Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  After the problem of the forts, the most pressing question before the General-in-Chief was the maintenance of order in the capital. It was feared that an uprising might occur during the count of the electoral vote in February, and there were convincing rumors that March 4 would be the occasion for a seditious outbreak. Men in high political positions had declared that Lincoln’s inauguration should never take place. The Constitution, the local disunionist newspaper, which received the patronage of the Government, had advised preventing the inauguration by armed force. It was believed that Mayor James E. Berret, a Breckinridge Democrat, was in accord with the secessionists.

  From his Democratic associates, Ben Butler had heard much of the treasonable talk which was current in the capital. One evening a Washington acquaintance, after dining with Butler at his hotel, proposed a walk. Taking their cigars, the two men strolled west on K Street, and stopped near some low buildings, like market sheds. In the wall of one of them was a hole, through which Butler peered at a company, drilling with arms. They were getting ready for the fourth of March, his friend told him.

  “Drilling a company of the District militia to escort Lincoln?” Butler asked.

  The Washington man laughed. “Yes, they may escort Lincoln,” he said, “but I guess not in the direction of the White House.”

  Early in January, in his special message to Congress, the President felt it necessary to mention that the capital would be adequately protected at the coming inauguration. General Scott was working in co-operation with Senator James W. Grimes of Iowa and Congressman Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois, who composed an investigating committee, appointed by Congress. These gentlemen appealed to the New York chief of police, and detectives in long beards and slouched hats, chewing tobacco and damning Yankees, went to work in Washington, Baltimore, Richmond and Alexandria.

  Scott had called in an Army officer, Charles P. Stone, who had served under the General in Mexico; and, after Stone had outlined an acceptable plan for the defense of the capital, he was assigned to the duty of organizing and drilling the District militia. He entered energetically on his work, for after several months’ residence in Washington he had become convinced that two-thirds of the population would sustain the Government in defending it.

  The four existing organizations of citizen soldiers, three in Washington and one in Georgetown, were already supplied with arms. The Georgetown company, though it contained some dubious members, seemed in the main well-disposed; while the Washington Light Infantry and the National Guard Battalion were old and dependable establishments. The third and most fashionable militia organization in Washington, the National Rifles, was a hotbed of disloyalty. It was commanded by Captain F. B. Schaeffer, an employee of the Department of the Interior, who had formerly been a lieutenant in the United States Artillery. Schaeffer had more than a hundred men, mostly Marylanders, on his company’s rolls, and they were remarkably well armed and drilled. Colonel Stone was surprised to find that, in addition to rifles and ammunition, they possessed a supply of sabers and revolvers and two mountain howitzers, with harness and carriages, all drawn from the United States Arsenal. When he complimented Schaeffer on the excellence of the company’s drill, the militia captain remarked that he supposed he should soon have to lead his men to the Maryland frontier, to keep the Yankees from coming down to coerce the South.

  Through a detective who enlisted in the company, Stone obtained reports on the new recruits, many of whom were avowed secessionists. He ordered Schaeffer to deposit in the armory the howitzers and other unsuitable armament, and the order was obeyed. Eventually, the captain resigned, taking the elite of his men with him to serve in the South.

  A company of the semi-political National Volunteers, who had agitated for Southern rights during the Presidential campaign, was also holding nightly drills. The Washington Evening Star attacked the National Volunteers in January as a disloyal organization, whose intention was to prevent Lincoln’s inauguration. One of Stone’s detectives reported that the seizure of the city was openly discussed at their meetings. A committee of five, appointed by the House to inquire into the rumors of conspiracy, questioned Mayor Berret, who endorsed the National Volunteers as a non-political body, composed of respectable citizens. Their senior officer, a secessionist called Dr. Cornelius Boyle, assured the congressmen that the association was not secret and had no unlawful purpose. Although the committee uncovered much disloyal activity, it cautiously reported that it had found no evidence to prove the existence in the District of an organization hostile to the Government; and that, if such a combination had been projected, it had been contingent on the secession of Maryland or Virginia, or both.

  Before granting the National Volunteers’ application for arms, Colonel Stone demanded their muster roll. Soon after the list was turned over, the leaders left for Richmond. Stone had no trouble in raising new volunteer companies for the preservation of order in the District. The alarmed citizens of Washington were anxious to protect their property. Prominent gentlemen lent their influence. Fire companies enrolled, and so did groups of artisans and German turners. By the middle of February, Stone had fourteen companies, over nine hundred men, ready for service; and he asserted that the number could be doubled on a week’s notice. The only opposition he had encountered had come from the mayor, who refused to deliver the names and addresses of the city police.

  General Scott was too old a soldier to place full reliance on citizens in an emergency. Aware that undisciplined men could not be trusted to hold their fire under a shower of stones and brickbats, he had felt it indispensable to order some regulars and especially some flying artillery to the city. Only eight companies could be spared from the Army to safeguard Washington. Three were brought from Kansas, and one from Plattsburg, New York; there were two companies that had been driven out of arsenals in Louisiana and Georgia; and two were taken from West Point.

  Though Mr. Buchanan had been forced to yield to the representations of Scott and Holt, the idea of calling in soldiers filled him with perturbation. Washington was the most unmilitary of capitals. Apart from the handful of marines at the barracks, its only uniforms were those worn by a few naval officers and the doddering old generals at the War Department bureaus.

  In late January, there was an especial reason for the Government to appear pacific and benign. With the defeat of plans for compromise in Congress, Virginia, most influential of the border States, was initiating a Peace Conference, to be held in Washington on February 4. The slave States of Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Missouri and Delaware accepted Virginia’s invitation. If, in conference with the delegates of the free States, they could work out some amicable adjustment, it was hoped that the secession fever might abate, and the cotton States be persuaded to return to the Union. In readiness for the emissaries of peace, Mr. Chandlee, who had the cardwriting stand at Willard’s, advertised a line of cockades, “suitable for all shades of political sentiment.” The arrival of armed forces, in Mr. Buchanan’s opinion, would raise the cry of coercion, inflame the secessionists and irritate the border slave States.

  The only available quarters for troops were the barracks at the Arsenal and the militia armory on the Mall. Arrangements were made for lodging companies in the Treasury Extension, in Judiciary Square, and on E Street. New barracks and stables were hastily erected on Capitol Hill, and in a lot west of the War Department. Arriving a few at a time, without fanfare or music or parade, the eight companies of hardy, well-drilled regulars were a sensation in Washington. Their gear encumbered the little depot; the saddles alone made a monument of baggage. Horses of cavalry and artillery, restless after the confinement of the boxcars, kicked up their heels in the streets. Brass field-pieces stuck in the mud, and were dragged out with shouts that brought the crowds running. A battery of light artillery sent the city into a panic by firing a salute of thirty-four guns in honor of the admission of the free State of Kansas to the Union. The residents mistook the thundering volleys for an attack by s
ecession troops from Virginia; while disunionist ladies at the National, apprehensive of Federal belligerence, began to pack their trunks for a hasty retreat. On a dark early morning, drum taps in E Street frightened good citizens from their beds. Hoisting windows and thrusting their nightcapped heads into the fog, they discovered that the uproar was not revolution, but reveille. Mounted soldiers pounded up and down the Avenue, exercising the horses. The Government reservations were muddy; and perhaps the regulars enjoyed cutting a figure in the national capital. It does not, for example, seem necessary for exercising horses that one company of artillerymen should have worn their old hats with the red plumes, which made a fine appearance and aroused much admiration.

  The Peace delegates from the border slave States glowered under their slouched hats, and Mr. Buchanan must have winced when he took his constitutional. He might have regretted the weakness that had made him send for General Scott, for here, in every gun and plume and prancing horse, was the logical consequence of becoming involved with a soldier. Scott took no stock in peace congresses, regarding them as collections of visionaries and fanatics. In this instance, he was wrong, for among the delegates were many eminent gentlemen. On the very day that representatives of the seceded States met at Montgomery, Alabama, the Peace Conference foregathered in a large, bare room, a former Presbyterian church, which had been assimilated by the spreading structure of Willard’s. Before a fine portrait of George Washington, loaned by the mayor, a quavering, suave old man, ex-President John Tyler of Virginia, occupied the chair. Reporters were excluded from the meetings; and, with moderate secrecy, the sections collided behind closed doors. Presently, “with the solemnity of a funeral procession,” they marched to the Executive Mansion, where Mr. Buchanan received them with streaming eyes, and implored them to arrange some compromise.

  General Scott’s adherence to the Government had not passed unnoticed in the South. His mail was growing heavy with threats of assassination. He had been burned in effigy at the University of Virginia, and representatives of his native State had denounced him on the floor of the House as an ungrateful and parricidal son. The General was in agreement with Hobbes, that war is the natural state of man; but he had not been thinking of civil war. It was his greatest wish to keep the peace. His many visitors were, however, impressed with his firm intention to suppress insurrection in the capital. An emissary, sent by the President-elect to sound out his loyalty, was completely reassured. The General, suffering from an attack of dysentery, received the Illinois man in bed, and declared that he would be responsible for Lincoln’s safety whenever he was ready to come to Washington. If necessary, he would plant cannon at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and blow to hell any Maryland and Virginia gentlemen who showed their heads.

  Meanwhile, in mansions and hotels, the dark-skinned maids had packed their mistresses’ dresses. The body servants had laid out their masters’ traveling shawls. “We must make concessions!” cried the North; but the steamers bound for Aquia Creek were laden with the chivalry. Through the streets rattled baggage wagons, piled high with trunks and boxes. Houses were closed and dark. Broad-brimmed hats and blooded horses disappeared from Pennsylvania Avenue. The Toombses’ coachman ran away, and the senator and his sober wife had to drive in a hired hack. Jefferson Davis left behind his tiny Japanese dog, “to be reclaimed when convenient.” The Sardinian minister begged Mrs. Clement Clay not to weep, since it was but a revolution. Some journeyed South in proud expectation of the empire of King Cotton; some, in scorn for the Yankee traders and crude Westerners who would supplant them; some, in sorrow for lost friendships and old ambitions. A regime had ended in Washington.

  The town was filling up with new arrivals, and among them were many Southerners. Baltimore plug-uglies, secessionist rowdies who were the allies of the Washington gangs, were filtering into the city. The atmosphere was tense with foreboding. Men scowled and muttered in the hotel lobbies, and groups stood whispering on the street corners. A young artist, Thomas Nast, who had come down to make sketches for a New York illustrated paper, would shudder at the memory of those weeks in Washington.

  Early on the morning of February 13, crowds began to move up Capitol Hill. The regulars were at their posts. Horses and harness and guns were ready for an attack. At the entrances of the Capitol, soldiers turned away the general public, and admitted only those who held tickets. One hundred special policemen in plain clothes mingled with the arriving spectators in the gilded corridors. Many fashionable ladies decorated the galleries of the Hall of Representatives, fluttered about the cloakrooms, and even occupied seats surrendered by gallant members on the floor of the House. It was after twelve when the doorkeeper announced the Senate, and the defeated candidate, Breckinridge, entered at its head. Without untoward incident, the tellers opened and registered the electoral votes, and Breckinridge with palefaced formality announced that Abraham Lincoln of Illinois had been elected President of the United States.

  After the Senate had withdrawn, there were howls of disapproval from the floor and the galleries. Southerners cursed old Scott for a “free-State pimp,” and protested at the presence of his “janizaries” about the Capitol. Outside, the crowd lingered on Capitol Hill. The saloons were full, and that night the city was noisy with street fights. In Republican eyes, every quarrelsome drunkard was a traitor, and every jostling rowdy was an armed invader; but no one dignified the brawling and disorder by the name of insurrection. The noisy Southern sympathizers were the scum of the secessionists, and had no relation with the reputable, hotheaded and personally ambitious gentlemen who were organizing the government of the Confederate States at Montgomery, Alabama.

  One crisis was safely past, but another was to come. For the inauguration, General Scott was bringing a few more regulars to the city; and every day Republicans, eager for their first chance at the spoils of Federal patronage, were arriving in Washington. Sunburned, countrified, heavy-stepping Westerners were beginning to be familiar figures in the streets. In the anteroom of Mr. Buchanan’s office, Republicans now waited to see him. Always an industrious worker, the President spent arduous hours at his desk; an Old Public Functionary (as he had once been unwise enough to call himself) in a dressing gown and slippers, with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. At White House receptions, it had been remarked that the attendance of Republicans was increasing; and, as their numbers mounted, Mr. Buchanan’s levees grew in popularity. With his white cravat on his wry neck, the President stood before the newcomers like a decadent patrician facing the hordes of the Vandals. His court was now in another sense Republican; but elegant it could by no stretch of the imagination be called. At the last reception in mid-February, five thousand people were present. Scala’s Marine Band, discoursing music for the occasion, began its program with “Dixie” and closed with “Yankee Doodle.” It was an epitome of Mr. Buchanan’s administration.

  III. Arrival of a Westerner

  WHILE PREPARATIONS were being made for the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederate States, Abraham Lincoln was traveling eastward from Illinois. He was accompanied by his wife and three sons, and by a suite of State politicians, personal friends, relatives by marriage, secretaries and newspaper correspondents; and he also had a military escort of four Army officers appointed by the War Department. One was a friend, Major David Hunter, an honest, anti-slavery paymaster, with a dyed mustache and a dark-brown wig. Young Captain John Pope was the son of an Illinois judge, while Colonel Edwin V. Sumner was a good old white-haired cavalry officer from Massachusetts.

  The militia system was represented by Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth, the Zouave drillmaster, who was entrusted with the responsibility of passing the President-elect through the crowds at his stopping places on the route. The man on whom Mr. Lincoln placed most dependence, however, was Ward Hill Lamon, a younger lawyer who had been associated with him in practice on the circuit. Lamon, a native of Virginia, resembled the chivalry in his long hair, defiant eyes and drooping mustaches. He had br
ought his banjo in his baggage, and amused the party with Negro songs. Of these, The Blue-Tailed Fly, a buzzing ballad, was a favorite with Mr. Lincoln; and he loved to listen to many other simple tunes, both sad and comical, that Lamon sang. In addition to the banjo, Lamon carried an assortment of pistols and knives, a slingshot and brass knuckles. He was powerfully built and fearless, and he considered himself especially charged with Mr. Lincoln’s safe-conduct to Washington.

  It was a tour and a progress, rather than a journey. The special trains, preceded by pilot engines, ran on carefully arranged schedules between the big cities where the President-elect had appointments for speeches and receptions. Past cheering miles of people, in a confusion of bonfires, parades, salutes and handshakings, Mr. Lincoln moved to the ovation in Philadelphia. After a trip to Harrisburg on February 22, he was to proceed to Washington, where he was expected late on the following afternoon. Among the invitations with which he had been deluged, none had come from Maryland. The omission was the more conspicuous, since a slow transit through the city of Baltimore, where the cars were separately drawn by horses between the depots, was unavoidable in journeying by rail to the capital from the North.

  This impending passage through a disaffected community had been a source of considerable anxiety to Mr. Lincoln’s friends. The Baltimore gangs were notoriously lawless, and Maryland was boiling with secession agitation. There, as in Washington, military companies of suspect loyalty had been drilling; and threats had been heard that Mr. Lincoln would never go through Baltimore alive. The President of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, Mr. Samuel M. Felton, not only felt the responsibility of conveying the Presidentelect across a hostile State, but he had been disturbed by reports of conspiracies to destroy railroad property. Some weeks earlier, he had sent for a trusted Chicago investigator, Allan Pinkerton, a Scottish barrelmaker who had founded one of the first private detective agencies in the United States. Pinkerton, who was also in the pay of Mr. Lincoln’s Illinois advisers, placed spies in the military companies and secret societies in and about Baltimore. On receiving confirmation of the rumored plots to interrupt the railroad, Felton organized and armed some two hundred guards, whom he distributed in the guise of workmen along the line between the Susquehanna and Baltimore.