Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  At the same time, Secretary Welles received disturbing news from Norfolk. The scarcity of both soldiers and seamen had made it impossible either to protect the navy yard, or to bring away the ships. Only recently, Welles had been able to assemble enough sailors to remove the most valuable vessel there, the Merrimac; and he now learned that the old commandant of the yard, overborne by treacherous subordinates, had refused to permit the ship to leave. An expedition was hastily rushed to Norfolk. The prospect of losing valuable ships was a heavy one. Of the Navy’s ninety vessels, more than half were ancient and useless, and most of the serviceable ships were scattered at foreign stations. In answer to a program of privateering announced by the Confederacy, the President published a proclamation of a blockade of the rebel ports from South Carolina to Texas. Even with a powerful navy, it was a long coast line to patrol.

  On Friday, the Cabinet had grim news from Maryland, as well as from Virginia. An official dispatch brought word of fearful excitement in Baltimore, of a collision between citizens and Northern troops. Rumors that the capital’s reinforcements had been attacked were flying through the city. By five o’clock, the depot was surrounded with anxious people. The regular afternoon train was followed by a special, which stopped just outside the station. Uniforms descended from the cars, and the crowd hailed with a cheer the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, the first armed volunteers to come to the defense of Washington. They were soldierly figures in their dark-gray overcoats, with neat knapsacks and new rifles; but their young faces were dirty and haggard. They had fought their way through a mob, hurling stones and firing guns, in the streets of Baltimore. Their casualties were four dead and thirty-one wounded. As the stretchers were carried out, some ladies sprang forward to dress the wounds with handkerchiefs. Their leader was the Patent Office clerk, Miss Clara Barton of Massachusetts—a shy little spinster, who forgot her timidity in her earnestness to assist the boys from her home State. The injured men were placed in hacks and removed to the E Street Infirmary, and the crowd escorted the regiment as it marched to the Capitol. The soldiers were fasting and exhausted, and it was late before they were handed one ration each of bacon, bread and coffee, and stumbled down to cook it on the furnace fires in the basement. Their camp was the Senate Chamber, and wrapped in their blankets, with knapsacks for pillows, they flopped heavily on the carpeted floor, the gallery seats, and the cold tiles of the corridor.

  Now the capital was ringed by rebellion. The northbound trains were packed. All night the pickets were vigilant at the roads and bridges, and a sharp watch was kept by the militia at the public buildings. The sentries of the Frontier Guards patrolled the White House porticoes. Major Hunter was still faithfully stretched on the East Room floor. All Washington looked for an attack before morning; but Secretary Cameron, sleeping on a sofa in the War Department, was disturbed only by the intrusion of a Baltimore committee, urging that no more soldiers be sent through their city. Its disaffection had been whipped into a frenzy by the casualties among the citizens, on whom the Massachusetts troops had fired, and armed secessionists were in control. At midnight, the Baltimore authorities decided on a plan for keeping the Yankee soldiers out of their town. While Simon Cameron turned over for another nap, the word was going out in Maryland to burn the bridges of the railroads to Philadelphia and Harrisburg. Washington awoke on Saturday, to find itself without railway communication with the loyal States, without mail or newspapers from the North. Until Sunday night, the telegraph faltered on. Then rioters seized the Baltimore office, and the capital was left in silence, isolation and fear.

  Over the week end, women and children were sent away. Hotel guests fled the city. Office seekers scurried home. Travelers piled on board the trains that ran irregularly to Baltimore; for that city might be in the hands of a mob, but it sounded safer than Washington. Vehicles were hired at extravagant prices. Every sort of conveyance was pressed into service to carry the refugees. A long, disorderly line of traffic moved up Seventeenth Street—carriages, wagons, drays and trucks, loaded with little children and household goods. Some started out on foot, pushing carts and baby wagons filled with groceries and clothes, or wheelbarrows stacked with baggage.

  Across the Potomac, secession sympathizers went in droves, carrying the story of Washington’s helplessness and alarm. Travelers to Aquia Creek were chagrined at the Government’s seizure of several large river steamers, an act which not only interfered with transportation to the South, but deprived Virginia of the ships. Army and Navy officers were leaving for the Confederacy by scores, and civil servants by hundreds. Quartermaster General Joseph E. Johnston sent in his resignation on Monday, and Captain Magruder took his sleek hair and fine manners to Virginia the same day. Magruder had made repeated protestations of fidelity to the President, who was shocked and pained at learning of his defection. On Monday, too, Commodore Buchanan resigned, together with most of the officers of the Navy Yard. Commander John A. Dahlgren, a brilliant ordnance officer and the inventor of the cannon which was the chief armament of the Navy, succeeded Buchanan in command. A more loyal heart than Franklin Buchanan’s never throbbed, the National Intelligencer still asserted, and it published an affecting description of his workmen, with tears running down their bronzed cheeks, as they listened to the Commodore’s farewell admonitions to be faithful. It was soon discovered that large quantities of bombshells manufactured at the yard had been filled with sand and sawdust instead of explosives.

  Some of the citizens, called on for assistance in the departments, which the exodus of clerks had left shorthanded, refused with the explanation that they would be criticized when the Virginians took possession of the capital. Unionist Washington was incredulous and baffled. The confusion of patriotic citizens was partly caused by their failure to understand that Virginia was irretrievably committed to the Confederacy. They at first interpreted the warlike movements across the Potomac as the acts of a rebellious minority and clung to the hope that secession would be repudiated by the people of Virginia. General Scott cherished no such illusion. Now he spoke of the soil of his native State as enemy’s country, repeating the strange phrase over and over again. Scott had been persuaded to move from Cruchet’s to Mrs. Duvall’s boardinghouse on the Avenue above Seventeenth Street. People nervously observed that the General was keeping close to the War Department, with a guard of soldiers posted in the yard around his lodgings. No man dared trust his neighbor, and Scott was a Virginian. There were whispers that he was unfaithful. The day after the Baltimore attack, a committee from Richmond had called on Scott to offer him the command of the forces of Virginia, and it was announced in a Charleston newspaper and joyfully credited in the South that the General had offered his sword to his State. But Scott had served under one flag for more than fifty years, and he would die a Union man. The command of Virginia’s army was given to Robert E. Lee.

  The old General’s gout was so bad that, when he drove to the White House for a conference, Mr. Lincoln came down and stood beside his coupé in the driveway, to spare him the pain of climbing the stairs. Troops must somehow be rushed to the capital. They might be ordered to fight their way through Baltimore—and men like Major Hunter and Kansas Jim Lane were ready to see the rebellious city laid in ruins. Mr. Lincoln, however, wanted to avoid bloodshed, and conciliate the timid Union sentiment in Maryland. The spreading turbulence in the State soon led him to abandon the hope of marching the troops around Baltimore. Scott had promptly endorsed a route, suggested on Friday by the railroad authorities—by steamer from Perryville on the north shore of the Susquehanna to Annapolis, which had a rail connection with the Washington branch line. In spite of rumors of rebel batteries on the Potomac, it was also expected that troops might come by the river route. On Sunday, the Government received the cheering news that General Benjamin F. Butler was off Annapolis with the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment, and the Seventh New York and a Rhode Island Regiment were believed to be close behind. Scott could not spare a body of cavalry to establish communication
with his reinforcements, only forty miles away, but was forced to rely on scouts, who, like the Government’s couriers, had difficulty in traversing the unfriendly territory of Maryland. On Monday, a letter was received from Governor Hicks, protesting against landing soldiers at Annapolis. It was known that the town was disloyal, and that the twenty miles of rails which joined it with the Washington line had been torn up. Scott, however, thought that, with good management, the soldiers could be landed and marched to Washington.

  Word of the Maryland uprising had set the whole South clamoring for an immediate advance on Washington. The only news the capital received came through Baltimore and Alexandria. In the dearth of reassuring information, the rumors had full sway. Wherever men looked, they saw the shapes of danger—on the river, on the Virginia heights, on the Seventh Street Road, and on the Bladensburg Turnpike. The Prussian envoy, Baron Gerolt, placed an identifying sign, lettered in large German script, over the entrance of his legation. He had intended to make a display of his national colors, but the railroad had been interrupted before he could procure them from New York. There were stories that secessionists would start fires all over Washington, so that it might easily be overrun by invading mobs. The click of hammers in the Treasury, where workmen were fitting the doors with iron bars, gave rise to a sensational report that mines were being laid under the building.

  The city looked deserted. Shops had shuttered windows, and dust gathered on the steps and railings of vacant houses. Many offices and all places of amusement were closed. Silence had fallen on the big hotels. The servants’ feet waked echoes in the empty halls of Willard’s. There was a short-lived alarm of famine, as provisions ceased to come in from Maryland and Virginia, and speculating grocers raised the price of flour from seven dollars and a half to twelve and fifteen dollars a barrel. During the preceding week, the Government, anticipating the arrival of thousands of soldiers, had laid in a large quantity of salt meat and other army stores, and on Sunday thousands of barrels of flour had been confiscated at the Georgetown mills. Ships and warehouses had been taken over by the militia, and all Sunday afternoon and night cartloads of barrels, trailing fine threads of flour, had moved to the Capitol, the Treasury and the Post-Office. Housewives ceased to hoard their rations and profiteering prices dropped, when it was announced that the city was provisioned for a siege.

  The unchallenged arrival of two steamers on Monday had proved the rumor of a blockade to be unfounded; but no troops came by the Potomac. At noon on Tuesday, as the Cabinet sat in the White House, two more steamers were reported. There was a flash of hope which quickly died. The Norfolk expedition had returned with the news that the navy yard was lost—the buildings had been burned and the ships scuttled. That day, the Government placed a guard at the railroad depot. All cars and locomotives were seized and dispatched to Annapolis Junction.

  Every day people collected at the depot, longing for the sight of soldiers. They walked aimlessly away, with apathetic and discouraged faces. The general opinion was that the South was prepared, and the North was not; and those who declared their faith in the power of the Union were met with smiles of incredulity. Looking up at the iron skeleton of the Capitol dome, one Washington resident despondently remarked, “I wonder if it will ever be finished!” “Yes, ma’am!” a Yankee voice emphatically replied. It came from a sentry of the Sixth Massachusetts, the spokesman of the spirit of the awakened North. Somehow, on Tuesday, a belated New York mail found its way to Washington. The newspapers were avidly seized. The hero of Fort Sumter, Major Anderson, had been greeted with wild enthusiasm in New York. The Seventh New York Regiment had departed in a storm of cheers. Governor Sprague of Rhode Island had sailed with a regiment from his State. The columns blazed with enlistments, orders, proclamations, flag raisings. But the newspapers were three days old, and the patriotism of the North seemed a senseless mockery. From the President to the last despairing property holder, the cry went up from Washington, “Why don’t they come!”

  The number of enrolled militia companies in the District mounted to thirty-three in the days of the capital’s isolation, and one company of cavalry was nearly ready to be mustered in. French and Italian residents met to organize for defense. Elderly men formed the Silver Grays’ Home Guard. The veterans of 1812 tottered out to offer their services. Colonel Stone admired the spirit of the District volunteers, but his enthusiasm was not shared by the rest of Washington. People looked askance at the awkward squads of civilians. Even the best trained companies seemed to be composed of underfed clerks and flat-footed German and Irish laborers. Many were of dubious fidelity. Over in Georgetown, the Potomac Light Infantry disbanded until peace should be restored, and one of its members proposed the toast: “The P.L.I., invincible in peace; invisible in war.”

  General Scott invited Colonel Stone to dine with him. When the meal was ended, the old General and the young Colonel sat staring at each other over their glasses of sherry. Scott recapitulated the disasters of the past few days—Harper’s Ferry, the Norfolk navy yard, the burned bridges.

  “They are closing their coils around us, sir!”

  “Yes, General.”

  Stone produced his plan for the defense of Washington. His centers were three: the Capitol; the City Hall hill, with the Patent Office and Post-Office; and the Executive Square, including the mansion and its neighboring departments. Three centers were too many, the General said. They must concentrate their little force on holding the Executive Square. Its citadel was the Treasury, with every opening barricaded, and breastworks made of sandbags on the portico. It had a supply of good water, and two thousand barrels of flour in the basement. In the last extremity, the President and the Cabinet members would have to take up their quarters there. “They shall not be permitted to desert the capital!” the General said.

  The President’s placid manner concealed the strain he suffered. His nerves played tricks on him, as the suspense was prolonged almost beyond endurance. One day he heard a sound like the boom of cannon. None of the White House attendants had noticed anything, and Mr. Lincoln walked out to see for himself. He walked on and on to the south, until at last he stood before the Arsenal. The gunfire had been a phantom sound, but the open doors of the Arsenal were real. Mr. Lincoln saw that there were no guards on duty. Anyone could have helped himself to the arms.

  The same trancelike mood which had sent the President wandering the whole desolate length of the Island was expressed in the words he spoke to some of the wounded of the Sixth Massachusetts, who came with their officers to visit him on Wednesday. “I don’t believe there is any North. The Seventh Regiment is a myth. Rhode Island is not known in our geography any longer. You are the only Northern realities.” There was an unusual irony, too, in Mr. Lincoln’s tone. Since midnight on Saturday, reinforcements had been only forty miles from Washington.

  Next day, the spell was broken. The sight of a train, filled and covered with soldiers, set the militia at the depot cheering. At the Capitol, the Sixth Massachusetts raised a shout. Crowds came running, and housetops, windows and balconies swarmed with people. Reviving at the sight of its deliverers, the Federal City warmed its chill faith at the fires of the North. For six days at the very outset of hostilities, it had shivered at its fate—a border town, divided within itself, and nakedly exposed to danger in a time of great rebellion.

  V. Home of the Brave

  THE DELIVERANCE of Washington was effected in style. It was relieved by the Seventh New York, the kid-glove militia corps of the North. In spick-and-span gray uniforms with pipe-clayed crossbelts on their breasts, the young gentlemen had had several days’ experience of the inconvenience of war—dirty, crowded ships and coarse rations, long marches and hard labor. The sandwiches, prepared for them under the supervision of Delmonico, had long ago been eaten; and they had had to leave at Annapolis a thousand velvet-covered camp stools. All night long, they had trudged the miles from Annapolis to the Junction, helping the Eighth Massachusetts to repair the track, sharing thei
r rations with hungry, resolute sailors and mechanics. The New Yorkers had suffered all their hardships without complaint—even fellows who would send back a turban de volaille aux truffes at Delmonico’s, if the truffles happened to be tough. They had come to save the capital, and were proudly aware of their own pluck and perseverance. As they marched in perfect step to the White House, with flags flying and bands playing, and rifles and little brass howitzers shining in the sun, they accepted the welcome of the Washington population as their rightful due.

  “We are here,” wrote Private Fitz James O’Brien, an Irish author, who was at home in the best circles of New York City, “. . . we all feel somewhat as Mr. Caesar Augustus must have felt when he had crossed the Rubicon.”

  After saluting the President, the Seventh paraded back along the Avenue to the Capitol. Through the dust, they looked at their quarters as they went up the hill, and joked about their Big Tent ready pitched. The top of the dome, of course, had been left off for ventilation.

  This was dramatic business, Private Theodore Winthrop thought. He was a Winthrop of Connecticut, a thin, shy man, with luminous eyes and waving hair and side whiskers. His tastes and talents were literary; but, though he had published novels and travel sketches, he had not quite made his mark at thirty-two. There was a touch of the dilettante about Winthrop—something refined and anemic and ineffectual. A friend observed in him the “curious critical introspection . . . . which paralyzes action.” Henry Adams would have understood him. They had been pruned by the same sharp culture.

  Yet, in the rough and tumble of American life, Theodore Winthrop had suddenly discovered direction and deep meaning. He had been living on Staten Island when the President called for volunteers, and he had lost no time in presenting himself at the Seventh Regiment armory. It had all happened very quickly after that—the new gray uniform, the thousand comrades, the cheering New York crowds, the journey, the fellowship with the Eighth Massachusetts at Annapolis and on the march. Now the Seventh was climbing the very steps of the national Capitol, entering the crimson and gold Hall of Representatives. Bayonets, Winthrop thought as he surveyed the seats, were taking the place of buncombe.