfare.
He was badly dressed, in old, shabby-genteel clothes, was slovenly, and
seemed to have lost all care for his appearance. He listened in a
submissive, helpless sort of way to the testimony. Occasionally
something seemed to touch him keenly and he would turn to his counsel
and whisper earnestly; but for the most part, he sat silent, bent-up,
cowering, and apparently wretched.
The proofs of his guilt were overwhelming. The man not convinced by them
would be the man to doubt whether there was sufficient historical
evidence of our ever having had a war with Mexico. But there were
others, as guilty as he, guiltier indeed in that they made him the tool
to do deeds to which they would not stoop themselves. They should have
been seated by his side, to make the trial other than a bitter mockery
of justice.
* * * * *
One hot August morning a couple of us, wearied with such scenes, crossed
the Long Bridge, (whose opposite ends were guarded, at the outbreak of
the war by hostile sentries—Virginia stationing hers at the end where
the bridge touched her sovereignty, and General Scott sending his to the
other end to watch them), and took the cars for Manassas Junction. The
railroad had just been turned over to its old owners by the military
authorities, and the cars, provided for the accommodation of the
Virginia travelers, still bore the inscription “United States Military
R. R.”
A motley throng of curiosity-hunters, speculators, sight-seers,
returning pardon-seekers, and Southern politicians filled the cars.
Among them were a very few Southern women. The leaders of the Old
Dominion were not yet able to travel much.
Manassas Junction was being made over again. A few frame shanties had
been hastily thrown up. Two of these did duty as “hotels;” nearly all
contrived to turn an honest penny by selling villainous liquors for
twice the Washington price. Workmen were nailing on roofs, and hammering
at weather-boarding for several more. “We’ll open out a store there next
week,” said an unmistakable Yankee, pointing to a structure still
standing in the naked simplicity of bare sills, posts and rafters.
We stopped among the carpenters, while the tavern-keeper was hitching up
his horses to take us over to Bull Run, and made some inquiries as to
the localities. “That’s the road to Manassus Gap,” said one, laying down
his hammer and nails, with the air of a man glad of an opportunity to
quit work and talk. “That’s where we came marching up time o’ Bull Run.”
He went on to describe the route his division took. Supposing him to be
a Northerner we became utterly confused in trying to square our
recollections of the battle with his descriptions. Finally it occurred
to us to ask, “Which side were you on?”
“The Virginia side, of co’se! What side’d ye ’spose I’d be on?”
“He was one of Mosby’s guerrillas,” whispered a Northern resident
standing by.
He reckoned they’d be quiet enough now, ’s long ’s they’d nothing else
to do. They’d been overpowered, but no Yankee could say they were ever
whipped. “Didn’t we whip you right straight along till you called in the
niggers and Dutch to help you? Make it a fair fight and we’d have
whipped you all the way through. One of us could whip two o’ your men
any time in fair fight. It stands to reason. Didn’t we whip you all
along with only half as many men? Of co’se one o’ our men had to be
better’n two o’ your’n.”
By this time our ambulance drove up and we started for the
battle-fields. “They talk mighty big,” said our Pennsylvania driver, who
had heard the latter part of the conversation; “but in spite of all
their big talk, they do things that down in old Lancaster we’d be mighty
’shamed of. Why, here the other night a fellow comes into our tavern
there to buy a bottle of whisky. After he buys it, what does he do, but
call in two or three others that had helped him pay for it, and borrow
our glasses to take a drink out of his bottle. Why couldn’t the stingy
cuss ’ave bought it by the drink like a gentleman, if he’d a know’d how
a gentleman did?”
The road led us away through a boundless common, waving with golden rod
and covered with luxuriant grass. Every fence, for miles, was gone. Here
and there solitary chimneys marked the site of an old “Virginia
mansion,” and sometimes a little of the shrubbery had been spared about
the ruins, but there were no other signs of human habitation. Neither
were there any signs of the conflicts which have made the neighborhood
memorable forever. Few trees were standing to show the scars of shells;
the country seemed an absolute solitude; where once the roar of battle
had rent the air, we had only the chirping notes of myriads of birds.
Coming out on the brow of a little knoll, near which, in the hollow and
across the brook was a double log-cabin, we stood beside the “Bull Run
Monument.” It is a plain obelisk, built up of the sand-stone found in
the neighborhood, roughly-faced down and cemented with coarse mortar. On
its sides smooth places had been obtained by daubing on a little square
of plaster. On these were painted the words “Erected, June 10, 1865, in
honor of the Patriots who fell at Bull Run, July 21, 1861.” On either
hand stretched the rolling country; below us murmured a little brook;
away beyond the log-cabin at the bottom of the hill, a dark forest line
shut in the view. A few yards from the monument stood half-a-dozen peach
trees, loaded with excellent fruit, with which the driver took care to
fill the lunch-basket.
Driving over to the extreme right of the Bull Run ground, we came out
into the edge of the woods on the left of the field where the second
Bull Run was fought. An old school-house, without doors, windows, desks
or seats, had in some way been preserved. A few bullets and fragments of
shell could still be found under the trees—there was nothing else to
speak of battle, or indeed, of the presence of man for years. Leaving
the ambulance here, we walked down through the woods till we struck the
railroad-cut, of which Stonewall Jackson made such effective use. Here,
too, a few bullets and fragments of shell were to be found; beyond was
the long, rank grass covering what had once been cultivated fields.
Climbing the hill—with not a few admonitions about the snakes that in
the grass do hide—we reached the Second Bull Run Monument, erected by a
Northern regiment at the same time with the other, and almost its _fac
simile_. The inscription read:
“In memory of the
Patriots
Who fell at Groveton,
August 28th, 29th and 30th, 1862.”
Since the return of the Rebels, after Lee’s surrender, another word had
been carefully and conspicuously interlined and the inscription read:
“In memory of the
Confederate Patriots,” etc.
When the rebellion began arsenals and ammunition were stolen; when it
ended we had this more original performance of stealing a monument.
On our return we stopped at the old log-cabin near the center of the
first Bull Run battle-field. Its inhabitants, a blear-eyed,
hard-drinking poor white and his wife, the latter of whom seemed to be
dividing her time between her pipe and the wash-tub, had occupied the
house during the whole of both battles and during the subsequent
alternate possession of the field by either side. Before the war he had
made a living by selling a little whisky; now he had nothing to depend
on but his “patch.” This, as it subsequently appeared, was gratuitously
cultivated for him by a curious old misshapen negro who considered
himself in some way bound to the place.
The negro brought us some cider, of indescribable taste. “How in the
world did you make this, uncle?”
“Why, sah, I only had few rotten apples, but I’s got plenty peaches. So
I pounds up de apples and de peaches togedder in a bary, wid a pessle.
Den I puts water in to make de juice come, cause it’s so dry. Den I put
away de juice, and gibs it to gemmen, and dey always gibs me somefin den
what makes me laugh.”
He thought the end of the world was coming, sure, at the time of the
first battle. Afterward, when the second came, he wasn’t quite so much
scared at first, but ’fore it over he thought hisself dead nigger,
shore.
Where were all his neighbors? Dey’d all done gone, sence dey got so
badly whipped, and nebber cum back. Reckoned some on ’em lost mighty
fine farms heah by it.
Didn’t he think they were very foolish to fight that way for nothing? He
didn’t know, twan’t for him to say. Dey was old enough and ageable
enough to know best for demselves.
Thus the freedman. The Virginian of the ruling class was even more
cautious. “He hain’t nary a politic,” explained our driver. “He’s been
first one thing and then the other, just accordin’ to which side
happened to be camped around; but he’s a poor sneakin’ nigger-driver at
heart.”
We drove from end to end of the two battle-fields, and found these to be
its only inhabitants. In fifteen miles of driving through what had once
been a cultivated country, we saw but a single fence.
At the railroad station, on our return, we found quite a number of
negroes. They had always lived here, and wanted to live here still. They
were willing to work, but their old masters weren’t willing to hire
them. Didn’t we think that the Government ought to give them lands?
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Footnote 43:
Judge Kelley, of Philadelphia.