Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  While the contrabands waited to be mustered in, they drilled in squads in an open lot. The hours dragged on. The mustering officer, sent for in the morning, did not come. At that evening’s meeting, the Negroes were assured that there was the most friendly feeling toward them at the War Department; but no more volunteers stepped forward. The enlisted men camped beside the church for the night. Sentries, armed with sticks, patrolled the lot, and a crowd of various complexions stood staring.

  When the two companies were at last mustered in, they were hurriedly taken from Washington to Analostan Island, opposite Georgetown. There, out of sight, they were clothed in the army blue. Their removal was a discouragement to the white recruiting officers, who wanted to use them to stimulate enthusiasm and reassure the doubtful. These officers were not permitted, under penalty of arrest, to visit Analostan Island. One of them said that the President himself did not know where the colored soldiers were encamped, but had been driving around Washington with Mrs. Lincoln, trying to find them. No criticism was made of the War Department, but there were hints of outside interference. One theory was that trouble had been caused by a desperate fight to have District citizens appointed as officers of the colored regiment. The strictness and secrecy of the seclusion on the island may have been prompted by a fear of race riots and bloodshed, once the Negroes were armed, for civilians and soldiers continued their persecution of colored men. Early in June, a disorderly gang made an attack on the contraband camp, and seriously wounded several Negroes before a detachment of Massachusetts troops arrived to protect them. So numerous were the assaults on colored soldiers that a special military commission was appointed to examine the cases.

  A few days later, a company of blacks was permitted to parade through the city. Fully armed, uniformed and equipped, they attracted a curious crowd. Little boys and an eager following of colored people trailed behind them; and the bearers of advertising banners for places of amusement kept step with their ranks, to engage the attention of the public. Later in the month, five colored companies, almost all jet black—“real Negro,” the Star commented—marched down the Avenue to attend prayer meeting. There was something formidable in their appearance. No insults or outbreaks were reported in the press. By that time, Washington, scanning the news of the fierce fighting on the Mississippi, had learned that at Port Hudson and Milliken’s Bend colored regiments had fought with desperate bravery and suffered heavy losses. The disciplined, dark-faced men in blue were beginning to be accepted as soldiers.

  By mid-June of 1863, the capital had cause to welcome new defenders. Louder and more perilous to the city than the distant roar of guns at Vicksburg, an ominous rumble had sounded beyond the Blue Ridge. Raids and skirmishes had at first been ascribed to the rebel guerrillas who hovered in small squads along the Federal lines across the Potomac. But a hundred startling rumors flew along the Avenue. The details were various and contradictory, but they had one constant theme: General Lee was marching north.

  The rebel cry of “On to Washington!” echoed up from Richmond. The Federal capital choked on a suspense as stifling as the summer dust. On a Navy Yard streetcar, the passengers spoke of barricades in the streets; and several ladies got out to study a pile of upturned earth on G Street, where a new flag footway was being laid. Jeb Stuart’s troopers wheeled dangerously near. There was a clash of sharp cavalry engagements. Wounded officers and men began to come into Washington. The name of Manassas rose again, like a ghost of old disasters.

  To the north, the city looked in fear, as well as across the Potomac. The Shenandoah Valley, guarded by mountain ridges, formed a great fertile corridor to the Cumberland Valley of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Running from southwest to northeast, it brought an invading army closer to Washington with every mile of its advance. Once in Maryland, the enemy could easily descend on the fortifications of the capital.

  There was a scare at Harper’s Ferry. Somewhere on the upper Potomac, rebel troops had crossed into Maryland. Alarm was spreading in Pennsylvania. June 14 was one of the capital’s “rumor Sundays.” Some said that Hooker’s army was protecting Washington, others that Hooker was retreating. An evening visit to the War Department left the Secretary of the Navy “painfully impressed.” Lincoln quietly said that he was feeling very bad. Stanton, uneasy and fussy, communicated nothing. Halleck sat in silence, puffing his cigar. His relations with General Hooker were strained. They had known and disliked each other in California before the war. It had been a long time since Hooker had “enjoyed the confidence” of the general-in-chief.

  On Monday morning, there was something close to panic in Washington. Rebel troops were said to be at Hagerstown in Maryland, at Chambersburg in Pennsylvania. There were rumors of a fight at Aldie, in Virginia, east of the Blue Ridge. It was a day of oppressive heat. At the bars, men turned from their long, cold glasses of whisky punch and sherry cobbler to read the President’s proclamation, calling out one hundred thousand militia for six months from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio and the new state of West Virginia, formed of the unionist counties beyond the Alleghenies. The week passed in a cloud of menacing reports. The governor of Pennsylvania and the mayor of Philadelphia were appealing for help. Fear gripped Harrisburg. The whole North was in a blaze of excitement. Militia regiments began to pour into Pennsylvania from New York, from New England, Ohio, New Jersey. The rebels were raiding Pennsylvania in force. Save for the cavalry, the Army of the Potomac might, for all the country knew, have vanished into thin air. The arriving boatloads of sick and wounded from the hospitals on the Rappahannock informed Washington that the Federals had stripped themselves for action. Washington secessionists said that Hooker’s headquarters were at Fairfax Station. Lee was reported to be at Fairfax Court-House. On Friday, the capital heard that the fight at Aldie, north of Manassas, had been a severe cavalry engagement.

  On Sunday, June 21, Washington listened to heavy artillery fire from the direction of the Bull Run Mountains. It gradually receded, ending at six o’clock. Ambulance trains moved across the Long Bridge to Virginia, and every day wounded troopers were brought in, many Ohio men among them. The cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, led now by General Alfred Pleasonton, boldly engaged Stuart’s horsemen in the gaps of the Blue Ridge. So far, it was noted, not a single Union straggler had limped into Washington. Rebel prisoners arrived from the mountain passes.

  Unexpectedly, Hooker had appeared in town. After a conference with him at the War Department, the President’s face was careworn. The newspapers spread headlines that Lee’s entire army was in motion, advancing on Harrisburg. The enrollment of Washington citizens for conscription began in an atmosphere of tension. Confederate cavalry were in Maryland now, seizing horses. It was said that wagon trains had been seized in sight of the Capitol, that a rebel scouting party had been seen near Georgetown. On June 28, Montgomery Blair and his father drove down Seventh Street at sunset to their city residence, thinking it unsafe to stay at Silver Spring, Maryland. One hundred army sutlers tendered their services to General Heintzelman as a mounted patrol for Washington, to relieve the cavalry for action. Mechanics and laborers at the Capitol formed a company for the defense of the city. Troops were moving into Maryland, many of them men just out of the hospitals. With rattling sabers, a veteran regiment of bearded, sunburned young troopers rode up Fourteenth Street, bound for the Susquehanna. The menace had moved from Virginia, was concentrated in the North. The Army of the Potomac had advanced to meet it.

  The announcement came abruptly that Hooker had been relieved of his command, and replaced by General George G. Meade. A little-known commander, with a bleak, scholar’s face, was to lead the Federal forces in the imminent battle on which the safety of the East depended.

  Above the line which halved the hard, gray boulders of the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, the Union cavalry moved through the dusty, green hills in search of the enemy. They found them on the outskirts of the comfortable, red-brick town of Gettysburg. On Thursday morning, July 1, the battle opened; an
d, before a rainstorm swept across the ridges on Saturday night, a hundred and sixty thousand men had fought with rifles and rocks and bayonets and new, long-range British cannon among the wheat fields and the peach orchards. Out-numbered and bleeding, Lee’s army fell away southwest, along the Hagerstown Road. In the seminary yard, in the cabbage patches and among the graves of the hillside cemetery of Gettysburg, boys of the Army of the Potomac lay bloating in the rain. For a second time, they had thrown back the invasion of the North. The gallant soldier, General John Reynolds, had fallen on the first day. He had been born near Gettysburg.

  For three days, Washington had held its breath, waiting for the outcome of the thunder and the slaughter on the free soil of Pennsylvania. All during the evening of July 3 and for the most of the night, the burning of firecrackers, squibs and rockets ushered in the celebration of Independence Day, and early on the morning of the Fourth powder was exploding all over Washington. Excitement was fanned by whispers that Lee’s army had been terribly whipped. At ten, a bulletin put out at the Star office on the Avenue announced the victory, and the city was aroused to an enthusiastic rejoicing which it had not known for years. Crowds gathered in the grounds south of the White House—citizens, volunteer regiments, veterans of 1812, the Odd Fellows, the mayor and the members of the city councils. The Declaration of Independence was read, there were speeches, and Mayor Wallach gave out the Star’s bulletin of the stirring news from Meade’s army. The hot air shook with three times three and a tiger, and the Marine Band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  The District militia regiments assembled on Monday, in response to the President’s call, but the emergency was past, and they were permitted to disband. Dan Sickles came to Washington on a stretcher, one leg shot off and amputated above the knee. Bystanders marveled at his imperturbable face, as he lay with folded arms on the stretcher.

  Next day, there was news that on July 4 Vicksburg had fallen to the forces of General Grant. The double victory sent the nation reeling in a heady celebration. Across the North boomed the salutes of the guns. Bells rang, buildings flared with garish illuminations, and people cheered the name of Grant and his right-hand general, Sherman. Headed by the band of the Thirty-fourth Massachusetts, thousands went to the White House to serenade the President, surged on to Stanton’s residence on K Street, to Seward’s on Lafayette Square.

  But the first exultation was succeeded by a soberer mood. In Washington, doubt began to dull the hope that, abetted by the flooded Potomac, General Meade would destroy Lee’s army. The Federals crept forward under hesitant and cautious leadership. Meade, after his magnificent success, seemed to be cut from the very pattern of all generals of the Army of the Potomac, and memories of past delays came back to haunt the capital. The fall of Port Hudson brought the assurance that throughout its length the Mississippi was open to the Union; but by the middle of July the noise of riots racketed down from the North, as the enforcement of conscription was resisted. New York was possessed by mobs, which burned and pillaged, and murdered innocent Negroes. In the uproar of anarchy and faction, the Union learned that General Lee’s forces, with all their guns and all their plunder, had splashed across the Potomac.

  For a moment, the North had dared to hope that the end of the rebellion was in sight. As the Secretary of the Navy walked slowly across the White House lawn, the President overtook him. They stood talking at the turnstile gate. Mr. Welles would never forget Lincoln’s voice and face, as he said that he had dreaded, yet expected Lee’s escape. “And that, my God, is the last of this Army of the Potomac!” the President cried, in the first pain of his disappointment. “There is bad faith somewhere. . . . What does it mean, Mr. Welles? Great God! What does it mean?”

  “Your golden opportunity is gone,” Mr. Lincoln wrote General Meade; but he did not send the letter. That conscientious soldier had been so offended by the criticisms of his delay that he had asked to be relieved of his command. His request was refused, but his achievement at Gettysburg had been permanently clouded by a dilatoriness that painfully recalled McClellan’s after Antietam.

  The Union was not yet saved, either from the armies of the Confederacy or from those more insidious enemies who spread disaffection at home. But, in spite of Copperheads and peacemakers and narrow partisans, there was a growing confidence in the country. The Emancipation Proclamation was increasingly popular. The Army of the Potomac had an awakening loyalty to the administration, did not like to hear it censured. The relation of slavery to the war no longer seemed remote. It was coming to appear the hateful source of the division of the country and the wastage of men and money. Before the need of replenishing the depleted armies—the losses at Gettysburg had been over twenty-three thousand men—the prejudice against enlisting Negroes faded. Late in the summer, General Grant wrote the President that the arming of the Negro, with the emancipation of the slaves, was “the heaviest blow yet given the Confederacy.”

  A disillusioned nation had lost its capacity for easy optimism; but it had learned to hold a grim and steadfast resolve. By the time that Mr. Lincoln journeyed up to Gettysburg in November, to read his short and simple speech over the vast graveyard of the battlefield, the Union was strong in the determination that, at whatever cost, white and black together, they would win this brothers’ war.

  XIII. Winter of Security

  AUTUMN LEAVES were bright along the Eastern Branch, as the jolly procession of carriages rolled across the Navy Yard Bridge. There were parties of sporting men in lively waistcoats, and smart, brass-buttoned officers on horseback. Mr. John Usher, the Secretary of the Interior, was driving out; and so were Marshal Lamon, Mayor Wallach and young Mr. John Hay. Everywhere ladies, in fall costumes of redundant skirts and sugar-loaf beaver hats, gleamed with scarlet like the maples. Chickamauga had been another costly blunder. General Rosecrans had been relieved of his command. The Army of the Cumberland, besieged at Chattanooga, might be starved into surrender, and the concentration of troops in Tennessee portended still more desperate fighting. But the war had lasted a long time; Tennessee was far away; and, in October, 1863, Washington was going to the trotting races.

  By two o’clock, the stands at the new National Race-Course near the Insane Asylum were packed. The plank enclosure was blue with standees drawn from the rank and file of the near-by military posts; while carriage-loads of spectators covered an area of ten acres. In front of the judges’ stand, the purse of one thousand dollars swung in its wire cage. The band played, the bell clanged, and the three contestants were driven onto the track: Butler, a slashing black gelding; a bay gelding called Prince; and Hartford Belle, a bay mare. Butler was the favorite. His name was actually General Butler, but he had been deprived of rank because military titles led to difficulties at the Washington track. The soldiers who formed a great proportion of the crowd had recently displayed passionate insistence that a horse named General McClellan should be permitted to win.

  The race was for three heats out of five. At the second stroke of the bell, the track was cleared. There was a drum tap, and the sulkies went twinkling around. Butler won the heat. His backers greeted his success with deafening cheers, but he seemed to blow pretty hard, and there was speculation over his staying qualities. In the second heat, Prince struck out briskly, and was nearly at the home stretch, when Butler shot forward and came in a length ahead. Hartford Belle was withdrawn, and the two geldings got away splendidly for the third heat. Prince had a slight lead, but Butler passed him, and opened a bad gap. Prince closed up and the black gelding broke. To the excitement of the crowd, the bay won by two lengths.

  The odds on the favorite dropped. He appeared to be a dull horse when not in motion. But the Butler backers were noisily confident. His driver had removed his coat; and his businesslike appearance in shirt sleeves was received with shouts. The tap for the fourth heat sent the geldings flying neck and neck. Suddenly Butler made a dash. Prince gradually drew upon him, and lapped him. For a dozen rods, the two ran beautifully together.
Butler swung into the homestretch ahead. The bay pulled up, shutting out the daylight between them. Butler coquetted a little. Neck and neck, they neared the judges’ stand. Then Butler went like great guns, and made the goal a neck and a half ahead. There was wild cheering as the black was driven up to the post of honor. The cage of greenbacks was lowered, and, with an air of nonchalance, Butler’s driver crammed them into his pocket.

  The excitement was over. It was time to go home to dinner, but it was long before the race track was deserted. The road was wedged with traffic, and thousands were obliged to sit waiting for their turn to move. In the clear evening air, it was a sight to see the dense train of carriages and horses dark along the sweep of road down by Foxtown and on across the bridge, winding at last up through the Sixth Ward. They would have preempted the whole width of the bridge, but the sentries kept them to the right, to leave room for the Government wagons and the droves of led horses, moving, eternally moving, even in trotting week, to the big cavalry depot at Giesboro’ Point.

  At least one incident enlivened the tedium of the homeward trip. Sarah Austin, the proprietor of a popular fancy house, chanced to drive alongside a carriage in which were seated two professional rivals, Fannie Lee and Fannie Dennis. One of them called out that the Austin equipage contained a “tub of guts.” Madam Austin summoned the police; and the Fannies were hailed before a justice, and fined two dollars and a half each.

  The press deplored the conduct of two army officers, who, returning from the races in an open barouche, sat hugging and kissing their “fair but frail” companions in full view of a regiment on dress parade. It was not a new complaint. From the first, the Star had crusaded against the public consorting of officers and bawds. After Second Bull Run, it had sternly condemned the uniformed idlers who went “gallanting the painted Jezebels with which the city is stocked.” But protests had been ineffectual. In 1863, the women of the town were as much a feature of the Washington scene as the soldiers themselves.