USA > Washington DC > Washington DC > Washington : the capital city and its part in the history of the nation > Part 9
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"I supposed you would be on duty to-day with your regiment."
" We are minute-men," answered the officer, with a smile. " We enter a room as private citizens, and come out of it a minute afterwards a regiment armed with repeating-rifles. Such a thing might happen here to-day if the neces-
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sity arose. My men are within easy call, and their rifles not far away. However, I think this is to be a very quiet election."
So it proved to be. The House and Senate having met in joint assembly, the count of the electoral vote proceeded without interruption, and then, in "a silence absolutely profound," the Vice-President formally declared the elec- tion of Lincoln and Hamlin as President and Vice-President. Danger, if danger there was, had been happily averted by the firmness of General Scott and Breckinridge's manly re- fusal to palter in any way with his official duty.
Eleven days later the President-elect arrived in Washington. Lincoln left his Illinois home on February II, and journeying eastward by easy stages, on February 22 reached Harris- burg. There he was waited upon by messengers from General Scott and Secretary Seward with news that a plot existed in Baltimore to mur- der him on his way through that city. Details were lacking for the moment, but these came out later. They went to show that men engaged in or in active sympathy with the secession movement had hired a small band of despera-
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does, mainly Italians, to kill the President-elect. The men employed for the work were to shoot Lincoln from the crowd gathered to greet him on his arrival at the railroad-station in Balti- more, on his way to Washington, and, after making sure and thorough work with hand- grenades, were to escape to Mobile in a vessel waiting for them in the harbor.
This plot was betrayed to loyal residents of Baltimore by a woman about to be abandoned by her lover. Its success depended upon the conspirators having accurate knowledge of the time of Lincoln's arrival in their city. Accord- ingly, on the afternoon of February 22, it was decided by the President-elect and his advisers that instead of passing through Baltimore on the following day, as had been previously ar- ranged, he should at six o'clock in the evening secretly leave Harrisburg on a special train for Philadelphia, and there take passage on the waiting night express for Washington. No mishap attended this secret journey. Lincoln passed through Baltimore undiscovered, and at an early hour next morning was safely lodged at Willard's Hotel in Washington.
There were nine days before the inaugura-
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tion, and they proved busy ones for Lincoln. He made visits to President Buchanan, to Con- gress, and to the Supreme Court, and he re- ceived a great number of visitors, including many delegations and committees. Those who thus met him for the first time discovered in the incoming President a tall, angular, black- haired, sallow-faced man of. fifty-two, whose speech and bearing revealed his frontier birth and breeding. Some of them also were quick to detect, hidden beneath the awkward outer man, a patience and sagacity that made him master of himself and were to prove him equal to the task before him, a task which, in taking leave of his fellow-townsmen, he had described as " greater than that which rested upon Wash- ington." During these nine days the doors of Lincoln's rooms were open to all-comers from early morning until midnight, and to men of every section and opinion he gave a cordial and candid hearing. Now and then, however, there was the quick flash that spoke the hand of steel beneath the velvet glove.
"It is for you, sir," pleaded one anxious visitor, " to say whether the whole nation shall be plunged into bankruptcy; whether the grass
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shall grow in the streets of our cities. Do not, I beg of you, go to war on account of slavery."
" If I ever come to the office of President," was the quiet reply, " I shall take an oath that I will, to the best of my ability, preserve, pro- tect, and defend the Constitution. This is a great and solemn duty, but I have full faith that, with the support of the people and the assistance of the Almighty, I shall perform it. The Constitution will not be preserved and defended until it is enforced and obeyed in all of the United States. It must be so preserved and defended, let the grass grow where it may."
Men on whose ears they fell recognized in words like these the ring of inherent authority, and it is now an admitted fact that the coming of Lincoln wrought a swift and radical change in the posture of affairs at the capital. Friends of the Union borrowed strength and courage from his presence, gladly reading in his wise and firm utterances the fact that their leader was one whom they could follow with confi- dence and without foreboding. The change made itself manifest in other ways. During the weeks in which the secession movement had
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been taking definite shape Washington had been crowded with visitors from the Southern States, and there was convincing evidence of the ex- istence of a plot for the armed seizure of the capital on the morning of the day of inaugu- ration. Now, however, another class was flock- ing to Washington,-young and stalwart men from the North and West. These, having cast their votes for Lincoln, came in multiplying numbers to witness the consummation of their purpose, and, on their arrival, eagerly offered their services as guards, soldiers, or policemen on the day of inauguration.
Monday, March 4, broke clear and cloudless, and at an early hour a great multitude filled both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue and the open space and square fronting the east portico of the Capitol, on the steps of which the usual platform had been erected for the inaugural ceremony. Again, as on the day of the count- ing of the electoral vote, unobtrusive yet effective steps were taken to quell any attempt at vio- lence and disorder. General Scott, making the best possible use of the small force at his com- mand, stationed platoons of soldiers at intervals along the avenue, and posted groups of riflemen
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on the adjacent roof-tops. Few knew, moreover, that soldiers lined the entire length of the im- provised board tunnel through which Lincoln was to pass into the Capitol; that squads of riflemen were in each wing; that half a hundred armed men were secreted under the platform from which the President-elect was to speak, and that there were batteries of flying artillery in adjacent streets, while a ring of volunteers encircled the waiting crowd.
A few minutes before the noon hour Presi- dent Buchanan arrived at Willard's to escort his successor to the Capitol. Lincoln came out and entered the Presidential carriage. Then a company of sappers and miners of the regular army formed in a hollow square about him, and moved down the avenue, preceded by the Mar- shal of the District and his aides, and followed by a few companies of uniformed volunteers. Shouts and cheers greeted the progress of the inaugural procession, which, all told, numbered less than five hundred men. The Capitol reached, Lincoln entered the building arm in arm with Buchanan, and a few minutes later the two appeared upon the east portico attended by the justices of the Supreme Court, Senators,
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Representatives, officers of the army and navy, and the family of the President-elect. Before them were, perhaps, sixty thousand people, the largest gathering that had been seen at any inauguration up to that date, all in absolute silence and every face serious, many in deep gloom. Accident, just before the ceremony began, formed a strange historic group. On one side was Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln's defeated rival for the Presidency, holding Lin- coln's hat. On the other side stood Chief Justice Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision, and close to the latter President Buchanan. To the front and centre stood the President-elect, thus grouping the principal characters in the most momentous era of American history.
Senator Baker, of Oregon, briefly introduced Lincoln, who, having adjusted his spectacles and unrolled his manuscript, stepped forward, and in a clear, firm voice, every word being heard by the most distant member of the lis- tening throng, read his remarkable inaugural address. The people broke into cheers at the touching words with which it closed, and Lin- coln, turning to the justices of the Supreme Court on his left, said, "I am now ready to
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take the oath prescribed by the Constitution." Chief Justice Taney administered the oath, Lincoln saluting the extended Bible with his lips, and the ceremony was at an end. The procession reformed and returned, leaving at the White House as President the private citi- zen it had escorted from his hotel. An hour later a carriage with a solitary occupant was driven down the avenue to the only railroad- station then in Washington. It contained ex- President Buchanan returning to his Pennsyl- vania home.
Lincoln, in choosing his official advisers, adopted the then novel policy of taking them from among his Presidential rivals. He called William H. Seward, his chief competitor, to the State Department; he summoned Salmon P. Chase, his next most formidable rival, to the Treasury portfolio; he gave Simon Cam- eron, another prominent rival, the War Office; and Edward Bates, who at one time seemed to be more than a possible success in the Lin- coln convention, was made Attorney-General. These appointments, along with those of Gideon Welles, of Connecticut, as Secretary of the Navy, and of Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana, as
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Secretary of the Interior, had been practically determined upon before Lincoln left Illinois. The remaining post, that of Postmaster-General, he decided, after his arrival in Washington, to bestow upon Montgomery Blair, of Maryland. The Cabinet, as thus constituted, included four former Democrats and three former Whigs, but, when reminded of this fact, Lincoln jo- cosely replied that " he was himself an old-line Whig, and he should be there to make the parties even."
No sooner were Lincoln and his Cabinet in- stalled in office than there began a rush for ยท place without precedent in the history of the capital. The office-seekers seized Washington, and made the White House their head-quarters. " There were days," writes William O. Stod- dard, " when the throng of eager applicants for office filled the broad staircase to its lower steps, the corridors of the first floor, the famous East Room, and the private parlors, while anx- ious groups and individuals paraded up and down the outer porch, the walks, and the ave- nue." The President at no hour of the work- ing day was free from their importunities, but he met their attacks with unfailing patience and
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good nature, and he had to aid him a keen and saving sense of humor.
"What is the matter, Mr. Lincoln?" one day asked a friend, who noted a downcast look in the President's face. "Has anything gone wrong at the front?"
" No," was the answer. " It isn't the war; " it's the post-office at Brownsville, Missouri."
Meantime, the President was facing a far more serious task than the making of cross-road postmasters. When he took office seven of the slave-holding States had left the Union, while, of the government defences in the South, only Fortress Monroe in Chesapeake Bay, Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, Fort Pickens at Pensacola, and the fortifications near Key West remained in federal possession. "The power confided to me," he had said in his inaugural, " will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the govern- ment." This promise, moving slowly and with caution, he proceeded to redeem, and when the Southern authorities summoned Fort Sumter to surrender, an expedition ordered by the Presi- dent sailed from New York to succor Major Robert Anderson and his handful of men. This
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was on April 9, and while the chief expedition was still at sea the Southern authorities opened fire on Sumter, bombarding it until it was com- pelled to surrender.
The North's answer to this appeal to force came on the morrow. Sumter fell on April 14, and the next day the President, by proclamation, called for seventy-five thousand volunteers. Quick and eager responses ere the end of the day on which this call was issued proved to Lincoln that the fall of Sumter had made a unit of the North. It had, on the other hand, done no less for the South. It silenced all pro- tests against secession, and brought the doubt- ing ones to the support of the Confederacy. All of the border States except Maryland refused the President's call for troops, and Virginia, still wavering between loyalty and disunion, on April 17 passed an ordinance of secession, her example being speedily followed by North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Richmond was made the Confederate capital, and a call from President Davis for volunteers was obeyed as eagerly as Lincoln's had been in the North. Both sides, all scruples dispelled, were ready for combat.
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Washington, however, during these first days of preparation, underwent a brief period of isolation and of seeming peril. Maryland con- tained a numerous and aggressive pro-slavery element, and, on April 19, the Sixth Massa-' chusetts, on its way to the capital, was attacked by a mob in Baltimore, four of its members being killed and many wounded. That evening the regiment reached Washington and took quarters in the Capitol. The wounded came with it on stretchers, but the dead had been left behind. "No more troops shall pass through Maryland," the people of Baltimore declared, and to make good their threat they burned many of the bridges on the railroads running from that city to Harrisburg and Philadelphia, and partially destroyed the telegraph lines. The bridges were destroyed on Friday night, and during the next two days other bands of Mary- landers tore up much of the track of the rail- road connecting the capital with Baltimore, and of the branch running to Annapolis. The re- maining telegraph wires were broken on Satur- day, and Washington was completely cut off from communication with the North.
Isolation doubled the uneasiness and alarm II .- 13
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that had existed since the previous Thursday, when a rumor had come up from the South that twelve thousand Confederates were advancing from Richmond bent upon razing the capital to the ground. Women and children were re- moved from the city upon receipt of this dis- turbing news, and hurried efforts made at defence. General Scott had only two thousand five hundred armed men, exclusive of the Sixth Massachusetts and a Pennsylvania regiment that had arrived on Thursday,-the first volunteers to reach the capital,-but he made ready for a desperate and stubborn resistance. Batteries were placed in commanding positions, guards stationed at every approach to the city, and all the public buildings, including school-houses, barricaded. The barricades at the entrances to the Capitol were ten feet high, and it was General Scott's purpose, if the town were at- tacked, to contest every point of vantage, making his last stand, if need be, on Capitol Hill.
Government officials, loyal citizens, and visit- ing strangers joined with hearty earnestness in General Scott's plans. The Treasury em- ployees organized a regiment for its defence, and in its unoccupied spaces drilled from early
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morning until nightfall; office-holders and office-seekers joined the Frontier Guards and the Clay Battalion, impromptu organizations commanded by James H. Lane, of Kansas, and Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, which were accepted as defenders of the Executive Man- sion, while the men " exempted from service by age formed a company called the Silver Grays, and even the soldiers of the War of 1812 offered themselves."
The President during these trying days was the most collected man in his capital, and his calm demeanor lent hope and courage to those about him. "He knew," writes one who was often with him, "that his call for men had already been approved by the loyal nation; that more men than he had called for had been tendered by a single State; that there had been a great uprising of the people; that every ham- let, as well as every city, from Maine to Oregon, was alive with the work of preparation, and that choice regiments from Massachusetts and New York, the advance-guard of the legions to fol- low, were already within the waters of Mary- land." Still, the suspense of isolation, the fear of hourly attack, and the non-arrival of the
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expected troops proved a sore strain even to Lincoln's strong fibre, and, pacing the floor of his deserted office, lie was heard to exclaim to himself, in anguished tones, "Why don't they come! Why don't they come!"
This question was happily answered at noon of Thursday, April 25, when the whistle of a locomotive broke the silence that brooded over the city, and soon the Seventh New York, travel-stained and dirty but flanked by cheering crowds, was marching from the station to the White House, there to be reviewed by the President. The Seventh New York and the Eighth Massachusetts had reached Philadelphia six days before to find the usual road to Washi- ington blocked by wrecked railroad bridges ; but Benjamin F. Butler, colonel of the Eighth, had pushed on by rail to Havre de Grace, and thence by water to Annapolis, while Colonel Lefferts, of the Seventh, placing his men aboard the first steamer he could find, started for the same point by way of the capes of Delaware and of Virginia. The two regiments met on Monday at Annapolis. Massachusetts soldiers repaired the dismantled locomotives found there; can- non and men to serve them were placed on a
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platform car in front, and the baggage of the regiments was loaded on other cars in the rear. Then the two commands, with a train thus made up, began their march towards Washington, and, building bridges and laying track as they advanced, on Thursday morning reached An- napolis Junction.
The Eighth was halted there by the rumor that a numerous body of Confederates was in the vicinity, while the Seventh pushed on to Washington. No Confederates appearing, the Eighth, after a wait of some hours, resumed its advance. It found quarters early next morn- ing in the Capitol, and the same day brought the First Rhode Island. Before the end of the week there were seventeen thousand volunteers in Washington. Thenceforward regiments poured in unceasingly, and the safety of the capital was assured.
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CHAPTER VIII
CAMPS AND HOSPITALS
T HE Civil War changed Washington, al- most in a day, from a sleepy Southern town to a city of camps and hospitals. The Secretary of War, on July 1, 1861, was able to report three hundred and ten thousand men at his command, and less than four months later an army of one hundred and fifty-two thou- sand was encamped in and around the capital. Another year found this host increased to two hundred thousand, while a score of hospitals sheltered twice as many sick and wounded sol- diers, and a hundred and fifty forts and bat- teries, mounting upward of twelve hundred guns, guarded the several approaches to the city.
A newspaper correspondent of the period has put on record a vivid description of the Wash- ington of war times. "Long lines of army wagons and artillery," he writes, " were continu- ally rumbling through the streets ; at all hours of the day and night the air was troubled by the
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clatter of galloping squads of cavalry, and the clank of sabers and the measured beat of march- ing infantry were ever present to the ear. The city was under military government, and the wayfarer was liable to be halted anywhere in public buildings, or on the outskirts, by an armed sentry, who curtly asked his business. Now and again, just after some great battle near at hand, the capital afforded a most distressful spectacle. The Washington hospitals were never empty, but at such times they were crowded with the maimed and wounded, streaming back from the fields of slaughter. They arrived in squads of a hundred or more, bandaged and limping, ragged and dishevelled, blackened with smoke and pow- der, and drooping with weakness. They came groping, hobbling, and faltering, so faint and so longing for rest that one's heart bled at the piteous sight."
The same writer speaks in another place of the inevitable flood of strangers that poured into Washington from the North after any great bat- tle fought in the fields of Virginia. These people came in quest of dead or wounded friends, and added a thousand moving and pathetic, though often unrecorded, incidents to the history of the
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great struggle. Andrew G. Curtin, governor of Pennsylvania, was in Washington on a Decem- ber night in 1862. Returning at a late hour to Willard's Hotel, he was accosted by an aged woman, whose rusty garb and anxious face made it plain that she was very poor and in deep distress. The battle of Fredericksburg had just been fought, and the Union killed and wounded had mounted into the thousands. The woman's only son was a private in a Pennsylvania regi- ment, and she had not heard from him since the fight. So, with little more than her railway fare, she had come to Washington to search for him. Would not the governor help her to get through the lines to nurse him or to carry his body home? Governor Curtin heard the num- ber of the young man's regiment with a sudden choking at the throat. He had come that day from the field of battle, and knew that it had been cut to pieces. There was moisture in his eyes when he told her that he would see either the President or the Secretary of War in the morning, and get her a pass through the lines.
Then he drew the old lady's arm within his own, escorted her to the street, hailed a cab, helped her into it, and, paying the cabman his
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fee, told him to drive his charge to a lodging- house where the governor was well known and had sent many a destitute friend. It was a clear night, and, as the cab rattled away, the thought occurred to the governor that a short walk might induce sleep. He lighted a cigar and strolled down the avenue, but had not gone far when he met Ben Wade and John Sherman homeward bound from the Capitol, where there had been a night session of Congress. The three men halted under a street lamp and entered into conversation. Fredericksburg was the topic, and the governor told, among other things, of the old lady in search of her son. He was thus engaged when a cab halted on the nearest corner. There was a woman inside, and the driver, with oaths, was demanding that she should leave the cab. Intuition told the governor that the woman was his old lady. A few quick strides carried him to the side of the cab and confirmed his suspicion. The cabman had spent his fee for liquor, and now, drunk and bewildered, was seeking to pitch his charge into the street.
"You infernal rascal." roared the governor, " what do you mean? Did I not pay you to take this old lady to a lodging-house?"
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Curtin's companions had come up by this time, and Ben Wade, sensing the situation, gave vent to a stream of profanity that would have done credit to a pirate captain. He wanted the cab- man whipped, and he wanted to help whip him. But the driver, who also looked the bully, noisily declared that he had never seen the governor before, and would punch his head if he did not promptly go about his business. The war of words was still raging when there appeared on the scene a six-foot soldier, who wore in his cap the tail of a buck,-the latter the emblem of Pennsylvania's fighting brigade, the Bucktails. He was promptly hailed. " Do you know me?" asked the governor. " Yes, sir. You're Andy Curtin," was the reply. "Do you think you can lick that fellow ?" and Curtin pointed to the cab- man, who was exchanging curses with Ben Wade. "Governor," said the Bucktail, "hold my rifle." Three minutes later it was all over, and the cabman looked as though he had en- countered a Kansas cyclone. Then the soldier, at the governor's request, escorted the old lady to the lodging-house. Passes were secured for her next day, and she went to the front to find her boy seriously but not fatally wounded.
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" Was that the end of the story?" the writer asked the governor, when he told it a few months before his death.
" There was a little more to it," said he, a smile lighting up his fine old face. " When- ever a man does me a good turn I like to do him one, and I felt under a lively obligation to that soldier. One of the first things I did when I returned home was to have an order issued for him to report forthwith in Harrisburg,-I had taken care to ascertain his name and com- pany,-and when he came I gave him a lieu- tenant's commission. His after-career proved that I had made no mistake. Bravery on the field speedily brought him promotion, first to the rank of captain, and then to that of major. He fell at Spottsylvania while leading his regi- ment as its lieutenant-colonel."
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