As Whitman wrote to his family and friends and to the newspapers about his hospital work, people began to send him money. He dispensed it carefully, making it go as far as possible. Through the wards on Sundays and some weekday afternoons, he trudged with his slow, rolling walk. A haversack hung heavy on his shoulder, and the pockets of his cheap gray suit were bulging. To one man he would give an orange, to another an apple or a small quantity of pickles or horehound candy. He brought pens and pencils, writing paper and envelopes. Sometimes he carried a good-sized jar of jelly, and spooned it out to the occupants of a ward. He did not encourage the use of tobacco, but he had a store of cut plugs in his pocket, to dole out to men who craved it. Often he left money, in “bright new ten-cent and five-cent bills.” Sick men longed for the fresh milk that was carried for sale through the wards; and Walt thought that it raised their spirits to have a little cash by them.
The penuriousness of his own life was reflected in his tiny gifts; but the recipients were simple men—poor, often destitute. They understood Walt, and were grateful to him. He regarded his presents as a means of making friends with the soldiers. Once a relationship was established, he talked with them, wrote their letters home, read aloud or played Twenty Questions. Between him and some of the very young soldiers, a deep tenderness developed. In gifts of the heart, in love and tact and sympathy, Walt was lavish. As fervently as the most sentimental of the women nurses, he believed in the curative properties of affection. His hands were gentle. His red face bent kindly over the sunken, childish features on the pillow. Sometimes, it pressed close. “Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.”
Outside the hospitals, snow eddied in the blustering northeast gale. It was a stormy winter in Washington. Barges and steamers, loaded with quartermaster’s stores, were driven aground in the Potomac mud between Alexandria and Aquia Creek. The houses of the capital were roofed in white. Men and women donned their patent arctic gaiters, and the streetcars slid uneasily over tracks sprinkled with salt. Late in February, there was such a heavy snowfall that cutters and basket sleighs sped along the Avenue, their occupants cosily wrapped in fur carriage robes of buffalo, wolf, skunk or tigerskin. To the gratification of the livery-stable keepers, hilarious stag parties joined in the sport; and for two days a glittering capital jingled with bells like any northern town. The thaw darkened the whiteness with rivers of mud. In spite of the efforts of the contrabands who operated the new street-sweeping machine, the Avenue was as filthy as the back streets. The carriage of the Russian minister stuck fast in a hole in I Street, and the coachman, holding desperately to the reins, was dragged from the box into the muck. Drivers and postillions cursed and lashed the six-mule teams that drew the army wagons. The noise of the traffic of war deadened all other sounds. In March, a nurse at the Mansion House in Alexandria wrote that she could hear the birds sing at daybreak, before the wagons began to pass.
Anxiety about the demoralization of the Army of the Potomac had subsided. Hooker had worked wonders in restoring the spirit and confidence of the troops. He had judiciously administered punishment, and granted furloughs and leaves of absence. Increased drill and field exercise kept the soldiers fit and lively. Their health, under intelligent medical supervision, was excellent. Staff departments were reorganized. The units of cavalry in the various corps were consolidated in one effective force and placed under the command of Major-General George Stoneman. To fix responsibility for straggling and marauding and to stimulate morale, Hooker adopted the idea of the Kearny patch, and assigned to each corps a distinctive device. Its color, red, white, or blue, differentiated the divisions. The emblems were proudly painted on the wagons and ambulances of the respective corps, stenciled on all articles of public property, and sewn on the caps of every officer and soldier. The cloverleaf of the Second Corps, and the Greek cross of the Sixth would, in particular, come to be famous badges of valor.
Early in April, Hooker said that he had “a living army.” He was boastfully certain of success, and the reinvigorated troops shared his high spirits. At this time, he received a visit from the President, Mrs. Lincoln, and Tad, accompanied by Attorney General Bates, Dr. A. G. Henry of Washington Territory and Noah Brooks, correspondent of the Sacramento Union, a young man whom Mr. Lincoln had known and liked in Illinois. On the pretty little dispatch boat, Carrie Martin, the party slowly voyaged in an unseasonable snowstorm to Aquia Creek Landing, now changed from a leisurely point of connection with the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad to the army’s busy base of supplies, filled with new unpainted warehouses and offices, crowded with soldiers, laborers and contrabands, and served by fleets of transports and Government steamers on the one hand and long lines of freight cars on the other. At Falmouth Station, the President was met by an escort of cavalry and Major-General Dan Butterfield, former colonel of the Twelfth New York militia, who was Hooker’s chief of staff. For nearly a week, the Presidential party stayed in three hospital tents at Hooker’s headquarters. Lincoln, riding at the head of the cavalry, watching the parade of the troops or visiting the hospital tents, was received with tremendous enthusiasm. Before his eyes passed in grand review the six magnificent infantry corps, the large and disciplined cavalry corps and the great reserve artillery force of the Army of the Potomac. The First Corps was commanded by the Pennsylvanian, John F. Reynolds, one of whose division commanders was James S. Wadsworth. Darius N. Couch had replaced Sumner as leader of the Second Corps. The erstwhile politician, Dan Sickles, commanded the Third. The Fifth was under George Meade, who had distinguished himself at Antietam and Fredericksburg. Franklin’s Sixth Corps had been assigned to John Sedgwick, division commander on the Peninsula and at Antietam, where he had been wounded. Oliver O. Howard, who had lost his right arm at Fair Oaks, led the Eleventh Corps, largely composed of German troops, Carl Schurz commanding a soldierly looking division. At the head of the Twelfth Corps, originally Banks’s and briefly Mansfield’s, rode Henry W. Slocum, severely wounded at First Bull Run and veteran of every field from Gaines’s Mill to Fredericksburg.
Seward invited Baron Gerolt, Count Piper, Mr. Schleiden, minister from the Hanseatic Cities, and other diplomats to accompany him on an excursion. With shawls and spyglasses and maps they made a pleasant voyage on the Carrie Martin to Aquia Creek, and witnessed a grand review of General Sickles’s corps. The fame of Hooker’s army circulated in Washington. The entire country, primed by an optimistic press, had grown elated and hopeful. Although disappointed by the failure of a naval attack on Fort Sumter, it looked forward with assurance to a military victory. War industries flourished, business was booming. A prosperous people invested confidently in the new issue of Government bonds.
The upturn in business had conspired with the defeats of the last year and the weariness of the long war to discourage volunteering. The State militia drafts had been a failure. In March, Congress passed the Enrollment Act, applying to men between the ages of twenty and forty-five. New regiments were not needed, but replenishments for the depleted organizations already in the field. The measure, which provided for a military draft when necessary, removed prospective levies from State control, centralizing all authority over them in the Federal Government. The Union was divided into districts, under provost marshals who reported to a Provost Marshal General, at the head of a special bureau of the War Department. Conscription, dreaded by the country, did not affect the man who was well-to-do. If drafted, he could avoid service either by furnishing a substitute or by paying three hundred dollars. This sum, when the first draft was ordered in May, became the purchase price of the substitute soldier, who also received the Federal bounty of one hundred dollars, paid to those drafted and their substitutes, as well as to volunteers. In 1863, able-bodied men were plentiful, and four hundred dollars was a good sum. To obtain it, worthless soldiers crowded into the Federal ranks; while the swindling and extortionate brokers, who traded in men, multiplied and flourished in every State of the Union.
April ran out on
a tide of rumors that General Hooker had crossed the Rappahannock. Washington clacked with reports of fighting, all vague, all unofficial. The first five days of May passed in uncertainty, in growing uneasiness, in the fear that victory had been purchased at a terrible price; and still the military telegraph was muffled and the press was jubilant. The War Department was only half informed. The President was feverishly anxious for facts. Gideon Welles picked up tidbits of news from correspondents and naval officers who came up from Aquia Creek. In spite of the general impression that the Federal arms had had a great, if costly triumph, Welles was not satisfied. “If we have success,” he wrote in his diary, “the tidings would come to us in volumes.” On Wednesday, May 6, the Secretary of the Navy saw a letter from Dahlgren’s boy, Ulric, who was on Hooker’s staff. He had telegraphed his father that he was “all right,” and the message came from headquarters near Falmouth, on the north side of the Rappahannock. Stanton, when Welles questioned him, said that he had no information that Hooker had retired across the river. An hour later, Senator Sumner strode into Welles’s room with raised hands, crying “Lost, lost, all is lost!” In a White House bedroom, the President stood, with a telegram from Butterfield in his hand. His face was the color of the French-gray paper on the walls. At Chancellorsville, the Army of the Potomac had paid a terrible price; but it was the price of defeat.
Through the crash of yet another fallen idol, the country heard the devastating story. Hooker, his forces twice as large as Lee’s, had moved forward brilliantly, confidently, crossing the Rappahannock thirty miles above Fredericksburg, moving on with four army corps across the Rapidan. Confronted by an aggressive enemy, Hooker had lost his impetus. He ordered the army to fall back, astounding his vigorous corps and division commanders and disheartening the troops. On May 2, Stonewall Jackson attacked the Eleventh Corps, and the German soldiers, surprised and unprepared, were routed. The next morning, Hooker had been knocked insensible by a cannon ball which struck a veranda pillar against which he was leaning. The great defeat of that day was ascribed to the effects of this accident; but, in fact, the battle was already lost. Hooker appeared to have suffered a nervous collapse. It was said that he appeared no more dazed and incapable after being knocked down than he had been before. Some declared that he had been drinking heavily; others, that he had abstained, and missed his accustomed stimulant. Sedgwick’s corps, sent across the river at Fredericksburg, had captured the city and the heights, but was not reinforced, and was defeated by Lee. Stoneman’s cavalry, sent off on a fruitless raid on Lee’s communications, with difficulty escaped to rejoin the army on the north bank of the Rappahannock. Soon after, Stoneman, dining in Washington with the Pennsylvanian, A. K. McClure, gave his explanation of Hooker’s failure. “He could play the best game of poker I ever saw until it came to the point when he should go a thousand better, and then he would flunk.”
As the tale of incompetence and vacillation unfolded, there was only one detail which might bring comfort to the Union. At Chancellorsville, Stonewall Jackson had been wounded. The week after the battle, it was known that his somber figure would ride no more at the head of his ragged rebel troops.
Though the calamity of this defeat appalled and discouraged the nation, there was not the black despondency that had followed the Seven Days, Second Bull Run and Fredericksburg. Business was good. Factory wheels were turning. There was wild speculation on the Stock Exchange. The humblest man could pocket a large bounty by donning the uniform of his country. If the people of the Union could not win this war, at least they were making money out of it. Two bitter years had made them callous to the loss of thousands of men; and above the sighs and the weeping arose a shrill new noise of laughter. People were beginning to spend money, to give parties, to dine and dance and be merry.
Again, the wounded cumbered the Washington wharves, but few sightseers gathered to see the transports arriving, day after day, with the men from Chancellorsville. Now, each of those prostrate young bodies seemed the very figure of the Union itself, and people turned away from the heartsickening, habitual scene. The compact caravans of the ambulances had become a monotonous part of the pageant of the streets. The procession of the maimed, with their empty sleeves and trouser legs, no longer attracted attention. Even death had grown commonplace. There had been a time when the loss of one young Ellsworth had thrown the capital into mourning. Now, from the silver-mounted rosewood of the higher officers to the cheap pine slats of the ordinary soldiers, the business of death was plied like any other prosperous trade. There was a section of the city where the rat-tat of the coffinmakers’ hammers sounded all day, and the stacks of long, upended boxes rose and fell outside their doors, like a fever chart of the battles. The capital had had a surfeit of misery; and, if the horror of blood beat like a wound in the back of every mind, the faces on the streets were smiling.
The soft spring air carried the plaintive mechanical melodies of the organgrinders; and on the Avenue, under the huge transparency which advertised embalming, the promenaders sauntered in the sunshine. Busy hacks rolled among the wagons and the caracoling horses of the officers. Fashionable ladies drove in barouches, with black coachmen and footmen. On the sidewalks, salesmen cried the merits of patent soaps, and proprietors of telescopes and lung-testing machines clamored for customers. Pineapples, oranges and tomatoes were piled in colored pyramids, ice-cream dealers were stationed in the shade of the trees, and Italians roasted chestnuts in little portable stoves. Children shrieked for pieces chipped from big, variegated rocks of candy and for the artificial bugs which were swung enticingly up and down on strings; while sharper children bawled the evening newspapers, and swarmed at the crossings to polish muddy boots.
The Avenue wore a cosmopolitan air. Every nationality seemed to be represented in the gaudy crowd. The swords and sashes, plumed hats and riding cloaks of the army officers, the gold lace of the naval officers, the outlandish dress of the Zouaves gave Washington the look of a carnival, a huge and lively masquerade. The spring bonnets of the ladies were fantastic—extravagantly high and narrow, “with over-hanging balconies of flowers.” They were wearing much red that season, for the color of the Garibaldians’ shirts was still the fashion. There was a shade called Magenta, and another paler red called Solferino—warm, bright, amusing names. Those smiling ladies knew that they were the names of battlefields, where alien men had died for some vague cause. But no one named a shade of red for Fredericksburg; and the silliest of the officers’ trollops would have shrunk from a scarlet dress that bore the name of Chancellorsville.
XII. Black, Copper and Bright
IN THE FAUL OF 1856, I showed my show in Utiky, a trooly grate sitty in the State of New York,” the President began in his pleasant, high-pitched voice. He was reading from the book which Artemus Ward had sent him. The Cabinet members, summoned to the White House by messenger, listened in silence.
“1 day as I was givin a descripshun of my Beests and Snaiks in my usual flowry stile what was my skorn & disgust to see a big burly feller walk up to the cage containin my wax figgers of the Lord’s Last Supper, and cease Judas Iscarrot by the feet and drag him out on the ground. He then commenced fur to pound him as hard as he cood.”
Five days had passed since the cannon had roared along Antietam Creek. It had been called a great Union victory, but the end of the war was not in sight. The Federal losses had been more than twelve thousand men. There had been no effective pursuit of the retreating Confederates. The minds of the gentlemen of the Cabinet were troubled on that September day of 1862, when they sat in the room with the view of Washington’s unfinished monument.
The President read with evident relish.
“Sez he, ‘What did you bring this pussylanermus cuss here fur?’ & he hit the wax figger another tremenjis blow on the hed.
“Sez I, ‘You egrejus ass, that air’s a wax figger—a representashun of the false ’Postle.'
“Sez he, ‘That’s all very well fur you to say, but I tell you, old man, th
at Judas Iscarrot can’t show hisself in Utiky with impunerty by a darn site!’ with which observashun, he kaved in Judassis hed. The young man belonged to 1 of the first famerlies in Utiky. I sood him, and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson in the 3d degree.”
The worried gentlemen appeared to share the President’s enjoyment. This was, after all, the sort of interlude to which habit had inured them. Mr. Smith and Mr. Blair permitted their features to relax. Old Mr. Bates was always courteous. Mr. Seward smiled easily, and Mr. Welles had a wry glint of Yankee humor. Even Mr. Chase’s awful solemnity paid its homage to fun. Only that reluctant courtier, Mr. Stanton, was not amused at all.
Mr. Lincoln’s persistent indulgence in anecdote had not always served him well in Washington. It was considered unworthy the dignity of his high office that he should jest at serious moments. Conservative Easterners were sometimes shocked by the tang of the soil or the backhouse in his tales. Yet laughter followed this melancholy man. His grotesquely attenuated figure and mournful, yellow face were an introduction to comedy. The face was startlingly mobile. Unexpectedly, the somber mouth pulled a droll grimace, the brooding eyes sparkled. His laugh, one observer thought, was as hearty as the neigh of a wild horse. Gentlemen from New York or Boston might shrink, Mr. Stanton might lower, but many men laughed with Lincoln.
Often the President drew on his stock of salt and homely stories to illustrate a point, to terminate a controversial discussion, or to save himself the embarrassment of a direct reply. But, when he read Artemus Ward to his Cabinet, he was prompted by no wish to speak in parables. The American humor of the period stands revealed in his selection. High-handed Outrage at Utica was pure entertainment.
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