“ON TO RICHMOND.”
At mid-day, on the fifteenth of September, I took the train at
Fredericksburg for Richmond, expecting to make in three hours the
journey which our armies were more than as many years in accomplishing.
“On to Richmond! On to Richmond!” clattered the cars; while my mind
recalled the horrors and anxieties of those years, so strangely in
contrast with the swiftness and safety of our present speed. Where now
were the opposing Rebel hosts? Where the long lines of bristling
musketry, the swarms of cavalry, and the terrible artillery? Where the
great Slave Empire, the defiant Confederacy itself?
“The earth hath bubbles as the water has,
And these were of them.”
We passed amid the same desolate scenes which I had everywhere observed
since I set foot upon the soil of Virginia,—old fields and undergrowths,
with signs of human life so feeble and so few, that one began to wonder
where the country population of the Old Dominion was to be found. All
the region between Fredericksburg and Richmond seems not only almost
uninhabited now, but always to have been so,—at least to the eye
familiar with New-England farms and villages. But one must forget the
thriving and energetic North when he enters a country stamped with the
dark seal of slavery. Large and fertile Virginia, with eight times the
area of Massachusetts, scarcely equals in population that barren little
State. The result is, that, where Southern State pride sees prosperous
settlements, the travelling Yankee discovers little more than
uncultivated wastes.
Ashton, sixteen miles from Richmond, was the first really
civilized-looking place we passed. Farther on I looked for the suburbs
of the capital. But Richmond has no suburbs. The pleasant villages and
market-gardens that spread smilingly for miles around our large Northern
towns, are altogether wanting here. Suddenly the melancholy waste of the
country disappears, and you enter the outskirts of the city.
And is this indeed Richmond into which the train glides so smoothly
along its polished rails? Is this the fort-encircled capital whose gates
refused so long to open to our loudly knocking armies?—and have we
entered with so little ado? Is the “Rome of the Confederacy” sitting
proudly on her seven hills, aware that here are detestable Yankees
within her walls? Will she cast us into Libby? or starve us on Belle
Island? or forward us to Wirtz at Andersonville?—for such we know was
the fate of Northern men who _did_ get into Richmond during the past
four years! You think of what _they_ suffered, as you walk unmolested
the pavements of the conquered capital; and something swells within you,
which is not exultation, nor rage, nor grief, but a strange mingling of
all these.
“Time the Avenger! unto thee I lift
My hands and eyes and heart!”
for what a change has been wrought since those days of horror and crime!
Now no Rebel guard is at hand to march you quickly and silently through
the streets; but friendly faces throng to welcome you, to offer you
seats in carriages, and to invite you to the hospitalities of hotels.
And these people, meeting or passing you, or seated before their doors
in the warm September afternoon, are no longer enemies, but tamed
complacent citizens of the United States like yourself.
I was surprised to find that the storm of war had left Richmond so
beautiful a city; although she appeared to be mourning for her sins at
the time in dust and ashes,—dust which every wind whirled up from the
unwatered streets, and the ashes of the Burnt District.
Here are no such palatial residences as dazzle the eye in New York,
Chicago, and other Northern cities; but in their place you see handsome
rows of houses, mostly of brick, shaded by trees, and with a certain air
of comfort and elegance about them which is very inviting. The streets
are sufficiently spacious, and regularly laid out, many of them being
thrown up into long, sweeping lines of beauty by the hills on which they
are built. The hills indeed are the charm of Richmond, overlooking the
falls of the James, on the left bank of which it stands; giving you
shining glimpses of the winding river up and down,—commanding views of
the verdant valley and of the hilly country around,—and here, at the end
of some pleasant street, falling off abruptly into the wild slopes of
some romantic ravine.
In size, Richmond strikes one as very insignificant, after all the noise
it has made in the world. Although the largest city of Virginia, and
ranking among Southern cities of the second magnitude, either of our
great Northern towns could swallow it, as one pickerel swallows a
lesser, and scarcely feel the morsel in its belly. In 1860 it had a
population of not quite thirty-eight thousand,—less than that of Troy or
New Haven, and but a little larger than that of Lowell.
I had already secured a not very satisfactory room at a crowded hotel,
when, going out for an afternoon ramble, I came by chance to Capitol
Square. Although a small park, containing only about eight acres, I
found in its shady walks and by its twinkling fountains a delightful
retirement after the heat and dust of the streets. It is situated on the
side of a hill sloping down to the burnt district which lies between it
and the river. On the brow of the slope, at an imposing elevation, its
pillared front looking towards the western sun, stands the State
Capitol, which was also the capitol of the Confederacy. Near by is
Crawford’s equestrian statue of Washington, which first astonishes the
beholder by its vast proportions, and does not soon cease to be a wonder
to his eyes.
Coming out of the Park, at the corner nearest the monument, I noticed,
on the street-corner opposite, a hotel, whose range of front rooms
overlooking the square, made me think ruefully of the lodgings I had
engaged elsewhere. To exchange a view of back yards and kitchen-roofs
from an upper story for a sight from those commanding windows, entered
my brain as an exciting possibility. I went in. The clerk had two or
three back rooms to show, but no front room, until he saw that nothing
else would suffice, when he obligingly sent me to the very room I
wished. Throwing open the shutters, I looked out upon the Park, the
Capitol, the colossal Washington soaring above the trees, and the
far-off shining James. I caught glimpses, through the foliage, of the
spray of one of the fountains, and could hear its ceaseless murmur
mingle with the noise of the streets.
I took possession at once, sent for my luggage, slept that night in my
new lodgings, and was awakened at dawn the next morning by a sound as of
a dish of beans dashed into a ringing brass kettle. This was repeated at
irregular intervals, and with increasing frequency, as the day advanced,
breaking in upon the plashy monotone of the fountain, and the rising hum
of the city, with its resounding rattle. Stung with curiosity, I arose
and looked from my open window. Few white citizens were astir, but I saw
a thin, ceaseless stream of negroes, who “would not work,” going
cheerfully to their daily tasks. The most of them took their way towards
the burnt district; some crossed Capitol Square to shorten their route;
and the sounds I had heard were occasioned by the slamming of the iron
gates of the Park.