AM ENLIGHTENED.
When Early appeared before Washington, we all knew there was nothing to
prevent his coming in and taking possession. The forts were stripped.
There were no soldiers either in or around the city. The original
inhabitants were ready to welcome him with open arms. The departments
were closed, that the clerks might go out in military array, to oppose;
but of course few soldiers were sitting at desks at that stage of the
war. The news at the Quartermaster's office one morning was that the
foreign ministers had been notified, and that the city would be shelled
that afternoon. We lived on the north side of the city; and when I went
home, thousands of people were on the streets, listening to the sound of
guns at Fort Reno.
So far as I knew, there was a universal expectation that the city would
be occupied by rebel troops that night. As this was in harmony with the
general tenor of my anticipations for a quarter of a century, I readily
shared in the popular opinion, and for once was with the majority.
Among the groups who stood in the streets were many contrabands, and
their faces were pitiful to see. One scantily-clad woman, holding a
ragged infant, and with two frightened, ragged children clinging to her
skirts, stood literally quaking. Her black face had turned gray with
terror, and she came to me and asked:
"Oh! Missus! does ye tink dey will get in?"
Suddenly my eyes were opened, like those of the prophet's servant when
he saw the horses and chariots of fire, and I replied:
"No! never! They will come no nearer than they now are! You can go home
and rest in peace, for you are just as safe from them as if you were in
heaven!"
She was greatly comforted; but a gentleman said, as she moved away:
"I wish I could share your opinion; but what is to hinder their coming
in?"
"God is to hinder! He has appointed us to rescue these people. They are
collected here in thousands, and the prayers of centuries are to be
answered now!"
I myself went home feeling all the confidence I spoke, and wondering I
could have been so stupid as to doubt. Our Government and people were
very imperfect, but had developed a sublime patriotism--made an almost
miraculous growth in good. Ten righteous men would have saved Sodom. We
had ten thousand; and I must think there are few histories of
supernatural interference in the affairs of the Jews more difficult to
account for, on merely natural grounds, than the preservation of
Washington in that crisis.
CONCLUSION.
December 6th, 1865, the fiftieth anniversary of my birth, found me in
Washington, at work in the Quarter-Master's office, on a salary of sixty
dollars a month, without any provision for support in old age; and so
great a sufferer as never to have a night of rest unbroken by severe
pain, but with my interest in a country rescued from the odium of
Southern slavery, and a faint light breaking of the day which is yet to
abolish that of the West.
In the summer of '66, Dr. King, of Pittsburg, came to know what I would
take for my interest in ten acres of the Swissvale estate, which he had
purchased. My deed had presented a barrier to the sale of a portion of
it, and he was in trouble:
I consulted Secretary Stanton, who said:
"Your title to that property is good against the world!"
It had become valuable and the idea of its ownership was alarming! I had
made up my mind to poverty, had been discharged from the
Quarter-Master's office by special order of President Johnson, "for
speaking disrespectfully of the President of the United
States!"--_Washington Star_--was the first person dismissed by Mr.
Johnson; was without visible means of support, could not suddenly adjust
my thought to anything so foreign to all my plans as coming into
possession of a valuable estate, and said:
"Oh, Secretary Stanton, how shall I ever undertake such a stewardship at
my time of life?" He looked sternly at me, and replied:
"Mrs. Swisshelm, don't be a fool! take care of yourself! It is time you
would begin. The property is yours now. You are morally responsible for
it, and can surely make some better use of it than giving it away to
rich men around Pittsburg. Go at once and attend to your interests."
This was our last interview. I instituted the suit he advised, and he
would have plead my cause before the Supreme Court, but when it came up
he was holding possession of the War Department to defeat President
Johnson's policy of making the South triumphant. However, the decree of
the court was in my favor, and through it I have been able to rescue the
old log block house from the tooth of decay, and to sit in it and recall
those passages of life with which it is so intimately connected.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Half a Century, by Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm