Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  In November, the bookbinders created consternation by calling a strike, and the bindery at the Printing Office was gloomy and deserted. They had been receiving sixteen dollars a week for a ten-hour day, and demanded either an eight-hour day or an increase of two dollars a week, promising that they would perform as much labor in eight hours as in ten, while the employer would be saved the expense of gas. Private binderies acceded to both higher pay and shorter hours, and soon after the Government reached an agreement with the workers’ association. Meantime, the compositors at the Printing Office had briefly stopped work in sympathy with the bookbinders. This strike was called without action on the part of the Typographical Society, which, however, adopted a resolution that the rate of wages was insufficient.

  The drivers of the street railway struck for higher pay. They had recently been raised from a dollar and a half a day to a dollar seventy-five, wanted three dollars, would settle for two. Conductors and hostlers replaced them, and the business of the road was not materially interrupted. Committees of strikers, posted on Seventh Street and the Avenue, attempted to persuade the substitutes to quit, and were sufficiently demonstrative to demand the interference of the police, but, at a meeting held by the drivers, coercion was frowned on as bad policy. The railway company granted the twenty-five cents raise. Both at the Navy Yard and the Arsenal, petitions for shorter hours were complied with. Stanton ordered the bureau heads to make inquiry regarding a reasonable increase in wages. Welles appointed an investigating board composed of one commissioned officer and three workmen, and in the spring higher pay was given to ships’ carpenters and mechanics at the Yard. Other department employees, the Metropolitan Police, bricklayers, plasterers, carpenters and cabinet-makers all petitioned for higher pay during the winter and spring, and there was agitation over the starvation wages of the Washington schoolteachers.

  On the whole, there was a disposition to sympathize with the just grievances of labor in Washington, and an effort was made to equalize the hours and pay of Government workingmen with those prevalent in private industry. In the readjustment, the women workers fared badly. There was an inexhaustible supply of them, and they were without standing, precedent or basis for comparison. Female clerks had been almost unheard of in the departments when Clara Barton obtained an appointment at a man’s wage. As time went on, their numbers became one of the notable effects of the war. The “Treasury girls” alone constituted a sizable group. Women were employed on the Government printing presses and at the bindery, and in making cartridges at the Arsenal and Navy Yard. Their remuneration was usually much lower than that of the men they replaced. The Treasury girls were comparatively well paid at fifty dollars a month; but Major Doster remarked that it was little enough, when an ordinary room cost twenty dollars and board was hard to get at thirty. In 1862, female press feeders had been audacious enough to strike for an increase from five dollars a week to a dollar a day, and had won their raise because of the heavy pressure of work. When women at the Printing Office again struck almost two years later, they were unsuccessful in obtaining higher pay, and some, according to the Star, found that their places had been filled. Many girls, earning a pittance in the factories and shops of other cities, bending over sewing machines in lofts to make uniforms for the soldiers, would have envied their sisters in the Printing Office. The Sunday Chronicle, in a thoughtful editorial, discussed the low prevailing scale of female wages, and came to the conclusion that the Printing Office women were still underpaid. The pertinent question was whether a woman should receive enough for her daily toil to rescue her from want and preserve her from shame. The Chronicle had never believed that “what are called ‘strikes’ are always oppressive and unjust.”

  Belle Boyd, back in Washington from August to December, was untroubled by the high cost of living in the capital. She had been given one of the best rooms in Carroll Prison, the Old Capitol annex. Both of the rambling jails were crowded. Over two thousand Confederate captives from Rappahannock Station jammed every hole and corner of the Old Capitol, and stood in the yard, “packed as closely as apples in a barrel.” It had become impossible for Washington to hold the large and growing numbers of prisoners of war, whose exchange had been blocked by acrimonious disputes between the Federal and Confederate authorities. As fast as possible, the captives were sent off to the big prison camp at Point Lookout in Maryland and the officers’ camp at Johnson’s Island, Ohio. In spite of omnipresent military commissions, the cases of political prisoners, smugglers, blockade runners, defaulting contractors and Federal military offenders were slowly disposed of. One of Belle’s fellow inmates was a prominent Washington banker, Mr. William T. Smithson. It was his second arrest on a charge of corresponding with the enemy. The proceedings of the court-martial were not divulged, but the banker was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, and went off under guard to the Albany penitentiary.

  The iron rule of Stanton, Watson and Baker had not succeeded in obliterating Southern sympathy in the capital city. The places of the six hundred ladies who had gone to Richmond were being filled in the autumn of 1863 by former residents who were stealing back through the army lines. Living was high in Washington, but in Richmond conditions were growing intolerable. Faces that had been missing since the spring of 1861 reappeared in the streets—halfhearted fire-eaters, tired of the pinch of the blockaded Confederacy. “Rats Leaving the Sinking Ship,” headlined the Star. The Union victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg had subdued their spirits, but they nodded and signaled toward Belle Boyd’s window, as they walked by Carroll Prison. Government clerks and boardinghouse keepers gathered behind the Capitol park in the evenings, while she plaintively sang, “Take me back to my own sunny South.” After an attack of typhoid fever, Belle obtained permission from General Martindale to walk in the park for a half-hour each evening, under guard. So many ladies and gentlemen congregated to watch her, uttering pitying expressions as she passed, that the permission was revoked by Mr. Stanton.

  One night, a fine new flag which had been raised on top of Grover’s Theatre was torn down and carried off. The incident aroused the wrath of the loyal population. The loss of a single Union banner was felt in Washington, which still made little festive show of red, white and blue, even in time of victory. The Sunday Chronicle deplored the unpatriotic aspect of the streets, and urged that the flag should float all day every day on the public buildings of the Government and the District—on the departments, at the provost marshal’s office and Colonel Baker’s headquarters, over every courtroom and at the police stations. The example, the Chronicle hoped, would spread to other buildings, to private dwellings and places of amusement. The newspaper was gratified that Manager Grover was prompt in purchasing another mammoth flag, to replace the one that had been stolen; and that Manager Ford had promised that his theatre would shortly fly the Stars and Stripes.

  The theatres could well afford to show patriotism. The war was making the managers rich. The Varieties Theatre, on Ninth Street near the Avenue, invariably concluded its performances with a national song and a patriotic tableau, profusely decorated with flags—loudly cheered by the bluecoats in the audience. The big auditorium was like a barn, with roughly plastered walls and bare rafters. It had, however, been renovated at considerable expense, and a wheel of colored lights revolved in kaleidoscopic brilliance above the entrance. Canterbury Hall, located in the old Assembly Rooms behind the National Hotel, illuminated Louisiana Avenue with its powerful calcium light. Like the Varieties, it was nightly crowded with “soldiers and roughs, screeching, catcalling, smoking and spitting.” Drinks, at ten cents apiece, were sold in the bar, and the entertainment was a potpourri of scantily dressed ladies, Negro comedians, acrobats and contortionists, broad jokes, farce, sentimental songs and satires on the management of the army. Matinee performances, suitable for women and children, were sometimes offered on holidays, but otherwise, save for a possible spree, family men did not frequent the music halls.

  A year after the outbreak of
war, respectable Washington had been provided with an unprecedented wealth of theatrical entertainment because of the enterprise and rivalry of the two managers, Mr. John T. Ford and Mr. Leonard Grover. Ford, an amiable gentleman of high reputation, was manager of the Halliday Street Theatre in his native city of Baltimore. He made frequent trips to Washington, where his two brothers were in charge of his business. Before the war, Ford had been president of the Baltimore city council, and had served as acting mayor for two years. He had also managed the Richmond Theatre, knew that city well and had close relatives there. His Union sympathies were of the ultra-Democratic variety prevalent in Maryland and the District. Leonard Grover said that Ford’s political opinions differed little from his own, and that they were both chary of expressing them, but on the record Grover made a better impression of loyalty to the administration. He had been born and reared in western New York, and had a friendly acquaintance with Mr. Seward. At the outbreak of war, he had been employed on a Baltimore newspaper; and, before coming to Washington, he had taken an active part in raising the First and Second Maryland Regiments.

  Both Ford and Grover were keen young men who saw an opportunity for making money out of the theatre business in the capital. As was customary, they organized resident stock companies, to support visiting stars during their engagements of one or two weeks—or, in a few instances, longer periods—of repertory. Popular actors were entitled to a benefit night as a part of their contract, but the managers also took an annual benefit performance for their own profit. The greatly increased population of Washington readily supported two new theatres, in addition to the music halls and the occasional good bills still offered at the old Washington Theatre on C Street. Ford’s first house, the Athenaeum, was a remodeled Baptist church on Tenth Street, between E and F. Grover, with his partner, C. D. Hess, assumed the management of a new theatre on E Street, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth. It was billed as Grover’s, but some people called it the National, because it stood on the site of an old theatre of that name, which had burned down several years before the war. Although, in these high-class places of amusement, propriety was observed in the sections reserved for ladies, the rear seats and benches were occupied, like the music halls, by rowdies. If a gentleman were forced to sit in the back of the house, he needed, said the Sunday Chronicle, an umbrella and a life preserver to protect him from the sluices of tobacco juice, which ran under his feet in a yellow sea, laden with peanut and chestnut shells. There were vulgar fellows who laughed and sneered at pathos and tragedy, and some disturbed their neighbors by rushing out before the close of the last scene. Nevertheless, since the stars were famous and the bills well selected, there were seldom empty seats in either of the theatres.

  After the Athenaeum was destroyed by fire, Ford had had no difficulty in getting financial support from wealthy Washington citizens to erect another theatre on the same site; and in August, 1863, the “magnificent new Thespian temple” had opened in a blaze of gaslight with the performance of the dramatic pageant, The Naiad Queen. There was a fine drop curtain, decorated with a bust of Shakespeare and a landscape. In ventilation, acoustic properties and optical advantages, the house was locally pronounced to be superior to any theatre in America. It contained fire hydrants with hose attachments, and accommodated twenty-four hundred persons. The admission was twenty-five, fifty and seventy-five cents. Painted Jezebels were barred from the audience by police officers stationed at the door.

  Ford had learned that there was a greater demand for private boxes in Washington than in almost any other city; for, though they did not afford as good a view of the stage as the orchestra or center balcony, they were fashionable for entertaining theatre parties. At both ends of the balcony or dress circle, he had provided a number of boxes, in addition to four boxes built in double tiers on either side of the apron of the stage. The two boxes of the upper right-hand tier, from the point of view of the audience, were divided by a movable partition which permitted them to be thrown into one, forming a double box for the use of the President. Both were papered in dark red, carpeted and hung with Nottingham lace curtains. In October, Mr. Lincoln attended the new theatre for the first time, to see Maggie Mitchell in Fanchon, the Cricket. The double box was decorated with flags and flowers, and the President occupied an upholstered rocking chair, with a carved frame, which was part of a handsome set of furniture purchased for the reception room. Two weeks later, while John Wilkes Booth, the youngest of the famous family of actors, was playing his first engagement at Ford’s, the President went to see his performance in The Marble Heart, which John Hay pronounced “Rather tame than otherwise.”

  In December, James H. Hackett played for a week at Ford’s. He was a veteran of the theatre, soon to retire, and large audiences gathered to see his famous impersonation of Falstaff in Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor. It was a role which especially interested the President, who had seen it presented on the stage for the first time during Hackett’s visit to Washington the year before. Lincoln had written Hackett, inviting him to call, and on the Sunday which preceded his opening, the actor and the President sat down for an evening’s discussion of Falstaff. The Chronicle said that Mr. Lincoln went to Ford’s four nights running, while Hackett was playing. John Hay noted two nights in his dairy.

  Leonard Grover, not to be outdone by his competitor, had altered and improved his theatre, increasing its capacity by a thousand seats. It reopened in October with the appearance of a team of stars, E. L. Davenport and J. W. Wallack, who were very popular in Washington. The celebrated tragedienne, Miss Charlotte Cushman—always Mr. Seward’s house guest when she came to the capital—played Lady Macbeth with Davenport and Wallack in a benefit which netted two thousand dollars for the Sanitary Commission. The President, Mrs. Lincoln and Tad were part of the enthusiastic audience.

  Both Grover’s and Ford’s were launched on a highly successful season, when the opening of Congress brought the rush of winter visitors. Politicians and contractors and hangers-on crowded into hotels already busy with officers on leave and sutlers with an eye on the movements of the army. Tourists came in droves, with money to spend. Northern capital had been invested in District enterprises and business in Washington was thriving as never before. Government contracts for mattresses, iron bedsteads, hardware and stoves had enriched many of the citizens. Merchant tailors, saddlers, blacksmiths, stationers and hotelkeepers had amassed fortunes from the war. On Saturday nights, the Avenue, illuminated by blazing shops and hotels, surged with pleasure-seeking people. Along the street went brass bands and shining transparencies, announcing “Po-ca-hon-tas and the Webb Sisters” and “The star of Canterbury never sets.” “This way to Ford’s Theatre,” bawled a boy stationed at the corner of Tenth Street.

  To foreign visitors, Washington still appeared an outlandish place. Mr. George Augustus Sala, looking it over that winter as correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, expended a deal of turgid and contemptuous rhetoric on the capital of the Union. He called it “a vast practical joke,” “a hydrocephalous hamlet,” and a “great, scrambling, slack-baked embryo of a city basking in the December sun like an alligator on the mud-bank of a bayou in July.” But its residents, in the flush of a new prosperity, gazed on Washington with honest civic pride and felt a warm faith in the future of the city. The doubts of the spring of 1861 had vanished with the leisurely Southern aspect of the streets. The abundance of money and the demand for housing had sent up the price of real estate. All over town, shops and houses were being erected. The Navy Yard docks were filled with vessels under repair. Blacksmiths hammered, carpenters sawed and planed. Guns, howitzers, copperplate, bullets, caps, fuses, rockets and cartridges were manufactured. Frigates were built and launched. The vast main reservoir of the Washington waterworks was opened with appropriate ceremonies. The public buildings, whose prone pillars and scattered ornaments had once recalled the ruins of antiquity, were being pushed to completion in the midst of war. There were brand-new carpets in the Hal
l of Representatives, and a splendid bronze door, depicting the history of Columbus, was set up at the entrance of the corridor leading from the old Hall to the new. In the Senate wing, painters were frescoing the walls, and workmen were heaving the marble columns into place on the portico. Over all, the great dome grew round beneath its scaffolding.