Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  Butler was soon informed that he was to be promoted to the rank of major-general and placed in command of an important post, Fort Monroe. He was, however, deeply wounded at being relieved of the command of the Department of Annapolis, and by a censorious communication which he had received from General Scott, who had been as surprised as Baltimore. A fort was not as large as a department, and Butler felt that the transfer disgraced him, and was ready to quit the Army and go home. He took the cars to Washington and had a furious quarrel with Scott. While he was in the General’s presence, he did not even wink, but on his return to his rooms at the National he threw himself on the lounge and burst into a flood of tears.

  A lifetime of political manipulation had well qualified Secretary Cameron to understand that the loss of the adherence of a leading Democrat was not one to be taken lightly by the administration; and his efforts to mollify General Butler were warmly abetted by the President and Secretary Chase. Furthermore, Butler’s boldness had won him much popular acclaim. There were consoling items in the press, and he was waited on at the National by many friends and serenaded by Withers’s Brass Band. After all, he concluded to give in and be a major-general, and take command of Fort Monroe. Before he left Washington, he had an agreeable conference with General Scott, who congratulated him on the assignment, which he said was very fortunate at that season on account of the soft-shell crabs and the delicious hogfish.

  On the Virginia side of the Potomac, the situation was still menacing. With a spyglass, a Confederate flag could be plainly seen on the roof of the Marshall House, a tavern in Alexandria; while along the shore the campfires of General Lee’s forces pricked the evening dusk. Hope had slowly died in Washington that the population of Virginia would adhere to the Union, although it was not until May 23 that the formality of a popular ratification of secession showed that the only loyal counties lay west of the Allegheny Mountains. The capital, protected by its large garrison, was not apprehensive. Traffic moved peaceably across the bridges. After some interruption, farmers once more brought their crops to the city markets, and soldiers occasionally strolled over to have a look at Virginia.

  Army officers, however, did not share the opinion that the defense of Washington had been accomplished by overrunning the town with men. The white-bearded Inspector General, Colonel Mansfield, had advised the occupation of the Virginia shore of the Potomac immediately after taking command of the Department of Washington. Mansfield was an engineer, and he saw the importance of holding the Arlington Heights, which were only two miles distant from the low-lying executive offices and Government buildings. The range of artillery fire had recently been increased to three or even four miles. For the security of Washington, redoubts were needed at the south end of the Long Bridge and the Chain Bridge, and also of the Aqueduct, which carried the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal over the river from Georgetown. Finally, to protect the navigation of the Potomac, the decayed old port of Alexandria must be occupied by Federal troops.

  Mansfield’s recommendations were accepted, but they could not immediately be carried out. It was not until the morning after the people of Virginia voted for secession that the soldiers of the Union advanced.

  One column was to march before daybreak by the Long Bridge, another by the towpath over the Aqueduct. Colonel Ellsworth and the Fire Zouaves were to move in two steamers from Giesboro’ Point, opposite the Arsenal, to Alexandria. Rumors of the movement had been whispered in Washington. The troops were packed and ready for the word that went toward midnight through the encampments. The drum beat on Meridian Hill, and the Seventh New York fell into ranks and marched through the trees to the highway. It was very still as they passed the lonely pile of Willard’s. “A hag in a night-cap,” wrote Private Winthrop, “reviewed us from an upper window as we tramped by.”

  Squads of cavalry posted across to hold the Virginia ends of the bridges. Under command of Colonel Stone, companies of District militia, including the National Rifles, advanced on scouting and patrol duty. South through the sleeping Island went boys from New York, New Jersey and Michigan. Other New Yorkers converged on the Aqueduct from the Georgetown Heights. There was no sound of drum or fife. Officers gave low-voiced commands. Artillery rumbled above the heavy irregular tread of men marching in broken step. The moon made a white path on the Potomac, and tipped the rows of bayonets with sparkling points of light.

  On the Virginia shore, the regiments established their outposts and engineers traced lines of fortifications. The Seventh New York sprawled out for a rest. As the sun rose high, guns were stacked, with blankets draped over them for shade. “Nothing men can do,” thought Private Winthrop, “—except picnics, with ladies in straw flats with feathers—is so picturesque as soldiering.” He lay watching his comrades, as they lounged or slept or nibbled at their rations. It was hot, and he nodded. A rattle of horse’s hoofs aroused him. Before he had grasped the shouted words, that Colonel Ellsworth was dead, the rider was gone, galloping on to the bridge, to carry the news to Washington.

  The city was horror-struck, and at first incredulous. At ten o’clock, the tolling of the bell of the Franklin engine house confirmed the news. The flag of the fire company was lowered to half-mast, and then all the Union flags in Washington, great and small, drooped slowly in honor of young Ellsworth.

  Carried on a litter of muskets, his body was taken by boat to the Navy Yard, and laid on a bench in its neat little engine house. Thousands came that day to look at the remains. At the mess of the Seventy-first New York, on duty at the yard, sat Private Francis E. Brownell of the Fire Zouaves, with blood on his gaudy uniform. Over and over again, he had to tell the story: how Ellsworth had gone to the roof of the Marshall House in Alexandria and torn down the Confederate flag; how the innkeeper had shot him, as he came down the stairs; how he, Private Brownell, had shot the innkeeper. His lip was bitten nearly through in his effort to keep from crying aloud. Ellsworth had understood the command of men. He had disciplined his New York roughs, played ball with them, fathered them, won their love and respect. As rage succeeded the first shock of grief, the Fire Zouaves threatened to burn the town of Alexandria, and it was thought prudent to confine them for the night on a steamer anchored in the middle of the Potomac.

  The President had suffered a personal bereavement, and Ellsworth’s funeral services were held in the Executive Mansion. More thousands filed through the East Room, where he lay in state, dressed in his uniform, with white lilies on his breast. On the casket, Mrs. Lincoln had placed his picture, framed in a waxen laurel wreath. Single-minded, courageous and austere, he was the ideal figure of a fallen hero. It was told that a medal he wore, a golden circle inscribed “Non nobis, sed pro patria,” was driven into his heart by the shot that killed him.

  When the services were over, the flag-draped coffin was placed in a hearse drawn by four white horses. The military escort marched with arms reversed and colors shrouded. Directly behind the hearse came an unarmed company of Fire Zouaves, and among them Private Brownell drew all eyes, for he carried the darkly splashed Confederate flag for which Ellsworth had given his life. The President, with bowed head, drove in the cortege to the depot.

  On the Avenue, the pendant flags were tied with crape. The crowds were out, but there were no cheers, only silence and tolling bells. From the capital, sorrow spread in a wave over the Union. It was as if the people of the republic, so inexperienced in war, had closed their eyes to the purpose for which their young men had been sent to Washington; as if Ellsworth’s death had for a moment undeceived them, and a premonition passed, like a shudder, over all hearts.

  There had been rumors of heavy fighting across the Potomac, and correspondents telegraphed alarming stories to their newspapers; but the rebel garrison had left Alexandria as the Union troops arrived, and on the heights men from New York and New Jersey, assisted by a force of laborers, were quietly engaged in “shovelling up Virginia. . . .” Lee’s mansion, which had been vacated by the family, was used for army headquarters.


  While the advance movement had been planned by Colonel Samuel P. Heintzelman, U.S.A., who had been called to Washington from the West, the commanding officer was an old lawyer, Charles W. Sandford, who for many years had headed New York City’s large militia organization, in which he held the rank of major-general. Sandford, however, was soon superseded in command of the forces in Virginia by the Army officer, Irvin McDowell, who had an influential friend in Secretary Chase. McDowell was made a brigadier-general of volunteers, having declined the rank of major-general because he feared to excite the jealousy of his brother officers. He was a sensitive man, forty-three years old, robustly built, with cropped dark hair and narrow beard of iron gray. He had received an excellent education in France, and possessed a wide theoretical knowledge of military affairs. His hobby was architecture, and he loved music and landscape gardening. There was nothing convivial about McDowell. He neither drank nor smoked. His manners were frank and simple, but not winning. He spoke with “rough indifference” to his subordinates, and was too reserved to be popular. He had a poor memory for names and faces, and seemed absent-minded, lost in thoughts of his own, while people were talking to him.

  McDowell immediately learned that his appointment was displeasing to General Scott, who twice sent messages asking him personally to request the Secretary of War not to send him across the river. The General was “cool for a great while,” because the new brigadier felt too insecure to make this presumptuous application. McDowell thought that Scott was irritated because his assignment placed Sandford in an equivocal position, and especially because he resented the slight to Mansfield, who as colonel and former Inspector General outranked McDowell. Mansfield was also made a brigadier of volunteers, but the post in Virginia was more important than the command of the Department of Washington. McDowell, facing ever heavier responsibilities, keenly felt a want of co-operation. In the first weeks after he took command, nothing at all was sent across the river.

  Some of the regiments which had advanced were withdrawn from Virginia. The Seventh New York, after bearing its part in a two days’ chore of digging, had returned to the encampment on Meridian Hill. The regiment had volunteered for only thirty days, and its service was over. Its final perfect gesture was to contribute one hundred and three dollars to the Washington Monument—that abbreviated shaft, beside which a Government slaughterhouse was now established, with the offal rotting two and three feet deep.

  Impeccable and self-satisfied, the Seventh had not accomplished very much; and it could scarcely be said that the country’s need of soldiers had ended. Yet it was true that some grace departed from Washington when they trundled their little brass howitzers to the depot. More significant than the easy admiration of the crowds was the friendship they had won from the honest fellows of the Eighth Massachusetts. Affection breathed from every line of the testimonial they had inscribed to “the generous, gallant, glorious Seventh.” The fervent words somehow make clear that there were kind and brave hearts under those pipe-clayed crossbelts, that those were manly hands that never dislodged a fence rail nor picked a flower on Meridian Hill.

  When the Seventh took the cars for New York, Private Winthrop did not go with them. War was his destiny—he had found himself at last. At Annapolis, he had caught the attention of General Ben Butler, and a place on Butler’s staff, with a major’s commission, awaited him at Fort Monroe.

  Having disgorged its thousands, Washington turned lazily in the warm sun, and began to prepare for the special session of Congress, which the President had convened. At the Capitol, soap and sand removed the grease, tobacco and filth of the soldiers’ occupancy. It was remarked that the furniture and draperies, the mirrors, chandeliers and frescoes remained as bright as new. In spite of the well-known whittling propensities of Yankees, no cuts were found on the gallery seats. When the scrubbing was finished and the carpets had been taken up and cleaned, there was little to remind the visitor that the Capitol had been a crowded bivouac. To complete the renovation, artists were employed to decorate the red and yellow ceiling of the Hall of Representatives in less garish colors.

  An alien activity was imposed on the slow life of the city. Its rough pavements were noisy with the clatter of army wagons, the screams and curses of the drivers, and the crack of their long whips. Every hotel and every house was filled. Sutlers had taken all the vacant shops. Business revived. Even property holders felt encouraged. The depot and the wharves knew a ceaseless passing of horses, cattle, wagons, ambulances, provisions, arms, equipments, uniforms—all the multiple requisitions of a Government at war. The movement around the big new stables, barns and warehouses began to give the town almost a Yankee air of bustle and trade.

  The application of the modern invention, the telegraph, to military uses was strikingly apparent in Washington. Immense reels of insulated wire were among the supplies which the Government had ordered, and the War Department had been connected with the Navy Yard, the Arsenal, the Capitol, the depot, the Chain Bridge and the outlying encampments. The wires were now carried into Virginia, and a corps of operators, mainly drawn from employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad, took up their duties in and around the capital. The Executive, Thomas A. Scott, was placed in charge of Government railways and telegraphs. His right-hand man, Andy Carnegie, was stationed at Alexandria to organize military transport.

  Washington was startled to learn that another scientific invention, the balloon, might be used for military observations. Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, an enterprising aeronaut of twenty-nine, was sponsored by Professor Joseph Henry, the director of the Smithsonian Institution. He made several captive ascensions from the grounds of the armory on the Mall. The President and Secretary Cameron were impressed, but the experiments did not enlist the interest of General Scott. To illustrate the speed with which observations could be reported, Lowe carried aloft a telegraphic apparatus, attached by a long wire to the Executive Mansion. Mr. Lincoln received the message, “The city, with its girdle of encampments, presents a superb scene.” Professor Lowe then soared over the terrain of Virginia, and reported scattered camps and a huge cloud of dust near Fairfax Court-House. He claimed an ascent of five hundred feet, though the correspondent of the Star thought the elevation not more than two hundred.

  Washington was satiated with spectacles. It had grown blasé. No one heard the band music any longer, or the racket of fife and drum. A passing regiment evoked no more attention than a Georgetown omnibus. The First New Hampshire arrived with eighty horses and sixteen baggage wagons, a brass band with a major in a bearskin hat, a hospital wagon and a contingent of nurses in gray traveling dresses and straw flats. The First Ohio strode by with its West Point colonel, Alexander M. McCook, of the clan of the “Fighting McCooks.” The Second Maine panted in, sweating in heavy overcoats. The Seventy-ninth New York, commanded by Secretary Cameron’s brother, succeeded in fluttering the ladies with the thrill of seeing Highlanders in kilts; and everyone stared at Louis Blenker, the German émigré who was colonel of the Eighth New York, one of four German regiments. Blenker was a soldier of fortune, who had fought in Greece and in the German revolution of 1848. If his past was rather dubious, he was a magnificently martial figure, as he rode through Washington in his red-lined cape. Another soldier who never failed to attract attention was Captain Thomas Francis Meagher of the Sixty-ninth New York, who strutted along the Avenue in a gorgeous Zouave uniform covered with gold lace.

  The regiment which completely captivated the flagging attention of Washington was a picturesque collection of foreign scamps, recruited in New York and known as the Garibaldi Guard. It was made up of Hungarians, Germans, Italians, French, Spanish and Swiss, mixed with a few Cossacks, Sepoys, Croats and English deserters, all romantically attired in red blouses and bersaglieri hats; and beside the companies marched vivandières in feathered hats, jaunty red jackets and blue gowns. The Intelligencer informed its readers that the vivandières had husbands in the ranks; but the Star reported that two of them were runaways f
rom Jersey City, presently pursued and carried back to their homes. The Star, however, praised Colonel D’Utassy, the theatrical commander of the Garibaldi Guard, and ascribed his idiosyncrasies to his mercurial foreign temperament. D’Utassy was an adventurer, who was reputed to have been a dancing master and a circus rider prior to entering the service of the Union. He played a splendid part in the Washington pageant of 1861, but he would eventually land in Sing Sing for embezzling and cheating and persuading soldiers to desert.

  The summer heat of the capital was hard on Northern boys. Fifteen or twenty men of the Second Michigan dropped in the ranks as they went through Georgetown. There were cases of dysentery in the camps. On both sides of the river, soldiers stifled in their tents. The water was like pea soup, with snakes in it, and a man was dirtier after bathing than before. The night closed in with swarms of mosquitoes and an infinite consumption of bad whisky. Rations were sometimes poor and insufficient, and a few regiments rebelled against their officers. James Jackson of the Ninth New York—a mutinous organization—refused to be mustered into the service, and was drummed out of his regiment. Disrobed of his uniform and clad in a suit of common tweed, he was released and started to run. There had been many to encourage the District volunteers who balked at the oath of allegiance; but feeling had changed in the capital. James Jackson’s defection came a good six weeks too late. A crowd pursued him, hooted and kicked and stoned him. At last a justice of the peace took Jackson under his protection, and concealed him until he could escape from town.