CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM E.H.Woodruff Digitized by Microsoft® This book was digitized by Microsoft Corporation in cooperation with Cornell University Libraries, 2007. You may use and print this copy in limited quantity for your personal purposes, but may not distribute or provide access to it (or modified or partial versions of it) for revenue-generating or other commercial purposes. Digitized by Microsoft® The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021499599 Digitized by Microsoft® Days By WALT WHITMAN, Author of " Leaves of Grass." PHILADELPHIA: REES WELSH & CO., No. 23 South Ninth Street. i882-'83. A Digitized by Microsoft® Copyright, 1882. By WALT WHITMAN. All Rights Reserved. Digitized by Microsoft® CONTENTS. SPECIMEN DAYS. ; , T ^ page A Happy Day's Command, Answer to an Insisting Friend, a - Genealogy— Van Velsor and Whitman The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries,' 9 The Maternal. Homestead Two Old Family Interiors, ' j x Paumanok, and My Life on it as Child and Young Man, . » ! ! ! » My First Reading— Lafayette, '.".*,'.*.', 14 Printing Office— Old Brooklyn ..!!!]* ! 15 \ Growth— Health— Work My Passion for Ferries, ' T g Broadway Sights, Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers, l8 Plays and Operas too, 10 Through Eight Years Sources of Character— Results— 1860, 20 Opening of the Secession War National Uprising and Volunteering, ....... 21 Contemptuous Feeling Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861 22 The Stupor Passes— Something Else Begins, 25 Down at the Front After First Fredericksburg 2 6 ^Back to Washington, ' , 2 _ Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field, 2 3 Hospital Scenes and Persons, 2 o Patent-Office Hospital, 30 The White House by Moonlight An Army Hospital Ward, x . 31 A Connecticut Case Two Brooklyn Boys, 32 A Secesh Brave..-. The Wounded from Chancellorsville, 33 A Night Battle over a Week Since, 34, "Unnamed Remains' the Bravest Soldier.. Some Specimen Cases, 36 My Preparations for Visits, 38 Ambulance Processions Bad Wounds — the Young, 39 The Most Inspiriting of all War's Shows 39 Battle of Gettysburg A Cavalry Camp, „ 40 A New York Soldier, 41 Home-Made Music, 42 Abraham Lincoln, 43 Heated Term Soldiers and Talks, 44 Death of a Wisconsin Officer, 45 Hospitals Ensemble, _ 46 A Silent Night Ramble, 47 Spiritual Characters among the Soldiers Cattle Droves about Washington, ... 48 Hospital Perplexity, 48 Down at the Front, 49 Paying the Bounties Rumors, Changes, &c Virginia, 50 Summer of 1864, 5* A New Army Organization fit for America Death of a Hero, 52 Hospital Scenes — Incidents, 53 A Yankee Soldier Union Prisoners South, 54 Deserters A Glimpse of War's Hell-Scenes, 55 Gifts — Money— Discrimination Items from My Note Books, 57- A Case from Second Bull Run Army Surgeons — Aid Deficiencies, 58 The Blue Everywhere A Model Hospital/ 59 Boys in the Army Burial of a Lady Nurse, 60 Female Nurses for Soldiers Southern Escapees, 61 The Capitol by Gas-Light The Inauguration, 63 Digitized by Microsoft® ( iii ) iv CONTENTS. PAGB Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War, . , . ^ 64 The Weather— Does it Sympathize with These Times ? 65 Inauguration Ball... ......Scene a.t the Capitol 66 A Yankee Antique 67 Wounds and Diseases Death of President Lincoln, 68 Sherman's Army's Jubilation — its Sudden Stoppage, 69 No Good Portrait of Lincoln Releas'd Union Prisoners from South, 69 Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier, 71 The Armies Returning, 72 The Grand Review Western Soldiers, 73 A Soldier on Lincoln Two Brothers, one South, one North, 74 Some Sad Cases yet, 75 ^Calhoun's Real Monument Hospitals Closing, 76 Typical Soldiers, 77 "*' Convulsiveness ** Three Years Summ'd up, 78 The Million Dead, too, Summ'd up 79 The Real War will never get in the Books, 80 An Interregnum Paragraph, 81 New Themes Enter* d Upon, . ; 82 x Enteringa Long Farm-Lane To the Spring and Brook An Earjy Summer Reveille, 83 Birds Migrating at Midnight Bumble-Bees, 84 Cedar-Apples, ~ . 86 ^ Summer Sights and Indolences Sundown Perfume — Quail-Notes — the Hermft Thrush, 87 ' A July Afternoon by the Pond 88 Locusts and Katy-Dids The Lesson of a Tree, * i..8g Autumn Side-Bits, n r The Sky — Days and Nights — Happiness, 02 Colors — A Contrast Novembers, '76, 03 Crows and Crows A Winter-Day on the Sea-Beach, g4 Sea-Shore Fancies, gs In Memory of Thomas Paine, . 06 A Two Hours' Ice-Sail, „_ Spring Overtures— Recreations One of the Human Kinks, 08 An Afternoon Scene The Gates Opening , „„ The Common Earth, the Soil Birds and Birds and Birds, IOO Full-Starr'd Nights, • [ 1Q1 t Mulleins and Mulleins Distant Sounds, t Ioa A Sun-Bath — Nakedness, m The Oaks and I . . 1 1 . . . ! 104 A Quintette, 1D The First Frost— Mems Three Young Men's Deaths, ," ,' 10 g February Days, < IQ g *SA Meadow Lark Sundown Lights, .110 Thoughts Under an Oak— A Dream Clover and Hay Perfume An Unknown, in Bird Whistling Horse-Mint Three of Us, \ 1I2 NS Death of William Cullen Bryant, ....[], I13 Jaunt up the Hudson Happiness and Raspberries, ] II4 A Specimen Tramp Family, K Manhattan from the Bay, T1 g Human and Heroic New York, Hours for the Soul, Il8 ,Straw-Color*d and other Psyches " A Night Remembrance Wild Flowers, I2 Digitized by Microsoft® CONTENTS. v PAGE A Civility Too Long Neglected, 123 ^Delaware River — Days and Nights Scenes on Ferry and River— LastWinter's Nights, 124 The First Spring Day on Chestnut Street, 128 Up the Hudson to Ulster County, , 129 •Days at J. B.'s — Turf Fires— Spring Songs, ' 130 Meeting a Hermit An Ulster County Waterfall Walter Dumont and his Medal, 131 ■ Hudson River Sights, 132 Two City Areas Certain Hours, . . . . . 133 Central Park Walks and Talks 134 A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6, , 135 Departing of the Big Steamers Two Hours on the Minnesota, 136^ Mature Summer Days and Nights, 137 Exposition Building— New City Hall — River-Trip, 138 -Swallows on the River Begin a Long Jaunt West.. In the Sleeper, 139 Missouri State, '. 140 Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas The Prairies — (and an Undeliver'd Speech,) . . . 141 On to Denver — A Frontier Incident An Hour on Kenosha Summit, 142 An Egotistical " Find" New Scenes — New Joys, 143 *> Steam-Power, Telegraphs, &c America's Back-Bone, 144 The Parks Art Features, 145 Denver Impressions, 146 I Turn South, and then East Again, 147 Unfulfill'd Wants— the Arkansas River A Silent Little Follower— the Coreopsis, . 148 The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry The Spanish Peaks — Evening on the Plains, 149 America's Characteristic Landscape Earth's Most Important Stream, 150 Prairie Analogies — the Tree Question Mississippi Valley Literature, 151 An Interviewer's Item, 152 The Women of the West The Silent General, 153 - President Hayes's Speeches, - 154 St. Louis Memoranda Nights on the Mississippi, 155 ^Upon our Own Land. Edgar Poe's Significance, 156 Beethoven's Septette, iS8j A Hint of Wild Nature.J. Loafing in the Woods, 159 A Contralto Voice Seeing Niagara to Advantage, 160 Jaunting to Canada Sunday with the Insane, 161 Reminiscence of Elias Hicks .'..Grand Native Growth, 162 A Zollverein between the U. S. and Canada The St. Lawrence Line, 163 The Savage Saguenay ....Capes Eternity and Trinity, 164- Chicoutimi, and Ha-ha Bay The Inhabitants— Good Living, 165 Cedar-Plums Like— Names, 165 Death of Thomas Cariyle 168 Carlyle from American Points of View, 170 A Couple of Old Friends— A Coleridge Bit 178 A Week's Visit to Boston, *79 The Boston of To-Day My Tribute to Four Poets .180 Millet's Pictures— Last Items, 181 Birds, and a Caution, '. , ... 182 Samples of my Common-Place Book 183 My Native Sand and Salt Once More, . . . . , 185 Hot Weather New York, 186 '"Custer's Last Rally," l8 7 SomejOld Acquaintances— Memories A Discovery of Old Age, 188 , A Visit at the Last to R. W. Emerson, , 189 Digitized by Microsoft® vi CONTMIVIS. PAGE Other Concord Notations, 190 Boston Common — More of Emerson, .191 An Ossianic Night — Dearest Friends, *9 2 Only a New Ferry Boat Death of Longfellow 193 Starting Newspapers T 94 The Great Unrest of which We are a Part, 19 6 By Emerson's Grave, *97 At Present Writing— Personal After Trying a Certain Book, 198. Final Confessions — Literary Tests, 199 Nature and Democracy — Morality, 200 COLLECT. One or Two Index Items 202 Democratic Vistas, 203 Origins of Attempted Secession, 258 Preface, 1855, to first issue of* Leaves of Grass,'' 263 N Preface, 1872, to "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free," 275 Preface, 1876, to L. of G. and "Two Rivulets," Centennial Edition, 280 Poetry To-Day in America — Shakspere — the Future, 288 A Memorandum at a Venture, 302 Death of Abraham Lincoln, 306 Two Letters, * 315 *. Notes Left Over, Nationality (and Yet), , 317 ■ Emerson's Books (the Shadows of Them), 319 Ventures on an Old Theme, , 322 British Literature, * 324 Darwinism (then Furthermore), 326 " Society," 327 The Tramp and Strike Questions, 329 Democracy in, the New World, 330 Foundation Stages — then Others General Suffrage, Elections, Ac, 331 Who Gets the Plunder? 33 a Friendship (the Real Article) Lacks and Wants Yet, 333 Rulers Strictly Out of the Masses, 334 Monuments— the Past and Present Little or Nothing New After All, 335 A Lincoln Reminiscence, 335 -Freedom, 33 g Book-Classes— America's Literature .*^.Our Real Culmination, .357 An American Problem The Last Collective Compaction, 338 Pieces in Early Youth. Dough-Face Song 339 Lingave's Temptation 366 Death in the School-Room, 340 Little Jane, 3C o One Wicked Impulse, ....... 344 Dumb Kate, 37 o The Last Loyalist, 349 Talk to an Art Union Blood-Money, 372 Wild Frank's Return, 353 Wounded in the House of Friends, . 373 The Boy Lover, 357 Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight, . . 574 The Child and the Profligate, . . , , 361 Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DAYS. A HAPPY HOUR'S COMMAND. Down in the Woods, July 2d, 1882. — If I do it at all I must delay no longer. Incongruous and full of skips and jumps as is that huddle of diary-jottings, war-memoranda of i862-'65, Nature-notes of i877-'8i, with Western and Canadian observa- tions afterwards, all bundled up and tied by a big string, the resolution and indeed mandate comes to me this day, this hour, — (and what a day ! what an hour just passing ! the luxury of riant grass and blowing breeze, with all the shows of sun and sky and perfect temperature, never before so filling me body and soul) — to go home, untie the bundle, reel out diary-scraps and mem- oranda, just as they are, large or small, one after another, into print-pages,* and let the melange's lackings and wants of connec- * The pages from & to 20 are nearly verbatim an off-hand letter of mine in January, 1882, to an insisting friend. Following, I give some gloomy ex- periences. The war of attempted secession has, of course, been the distin- guishing event of my time. I commenced at the close of 1862, and contin- ued steadily through '63, '64, and '65, to visit the sick and wounded of the army, both on the field and - in the hospitals in and around Washington .city. From the first I kept little note-books for impromptu jottings in pencil to re- fresh my memory of names and circumstances, and what was specially wanted, &c. In these I brief d cases, persons, sights, occurrences in camp, by the bed- . side, and not seldom by the corpses of the dead. Some were scratch'd down from narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tending somebody amid those scenes. I have dozens of such little note-books left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of associations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey to the reader the associations that attach to these soil'd and creas'd livraisons, each com- posed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fast- en'd with a pin. I leave them just as I threw them by after the war, blotch'd here and there with more than one blood-stain, hurriedly written, sometimes at the clinique, not seldom amid the excitement of uncertainty, or defeat, or of action, or getting ready for it, or a march. Most of the pages from 26 to 81 are verbatim copies of those lurid and blood-'smutch'd little note-books. Very different are most of the memoranda that follow. Some time after the ■war ended I had a paralytic stroke, which prostrated me for several years. In^ 18.76 I began to get over the worst of it. From this date, portions of several seasons, especially summers, I spent at a secluded haunt down in Camden county, New Jersey — Timber creek, quite a little river (it enters from the Digitized by Microsoft® ( ' ' 8 SPECIMEN DA VS. tion take care of themselves. It will illustrate one phase of hu- manity anyhow; how few of life's days and hours (and they not by relative value or proportion, but by chance) are ever, noted. Probably another point too, how we give long preparations for some object, planning and delving and fashioning, and then, when the actual hour for doing arrives, find ourselves still quite unprepared, and tumble the thing together, letting hurry and crudeness tell the story better than fine work. At any rate I obey my happy hour's command, which seems curiously imperative. May-be, if I don't do anything else, I shall send out the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed. ANSWER TO AN INSISTING FRIEND. You ask for items, details of my early life — of genealogy and parentage, particularly of the women of my ancestry, and of its far back Netherlands stock on the maternal side — of the region where I was born and raised, and my father and mother before me, and theirs before them — with a word about Brooklyn and New York cities, the times I lived there as lad and young man. You say you want to get at these details mainly as the go-befores and embryons of "Leaves of Grass." Very good ; you shall have at least some specimens of them all. I have often thought of the meaning of such things — that one can only encompass and complete matters of that kind by exploring behind, perhaps very far behind, themselves directly, and so into their genesis, ante- cedents, and cumulative stages. Then as luck would have it, I lately whiled away the tedium of a week's half-sickness and con- finement, by collating these very items for another (yet unful- fill'd, probably abandon'd,) purpose; and if you will be satisfied with them, authentic in date-occurrence and fact simply, and told my own way, garrulous-like, here they are. I shall not hesi- tate to make extracts, for I catch at any thing to save labor ; but those will be the best versions of what I want to convey. great Delaware, twelve miles away) — with primitive solitudes, winding stream, recluse and woody banks, sweet-feeding springs, and all the charms that birds, grass, wild-flowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut trees, &c, can bring. Through these times, and on these spots, the diary from page 83 onward was mostly written. _ The Collect afterward gathers up the odds and ends of whatever pieces I can now lay hands on, written at various times past, and swoops all together like fish in a net. I suppose I publish and leave the whole gathering, first, from that eternal tendency to perpetuate and preserve which is behind all Nature, authors in- cluded; second, to symbolize two or three specimen interiors, personal and other, out of the myriads of my time, the middle range of the Nineteenth century in the New World ; a strange, unloosen'd, wondrous time. But the book is probably without any definite purpose that can be told in a statement. Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA VS. q GENEALOGY— VAN VELSOR AND WHITMAN. The later years of the last century found the Van Velsor family, my mother's side, living on their own farm at Cold Spring, Long Island, New York State, near the eastern edge of Queens county, about a mile from the harbor.* My father's side— probably the fifth generation from the first English arrivals in New England — were at the same time farmers on their own land — (and a fine domain it was, 500 acres, all good soil, gently sloping east and south, about one-tenth woods, plenty of grand old trees,) two or three miles oft", at West Hills, Suffolk county. The Whitman name in the Eastern States, and so branching West and. South, starts undoubtedly from one John Whitman, born 1602, in Old England, where he grew up, married, and his eldest son was born in 1 629. He came over in the ' ' True Love " in 1 640 to America, and lived in Weymouth, Mass., which place became the mother- hive of the New-Englanders of the name : he died in 1692. His brother, Rev. Zechariah Whitman, also came over in the "True Love," either at that time or soon after, and lived at Milford, Conn. A son of this Zechariah, named Joseph, migrated to Huntington, Long Island, and permanently settled there. Savage's "Genealogical Dictionary" (vol. iv,.p. 524) gets the Whitman family establish'd at Huntington, per this Joseph, be- fore 1664. It is quite certain that from that beginning, and from Joseph, the West Hill Whitmans, and all others in Suffolk county, have since radiated, myself among the number. John and Zechariah both went to England and back again divers times; they had large families, and several of their children were born in the old country. We hear of the father of John and Zechariah, Abijah Whitman, who goes over into the 1500's, but we know little about him, except that he also was for some time in America. These old pedigree-reminiscences come up to me vividly from a visit I made not long since (in my 63d year) to West Hills, and to the burial grounds of my ancestry, both sides. I extract from notes of that visit, written there and then : THE OLD WHITMAN AND VAN VELSOR CEMETERIES. July 29, 1881. — After more than forty years' absence, (except a brief visit, to take my father there once more, two years before he died,) went down Long Island on a week's jaunt to the place * Long Island was settled first on the west end by the Dutch, from Hol- land, then on the east end by the English — the dividing line of the two nationalities being a little west of Huntington, where my father's folks lived, and where I was born. Digitized by Microsoft® 10 SPECIMEN DAYS. where I was born, thirty miles from New York city. Rode around the old familiar spots, viewing and pondering and dwell- ing long upon them, everything coming back to me. Went to •the old Whitman homestead on the upland and took a view east- ward, inclining south, over the broad and beautiful farm lands of my grandfather (1780,) and my father. There was the new house (1810,) the big oak a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old ; there the well, the sloping kitchen-garden, and a little way off even the well-kept remains of the dwelling of my great- grandfather (i75o-'6o) still standing, with its mighty timbers and low ceilings. Near by, a stately grove of tall, vigorous black- walnuts, beautiful, Apollo-like, the sons or grandsons, no doubt, of black-walnuts during or before 1776. On the other side of the road spread the famous apple orchard, over twenty acres, the trees planted by hands long % mouldering in the grave'(my uncle Jesse's,) but quite many of them evidently capable of throwing out their annual blossoms and fruit yet. I now write these lines seated on an old grave (doubtless of a century since at least) on the burial hill of the Whitmans of many generations. Fifty and more graves are, quite plainly traceable, and as many more decay'd out of all form — depress'd mounds, crumbled and broken stones, cover'd with moss — the gray and sterile hill, the clumps of chestnuts outside, the silence, just va- ried by the soughing wind. There is always the deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any of these ancient graveyards of which Long Island has so many; so what must this one have been to me ? My whole family history, with its succession of links, from the first settlement down to date, told here — three centuries con- centrate on this sterile acre. The next day, July 30, I devoted to the maternal locality, and if possible was still more penetrated and impress'd. I write this paragraph on the burial hill of the Van Velsors, near Cold Spring, the most significant depository of the dead that could be im- agin'd, without the slightest help from art, but far ahead of it, soil sterile, a mostly bare plateau-flat of half an acre, the top of a hill, brush and well grown trees and dense woods bordering all around, very primitive, secluded, no visitors, no road (you can- not drive here, you have to bring the dead on foot, and follow on foot.) Two or three-score graves quite plain ; as many more almost rubb'd out. My grandfather Cornelius and my grand- mother Amy (Naomi) and numerous relatives nearer or remoter, on my mother's side, lie buried here. The scene as I stood or sat, the delicate and wild odor of the woods, a slightly drizzling rain, the emotional atmosphere of the place, and the inferr'd reminiscences, were fitting accompaniments. Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA YS. j r THE MATERNAL HOMESTEAD. I went down from this ancient grave place eighty or ninety rods to the site of the Van Velsor homestead, where my mother was born (1795,) and where every spot had been familiar to me as a child and youth (i825-'4o.) Then stood there a long rambling, dark-gray, shingle-sided house, with sheds, pens, a great barn, and much open road-space. Now of all those not a vestige left; all had been pull'd down, erased, and the plough and har- row pass'd over foundations, road-spaces and everything, for many summers; fenced in at present, and grain and clover growing like any other fine fields. Only a big hole from the cellar, with some little heaps of broken stone, green with grass and weeds, identified the place. Even the copious old brook and spring seem'd to have mostly dwindled away. The whole scene, with what it arous'd, memories*of my young days there half a century ago, the vast kitchen and ample fireplace and the sitting-room adjoining, the plain furniture, the meals, the house full of merry people, my grandmother Amy's sweet old face in its Quaker cap, my grandfather "the Major," jovial, red, stout, with sonorous voice and characteristic physiognomy, with the actual sights themselves, made the most pronounc'd half-day's experience of my whole jaunt. For there with all those wooded, hilly, healthy surroundings, my dearest mother, Louisa Van Velsor, grew up — (her mother, Amy Williams, of the Friends' or Quakers' denomination — the Williams family, seven sisters and one brother — the father and brother sailors, .both of whom met their deaths at sea.) The Van Velsor people were noted for fine horses, which the men bred and train'd from blooded stock. My mother, as a young woman, was a daily and daring rider. As to 'the head of the family himself, the old race of the Netherlands, so deeply grafted on Manhattan island and in Kings and Queens counties, never yielded a more mark'd and full Americanized specimen than Major Cornelius Van Velsor. TWO OLD FAMILY INTERIORS. Of the domestic and inside life of the middle of Long Island, at and just before that time, here are two samples : " The Whitmans, at the beginning of the present century, lived in a long story-and-a-half farm-house, hugely timberM, which is still standing. A great smoke-canopied kitchen, with vast hearth and chimney, form'd one end of the house. The existence of slavery in New York at that time, and the possession by the family of some twelve or fifteen slaves, house and field ser- vants, gave things quite a patriarchal look. The very young darkies could be seen, a swarm of them, toward sundown, in this kitchen, squatted in a circle on the floor, eating their supper of Indian pudding and milk. In the house, Digitized by Microsoft® ! 2 SPECIMEN DA YS. and in food and furniture, all was rude, but substantial. No carpets or stoves were known, and no coffee, and tea or sugar only for the women. Rousing wood fires gave both warmth and light on winter nights. Pork, poultry, beef, and all the ordinary vegetables and grains were plentiful. Cider was the men's common drink, and used at meals. The clothes were mainly homespun. Journeys were made by both men and women on horseback. Both sexes labor'd with their own hands— the men on the farm— the women in the house and around it. Books were scarce. The annual copy of the almanac was a treat, and was pored over through the long winter evenings. I must not for- get to mention that both these families were near enough to the sea to behold it from the high places, and to hear in still hours the roar of the surf; the latter, after a storm, giving a peculiar sound at night Then all hands, male and female, went down frequently on beach and bathing parties, and the men on practical expeditions for cutting salt hay, and for clamming and fishing." —John Burroughs' s Notes. " The ancestors of Walt Whitman, on both the paternal and maternal sides, kept a good table, sustain'd the hospitalities, decorums, and an excellent so- cial reputation in the county, and they were often of mark'd individuality. IS space permitted, I should consider some of the men worthy special descrip- tion; and still more some of the women. His great-grandmother on the paternal side, for instance, was a large swarthy woman, who lived to a very old age. She smoked tobacco, rode on horseback like a man, managed the most vicious horse, and, becoming a widow in later life, went forth every day over her farm-lands, frequently in the saddle, directing the labor of her slaves, with language in which, on exciting occasions, oaths were not spared. The two immediate grandmothers were, in the best sense, superior women. The maternal one (Amy Williams before marriage) was a Friend, or Quakeress, of sweet, sensible character, housewifely proclivities, and deeply intuitive and spiritual. The other, (Hannah Brush,) was an equally noble, perhaps stronger character, lived to be very old, had quite a family of sons, was a natural lady, was in early life a school-mistress, and had great solidity of mind. W. W. himself makes much of the women of his ancestry." — The same. Out from these arrieres of persons and scenes, I was born May 31, 1819. And now to dwell awhile on the locality itself — as the successive growth stages of my infancy, childhood, youth and manhood were all pass'd on Long Island, which I sometimes feel as if I had incorporated. I roam'd, as boy and man, and have lived in nearly all parts, from Brooklyn to Montauk point. PAUMANOK, AND MY LIFE ON IT AS CHILD AND YOUNG MAN. Worth fully and particularly investigating indeed this Pau- manok, (to give the spot its aboriginal name,*) stretching east * " Paumanok, (or Paumanake, or Paumanack, the Indian name of Long Island,) over a hundred miles long; shaped like a fish— plenty of sea shore, sandy, stormy, uninviting, the horizon boundless, the air too strong for in- valids, the bays a wonderful resort for aquatic birds, the south-side meadows cover'd with salt hay, the soil of the island generally tough, but good for the locust-tree, the apple orchard, and the blackberry, and with numberless springs of the sweetest water in the world. Years ago, among the bay-men —a strong, wild race, now extinct, or rather entirely changed— a native of Long Island was called a Paumanacker, or Creole- Paumanacker. "—John Burroughs. Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DAYS. j- through Kings, Queens and Suffolk counties, 120 miles altogether —on the north Long Island sound, a beautiful, varied and pic- turesque series of inlets, "necks" and sea-like expansions, for a hundred miles to Orient point. On the ocean side the great south bay dotted with countless hummocks, mostly small, some quite large, occasionally long bars of sand out two hundred rods to a mile-and-a-half from the shore. While now and then, as at Rockaway and far east along the Hamptons, the beach makes right on the island, the sea dashing up without intervention. Several light-houses on the shores east ; a long history of wrecks tragedies, some even of late years. As a youngster, I was in the atmosphere and traditions of many of these wrecks — of one or two almost an observer. Off Hempstead beach ifor example, was the loss of the ship "Mexico" in 1840, (alluded to in "the Sleepers " in L. of G.) And at Hampton, some vears later, the destruction of the brig "Elizabeth," a fearful affair, in one of the worst winter gales, where Margaret Fuller went down, with her husband and child. Inside the outer bars or beach this south bay is everywhere comparatively shallow ; of cold winters all thick ice on the sur- face. As a boy I often went forth with a chum or two, on those frozen fields, with hand-sled, axe and eel-spear, after messes of eels. We would cut' holes in the ice, sometimes striking quite an eel-bonanza, and filling our baskets with great, fat, sweet, white-meated fellows. The scenes, the ice, drawing the hand- sled, cutting holes, spearing the eels, &c, were of course just such fun as is dearest to boyhood. The shores of this bay, winter and summer, and my doings there in early, life, are woven all through L. of G. One sport I was very fond of was to go on a bay-party in summer to gather sea-gull's eggs. (The gulls lay two or three eggs, more than half the size of hen's eggs, right on the sand, and leave the sun's heat to hatch them.) The eastern end of Long Island,, the Peconic bay region, I knew quite well too — sail'd more than once around Shelter island, and down to Montauk — spent many an hour on Turtle hill by the old light-house, on the extreme point, looking out over the ceaseless roll of the Atlantic. I used to like to go down there and fraternize with the blue-fishers, or the annual squads of sea-bass takers. Sometimes, along. Montauk peninsula, (it is some 15 miles long, and good grazing,) met the strange, unkempt, half-barbarous herdsmen, at that time living there entirely aloof from society or civilization, in charge, on those rich pasturages, of vast droves of horses, kine or sheep-, own'd by farmers of the eastern towns. Sometimes, too, the few remaining Indians, or Digitized by Microsoft® I4 SPECIMEN DA YS. half-breeds, at that period left .on Montauk peninsula, but now I believe altogether extinct. More in the middle of the island were the spreading Hemp- stead plains, then(i830-'4o) quite prairie-like, open, uninhabited, rather sterile, cover'd with kill-calf and huckleberry bushes, yet plenty of fair pasture for the cattle, mostly milch-cows, who fed there by hundreds, even thousands, and at evening, (the plains too were own'd by the towns, and this was the use of them in common,) might be seen taking their way home, branching off regularly in the right places. I have often been out on the edges of these plains toward sundown, and can-yet recall in fancy the interminable cow- processions, and hear the music of the tin or copper bells clanking far or near, and breathe the cool of the sweet and slightly aromatic evening air, and note the sunset. Through the same region of the island, but further east, ex- tended wide central tracts of pine and scrub-oak, (charcoal was largely made here,) monotonous and sterile. But manya good day or half-day did I have, wandering through those solitary cross-roads, inhaling the peculiar and wild aroma. Here, and all along the island and its shores, I spent intervals many years, all seasons, sometimes riding, sometimes boating, but generally afoot, (I was always then a good walker,) absorbing fields, shores, marine incidents, characters, the bay-men, farmers, pilots — always had a plentiful acquaintance with the latter, and with fishermen — went every summer on sailing trips — always liked the bare sea-beach, south side, and have some of my happiest hours on it to this day. As I write, the whole experience comes back to me after the lapse of forty and more years — the soothing rustle of the waves, and the saline smell — boyhood's times, the clam-digging, bare- foot, and with trowsers roll'd up — hauling down the creek — the perfume of the sedge-meadows — the hay-boat, and the chowder and fishing excursions ; — or, of later years, little voyages down and out New York bay, in the pilot boats. Those same later years, also, while living in Brooklyn, (i836-'so) I went reg- ularly every week in the mild seasons down to Coney island, at that time a long, bare unfrequented shore, which I had all to my- self, and where I loved, after bathing, to race up and down the hard sand, and declaim Homer or Shakspere to the surf and sea-gulls by the hour. But I am getting ahead too rapidly, and must keep more in my traces. MY FIRST READING.— LAFAYETTE. From 1824 to '28 our family lived in Brooklyn in Front, Cran- berry and Johnson streets. In the latter my father built a nice house for a home, and afterwards another in Tillary street. We Digitized by Microsoft® SPE CI MEN DA YS. j g occupied them, one after the other, but they were mortgaged, and we lost them. I yet remember Lafayette's visit.* Most of these years I went to the public schools. It must have been about 1829 or '30 that I went with my father and mother to hear Elias Hicks preach in a ball-room on Brooklyn heights. At about the same time employ'd as'aboyin an office, lawyers', father and two sons, Clarke's, Fulton street, near Orange. I had a nice desk and window-nook to myself ; Edward C. kindly help'd me at my handwriting and composition, and, (the signal event of my life up to that time,) subscribed for me to a big circulating library. For a time I now revel'd in romance-reading of all kinds; first, the "Arabian Nights," all the volumes, an amazing treat. Then, with sorties in v,ery many other directions, took in Walter Scott's novels, one after another, and his poetry, (and continue to enjoy novels and poetry to this day.) PRINTING OFFICE.— OLD BROOKLYN. After aftout two years went to work in a weekly newspaper and printing office, to learn the trade. The paper was the " Long Island Patriot," owned by^S. E. Clements, who was also post- master. An old printer in the office, William Hartshorne, a rev- olutionary character, who had seen Washington, was a special friend of mine, and I had many a talk with him about long past times. The apprentices, including myself, boarded with his grand-daughter. I used occasionally to go out riding with the boss,, who was very kind to us boys ; Sundays he took us all to a great old rough, fortress-looking stone church, on Joralemon street, near where the Brooklyn city hall now is — (at that time broad fields and country roads everywhere around. f) Afterward * "On the visit of General Lafayette to this country, in 1824, he came over to Brooklyn in state, and rode through the city. The children of the schools turn'd out to join in the welcome. An edifice for a free public library for youths was just then commencing, and Lafayette consented to stop on his way and lay the corner-stone. Numerous children arriving on the ground, where a huge irregular excavation for the building was already dug, surrounded with heaps of rough stone, several gentlemen assisted in lifting the children to safe or convenient spots to see the ceremony. Among the rest, Lafayette, also helping the children, took up the five-year-old Walt Whitman, and press- ing the child a moment to his breast, and giving him a kiss, handed him down to a safe spot in the excavation." — John Burroughs. f Of the Brooklyn of that time (1830-40) hardly anything remains, ex- cept the lines of the old streets. The population was then between ten and twelve thousand. P"or a mile Fulton street was lined with magnificent elm trees. The character of the place was thoroughly rural. As a sample of com- parative values, it may be mention'd that twenty-five acres in what is now the most costly part of the city, bounded by Flatbush and Fulton avenues, were then bought by Mr. Parmentier, a French emigri, for #4000. Who remem- bers the old places as they were ? Who remembers the old citizens of that time ? Digitized by Microsoft® 1 6 SPECIMEN DA VS. I work'd on the "Long Island Star," Alden Spooner's paper. My father all these years pursuing his trade as carpenter and builder, with varying fortune. There was a growing family of children — eight of us — ray brother Jesse the oldest, myself the second, my dear sisters Mary and Hannah Louisa, my brothers An- drew, George, Thomas Jefferson, and then my youngest brother, Edward, born 1835, and always badly crippled, as I am myself of late years. GROWTH— HEALTH— WORK. I develop'd (1833-4-5) into a healthy, strong youth (grew too fast, though, was nearly as big as a man at 15 or 16.) Our family at this period moved back to the country, my dear mother very ill for a long time, but recover'd. All these years I was down Long Island more or less every summer, now east, now west, sometimes months at a stretch. At 16, 17, and so on, was fond of debating societies, and had an active membership with them, off and on, in Brooklyn and one or two country towns on the island. A most omnivorous novel-reader, these and later years, devour' d everything I could get. Fond of the theatre, also, in New York, went whenever I could — sometimes witnessing fine performances. 1836-7, work'd as compositor in printing offices in New York city. Then, when little more than eighteen, and for a while af- terwards, went to teaching country schools down in Queens and Suffolk counties, Long Island, and "boarded round." (This latter I consider one of my best experiences and deepest lessons in human nature behind the scenes, and in the masses.) In '39, '40, 1 started and publish'd a weekly paper in my native town, Huntington. Then returning to New York city and Brooklyn, work'd on as printer and writer, mostly prose, but an occasional shy at "poetry." MY PASSION FOR FERRIES. Living in Brooklyn or New York city from this time forward, my life, then, and still more the following years, was curiously identified with Fulton ferry, already becoming the greatest of its sort in the world for general importance, volume, variety ra- pidity, and picturesqueness. Almost daily, later, ('50 to '60,) I Among the former were Smith & Wood's, Coe Downing's, and other public houses at the ferry, the old Ferry itself, Love lane, the Heights as then, the Wallabout with the wooden bridge, and the road out beyond Fulton street to the old toll-gate. Among the latter were the majestic and genial General Jeremiah Johnson, with others, Gabriel Furman, Rev. E. M. Johnson Aider! Spooner, Mr. Pierrepont, Mr. Joralemon, Samuel Willoughby, Jonathan Trot- ter, George Hall Cyrus P. Smith, N. B. Morse, John Dikeman, Adrian Hege- man, William Udall, and old Mr. Duflon, with his military garden. Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA VS. ! j cross'd on the boats, often up in the pilot-houses where I could get a full sweep, absorbing shows, accompaniments, surroundings. What oceanic currents, eddies, underneath — the great tides of humanity also, with ever-shifting movements. Indeed, I have always had a passion for ferries ; to me they afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems. The river and bay scenery, all about New York island, any time of a fine day — the hurrying, splashing sea-tides — the changing panorama of steamers, allsizes, often a string of big ones outward bound to distant ports — the myriads of white-sail'd schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the marvel- lously beautiful yachts — the majestic sound boats as they rounded the Battery and came along towards 5, afternoon, eastward bound — the prospect off towards Staten island, or down the Nar- rows, or the other way up the Hudson — what refreshment of spirit such sights and experiences gave me years ago (and many a time since.) My old pilot friends, the Balsirs, Johnny Cole, Ira Smith, William White, and my young ferry friend, Tom Gere — how well I remember them all. BROADWAY SIGHTS. Besides Fulton ferry, off and on for years, I knew and fre- quented Broadway — that noted avenue of New York's crowded and mixed humanity, and of so many notables. Here I saw, during those times, Andrew Jackson, Webster, Clay, Seward, Martin Van Buren, filibuster Walker, Kossuth, Fitz Greene Hal- leck; Bryant, the Prince of Wales, Charles Dickens, the first Japanese ambassadors, and lots of other celebrities of the time. Always something novel or inspiriting ; yet mostly to me the hur- rying and vast amplitude of those never-ending human currents. I remember seeing James Fenimore Cooper in a court-room in Chambers street, back of the city hall, where he was carrying on a law case — (I think it was a charge of libel he had brought against some one.) I also remember seeing Edgar A.- Poe, and having a short interview with him, (it must have been in 1845 or '6,) in his office, second story of a corner building, (Duane or Pearl street.) He was editor and owner or part owner of " the Broadway Journal." The visit was about a piece of mine he had publish'd. Poe was very cordial, in a quiet way, appear'd well in person, dress, &c. I have a distinct and pleasing remembrance of his looks, voice, manner and matter ; very kindly and human, but subdued, perhaps a little jaded. For another of my reminis- cences, here on the west side, just below Houston street, I once saw (it must have been about 1832, of a sharp, bright January day) a bent, feeble but stout-built very old man, bearded, swathed in rich furs, with a great ermine cap on his head, led and assisted, almost y Digitized by Hjjcrosoft® 1 8 SPECIMEN DA VS. carried, down the steps of his high front stoop (a dozen friends and servants, emulous, carefully holding, guiding him) and then lifted and tuck'd in a gorgeous sleigh, envelop'd in other furs, for a ride. The sleigh was drawn by as fine a team of horses as I ever saw. (You needn't think all the best animals are brought up nowadays ; never was such horseflesh as fifty years ago on Long Island, or south, or in New York city ; folks look'd for spirit and mettle in a nag, not tame speed merely.) Well, I, a boy of perhaps thirteen or fourteen, stopp'd and gazed long at the spec- tacle of that fur-swathed old man, surrounded by friends and ser- vants, and the careful seating of him in the sleigh. I remember the spirited, champing horses, the driver with his whip, and a fellow-driver by his side, for extra prudence. The old man, the subject of so mueh attention, I can almost see now. It was John Jacob Astor. The years 1846, '47, and there along, see me still in New York city, working as writer and printer, having my usual good health, and a good time generally. OMNIBUS JAUNTS AND DRIVERS. One phase of those days must by no means go unrecorded — namely, the Broadway omnibuses, with their drivers. The vehi- cles still (I write this paragraph in 1881) give a portion of the character of Broadway — the Fifth avenue, Madison avenue, and Twenty-third street lines yet running. But the flush days of the old Broadway stages, characteristic and copious, are over. The Yellow-birds, the Red-birds, the original Broadway, the Fourth avenue, the Knickerbocker, and a dozen others of twenty or thirty years ago, are all gone. And the men specially identified with them, and giving vitality and meaning to them— the drivers — a strange, natural, quick-eyed and wondrous race — (not only Rab- elais and Cervantes would have gloated upon them, but Homer and Shakspere would)— how well I remember them, and must here give a word about them. How many hours, forenoons and afternoons — how many exhilarating night-times-I have had — perhaps June or July, in cooler air— riding the whole length of Broadway, listening to some yarn, (and the most vivid yarns ever spun, and the rarest mimicry)— or perhaps I declaiming some stormy passage from Julius Csesar or Richard, (you could roar as loudly as you chose in that heavy, dense, uninterrupted street- bass.) Yes, I knew all the drivers then, Broadway Jack, Dress- maker, Balky Bill, George Storms, Old Elephant, his brother Young Elephant (who came afterward,) Tippy, Pop Rice Big Frank, Yellow Joe, Pete Callahan, Patsy Dee, and dozens more ■ for there were hundreds. They had immense qualities, largely animal— eating, drinking, women— great personal pride/in their Digitized by Microsoft® r v ' l " elr SPECIMEN DA YS. I9 way — perhaps a few slouches here and there, but I should have trusted the general run of them, in their simple good-will and honor, under all circumstances. Not only for comradeship, and sometimes affection — great studies I found them also. (I sup- pose the critics will laugh heartily, but the influence of those Broadway omnibus jaunts and drivers and declamations and es- capades undoubtedly enter'd into the gestation of " Leaves of Grass.") PLAYS AND OPERAS TOO And certain actors and singers, had a good deal to do with the business. All through these years, off and on, I frequented the old Park, the Bowery, Broadway and Chatham-square theatres, and the Italian operas at Chambers-street, Astor-place or the Battery — many seasons was on the free list, writing for papers even as quite a youth. The old Park theatre — what names, reminiscences, the words bring back ! Placide, Clarke, Mrs. Vernon, Fisher, Clara F., Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Seguin, Ellen Tree, Hackett, the younger Kean, MaCready, Mrs. Richardson, Rice — singers, tragedians, comedians. What perfect acting ! Henry- Placide in " Napoleon's Old Guard " or " Grandfather White- head," — or "the Provoked Husband" of Cibber, with Fanny Kemble as Lady Townley — or Sheridan Knowles in his own "Virginius" — or inimitable Power in "Born to Good Luck." These, and many more, the years of youth and onward. Fanny Kemble— name to conjure up great mimic scenes withal — per- haps the greatest. I remember well her rendering of Bianca in "Fazio," and Marianna in "the Wife." Nothing finer did ever stage exhibit — the veterans of all nations said so, and my .boyish heart and head felt it in every minute cell. The lady was just matured, strong, better than merely beautiful, born from the footlights, had had three years' practice in London and through the British towns, and then she came to give America that young maturity and roseate power in all their noon, or rather forenoon, flush. It was my good luck to see her nearly every night she play'd at the old Park — certainly in all her principal characters. I heard, these years, well render'd, all the Italian and other operas in vogue, " Sonnambula," " the Puritans," "DerFreis- chutz,"^" Huguenots," " Fille d'Regiment," "Faust," "Etoile du Nord," "Poliuto," and others. Verdi's "Ernani," "Rigo- letto," and " Trovatore," with Donnizetti's "Lucia" or "Fa- vorita " or "Lucrezia," and Auber's " Massaniello," or Rossini's "William Tell" and "Gazza Ladra," were among my special enjoyments. I heard Alboni every time she sang in New York and vicinity— also Grisi, the tenor Mario, and the baritone Ba- diali, the finest in the world. Digitized by Microsoft® 20 SPECIMEN DA YS. This musical passion follow'd my theatrical one. As boy or young man I had seen, (reading them carefully the day before- hand,) quite all Shakspere's acting dramas, play'd wonderfully well. Even yet I cannot conceive anything finer than old Booth in "Richard Third," or "Lear," (I don't know which was best,) or Iago, (or Pescara, or Sir Giles Overreach, to go outside of Shakspere) — or Tom Hamblin in "Macbeth" — or old Clarke, either as the ghost in "Hamlet," or as Prospero in "the Tem- pest," with Mrs. Austin as Ariel, and Peter Richings as Caliban. Then other dramas, and fine players in them, Forrest as Meta- mora or Damon or Brutus — John R. Scott as Tom Cringle or Rolla — or Charlotte Cushman's Lady Gay Spanker in "Lon- don Assurance." Then of some years later, at Castle Garden, Battery, I yet recall the splendid seasons of the Havana musi- cal troupe under Maretzek — the fine band, the cool sea- breezes, the unsurpass'd vocalism — Steffanone, Bosio, Truffi, Ma- rini in "Marino Faliero," " Don Pasquale," or " Favorita." No better playing or singing ever in New York. It was here too I afterward heard Jenny Lind. (The Battery — its past associa- tions — what tales those old trees and walks and sea-walls could tell !) THROUGH EIGHT YEARS. In 1848, '49, I was occupied as editor of the "daily Eagle" newspaper, in Brooklyn. The latter year went off on a leisurely journey and working expedition (my brother Jeff with me) through all the middle States, and down the Ohio and Missis- sippi rivers. Lived awhile in New Orleans, and work'd there on the editorial staff of " daily Crescent " newspaper. After a time plodded back northward, up the Mississippi, and around to, and by way of the great lakes, Michigan, Huron, and Erie, to Niagara falls and lower Canada, finally returning through central New York and down the Hudson ; traveling altogether probably 8000 miles this trip, to and fro. '51, '53, occupied in house- building in Brooklyn. (For a little of the first part of that time in printing a daily and weekly paper, " the Freeman.") '55, lost my dear father this year by death. Commenced putting " Leaves of Grass" to press for good, at the job printing office of my friends, the brothers Rome, in Brooklyn, after many MS. doings and undoings — (I had great trouble in leaving out the stock "poetical " touches, but succeeded at last.) I am now (1856- 7) passing through my 37th year. SOURCES OF CHARACTER— RESULTS— 1860. To sum up the foregoing from the outset (and, of course, far, far more unrecorded,) I estimate three leading sources and forma- Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA YS. 2 1 tive stamps to my own character, now solidified for good or bad, and its subsequent literary and other outgrowth — the maternal nativity-stock brought hither from far-away Netherlands, for one, (doubtless the best) — the subterranean tenacity and central bony structure (obstinacy, wilfulness) which I get from my paternal English elements, for another — and the combination of my Long Island birth-spot, sea-shores, childhood's scenes, absorptions,, with teeming Brooklyn andNew York — with, Isuppose, my experi- ences afterward in the secession outbreak, for the third. For, in 1862, startled by news that my brother George^ an officer in the 51st New York volunteers, had been seriously wounded (first Fredericksburg battle, December 13th,) I hur- riedly went down to the field of war in Virginia. But I must go r)3.ck 3. little " OPENING OF THE SECESSION WAR. — News of the attack on fort Sumter and the flag at Charles- ton harbor, S. C, was receiv'd in New York city late at night (13th April, 1 86 1,) and was immediately sent out in extras of the newspapers. I had been to the opera in fourteenth street that night, and after the performance was walking down Broadway toward twelve o'clock, on my way to Brooklyn, when I heard in the distance the loud cries of the newsboys, who came presently tearing and yelling up the street, rushing from side to side even more furiously than usual. I bought an extra and cross' d to the Metropolitan hotel (Niblo's) where the great lamps were still brightly blazing, and, with a crowd of others, who gather'd im- promptu, read the news, which was evidently authentic. For the benefit of some who had no papers, one of us read the telegram aloud, while all listen'd silently and attentively. No remark was made by any of the crowd, which had increas'd to thirty or forty, but all stood a minute or two, I remember, before they dispers'd. I can almost see them there now, under the lamps at midnight again. NATIONAL UPRISING AND VOLUNTEERING. T have said somewhere that the three Presidentiads preceding 1861 show'd how the weakness and wickedness of rulers are just as eligible here in America under republican, as in Europe under dynastic influences. But what can I say of that prompt and splendid wrestling with secession slavery, the arch-enemy personi- fied, the instant he unmistakably show'd his face ? The volcanic upheaval of the nation, after that firing on the flag at Charleston, proved for certain something which had been previously in great doubt, and at once substantially settled the question of disunion. In my judgment it will remain as the grandest and most encour- aging spectacle yet vouchsafed in any age, old or new, to politi- 6 6 r ' Digitized by Microsoft® 22 SPECIMEN DA YS. cal progress and democracy. It was not for what came to the surface merely — though that was important — but what it indi- cated below, which was of eternal importance. Down in the ., abysms of New World humanity there had form'd and harden'd ' a primal hard-pan of national Union will, determin'd and in the •majority, refusing to be tamper'd with or argued against, con- fronting all emergencies, and capable at any time of bursting all surface bonds, and breaking out like an earthquake. It is, in- deed, the best lesson of the century, or of America, and it is a mighty privilege to have been part of it. (Two great spectacles, immortal proofs of democracy, unequall'd in all the history of the past, are furnish'd by the secession war — one at the begin- ning, the other at its close. Those are, the general, voluntary, arm'd upheaval, and the peaceful and harmonious disbanding of the armies in the summer of 1865.) CONTEMPTUOUS FEELING. Even after the bombardment of Sumter, however, the gravity of the revolt, and the power and will of the slave States for a strong and continued military resistance to national authority, were not at all realized at the North, except by a few. Nine-tenths of the people of the free States look'd upon the rebellion, as started in South Carolina, from a feeling one-half of contempt, and the other half composed of anger and incredulity. It was not thought it would be join'd in by Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia. A great and cautious national official predicted that it would blow over "in sixty days," and folks generally believ'd the prediction. I remember talking about it on a Fulton ferry- boat with the Brooklyn mayor, who said he only " hoped the Southern fire-eaters would commit some overt act of resistance as they would then be at once so effectually squelch'd, we would never hear of secession again— but he was afraid they never would have the pluck to really do anything." I remember, too, that a couple of companies of the Thirteenth Brooklyn, who rendez- vou d at the city armory, and started thence as thirty days' men, were all provided with pieces of rope, conspicuously tied to their musket-barrels with which to bring back each man a prisoner from the audacious South, to be led in a noose, on our men's early and triumphant return ! ' BATTLE OF BULL RUN, JULY, 1861. I All this sort of feeling was destin'd to be arrested and revers'd t by a terrible shock— the battle of first Bull Run— certainly as we I now know it, one of the most singular fights on record. {All bat- tles, and their results, are far more matters of accident than is generally thought; bu^tWs^t^oug^dt a casualty, a chance. SPECIMEN DAYS. „ Each side supposed it had won, till the last moment. One had, in point of fact, just the same right to be routed as the other. By a fiction, or series of fictions, the national forces at the last a moment exploded in a panic and fled from the field.) The de- feated troops commenced pouring into Washington over the Long Bridge at daylight on Monday, 2 2d — day drizzling all . through with rain. The Saturday and Sunday of the battle (20th, 21st,) had been parch'd and hot to an extreme — the dust, the grime and smoke, in layers, sweated in, follow'd by other layers again sweated in, absorb'd by those excited souls — their clothes all saturated with the clay-powder filling the air — stirr'd up every- where on the dry roads and trodden fields by the regiments, swarming wagons, artillery, &c. — all the men with this coating of murk and sweat and rain, now recoiling back, pouring over the Long Bridge — a horrible' march of twenty miles, returning to Washingtpn baffled, humiliated, panic-struck. Where are the vaunts, and the proud boasts with which you went forth? Where are your banners, and your bands of music, and your ropes to bring back your prisoners? Well, there isn't a band playing — and there isn't a flag but clings ashamed and lank to its staff. The sun rises, but shines not. The men appear, at first sparsely and shame-faced enough, then thicker, in the streets of Washington — appear in Pennsylvania avenue, and on the steps and basement entrances. They come along in disorderly mobs,' some in squads, stragglers^ companies. Occasionally, a rare regi- ment, in perfect order, with its officers (some gaps, dead, the true braves,) marching in silence, with lowering faces, stern, weary to sinking, all black and dirty, but every man with his musket, and stepping alive ; but these are the exceptions. Side- walks of Pennsylvania avenue, Fourteenth street, &c, crowded, jamm'd with citizens, darkies, clerks, everybody, lookers-on ; women in the windows, curious expressions from faces, as those swarms of dirt-cover'd return'd soldiers there (will they never end?) move by; but nothing said, no comments; (half our lookers-on secesh of the most venomous kind — they say nothing ; but the devil snickers in their faces.) During the forenoon Washington gets all over motley with these defeated soldiers — queer-looking objects, strange eyes and faces, drench'd (the steady rain drizzles on all day) and fearfully worn, hungry, hag- gard, blister'd in the feet. Good people (but not over-many of them either,) hurry up' something for their grub. They put -wash-kettles on the fire, for soup, for coffee. They set tables on the side-walks — wagon-loads of bread are purchas'd, swiftly cut - in stout chunks. Here are two aged ladies, beautiful, the first in the city for culture and charm, they stand with store of eating ' Digitized by Microsoft® 24 SPECIMEN DA KS. and drink at an improvis'd table of rough plank, and give food, and have the store replenish'd from their house every half-hour all that day ; and there in the rain they stand, active, silent, white- hair'd, and give food, though the tears stream down their cheeks, almost without intermission, the whole time. Amid the deep excitement, crowds and motion, and desperate eagerness, it seems strange to see many, very many, of the soldiers sleeping— in the midst of all, sleeping sound. They drop down anywhere, on the steps of houses, up close by the basements or fences, on the sidewalk, aside' on some vacant lot, and deeply sleep. A poor seventeen or eighteen year old boy lies there, on the stoop of a grand house ; he sleeps so calmly, so profoundly. Some clutch their muskets firmly even in sleep. Some in squads ; comrades, brothers, close together — and on them, as they lay, sulkily drips the rain. As afternoon pass'd, and evening came, the streets, the bar- rooms, knots everywhere, listeners, questioners, terrible yarns, bugaboo, mask'd batteries, our regiment all cut up, &c. — stories and story-tellers, windy, bragging, vain centres of street-crowds. Resolution, manliness, seem _to have abandon'd Washington^ The principal hotel, WiTTarcFs, is full of shoulder-straps — thick, crush' d, creeping with shoulder-straps. (I see them, and must have a word with them. There you are, shoulder-straps ! — but where are your companies ? where are your men ? Incompetents 1 never tell me of chances of battle, of getting stray'd, and the like. I think this is your work, this retreat, after all. Sneak, blow, put on airs there in Willard's sumptuous parlors and bar- rooms, or anywhere — no explanation shall save you. Bull Run is your work ; had you been half or one-tenth worthy your men, this would never have happen'd.) Meantime, in Washington, among the great persons and their entburage, a mixture of awful consternation, uncertainty, rage, shame, helplessness, and stupefying disappointment. The worst is not only imminent, but already here. In a few hours — perhaps before the next meal — the secesh generals, with their victorious hordes, will be upon us. The dream of humanity, the vaunted Union we thought so strong, so impregnable — lo ! it seems al- ready smash' d like a china plate. One bitter, bitter hour — per- haps proud America will never again know such an hour. She must pack and fly— no time to spare. Those white palaces— the dome-crown'd capitol there on the hill,*so stately over the trees — shall they be left — or destroy'd first? For it is certain that the talk among certain of the magnates and officers and clerks and officials everywhere, for twenty-four hours in and around Washington after Bull Run, was loud and undisguised for yield- Digitized by Microsoft® ' • • SPECIMEN DAYS. 2 $ ing out and out, and substituting the southern rule, and Lincoln promptly abdicating and departing. If the secesh officers and forces had immediately follow'd, and by a bold Napoleonic movement had enter'd Washington the first day, (or even the second,) they could have had things their own way, and a pow- erful faction north to back them. One of our returning colo- nels express'd in public that night, amid a swarm of officers' and gentlemen in a crowded room, the opinion that it was useless to fight, that the southerners had made their title clear, and that the best course for the national government to pursue was to de- sist from any further attempt at stopping them, and admit them again to the lead, on the best terms they were willing to grant. Not a voice was rais'd against this judgment, amid that large! crowd of officers and gentlemen. (The fact is, the hour was one of the three or four of those crises we had then and afterward, during the fluctuations of four years, when human eyes appear'd at least just as likely to see the last breath of the Union as to see it continue.) THE STUPOR PASSES— SOMETHING ELSE BEGINS. But the hour, the day, the night pass'd, and whatever returns, an hour, a day, a night like that can never again return. The President, recovering himself, begins that very night — sternly, rapidly sets about the task of reorganizing his forces, and plac- ing himself in positions for future and surer work. If there were nothing else of .Abraham Lincoln for history to stamp him with; it is enough to send him with his wreath to the memory of all future time, that he endured that hour, that day, bitterer than gall — indeed a crucifixion day — that it did not conquer him — that he unflinchingly stemm'd it, and resolv'd to lift himself and the Union out of it.. Then the great New York papers at once appear'd, (commenc- ing that evening, and following it up the next morning, and in- cessantly through many days afterwards,) with leaders that rang out over the land with the loudest, most reverberating ring of clearest bugles, full of encouragement, hojie, inspiration, unfalter- ing defiance. Those magnificent editorials ! they never flagg'd for a fortnight. The "Herald " commenced them — I remember the articles well. The "Tribune" was equally cogent and in- spiriting — and the "Times," "Evening Post," and other prin- cipal papers, were not a whit behind. They came in good time, for they were needed. For in the humiliation of Bull Run, the popular feeling north, from its extreme of superciliousness, re- coil'd to the depth of gloom and apprehension. (Of all the days of the war, there are two especially I can Digitized by Microsoft® 3 2 6 SPECIMEN DA YS. never forget. Those were the day following the news, in New York and Brooklyn, of that first Bull Run defeat, and the day of Abra- ham Lincoln's death. I was home in Brooklyn on both occa- sions. The day of the murder we heard the news very early in the morning. Mother prepared breakfast — and other meals after- ward — as usual ; but not a mouthful was eaten all day by either of us. We each drank half a cup of coffee ; that was all. Little was said. We got every newspaper morning and evening, and the frequent extras of that period, and pass'd them silently to each other.) DOWN AT THE FRONT. Falmouth, Va., opposite Fredericksburgh, December 21, 1862. — Begin my visits among the camp hospitals in the army of the Potomac. Spend a good part of the day in a large brick man- sion on the banks of the Rappahannock, used as a hospital since the battle — seems to have receiv'd only the worst cases. Out doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, &c, a full load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near, each cover' d with its brown woolen blanket. In the door-yard, towards the river, are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their iiames on pieces of ' barrel-staves or broken boards, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodies were subsequently taken up and trans- ported north to their friends.) The large mansion is quite crowded upstairs and down, everything impromptu, no system, all bad enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done ; all the wounds pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel soldiers and officers, prisoners. One, a Mississippian, a captain, hit badly in leg, I talk'd with some time ; he ask'd me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward in Washington, with his leg amputated, doing well.) I went through, the rooms, downstairs and up. Some of the men were dying. I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few let- ters to folks home, mothers, &c. Also talk'd to three or four, who seem'd most susceptible to it, and needing it. AFTER FIRST FREDERICKSBURG. December 23 to 31.— The results of the late battle are exhib- ited everywhere about here in thousands of cases, (hundreds die every day,) in the^camp, brigade, and division hospitals. These are merely tents, and sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their blankets are spread on layers of pine or hemlock twigs, or small leaves. No cots ; seldom even a mattress. It is pretty cold. The ground is frozen hard, and Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA YS. 2 j there is occasional snow. I go around from one case to another. I do not see that I do much good to these wounded and dying; but I cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me convulsively, and I do what I can for him ; at any rate, stop with him and sit near him for hours, if he wishes it. Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the camps, talking with the men, &c. Sometimes at night among the groups around the fires, in their shebang enclo- sures of bushes. These are curious shows, full of characters and groups. I soon get acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well used. Sometimes I go down on picket .with the regiments I know best. As to rations, the army here at present seems to be tolerably well supplied, and the men have enough, such as it is, mainly salt pork and hard tack. Most of the regiments lodge in the flimsy little shelter-tents. A few have built themselves huts of logs and mud, with fire-places. BACK TO WASHINGTON. January, '6j. — Left camp at Falmouth, with some wounded, a few days since, and came heVe by A quia creek railroad, and so on government steamer up the Potomac. Many wounded were with us on the cars and boat. The cars were just common platform ones. The railroad journey of ten or twelve miles was made mostly before sunrise. The soldiers guarding the. road came out from their tents or shebangs of bushes with rumpled hair and half-awake look. Those on duty were walking their posts, some on banks over us, others down far below the level of the track. I saw large cavalry camps off the road. At Aquia creek landing were numbers of wounded going north. While I waited some three hours, I went around among them. Several wanted word sent home to parents, brothers, wives, &c, which I did for them, (by mail the next day from Washington.) On the boat I had my hands full. One poor fellow died going up. I am now remaining in and around Washington, daily visiting the hospitals. Am much in Patent-office, Eighth street, H street, Armory-square, and others. Am now able to do a little good, having money, (as almoner of others home,) and getting experience. To-day, Sunday afternoon and till nine in the evening, visited Campbell hospital; attended specially to one case in ward i, very sick with pleurisy and typhoid fever, young man, farmer's son, D. F. Russell, company E, 6oth New York, downhearted and feeble ; a long time before he would take any interest ; wrote a letter home to his mother, in Malone, Franklin county, N. Y., at his request ; gave him some fruit and one or two other gifts ; envelop'd and directed his letter, &c. Then went thoroughly through ward 6, obser%f'e9fiice pass away without some mention. A few weeks ago the vast area of the second story of that noblest of Washington buildings was crowded close with rows of sick, badly wounded and dying soldiers. They were placed in three very large apart- ments. I went there many times. It was a strange, solemn, and, with all its features of suffering and death, a sort of fascinating sight. I go sometimes at night to soothe and relieve par- ticular cases. Two of the immense apartments are fill'd with high and ponderous glass cases, crowded with models in minia- ture of every kind of utensil, machine or invention, it ever en- ter'd into the mind of man to conceive ; and with curiosities and foreign presents. Between these cases are lateral openings, perhaps eight feet wide and quite deep, and in these were placed the sick, besides a great long double row of them up and down Digitized by Microsoft® SPE CI MEN DA VS. 3 r through the middle of the hall. Many of them were very bad cases, wounds and amputations. Then there was a gallery run- ning above the hall in which there were beds also. It was, in- deed, a curious scene, especially at night when lit up. The glass cases, the beds, the forms lying there, the gallery above, and the marble pavement under foot — the suffering, and the fortitude to bear it in various degrees — occasionally, from some, the groan that could not be repress'd — sometimes a poor fellow dying, with emaciated face and glassy eye, the nurse by his side, the doctor also there, but no friend, no relative — such were the sights but lately in the Patent-office. (The wounded have since been re- moved from there, and it is now vacant again.) THE WHITE HOUSE BY MOONLIGHT. February 24th. — A spell of fine soft weather. I wander about a good deal, sometimes at night under the moon. To-night took a long look at the President's house. The white portico — the palace-like, tall, round columns, spotless as snow — the walls also — the tender and soft moonlight, flooding the pale marble, and making peculiar faint languishing shades, not shadows — every- where a soft transparent hazy, thin, blue moon-lace, hanging in the air — the brilliant and extra-plentiful clusters of gas, on and around the facade, columns, portico, &c. — everything so white, so marbly pure and dazzling, yet soft — the White House of future poems, and of dreams and dramas, there in the soft and copious mqon — the gorgeous front, in the trees, under the lustrous flood- ing moon, full of reality, full of illusion — the forms of the trees, leafless, silent, in trunk and myriad-angles of branches,' under the stars and sky — the White House of the land, and of beauty and night — sentries at the gates, and by the portico, silent, pac- ing there in blue overcoats — stopping you not at all, but eyeing you with sharp eyes, whichever way you move. AN ARMY HOSPITAL WARD. Let me specialize a visit I made to the collection of barrack- like one-story edifices, Campbell hospital, out on the flats, at the end of the then horse railway route, on Seventh street. There is a long building appropriated to each ward. Let us go into ward 6. It contains to-day, I should judge, eighty or a hundred patients, half sick, half wounded. The edifice is nothing but boards, well whitewash'd inside, and the usual slender-framed iron bedsteads, narrow and plain. You walk down the central passage, with a row on either side, their feet towards you, and their heads to the wall. There are fires in large stoves, and the prevailing white of the walls is reliev'd by some ornaments, stars, circles, &c, made of gyer^ree^ The^view of the whole edifice \ 32 SPECIMEN DAYS. and occupants can be taken at once, for there is no partition. You may hear groans or other sounds of unendurable suffering from two or three of the cots, but in the main there is quiet-- almost a painful absence of demonstration ; but the pallid face, the dull'd eye, and the moisture -on the lip, are demonstration enough. Most of these sick or hurt are evidently young fellows from the country, farmers' sons, and such like. Look at the fine large frames, the bright and broad countenances, and the many yet lingering proofs of strong constitution and physique. Look at the patient and mute manner of our American wounded as they lie in such a sad collection ; representatives from all New England, and from New York, and New Jersey, and Pennsyl- vania — indeed from all the States and all the cities — largely from the west. Most of them are entirely without friends or ac- quaintances here — no familiar face, and hardly a word of judi- cious sympathy or cheer, through their sometimes long and te- dious sickness, or the pangs of aggravated wounds. A CONNECTICUT CASE. This young man in bed 25 is H. D. B., of the 27th Connecti- cut, company B. His folks live at Northford, near New Haven. Though not more than twenty-one, or thereabouts, he has knock'd much around the world, on sea and land, and has seen some fight- ing on both. When I first saw him he was very sick, with no appetite. He declined offers of money — said he did not need anything. As I was quite anxious to do something, he confess'd that he had a hankering for a good home-made rice pudding — thought he could relish it better than anything. At this time his stomach was very weak. (The doctor, whom I consulted, said nourishment would do him more good than anything ; but things in the hospital, though better than usual, revolted him.) I soon procured B. his rice-pudding. A Washington lady, (Mrs. O'C), hearing his wish, made the pudding herself, and I took it up to him the next day. He subsequently told me he lived upon it for three or four days. This B. is a good sample of the American eastern young man— the typical Yankee. I took a fancy to him, and gave him a nice pipe, for a keepsake. He receiv'd after- wards a box of things from home, and nothing would do but I must take dinner with him, which I did, and a very good one it was. TWO BROOKLYN BOYS. Here in this same ward are two young men from Brooklyn members of the 51st New York. I had known both the two as young lads at home, so they seem near to me. One of them, J. L., lies there with an amputated arm, the stump healine nre'ttv Digitized by Microsoft® * e pi city SPECIMEN DA YS. 33 well. (I saw him lying on the ground at Fredericksburgh last December, all bloody, just after the arm was taken off. He was very phlegmatic about it, munching away at a cracker in the re- maining hand — made no fuss.) He will recover, and thinks and talks yet of meeting the Johnny Rebs. A SECESH BRAVE. The grand soldiers are not comprised in those of one side, any more than the other. Here is a sample of an unknown south- erner, a lad of seventeen. At the War department, a few days ago, I witnessed a presentation of captured flags to the Secretary. Among others a soldier named Gant, of the 104th Ohio volun- teers, presented a rebel battle-flag, which one of the officers stated to me was borne to the mouth of our cannon and planted there, by a boy but seventeen years of age, who .actually endeavor'd to stop the muzzle of the gun with fence-rails. He was kill'd in th? effort, and the flag-staff was sever'd by a shot from one of our men. THE WOUNDED FROM CHANCELLORSVILLE. May, '6j. — As I write this ? the wounded have begun to arrive from Hooker's command from bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among the first arrivals. The men in charge told me the bad cases were yet to come. If that is so I pitvthem, for these are bad enough. You ought to see the scene ofthe wounded ar- riving at the landing here at the foot of Sixth street, at night. Two boat loads came about half-past seven last night. A little after eight it rain'd a long and violent shower. The pale, help- less soldiers had been debark'd, and lay around on the wharf and neighborhood anywhere. The rain was, probably, grateful to them ; at any rate they were exposed to it. The few torches light up the spectacle. All around — on the wharf, on the ground, out on side places — the men are lying on blankets, old quilts, &c, with bloody rags bound round heads, arms, and legs. The at- tendants are few, and at night few outsiders also — only a few hard-work'd transportation men and drivers. (The wounded are .getting to be common, and people grow callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie there, and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by, the ambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another is call'd to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their sufferings. A few groans that cannot be suppress'd, and occasionally a scream of pain as they lift a man into the ambulances To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and to-morrow and the next Digitized by Microsoft® 34 SPECIMEN DA YS. day more, and so on for many days. Quite often they arrive at the rate of ioooaday. , A NIGHT BATTLE, OVER A WEEK SINCE. May 12.— There was part of the late battle at Chancellors- ville, (second Fredericksburgh,) a little over a week ago, Satur- day, Saturday night and Sunday, under Gen. Joe Hooker, I would like to give just a glimpse of— (a moment's look in a ter- rible storm at sea— of which a few suggestions are enough, and full details impossible.) The fighting had been very hot during the day, and after an intermission the latter part, was resumed at night, arid kept up with furious energy till 3 o'clock in the morn- ing. That afternoon (Saturday) an attack sudden and strong by Stonewall Jackson had gain'd a great advantage to the southern army, and broken our lines, entering us like a wedge, and leaving things in that position at dark. But Hooker at 1 1 at night made a desperate push, drove the secesh forces back, restored his origi- nal lines, and resumed his plans. This night scrimmage was very exciting, and afforded countless strange and fearful pictures. The fighting had been general both at Chancellorsville and northeast at Fredericksburgh. (We hear of some poor fighting, episodes, skedaddling on our part. I think not of it. I think of the fierce bravery, the general rule.) One corps, the 6th, Sedgewick's, fights four dashing and bloody battles in thirty-six hours, retreat- ing in great jeopardy, losing largely but maintaining itself, fight- ing with the sternest desperation under all circumstances, getting over the Rappahannock only by the skin of its teeth, yet getting over. It lost many, many brave men, yet it took vengeance, ample vengeance. But it was the tug of Saturday evening, and through the night and Sunday morning, I wanted to make a special note of. It was largely in the woods, and quite a general engagement. The night was very pleasant, at times the moon shining out full and clear, all Nature so calm in itself, the early summer grass so rich, and foliage of the trees — yet there the battle raging, and many good fellows lying helpless, with new accessions to them, and every minute amid the rattle of muskets and crash of cannon, (for there was an artillery contest too,) the red life-blood oozing out from heads or trunks or limbs upon that green and dew-cool grass. Patches of the woods take fire, and several of the wounded, unable to move, are consumed — quite large spaces are swept over burning the dead also — some of the men have their hair and beards singed — some, burns on their faces and hands — others holes burnt in their clothing. The flashes of fire from the can- non, the quick flaring flamesandsmokei. and the immense roar— SPECIMEN DA YS. 3 g the musketry so general, the light nearly bright enough for each side to see the other — the crashing, tramping of men^-the yelling— close quarters — we hear the secesh yells — our men cheer loudly back, especially if Hooker is in sight — hand to hand con- flicts, each side stands up to it, brave, determin'd as demons, they often charge upon us — a thousand deeds are done worth to writer newer greater poems on — and still the woods on fire — still many) are not only scorch' d — too many, unable to move, are burn'd to death. Then the camps of the wounded — O heavens, what scene is this ? — is this indeed humanity — -these butchers' shambles ? There are several of them. There they lie, in the largest, in an open space in the woods, from 200 to 300 poor fellows — the groans and screams — the odor of blood, mixed with the fresh scent of the night, the grass, the trees— that slaughter-house ! O well is it their mothers, their sisters cannot see tiiem — cannot conceive, and never conceiv'd, these things. One man is shot by a shell, both in the arm and leg — both are amputated — there lie the re- jected members. Some have their legs blown off — some bullets through the breast — some indescribably horrid wounds in the face or head, all mutilated, sickening, torn, gouged out — some^ in the abdomen — softie mere boys — many rebels, badly hurtt^- they take their regular turns with the rest, just the same as any — the surgeons use them just the same. Such is the camp of the wounded — such a fragment, a reflection afar off of the bloody scene — while over all the clear, large moon comes out at times softly, quietly shining. Amid the woods, that scene of flitting souls — amid the crack and crash and yelling sounds — the impal- pable perfume of the'woods — and yet the pungent, stifling smo^e — the radiance of the moon, looking from heaven at intervals- so placid — the sky so heavenly — the clear-obscure up there, those buoyant upper oceans-— a few large placid stars beyond, comiijg silently and languidly out, and then disappearing — the, melari\ choly, draperied night above, around. And there, upon the' roads, the fields, and in those woods, that contest, never one. more desperate in any age or land — both parties now in force-=»' masses — no fancy battle, no semi-play, but fierce and savage' de- mons fighting there— courage and scorn of death the ruleyexcep- jtions almost none. What history, I say, can ever give — for who can know — the mad, determin'd tussle of the armies, in all their separate large and little squads — as this — each steep'd from crown to toe in desperate, mortal purports? Who know the conflict, hand-to- hand — the many conflicts in the dark, those shadowy-tangled, flashing-moonbeam'^pdp^^wr^ing groups and squads— 36 SPECIMEN DA YS. the cries, the din, the cracking guns and pistols — the distant cannon— the cheers and calls and threats and awful music of the oaths— the indescribable mix — the officers' orders, persua- sions, encouragements — the devils fully rous'd in human hearts — the strong shout, Charge, men, charge — the flash of the naked sword, and rolling flame and smoke ? And still the broken, clear and clouded heaven— and still again the moonlight pouring sil- very soft its radiant patches over all. Who paint the scene, the sudden partial panic of the afternoon, at dusk ? Who paint the irrepressible advance of the second division of the Third corps, under Hooker himself, suddenly order'd up — those rapid-filing phantoms through the woods ? Who show what moves there in the shadows, fluid and firm — to save, (and it did save,) the army's name, perhaps the nation ? as there the veterans hold the field. (Brave Berry falls not yet — but death has mark'd him — soon he falls.) UNNAMED REMAINS THE BRAVEST SOLDIER. Of scenes like these, I say, who writes — whoe'er can write the story ? Of many a score — aye, thousands, north and south, of unwrit heroes, unknown heroisms, incredible, impromptu, first- -lass desperations — who tells ? No history ever— -no poem sings, xiO music sounds/those bjaxest men of all — those deeds. No fortoal general's report, nor book in the library, nor column in the paper, embalms the bravest, north or south, east or west. Unnamed, unknown, remain, and still remain, the bravest sol- diers. Our manliest— our boys— our hardy darlings ; no picture gives them. Likely, the typic one of them (standing, no doubt, for hundreds, thousands,) crawls aside to some bush-clump, or ferny tuft, on receiving his death-shot — there sheltering a little while, soaking roots, grass and soil, with red blood — the battle advances, retreats, flits from the scene, sweeps by — and there, laply with pain and suffering (yet less, far less,- than is supposed,) the last lethargy winds like a serpent round him— the eyes glaze in death— none recks — perhaps the burial-squads, in truce, a week afterwards, search not the secluded spot— and there, at last, the Bravest Soldier crumbles in mother earth, unburied and un- known. SOME SPECIMEN CASES. June i8th.—ln one of the hospitals I find Thomas Haley, com- pany M, 4th New York cavalry— a regular Irish boy, a fine speci- men of youthful physical manliness— shot through the lungs— •inevitably dying— came over to this country from Ireland to en- ■ list— has not a single friend or acquaintance here— is sleeping soundly at this moment, (but it is the sleep of death)— has % Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA VS. 3 ? bullet-hole straight through the lung. I saw Tom when first ' brought here, three days since, and- didn't suppose he could live twelve hours — (yet he looks well enough in the face to a casual observer.) He lies there with his frame exposed above the waist, all naked, for coolness, a fine built man, the tan not yet bleach' d from his cheeks and neck. It is useless to talk to him, as with his sad hurt, and the stimulants they give him, and the utter strangeness of every object, face, furniture, &c, the poor fellow, even when awake, is like some frighten'd, shy animal. Much of the time he sleeps, or half sleeps. (Sometimes I thought he knew more than he show'd.) I often come and sit by him in perfect silence ; he will breathe for ten minutes as softly and evenly as a young babe asleep. Poor youth, so handsome, athletic, with profuse beautiful shining hair. One time as I sat looking at him while he lay asleep, he suddenly, without the least start, awaken'd, open'd his eyes, gave me a long steady look, turning his face very slightly to gaze easier — one long, clear, silent look — a slight sigh — then turn'd back and went into his doze again. Little he knew, poor death-stricken boy, the heart of the stranger that hover'd near. W. H. E., Co. F., 2d N. J. — His disease is pneumonia. He lay sick at the wretched hospital below Aquia creek, for seven or eight days before brought here. He was detail' d from his regi- ment to go there and help as nurse, but was soon taken down himself. Is an elderly, sallow-faced, rather gaunt, gray-hair'd man, a -widower, with children. He expressed a great desire for good, strong green tea. An excellent lady, Mrs. W. ; of Wash- ington, soon sent him a package ; also a small sum of money. The doctor said give him the tea at pleasure ; it lay on the table by his side, and he used it every day. He slept a great deal ; could not talk much, as he grew deaf. Occupied bed 15, ward I, Armory. (The same lady above, Mrs. W., sent the men a large package of tobacco.) J. G. lies in bed 52, ward I; is of company B, 7th Pennsyl- vania. I gave him a small sum of money, some tobacco, and en- velopes. To a man adjoining also gave twenty-five cents; he flush'd in the face when I offer'd it— refused at first, but as I found he had not a cent, and was very fond of having the daily papers to read, I prest it on him. He was evidently very grate- ful, but said little. J. T. L., of company F., gth New Hampshire, lies in bed 37, ward I. Is very fond of tobacco. I furnish him some ; also with a little money. Has gangrene of the feet ; a pretty bad case ; will surely have to lose three toes. Is a regular specimen of an old-fashion'd, rude, ^^jgid countryman, impress- - -3 SPECIMEN DA VS. ing me with his likeness to that celebrated singed cat, who was better than she look'd. Bed 3, ward E, Armory, has a great hankering for pickles, something pungent. After consulting the doctor, I gave him a .small bottle of horse-radish; also some apples; also a book. Some of the nurses are excellent. The woman-nurse in this ward I like very much. (Mrs. Wright— a year afterwards I found her in Mansion house hospital, Alexandria— she is a perfect nurse.) In one bed a young man, Marcus Small, company K, 7th Maine— sick with dysentery and typhoid fever — pretty critical case — I talk with him often — he thinks he will die — looks like it indeed. I write a letter for him home to East Livermore, Maine — I let him talk to me a little, but not much, advise him to keep very quiet — do most of the talking myself — stay quite a while with him, as he holds on to my hand — talk to him in a cheering, but slow, low and measured manner — talk about his furlough, and going home as soon as he is able to travel. Thomas Lindly, 1st Pennsylvania cavalry, shot very badly through the foot — poor young man, he suffers horribly, has to be constantly dosed with morphine, his face ashy and glazed, bright young eyes — I give him a large handsome apple, lay it in sight, tell him to have it" roasted in the morning, as he generally feels easier then, and can eat a little breakfast. I write two letters for him. Opposite, an old Quaker lady is sitting by the side of her son, Amer Moore, 2d U. S. artillery — shot in the head two weeks since, very low, quite rational — from hips down paralyzed — he will surely die. I speak a very few words to him every day and even- ing — he answers pleasantly — wants nothing — (he told me soon after he came about his home affairs, his mother had been an in- valid, and he fear'd to let her know his condition.) He died soon after she came MY PREPARATIONS FOR VISITS. In my visits to the hospitals I found it was in the simple matter of personal presence, and emanating ordinary cheer and mag- netism, that I succeeded and help'd more than by medical nursing, or delicacies, or gifts of money, or anything else. During the war I possess'd the perfection of physical health. My habit, when practicable, was to prepare for starting out on one of those daily or nightly tours of from a couple to four or five hours, by fortifying myself with previous rest, the bath, clean clothes, a good meal, and as cheerful an appearance as possible. Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA YS. 39 AMBULANCE PROCESSIONS. _, June 25, Sundown. — As I sit writing this paragraph I see a train of about thirty huge four-horse wagons, used as ambulances, filPd with wounded, passing up Fourteenth street, on their way, prob- ably, to Columbian, Carver, and mount Pleasant hospitals. This is the way the men come in now, seldom in small numbers, but almost always in these long, sad processions. Through the past winter, while our army lay opposite Fredericksburgh, the like strings of ambulances were of frequent occurrence along Seventh street, passing slowly up from the steamboat wharf, with loads from Aquia creek. BAD WOUNDS— THE YOUNG. The soldiers, are nearly all young men, and far more American than is generally supposed— J should say_ nine-tenths are native- born. Among the arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio^Indiana, and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men fearfully burnt from the explosions of artillery caissons. One ward has a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was perhaps worse than usual. Amputations are going on — the attendants are dress- ing wounds. As you pass by,, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw the other day a gentleman, a visitor apparently from curiosity, in one of the wards, stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were probing. He turn'd pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and fallen on the floor. THE MOST INSPIRITING OF ALL WAR'S SHOWS. June 29. — Just before sundown this evening a very large cav- alry force went by — a fine sight. The men evidently had seen service. First came a mounted band of sixteen bugles, drums' and cymbals, playing wild martial tunes — made my heart jump. Then the principal officers, then company after company, with their officers at their heads, making of course the main part of the cavalcade ; then a long train of men with led horses, lots of mounted negroes with special horses — and a long string of bag- gage-wagons, each drawn by four horses — and then a motley rear guard. It was a pronouncedly warlike and gay show ; the sabres clank' d, the men look'd young and healthy and strong ; the elec- tric tramping of so many horses on the hard road, and the gallant bearing, fine seat, and bright faced appearance of a thousand and more handsome young American men, were so good to see. An ' hour later another troop went by, smaller in numbers, perhaps three hundred men. They too look'd like serviceable men, cam- paigners used to field and fight. July 3— This foren^r^^ r^g^^an an hour, again long 40 SPECIMEN DA VS. strings of cavalry, several regiments, very fine men and horses, four or five abreast. I saw them in Fourteenth street, coming in town from north. Several hundred extra horses, some of the mares with colts, trotting along. (Appear'd to be a number of prisoners too.) How inspiriting always the cavalry regiments. Our men are generally well mounted, feel good, are young, gay on the saddle, their blankets in a roll behind them, their sabres clanking at their sides. This noise and movement and the tramp of many horses' hoofs has a curious effect upon one. The bugles play— presently you hear them afar off, deaden'd, mix'd with other noises. Then just as they had all pass'd, a string of ambu- lances commenc'd from the other way, moving up Fourteenth street north, slowly wending along, bearing a large lot of wounded to the hospitals. BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. July 4th. — The weather to-day, upon the whole, is very fine, warm, but from a smart rain last night, fresh enough, and no dust, which is a great relief for this city. I saw the parade about noon, Pennsylvania avenue, from Fifteenth street down toward the capi- tol. There were three regiments of infantry, (I suppose the ones doing patrol duty here,) two or three societies of Odd Fellows, a lot of children in barouches, and a squad of policemen. (A useless imposition upon the soldiers — they have work enough, on their backs without piling the like of this.) As I went down the Avenue, saw a big flaring placard on the bulletin board of a newspaper office, announcing "Glorious Victory for the Union Army!" Meade had fought Lee at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, yesterday and day before, and repuls'd him most signally, taken 3,000 prisoners, &c. (I afterwards saw Meade's despatch, very modest, and a sort of order of the day from the President him- self, quite religious, giving thanks to the Supreme, and calling on the people to do the same.) I walk'd on to Armory hospi- tal — took along with me several bottles of blackberry and cherry syrup, good and strong, but innocent. Went through several of the wards, announc'd to the soldiers the news from Meade, and gave them all a good drink of the syrups with ice water, quite refreshing — prepar'd it all myself, and serv'd it around. Mean- while the Washington bells are ringing their sundown peals for Fourth'of July, and the usual fusilades of boys' pistols, crackers, and guns. A CAVALRY CAMP. I am writing this, nearly sundown, watching a cavalry com- pany (acting Signal service,) just come in through a shower, making their night's camp ready on some broad, vacant ground a sort of hill, in full view opposite my window. There are the Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA YS. 41 men in their yellow-striped jackets. All are dismounted ; the freed horses stand with drooping heads and wet sides ; they are to be led off presently in groups, to water. The little wall-tents and shelter tents spring up quickly. I see the fires already blazing, and pots and kettles over them. Some among the men are driving in tent-poles, wielding their axes with strong, slow blows. I see great huddles of horses, bundles of hay, groups of men (some with unbuckled sabres yet on their sides,) a few officers, piles of wood, the flames of the fires, saddles, harness, &c. The smoke streams upward, additional men arrive and dismount — some drive in stakes, and tie their horses to them ; some go with buckets for water, some are chopping wood, and so on, ' July 6th. — A steady rain, dark and thick and warm. A train of six-mule wagons has just pass'd bearing pontoons, great square- end flat-boats, and the heavy planking for overlaying them. We hear that the Potomac above here is flooded, and are wondering whether Lee will be able to get back across again, or whether Meade will indeed break him to pieces. The cavalry camp on the hill is a ceaseless field of observation for me. This forenoon there stand the horses, tether'd together, dripping, steaming, chewing their hay. The men emerge from their tents, dripping also. The fires are half quench' d. July zoth. — Still the camp opposite — perhaps fifty or sixty tents. Some of the men are cleaning their sabres (pleasant to-day,) some brushing boots, some laying off, reading, writing — some cooking, some sleeping. On long temporary cross-sticks back of the tents are cavalry accoutrements — blankets and overcoats are hung out to air — there are the squads of horses tether'd, feeding, continu- ally stamping and whisking their tails to keep off flies. I sit long in my third story window and look at the scene — a hundred little things going on — peculiar objects connected with the c^mp that could not be described, any one of them justly, without much minute drawing and coloring in words. A NEW YORK SOLDIER. This afternoon, July 22d, I have spent a long time with Oscar F. Wilber, company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diar- rhoea, and a bad wound also. He asked me to read him a chap- ter in the New Testament. I complied, and ask'd him what I should read. He said, " Make your own choice." I open'd at the close of one of the first books of the evangelists, and read the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ, and the scenes at the crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man ask'd me to read the following chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read verv slowly, for Oscar was feeble. Itpleased him very much, yet ' ■" Digitized by Microsoft® 4 4 a SPECIMEN DA YS. the tears were in his eyes. He ask'd me if I enjoy'd religion. I said, " Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you mean, and yet, may-be, it is the same thing." He said, "It is my chief reli- ance." He talk'd of death, and said he did not fear it. I said, " Why, Oscar, don't you think you will get well ?" He said, " I may, but it is not probable." He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad, it discharg'd much. Then the diar- rhoea had prostrated him, and I felt that he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he returned fourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany post-office, Cattaraugus county, N. Y. I had several such in- terviews with him. He died a few days after the one just de- scribed. HOME-MADE MUSIC. August 8th. — To-night, as I was trying to keep cool, sitting by a wounded soldier in Armory-square, I was attracted by some pleasant singing in an adjoining ward. As my soldier was asleep, I left him, and entering the ward where 'the music was, I walk'd half-way down and took a seat by the cot of a young Brooklyn friend, S. R., badly wounded in the hand at Chancellorsville, and who has suffer'd mucn, but at that moment in the evening was wide awake and comparatively easy. He had turn'd over on his left side to get a better view of the singers, but the mosquito-cur- tains of the adjoining cots obstructed the sight. I stept round and loop'd them all up, so that he had a clear show, and then sat down again by him, and look'd and listen'd. The principal singer was a young lady-nurse of one of the wards, accompany- ing on a melodeon, and join'd by the lady-nurses of other wards. They sat there, making a charming group, with their handsome, healthy faces, and standing up a little behind them were some ten or fifteen of the convalescent soldiers, young men, nurses, &c, with books in their hands, singing. Of course it was not such a performance as the great soloists at the New York opera house take a hand in, yet I am not sure but I receiv'd as much pleasure under the circumstances, sitting there, as I have had from the best Italian compositions, express'd by world-famous performers. The men lying up and down the hospital, in their cots, (some badly wounded — some never to rise thence,) the cots themselves, with their drapery of white curtains, and the shadows down the lower and upper parts of the ward ; then the silence of the men, and the attitudes 'they took — the whole was a sight to look around upon again and again. And there sweetly rose those voices up to the high, whitewash'd wooden roof, and pleasantly the roof sent it all back again. They sang very well, mostly quaint old Digitized hy Microsoft® * SPECIMEN DA VS. 43 songs and declamatory hymns, to fitting tunes. Here, for in- stance : My days are swiftly gliding by, and I a pilgrim stranger. Would not detain them as they fly, those hours of toil and danger ; For O we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing over, And just before, the shining shore we may almost discover. We'll gird our loins my brethren dear, our distant home discerning, Our absent Lord has left us word, let every lamp be burning. For O we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing over, And just before, the shining shore we may almost discover. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. August 12th. — I see the President almost every day, as I hap- pen to live where he passes to or from his lodgings out of town. He never sleeps at the White House during the hot season, but has quarters at a healthy location some three miles north of the city, the Soldiers' home, a United States military establishment. I saw him this morning about 8j£ coming in to business, riding on Vermont avenue, near L street. He always has a company of twenty-five or thirty cavalry, with sabres drawn and held upright over their shoulders. They say this guard was against his personal wish, but he let his counselors have their way. The party makes no great show in uniform or horses. Mr. Lincoln on the saddle gen- erally rides a good-sized, easy-going gray horse, is dress' d in plain black, somewhat rusty and dusty, wears a black stiff hat, and looks about as ordinary in attire, &c, as the commonest man. A lieutenant, with yellow straps, rides at his left, and following be- hind, two by two, come the cavalry men, in their yellow-striped jackets. They are generally going at a slow trot, as that is the pace set them by the one they wait upon. The sabres and ac- coutrements clank, and the entirely unornamental cortege as it trots towards Lafayette square arouses no sensation, only some curious stranger stops and gazes-. I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face, with the deep-cut lines, the eyes, al- ways to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. We have got so that we exchange bows, and very cordial ones. Some- times the President goes and comes in an open barouche. The cavalry always accompany him, with drawn sabres. Often I no- tice as he goes out evenings — and sometimes in the morning, when he returns early— he turns off and halts at the large and handsome residence of the Secretary of War, on K street, and holds conference there. If in his barouche, I can see from my window he does not alight, but sits in his vehicle, and Mr. Stan- ton comes out to attend him. Sometimes one of his sons, a boy of ten or twelve, accompanies him, riding at his right on a pony. Earlier in the summ^oc^nall^aw the President and his 44 SPECIMEN DA YS. wife, toward the latter part of the afternoon, out in a barouche, on a pleasure ride through the city. Mrs. Lincoln was dress'd in complete black, with a long crape veil. The equipage is of the plainest kind, only two horses, and they nothing extra. They pass'd me once very close, and I saw the President in the face fully, as they were moving slowly, and his look, though abstracted, happen'd to be directed steadily in my eye. He bow'd and smiled, but far beneath his smile I noticed well the expression I have alluded to. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed. HEATED TERM. There has lately been much suffering here from heat ; we have had it upon us now eleven days. I go around with an umbrella and a fan. I saw two cases of sun-stroke yesterday, one in Penn- sylvania avenue, and another in Seventh street. The City rail- road company loses some horses every day. Yet Washington is having a livelier August, and is probablyputting in a more ener- getic and satisfactory summer, than ever before during its exist- ence. There is probably more human electricity, more popula- tion to make it, more business, more light-heartedness, than ever before. The armies that swiftly circumambiated from Fredericks- burgh — march'd, struggled, fought, had out their mighty clinch and hurl at Gettysburg — wheel'd, circumambiated again, re- turn 'd to their ways, touching us not, either at their going or coming. And Washington feels that she has pass'd the worst ; perhaps feels that she is henceforth mistress. So here she sits with her surrounding hills spotted with guns, and is conscious of a character and identity different from what it was five or six short weeks ago, and very considerably pleasanter and prouder. SOLDIERS AND TALKS. Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, you meet everywhere about the | city, often superb-looking men, though invalids dress'd in worn uniforms, and carrying canes or crutches. I often have talks Iwith them, occasionally quite long and interesting. One, for in- stance, will have been all through the peninsula under McClellan — narrates to me the fights, the marches, the strange, quick changes of that eventful campaign, and gives glimpses of many ■ things untold in any official reports or books or journals. These, '; indeed, are the things that are genuine and precious. The man was there, has been out two years, has been through a dozen , fights, the superfluous flesh of talking is long work'd off him, and he gives me little but the hard meat and sinew. I find it re- Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA VS. 45 freshing, these hardy, bright, intuitive, American young men,^ _ (experienc'd soldiers with all their youth.) _ The vocal play and 1 significance moves one more than books. ,Then there hangs something majestic about a man who has borne his part in bat- tles, especially if he is very quiet regarding it when you desire him to unbosom. I am continually lost at the absence of blow- ing and blowers among these old-young American militaires. I have found some man or other who has been in every battle since the war began, and have talk'd with them about each one in every part of the United States, and many of the engagements on the rivers and harbors too. I find men here from every State in the Union, without exception. (There are more Southerners, especially border State men, in the Union army than is gener- ally supposed.*) I now doubt whether one can get a fair idea of what this war practically is, or what genuine America is, and her » character, without some such experience as this I am having, DEATH OF A WISCONSIN OFFICER. Another characteristic scene of that dark and bloody 1863, from notes of my visit to Armory-square hospital, one hot but pleasant summer day. In ward H we approach the cot of a young lieutenant of one of the Wisconsin regiments. Tread the bare board floor lightly here, for the pain and panting of death are in this cot. I saw the lieutenant when he was first brought here from Chancellorsville, and have been- with him occasionally fr,om day to day and night to night. He had been getting along pretty well till night before last, when a sudden hemorrhage that could not be stopt came upon him, and to-day it still continues at intervals. Notice that water-pail by the side of the bed, with a quantity of blood and bloody pieces of muslin, nearly full ; that tells the story. The poor young man is struggling painfully for breath, his great dark eyes with a glaze already upon them, and the choking faint but audible in his throat. An attendant sits by him, and will not leave him till the last ; yet little or nothing can be done. He will die here in an hour or two, with- out the presence of kith or kin. Meantime the ordinary chat and business of the ward a little way off goes on indifferently. * Mr. Garfield (In the House of Representatives, April is, '79-) "Do gentlemen know that (leaving out all the border States) there were fifty regi- ments and seven companies of white men in our army fighting for the Union from the States that went into rebellion ? Do they know that from the single State of Kentucky more Union soldiers fought under our flag than Napoleon took into the battle of Waterloo ? more than Wellington took with all the allied armies against Napoleon ? Do they remember that 186,000 color'd men fought under our flag against the rebellion and for the Union, and that of that number 90,000 were from t^ejui^wh^h wen^ntp rebellion ? " 4 6 SPECIMEN DA YS. Some of the inmates are laughing and joking, others are playing checkers or cards, others are reading, &c. I have noticed through most of the hospitals that as long as there is any chance for a man, no matter how bad he may be, the surgeon and nurses work hard, sometimes with curious tena- • city, for his life, doing everything, and keeping somebody by him to execute the doctor's orders, and minister to him every minute night and day. See that screen there. As you advance through the dusk of early candle-light, a nurse will step forth on tip-toe, and silently but imperiously forbid you to make any noise, or perhaps to come near at all. Some soldier's life is flickering there, suspended between recovery and death. Perhaps at this moment the exhausted frame has just fallen into a light sleep that a step might shake. You must retire. The neighboring pa- tients must move in their stocking feet. I have been several times struck with such mark'd efforts — everything bent to save a life from the very grip of the destroyer. But when that grip is once firmly fix'd, leaving no hope or chance at all, the surgeon abandons the patient. If it is a case where stimulus is any relief, the nurse gives milk-punch or brandy, or whatever is wanted, ad libitum. There is no fuss made. Not a bit of sentimentalism or whining have I seen about a single death-bed in hospital or on the field, but generally impassive indifference. All is over, as far as any efforts can avail ; it is useless to expend emotions or labors. While there is a prospect they strive hard — at least most surgeons do; but death certain and evident, they yield the field. HOSPITALS ENSEMBLE. Aug., Sep., and Oct., '63. — I am in the habit of going to all, and to Fairfax seminary, Alexandria, and over Long bridge to the great Convalescent camp. The journals publish a regular . directory of them — a long list. As a specimen of almost any one of the larger of these hospitals, fancy to yourself a space of three to twenty acres of ground, on which are group'd ten or twelve very large wooden barracks, with, perhaps, a dozen or twenty, and sometimes more than that number, small buildings, capable altogether of accommodating from five hundred to a thousand or fifteen hundred persons. Sometimes these wooden barracks or wards, each of them perhaps from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet long, are rang'd in a straight row, evenly fronting the street ; others are plann'd so as to form an immense V ; and others again are ranged around a hollow square. They make altogether a huge cluster, with the additional tents, extra wards for contagious diseases, guard-houses, sutler's stores, chap- lain's house; in the middle will probably be an edifice devoted Digitized by Microsoft® t SPECIMEN DA YS. 47 to the offices of the surgeon in charge and the ward surgeons, principal attaches, clerks, &c. The wards are either letter'd al- phabetically, ward G, ward K, or else numerically, i, 2, 3, &c. Each has its ward surgeon and corps of nurses. Of course, there is, in the aggregate, quite a muster of employes, and over all the surgeon in charge. Here in Washington, when these army hos- pitals are all fill'd, (as they have been already several times,) they contain a population more numerous in itself than the whole of the Washington of ten or fifteen years ago. Within sight of the capitol, as I write, are some thirty or forty^such collections, at times holding from fifty to seventy thousand men. Looking from any eminence and studying the topography in my rambles, I use them as landmarks. Through the rich August verdure of the trees, see that white group of buildings off yonder in the out- skirts ; then another cluster half a mile to the left of the first ; then another a mile to the right, and another a mile beyond, and still another between us and the first. Indeed, we can hardly look in any direction but these clusters are dotting the landscape and environs. That little town, as you might suppose it, off there on the brow of a hill, is indeed a town, but of wounds, sickness, and death. It is Finley hospital, northeast of the city, on Kendall green, as it used to be call'd. That other is Camp- bell hospital. Both are large establishments. I have known these two alone to have fromtwo thousand to twenty -five hun- dred inmates. Then there is Carver hospital, larger still, a wall'd and military city regularly laid out, and guarded by squads of sentries. Again, off east,- LincolnXhospital, a still larger one ; and half a mile further Emory hospital. Still sweeping the eye around down the river toward Alexandria, we see, to the right, the locality where the Convalescent camp stands, with its five, eight, or sometimes ten thousand /inmates. Even all these are but a portion. The Harewood, Mount Pleasant, Armory-square, Judiciary hospitals, are some pi the rest, and all large collec- tions. A SILENT'NIGHT RAMBLE. October 20th.— To-night, after leaving the hospital at 10 o'clock, (I had been on self-imposed duty some five hours, pretty closely confined,) I wander'd a long time around Washington. The night was sweet, very clear, sufficiently cool, a voluptuous half-moon, slightly golden, the space near it of a transparent blue-gray tinge. I walk'd up Pennsylvania avenue, and then to Seventh street, and a long while around the Patent-office. Some- how it look'd rebukefully strong, majestic, there in the delicate -moonlight. The sky, the planets, the constellations all so bright, so calm, so expressiv^^ ^soo^ing, after those hospital 48 SPECIMEN DA YS. scenes. I wander' d to and fro till the moist moon set, long after midnight. SPIRITUAL CHARACTERS AMONG THE SOLDIERS. , Every now and then, in hospital or camp, there are beings I meet — specimens of unworldliness, disinterestedness, and animal purity and heroism — perhaps some unconscious Indianian, or from Ohio or Tennessee — on whose birth the calmness of heaven seems to have descended, and whose gradual growing up, what- ever the circumstances of work-life or change, or hardship, or small or no education that attended it, the power of a strange spiritual sweetness, fibre and inward health, have also attended. Something veil'd and abstracted is often a part of the manners of these beings. I have met them, I say, not seldom in the army, in camp, and in the hospitals. The Western regiments con- tain many of them. They are often young men, obeying the events and occasions about them, marching, soldiering, fighting, foraging, cooking, working on farms or at some trade before the war — unaware of their own nature, (as to that, who is aware of his own nature ?) their companions only understanding that they are different from the rest, more silent, " something odd about them," and apt to go off and meditate and muse in soli- tude. ' CATTLE DROVES ABOUT WASHINGTON. Among other sights are immense droves of cattle with their drivers, passing through the streets of the city. Some of the men have a way of leading the cattle by a peculiar call, a wild, pensive hoot, quite musical, prolong'd, indescribable, sounding something between the cooing of a pigeon and the hoot of an owl. I like to stand and look at the sight of one of these im- mense droves— a little way off— (as the dust is great.) There are always men on horseback, cracking their whips and shouting — the cattle low — some obstinate ox or steer attempts to escape — then a lively scene — the mounted men, always excellent riders and on good horses, dash after the recusant, and wheel and turn — a dozen mounted drovers, their great slouch'd, broad-brim'd hats, very picturesque— another dozen on foot— everybody cov- er' d with dust— long goads in their hands — an immense drove of perhaps iooo cattle — the shouting, hooting, movement, &c. HOSPITAL PERPLEXITY. To add to other troubles, amid the confusion of this great army of sick, it is almost impossible for a stranger to find any friend or relative, unless he has the patient's specific address to start upon. Besides the directory printed in the newspapers here. Digitized By Microsoft® * * ' SPECIMEN DA YS. • 4 g there are one or two general directories of the hospitals kept at provost's headquarters, but they are nothing like complete; they are never up to date, and, as things are, with the daily streams of coming and going and changing, cannot be. I have known cases, for instance such as a farmer coming here from northern New York to find a wounded brother, faithfully hunting round for a week, and then compell'd to leave' and go home without getting any trace of him. When he got home he found a letter from the brother giving the right address. DOWN AT THE FRONT. Culpepper, Va., Feb. '64. — Here I am pretty well down toward the extreme front. Three or four days ago General S., who is now in chief command, (I belieye Meade is absent, sick,) moved a strong force southward from camp as if intending busi- ness. They went to the Rapidan ; there has since been some manoeuvring and a little fighting, but nothing of consequence. The telegraphic accounts given Monday morning last, make en- tirely too much of it, I should say. What General S. intended we here know not, but we trust in that competent commander. We were somewhat excited, (but not so very much either,) on Sunday, during the day and night, as orders were sent out to pack up and harness,, and be ready to evacuate, to fall back towards Washington. But I was very sleepy and went to bed. Sometre- 1 mendous shouts arousing me during the night, I went forth and found it was from the men above mention'd, who were returning. I talk 'd with some of the men; as usual I found them full of gayety, endurance, and many fine little outshows, the signs of the most excellent good manliness of the world. It was a curious sight 'to see those shadowy columns moving through the night. I stood unobserv'd in the darkness and watch' d them long. The mud was very deep. The men had their usual burdens, overcoats, knapsacks, guns and blankets. Along and along they filed by me, with often a laugh, a song, a cheerful word, but never once a. murmur. It mayhaye been odd, but I never before so realized _the majesty and reality of the American people en masse. It fell upon me like a great awe. The strong ranks moved neither fast nor slow. They had march'd seven or eight miles already through the slipping unctuous mud. The brave First corps stopt here. The equally brave Third corps moved on to Brandy station. The famous Brooklyn 14th are here, guarding the town. You see their red legs actively moving everywhere. Then they have a theatre of their own here. They give musical performances, nearly everything done capitally. Of course the audience is a jam. . It is good sport to atten^/gjBgee^jjggft^^rtainments of the 14th. 50 SPECIMEN DA VS. I like to look around at the soldiers, and the general collection in front of the curtain, more than the scene on the stage. PAYING THE BOUNTIES. One of the things to note here now is the arrival of the paymaster with his strong box, and the payment of bounties to veterans re-enlisting. Major H. is here to-day, with a small mountain of greenbacks, rejoicing the hearts of the 2d division of the First corps. In the midst of a rickety shanty, behind a little table, sit the major and clerk Eldridge, with the rolls be- fore them, and much moneys. A re-enlisted man gets in "cash about $200 down, (and heavy instalments following, as the pay- days arrive, one after another.) The show of the men crowding around is quite exhilarating ; I like to stand and look. They feel elated, their pockets full, and the ensuing furlough, the visit home. It is a scene of sparkling eyes and flush'd cheeks. The soldier has many gloomy and harsh experiences, and this makes, upfor some of them. Major H. is order'd to pay first all the re-enlisted men of the First corps their bounties and back pay, and then the rest. You hear the peculiar sound of the rustling of the new and crisp greenbacks by the hour, through the nimble fingers of the major and my friend clerk E. RUMORS, CHANGES, &c. About the excitement of Sunday, and the orders to be ready to start, I have heard since that the paid orders came from some cautious minor commander, and that the high principalities knew not and thought not of any such move ; which is likely. The rumor and fear here intimated a long circuit by Lee, and flank attack on our right. But I cast my eyes at the mud, which was ,then at its deepest and palmiest condition, and retired com- posedly to rest. Still it is about 'time for Culpepper to have a change. Authorities have chased each other here like clouds in a stormy sky. Before the first Bull Run this was the rendezvous and camp of instruction of the secession troops. I am stopping at the house of a lady who has witness'd all the eventful changes of the war, along this route of contending armies. She is a widow, with a family of young children, and lives here with her sister in a large handsome house. A number of army officers board with them. VIRGINIA. Dilapidated, fenceless, and trodden with war as Virginia is, wherever I move across her surface, I find myself rous'd to sur- prise and admiration. What capacity for products, improvements, human life, nourishment and expansion. Everywhere that I have been in the Ol^Dn^rdo^^t^ subtle mockery of that SPECIMEN DAYS. SI title now !) such thoughts have fill'd me. The soil is yet far above the average of any of the northern States. And how full of breadth the scenery, everywhere distant mountains, every- where convenient rivers. Even yet prodigal in forest woods, and surely eligible for all the fruits, orchards, and flowers. The skies and atmosphere most luscious, as I feel certain, from more than a year's residence in the State, and movements hither and yon. I should say very healthy, as a general thing. Then a rich and elastic quality, by night and by day. The sun rejoices in his strength, dazzling and burning, and yet, to me, never un- pleasantly weakening. It is not the panting tropical heat, but invigorates. The north tempers it. The nights are often un- surpassable. Last evening (Feb. 8,) I saw the first of the new moon, the outlined old moon clear along with it ; the sky and air so clear, such transparent hues of color, it seem'd to me I had never really seen the new moon before. It was the thinnest cut v crescent possible. It hung delicate just above the sulky shadow of the Blue mountains. Ah, if it might prove an omen and good prophecy for this unhappy State. SUMMER OF 1864. I am back again in Washington, on my regular daily and nightly rounds. Of course there are many specialties. Dotting a ward here and there are always cases of poor fellows, long-suf- fering under obstinate wounds, or weak and dishearten'd from typhoid fever, or the like ; mark'd cases, needing special and sympathetic nourishment. These I sit down and either talk to, or silently cheer them up. They always like it hugely, (and so do I.) Each case has its peculiarities, and needs some new adaptation. I have learnt to thus conform— learnt a good deal ' of hospital wisdom. Some of the poor young chaps, away from home for the first time in their lives, hunger and thirst for affec- tion ; this is sometimes the only thing that will reach their con- dition. The men like to have a pencil, and something to write in. I have given them cheap pocket-diaries, and almanacs for 1864, interleav'd with blank paper. For reading I generally have some old pictorial magazines or story papers — they are al- ways acceptable. Also the morning or evening papers of the day. The best books I do not give, but lend to read through the wards, and then take them to others, and so on; they are very punctual about returning the books. In these wards, or on ' the field, as I thus continue to go round, I have come to adapt myself to each emergency, after its kind or call, however trivial, , however solemn, every orje justified and made real under its cir- cumstances—not o&y m&M$.fJf$ffi8M talk and little S ifts_ c 2 SPECIMEN DA YS. not only washing and dressing wounds, (I have some cases where the patient is unwilling any one should do this but me)— but passages from the Bible, expounding them, prayer at the bed- side, explanations of doctrine, &c. (I think I see my friends smiling at this confession, but I was never more in earnest in my , life.) In camp and everywhere, I was in the habit of reading or giving recitations to the men. They were very fond of it, and liked declamatory poetical pieces. We would gather in a large group by ourselves, after supper, and spend the time in such readings, or in talking, and occasionally by an amusing game called the game of twenty questions. A NEW ARMY ORGANIZATION FIT FOR AMERICA. It is plain to me out of the events of the war, north and south, and out of all considerations, that the current military theory, practice, rules and organization, (adopted from Europe from the feudal institutes, with, of course, the "modern improvements," largely from the French,) though tacitly follow'd, and believ'd in by the officers generally, are not at all consonant with the United States, nor our people, nor our days. What it will be I know not-r-but I know that as entire an abnegation of the present military system, and the naval too, -and a building up from radi- cally different root-bases and centres appropriate to us, must eventually result, as that our political system has resulted and be- come establish'd, different from feudal Europe, and built up on itself from original, perennial, democratic premises. We have undoubtedly in the United States the greatest military power — an exhaustless, intelligent, brave and reliable rank and file — in the world, any land, perhaps all lands. The problem is to or- ganize this in the manner fully appropriate to it, to the princi- ples of the republic, and to get the best service out of it. In the present struggle, as already seen and review'd, probably three- fourths of the losses, men, lives, &c, have been sheer superfluity, extravagance, waste. DEATH OF A HERO. I wonder if I could ever convey to another — to you, for in- stance, reader dear — the tender and terrible realities of such cases, (many, many happen'd,) as the one I am now going to mention. Stewart C. Glover, company E, 5 th Wisconsin — was wounded May 5, in one of those fierce tussles of the Wilderness — died May 21 — aged about 20. He was a small and beardless young man — a splendid soldier — in fact almost an ideal Ameri- can, of his age. He had serv'd nearly three years, and would have been entitled to his discharge in a few days. He was in . Hancock's corps. Thj^tfjr^ha^out ceas'd for the day, SPECIMEN DA YS. 53 and the general commanding the brigade rode by and call' d for volunteers to bring in the wounded. Glover responded among the first — went out gayly — but while in4he act of bearing in a ■wounded sergeant to our lines, was shot in the knee by a rebel sharpshooter ; consequence, amputation and death. He had re- sided with his father, John Glover, an aged and feeble man, in Batavia, Genesee county, N. Y., but was at school in Wisconsin, after the war broke out, and there enlisted — soon took to soldier- life, liked it, was very manly, was belov'd by officers and com- rades. He kept a little diary, like so many of the soldiers. On the day of his death he wrote the following in it, to-day the doctor says I must die — all is over with me — ah, so young to die. On an- other blank leaf he pencill'd to his brother, dear brother Thomas, I have been brave but wicked— pray for me. HOSPITAL SCENES— INCIDENTS. It is Sunday afternoon, middle of summer, hot and oppressive, and very silent through the ward. I am taking care of a critical case, now lying in a half lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffer- ing rebel, from the 8th Louisiana ; his name is Irving. He has been here a long time, badly wounded, and lately had his leg amputated ; it is not doing very well. Right opposite me is a sick soldier-boy, laid down with his clothes on, sleeping, looking much wastedj his pallid face on his arm. I see by the yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. I step softly over and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st Maine cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan. Ice Cream Treat. — One hot day toward the middle of June, I ' gave the inmates of Carver hospital a general ice cream treat, purchasing a large quantity, and, under convoy of the doctor or head nurse, going around personally through the wards to see to its distribution. An Incident.— -In one of the fights before Atlanta, a rebel sol- dier, of large size, evidently a young man, was mortally wounded top of the head, so that the brains partially exuded. He lived three days, lying on his back on the spot where he first dropt. He dug with his heel in the ground during that time a hole big enough to put in a couple of ordinary knapsacks. He just lay there in the open air, and with little intermission kept his heel going night and day. Some of our soldiers then moved him to a house, but he died in a few minutes. Another.— After the battles at Columbia, Tennessee, where we repuls'd about a score of vehement rebel charges, they left a great many wounded on the ground, mostly within our range. Whenever any of the^^nd^ajjgra^ted to move away by any 54 SPECIMEN DA YS. s means, generally by crawling off, our men without exception brought them down by a bullet. They let none crawl away, no matter what his condition.. A YANKEE SOLDIER. As I turn'd off the Avenue one cool October evening into Thirteenth street, a soldier with knapsack and overcoat stood, at the corner inquiring his way. I found he wanted to go part of the road in my direction, so we walk'd on together. We soon fell into conversation. He was small and not very young, and a tough little fellow, as I judged in the evening light, catching glimpses by the lamps we pass'd. His answers were short, but clear. His name was Charles Carroll ; he belong'd to one of the Massachusetts regiments, and was born in or near Lynn. His parents were living, but were very old. There were four sons, and all had enlisted. Two had died of starvation and misery in the prison at Andersonville, and one had been kill'd in the west. He only was left. He was how going home, and by the way he talk'd I inferr'd that his time was nearly out. He made great calculations on being with his parents to comfort them the rest of their days, UNION PRISONERS SOUTH. Michael Stansbury, 48 years of age, a sea-faring' man, a south- erner by birth and raising, formerly captain of U. S. light ship Long Shoal, station'd at Long Shoal point, Pamlico sound — though a southerner, a firm Union man — was captur'd Feb. 17, 1863, and has been nearly two years in the Confederate prisons ; was at one time order'd releas'd by Governor Vance, but aTebel offi- cer re-arrested him; then sent on to Richmond for exchange — but instead of being exchanged was sent down (as a southern citizen, not a soldier,) to Salisbury, N. C, where he remain'd until lately, when he escap'd among the exchang'd by assuming the name of a dead soldier, and coming up via Wilmington with the rest. Was about sixteen months in Salisbury. Subsequent to October, '64, there were about 11,000 Union prisoners in the stockade; about 100 of them southern unionists, 200 U. S. de- serters. During the past winter 1500 of the prisoners, to save their lives, join'd the confederacy, on condition of being assign'd merely to guard duty. Out of the 11,000 not more than 2500 came out ; 500 of these were pitiable, helpless wretches — the rest were in a condition to travel. There were often 60 dead bodies to be buried in the morning ; the daily average would be about 40. The regular food was a meal of corn, the cob and husk ground together, and sometimes once a week a ration of sorghum molasses. A diminujke^r^ip^of jgat might possibly come SPECIMEN DA YS. 55 once a month 1 , not oftener. In the stockade, containing the ii.ooo men, there was a partial show of tents, not enough for 2000. A large proportion of the men lived in holes in the ground, in the utmost wretchedness. Some froze to death, others had their hands and feet frozen. The rebel guards would occa- sionally, and on the least pretence, fire into the prison from mere demonism and wantonness. All the horrors that can be named, starvation, lassitude, filth, vermin, despair, swift loss of self-respect, idiocy, insanity, and frequent murder, were there. Stansbury has a wife and child living in Newbern — has written to them from here — is in the U. S. light-house employ still — (had been home to Newbern to see his family, and on his return to the ship was captured in his boat.) Has seen men brought there to Salisbury as hearty as you ever see in your life — in a few weeks completely dead gone, much of it from thinking on their condition — hope all gone. Has himself a hard, sad, strangely deaden'd kind of look, as of one chill'd for years in the cold and dark, where his good manly nature had no room to exercise itself. DESERTERS. Oct. 24. — Saw a large squad of our own deserters, (over 300) surrounded with a cordon of arm'd guards, marching along Penn- sylvania avenue. The most motley collection I ever saw, all sorts of rig, all sorts of hats and caps, many fine-looking young fellows, some of them shame-faced, some sickly, most of them dirty, shirts very dirty and long worn, &c. _ They tramp'd along/ without order, a huge huddling mass, not in ranks. I saw somd of the spectators laughing, but I felt like anything else but laugh4 ing. These deserters are far more numerous than would bel thought. Almost every day I see squads of them, sometimes two or three at a time, with a small guard ; sometimes ten or twelve, under a larger one. (I hear that desertions from the army now in the field have often averaged 10,000 a month. One of the commonest sights in Washington is a squad of deserters.) A GLIMPSE OF WAR'S HELL-SCENES. In one of the late movements of our troops in the valley, (near Upperville, I think,) a strong force of Moseby's mounted gueril- las attack'd a train of wounded, and the guard of cavalry con- voying them. The ambulances contain' d about 60 wounded, quite a number of them officers of rank. The rebels were in strength, and the capture of the train and its partial guard after a short snap was effectually accomplish'd. No sooner had our men surrender'd, the rebels instantly commenced robbing the train and murdering tdvgtegri^aJiwasjsesfgn the wounded. Here is 5 6 SPECIMEN DA VS. the' scene or a sample of it, ten minutes after. Among the wounded officers in the ambulances were one, a lieutenant of regulars, and another of higher rank. These two were dragg'd out on the ground on their backs, and were now surrounded by the guerillas, a demoniac crowd, each member of which was stab- bing them in different parts of their bodies. One of the officers had his feet pinn'd firmly to the ground by bayonets stuck through them and thrust into the ground. These two officers, as after- wards found on examination, had receiv'd about twenty such thrusts, sqme of them through the mouth, face, &c. The wounded had all been dragg'd (to give a better chance also for plunder,) out of their wagons; some had been effectually dis- patch'd, and their bodies were lying there lifeless and bloody. Others, not yet dead, but horribly mutilated, were moaning or groaning. Of our men who surrender'd, most had been thus maim'd or slaughter'd. At this instant a force of our cavalry, who had been following the train at some interval, charged suddenly upon the secesh cap- tors, who proceeded at once to make the best escape they could. Most of them got away, but we gobbled two officers and seven- teen men, in the very acts just described. The sight was one which admitted of little discussion, as may be imagined. The seventeen captur'd men and two officers were put under guard for the night, but it was decided there and then that they should die. The next morning the two officers were taken in the town, separate places, put in the centre of the street, and shot. The .seventeen men were taken to an open ground, a little one side. They were placed in a hollow square, halfencompass'd by two of our cavalry regiments, one of which regiments had three days before found the bloody corpses of three of their men hamstrung and hung up by the heels to limbs of trees by Moseby's guerillas, and the other had not long before had twelve men, after surren- dering'shot and then hung by the neck to limbs of trees, and jeering inscriptions pinn'd to the breast of one of the corpses, who had been a sergeant. Those three, and those twelve, had been found, I say, by these environing regiments. Now, with revolvers, they form'd the grim cordon of the seventeen prison- ers. The latter were placed in the midst of the hollow square, unfasten'd, and the ironical remark made to them that they were now to be given "a chance for themselves." A few ran for it. But what use ? From every side the deadly pills came. In a few minutes the seventeen corpses strew'd the hollow square. I was curious to know whether some of the Union soldiers, some few (some one or two at least of the youngsters,) did not abstain from shooting on the helpless men. Not one. There was no Digitized by Microsoft® S'PECIMEN DA YS. 57 exultation, very little said, almost nothing, yet every man there contributed his shot. Multiply the above by scores, aye hundreds — verify it in all the forms that different circumstances, individuals, places, could afford — light it with every lurid passion, the wolf's, the lion's lapping thirst for blood — the passionate, boiling volcanoes of hu- man revenge for comrades, brothers slain — with the light of burn- ing farms, and heaps of smutting, smouldering black embers — and in the human heart everywhere black, worse embers— and you have an inkling of this war. GIFTS— MONEY— DISCRIMINATION. As a very large proportion of the wounded came up from the front without a cent of money in their pockets, I soon dis- covered that it was about the best thing I could do to raise their spirits, and show them that somebody cared for them, and practically felt a fatherly or brotherly interest in them, to give them small, sums in such cases, using tact and discretion about it. I am regularly supplied with funds for this purpose by good _ women and men in Boston, Salem, Providence, Brooklyn, and New York. I provide myself with a quantity of br.ight new ten- cent and five-cent bills, and, when I think it incumbent, I give 25 or 30 cents, or perhaps 50 cents, and occasionally a still larger sum to some particular case. As I have started this subject, I take opportunity to ventilate the financial question. My supplies, altogether voluntary, mostly confidential, often seeming quite Providential, were numerous and varied. For instance, there were two distant and wealthy ladies, sisters, who sent regularly, for two years, quite heavy sums, enjoining that their names should be kept secret. The same delicacy was indeed a frequent condi- tion. From several I had carte blanche. Many were entire strangers. From these sources, during from two to three years, in the manner described, in the hospitals, I bestowed, as almoner for others, many, many thousands of dollars. I learn'd one thing conclusively — that beneath all the ostensible greed and heartless- ness of our times there is no end to the generous benevolence of men and women in the United States, when once sure of their object. Another thing became clear to me — while cash is not amiss to bring up the rear, tact and magnetic sympathy and unc- tion are, and ever will be, sovereign still. ITEMS FROM MY NOTE BOOKS. Some of the half-eras'd, and not over-legible when made, mem- oranda of things wanted by one patient or another, will convey quite a fair idea. D. S. G., bed 52, wants a good book; has a sore, weak throat; woj^Jjk^ s^y^ehound candy; is from s g SPECIMEN DA VS. New Jersey, 28th regiment. C. H. L., 145th Pennsylvania, lies in bed 6, with jaundice and erysipelas; also wounded-; stomach easily nauseated ; bring him some oranges, also a little tart jelly ; hearty, full-blooded young fellow— (he got better in a few days, and is now home on a furlough.) J. H. G., bed 24, wants an undershirt, drawers, and socks ; has not had a change for quite a while ; is evidently a neat, clean boy from New England— (I supplied him ; also with a comb, tooth-brush, and some soap and towels ; I noticed afterward he was the cleanest of the whole ward.) Mrs. G., lady-nurse, ward F, wants a bottle of brandy — has two patients 1 imperatively requiring stimulus — low with wounds and exhaustion. (I supplied her with a bottle of first- rate brandy from the Christian commission rooms.) A CASE FROM SECOND BULL RUN. Well, poor John Mahay is dead. He died yesterday. His was a painful and long-lingering case, (see p. 30 ante?) I have been with him at times for the past fifteen months. He belonged, to company A, 101st New York, and was shot through the lower region of the abdomen at second Bull Run, August, '62. One Scene at his bedside will suffice for the agonies of nearly two years. The bladder had been perforated by a bullet going en- tirely through him. Not long since I sat a good part of the morn- ing by his bedside, ward E, Armory square. The water ran out of his eyes from the intense pain, and the muscles of his face were distorted, but he utter'd nothing except a low groan now and then. Hot moist cloths were applied, and reliev'd him some- what. Poor Mahay, a mere boy in age, but old in misfortune. He never knew the love of parents, was placed in infancy in one of the New York charitable institutions, and subsequently bound out to a tyrannical master in Sullivan county, (the scars of whose cowhide and club remain'd yet on his back.) His wound here was a most disagreeable one, for he was a gentle, cleanly, and af- fectionate boy. He found friends in his hospital life, and, indeed, was a universal favorite. He had quite a funeral ceremony. ARMY SURGEONS— AID DEFICIENCIES. I must bear my most emphatic testimony to the zeal, manli- ness, and professional spirit and capacity, generally prevailing among the surgeons, many of them young men, in the hospitals and the army. I will not say much about the exceptions, for they are few ; (but I have met some of those few, and very incompe- tent and airish they were.) I never ceas'd to find the best men, and the hardest and most disinterested workers, among the sur- geons in the hospitals. They are full of genius, too. I have seen many hundreds qf.^rn^a^thiys my testimony. There SPECIMEN DAYS. S9 are, however, serious deficiencies, wastes, sad want of system, in the commissions, contributions, and in all the voluntary, and .a great part of the governmental nursing, edibles, medicines, stores, &c. (I do not say surgical attendance, because the sur- geons cannot do more than human endurance permits.) What- ever puffing accounts there may be in the papers of the North, this is the actual fact. No thorough previous preparation, no system, no foresight, no genius. Always plenty of stores, no doubt, but never where they are needed, and never the proper application. Of all harrowing experiences, none is greater than that of the days following a heavy battle. Scores, hundreds of the noblest men on earth, uncomplaining, lie helpless, mangled, faint, alone, and so bleed to death, or die from exhaustion, either actually untouch'd at all, or merely the laying of them down and leaving them, when there ought to be means provided to save them. THE BLUE EVERYWHERE. This city, its suburbs, the capitol, the front of the White House, the places of amusement, the Avenue, and all the main streets, swarm with soldiers this winter, more than ever before. Some are out from the hospitals, some from the neighboring camps, &c. One source or another, they pour plenteously, and make, I should say, the mark'd feature in the human movement and costume-appearance of our national city. Their blue pants and overcoats are everywhere. The clump of crutches is heard up the stairs of the paymasters' offices, and there are character- istic groups around the doors of the same, often waiting long and wearily in the cold. Toward the latter part of the afternoon, you see the furlough'd men, sometimes singly, sometimes in small squads, making their way to the Baltimore depot. At all times, except early in the morning, the patrol detachments are moving around, especially during the earlier hours of evening, examining passes, and arresting all soldiers without them. They do not question the one-legged, or men badly disabled or maim'd, but all others are stopt. They also go around evenings through the auditoriums of the theatres, and make officers and all show their passes, or other authority, for being there. A MODEL HOSPITAL. Sunday, January 2gth, 1865.— Have been in Armory-square this afternoon. The wards are very comfortable, new floors and plaster walls, and models of neatness. I am not sure but this is a model hospital after all, in important respects. I found several sad cases of old lingering wounds. One Delaware soldier, William H. Millis, from Bridg^vUle^ wr^m I had' been with after the bat- 60 SPECIMEN VA YS. ties of the Wilderness, last May, where he receiv'd a very bad wound in the chest, with another in the left arm, and whose case was serious (pneumonia had set in) all last June and July, I now find well enough to do light duty. For three weeks at the time mention'd he just hovered between life and death. BOYS IN THE ARMY. As I walk'd home about sunset, I saw in Fourteenth street a very young soldier, thinly clad, standing near the house I was about to enter. I stppt a moment in front of the door and call'd him to me. I knew that an old Tennessee regiment, and also an Indiana regiment, were temporarily stopping in new barracks, near Fourteenth street. This boy I found belonged to the Ten- nessee regiment. But I could hardly believe he carried a musket. He was but 15 years old, yet had been twelve months a soldier, and had borne his part in several battles, even historic ones. I ask'd him if he did not suffer from the cold, and if he had no overcoat. No, he did not suffer from cold, and had no overcoat, but could draw one whenever he wish'd. His father was dead, and his mother living in some part of East Tennessee ; all tbe men were from that part of the country. The next forenoon I saw the Tennessee and Indiana regiments marching down the Avenue. My boy was with the former, stepping along with the rest. There, were many other boys no older. I stood and watch'd them as they tramp'd along with slow, strong, heavy, regular steps. There did not appear to be a man over 30 years of age, and a large proportion were from 15 to perhaps 22 or 23. They. had all the look of veterans, worn, stain'd, impassive, and a cer- tain unbent, lounging gait, carrying in addition to their regular arms and knapsacks, frequently a frying-pan, broom, &c. They were all of pleasant physiognomy ; no refinement, nor blanch'd with intellect, but as my eye pick'd them, moving along, rank by rank, there did not seem to be a single repulsive, brutal or markedly stupid face among them. BURIAL OF A LADY NURSE. Here is an incident just occurr'd in one of the hospitals. A lady named Miss or Mrs. Billings, who has long been a practical friend of soldiers, and nurse in the army, and had become at- tached to it in a way that no one can realize but him or her who has had experience, was taken sick, early this winter, lihger'd some time, and finally died in the hospital. It was her request that she should be buried among the soldiers, and after the mili- tary method. This request was fully carried out. Her coffin was carried to the grave by soldiers, with the usual escort, buried, Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA VS. 6 1 and a salute fired over the grave. This was at Annapolis a few days since. FEMALE NURSES FOR SOLDIERS. There are many women in one position or another, among the hospitals, mostly as nurses here in Washington, and among the military stations ; quite a number of them young ladies acting as volunteers. They are a help in certain ways, and deserve to be mention'd with respect. Then it remains to be distinctly said that few or no young ladies, under the irresistible conventions of society, answer the practical requirements of nurses for soldiers. Middle-aged or healthy and good condition'd elderly women, mothers of children, are always best. Many of the wounded must be handled. A hundred things which cannot be gainsay'd, must occur and must be done. The presence of a good middle- aged or elderly woman, the magnetic touch of hands, the ex- pressive features of the mother, the silent soothing of her pres- ence, her words, her knowledge and privileges arrived at only through having had children, are precious and final qualifications. It is a natural faculty that is required ; it is not merely having a genteel young woman at a table in a ward. One of the finest nurses I met was a red-faced illiterate old Irish woman ; I have seen her take the poor wasted naked boys so tenderly up in her arms. There are plenty of excellent clean old black women that would make tip-top nurses. SOUTHERN ESCAPEES. Feb. 23, '65. — I saw a large procession of young men from the rebel army, (deserters they are call'd, but the usual meaning of the word does not apply to them,) passing the Avenue to-day. There were nearly 200, come up yesterday by boat from James river. I stood and watch' d them as they shuffled along, in a slow, tired, worn sort of way; a large proportion of light-hair'd, blonde, light gray-eyed young men among them. Their costumes had a dirt-stain'd uniformity; most had been originally gray; some had articles of our uniform, pants on one, vest or coat on ' another.; I think they were mostly Georgia and North Carolina boys. They excited little or no attention. As I stood quite close to them, several good looking enough youths, (but O what a tale of misery their appearance toldj) nodded or just spoke to me, without doubt divining pity and fatherliness out of my face, for my heart was full enough of it. Several of the couples trudg'd along with their arms about each other, some probably brothers, as if they were afraid they might somehow get separated. They nearly all look'd what one might call simple, yet intelligent, too. Some had pieces of old carpet, some blankets, and others old Digitized by Microsoft® g 2 SPECIMEN DA YS. bags around their shoulders. Some of them here and there had fine faces, still it was a procession of misery. The two hundred had with them about half a dozen arm'd guards. Along this week I saw some such procession, more or less in numbers, every day, as they were brought up by the boat. The government does what it can for them, and sends them north and west. Feb. 27.— Some three or four hundred more escapees from the confederate army came up on the boat. As the day has been very pleasant indeed, (after a long spell of bad weather,) I have been wandering around a good deal, without any other object than to be out-doors and enjoy it ; have met these escaped men in all directions. Their apparel is the same ragged, long-worn motley as before described. I talk'd with a number of the men. Some are quite bright and stylish, for all their poor clothes- walking with an air, wearing their old head-coverings on one side, quite saucily. I find the old, unquestionable proofs, as all along the past four years, of the unscrupulous tyranny exercised by the secession government in conscripting the common people by absolute force everywhere, and paying no attention whatever to the men's time being up— keeping them in military service just the same. One gigantic young fellow, a Georgian, at least six feet three inches high, broad-sized in proportion, attired in the dirtiest, drab, well-smear'd rags, tied with strings, his trou- sers at the knees all strips and streamers, was complacently stand- ing eating some bread and meat. He appear'd contented enough. Then a few minutes after I saw him slowly walking along. It was plain he did not take anything to heart. Feb. 28. — As I pass'd the military headquarters of the city, not far from the President's house, I stopt to interview some of the crowd of escapees who were lounging there. In appearance they were the same as previously mention'd. Two of them, one about 17, and the other perhaps 25 or '6, 1 talk'd with some time. They were from North Carolina, born and rais'd there, and had folks there. The elder had been in the rebel service four years. He was first conscripted for two years. He was then kept arbi- trarily in the ranks. This is the case with a large proportion of the secession army. There was nothing downcast in these young men's manners; the younger had been soldiering about a year; he was conscripted.; there were six brothers (all the boys of the family) in the army, part of them as conscripts, part as volunteers ; three had been kill'd ; one had escaped about four months ago, and now this one had got away ; he was a pleasant and well-talking lad, with the peculiar North Carolina idiom (not at all disagreeable to my ears.) He and the elder one were of the same company, and escaped together — and wish'd to remain Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA YS. 63 together. They thought of getting transportation away to Mis- souri,' and working there ; but were not sure it was judicious. I advised them rather to go to some of the directly northern States, and get farm work for the present. The younger had made six dollars on the boat, with some tobacco he brought ; he had three and a half left. The elder had nothing ; I gave him a trifle. Soon after, met John Wormley, 9th Alabama, a West Tennessee rais'd boy, parents both dead — had the look of one for a long time on short allowance — said very little — chew'd to- bacco at a fearful rate, spitting in proportion — large clear dark- brown eyes, very fine — didn't know what to make of me — told me at last he wanted much to get some clean underclothes, and a pair of decent pants. Didn't care about coat or hat fixings. 'Wanted a chance to wash himself well, and put on the under- clothes. I had the very great pleasure of helping him to accom- plish all those wholesome designs. March 1st. — Plenty more butternut or clay-color' d escapees everyday. About 160 came in to-day, a large portion South Carolinians. They generally take the oath of allegiance, and-arq sent north, west, or extreme south-west if they wish. Several of them told me that the desertions in their army, of men going home, leave or no leave, are far more numerous than their deser- tions to our side. I saw a very forlorn looking squad of about a. hundred, late this afternoon, on their way to the Baltimore depot. THE CAPITOL BY GAS-LIGHT. To-night I have been wandering awhile in the capitol, which is all lit up. The illuminated rotunda looks fine. I like to stand aside and look a long, long while, up at the ddme; it com- forts me somehow. The House and Senate were both in session till very late. I look'd in upon them, but only a few moments; they were hard at work on tax and appropriation bills. I wan- der'd through the long and rich corridors and apartments under the Senate ; an old habit of mine, former winters, and now more satisfaction than ever. Not many persons down there, occasion- ( ally a flitting figure in the distance. , THE INAUGURATION. March 4.— The President very quietly rode down to the capi- tol in his own carriage, by himself, on a sharp trot, about noon, either because he wish'd to be on hand to sign bills, or to get rid of marching in line with the absurd procession, the muslin -temple of liberty, and pasteboard, monitor. I saw him on his return, at three o'clock, after the performance was over. He was in.his plain two-^&glfll&feJffi 1 look ' d very muchwom 64 SPECIMEN DA YS. ,*^ and tired ; the lines, indeed, of-vast responsibilities, intricate questions, and demands of life and death, cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face ; yet all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness, and canny shrewdness, underneath the furrows. (I never see that man without feeling that he is one to become personally attach'd to, for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and native western form of manliness.) By his side sat his little boy, of ten years. There were no soldiers, only a lot of civilians on horseback, with huge yellow scarfs over their shoulders, riding around the carriage. (At the inauguration four years ago, he rode down and back again surrounded by a dense mass of arm'd cavalrymen eight deep, with c!rawn sabres ; and there were sharp- shooters station 'd at every corner on the route.) I ought -to make mention of the closing levee of Saturday night last. Never before was such a compact jam in front of the White House — all the grounds fill'd, and away out to the spacious sidewalks. I was there, as I took a notion to go — was in the rush inside with the crowd — surged along the passage-ways, the blue and other rooms, and through the great east room. Crowds of country people, some very funny. Fine music from the Marine band, off in a side place. I saw Mr. Lincoln, drest all in black, with white kid gloves and a claw-hammer coat, receiving, as in duty bound, shaking hands, looking very disconsolate, and as if he would give anything to be somewhere else. ATTITUDE OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS DURING THE WAR. Looking over my scraps, I find I wrote the following during 1864. The happening to our America, abroad as well as at home, these years, is indeed most strange. The democratic republic has paid her to-day the terrible and resplendent compliment of the united wish of all the nations of the world that her union should be broken, her future cut off, and that she should be com- pell'd to descend to the level of kingdoms and empires ordinarily great. There is certainly not one government in Europe but is now watching the war in this country, with the ardent prayer that the United States may be effectually split, crippled, and dis- member'd by it. There is not one butswould help toward that dismemberment, if it dared. I say such is the ardent wish to-day of England and of France, as governments, and of all the nations of Europe, as governments. t I think indeed it is to-day the real, heartfelt wish of all the nations of the world, with the single ex- ception of Mexico — Mexico, the only one to whom we have ever really done wrong, and now the only one who prays for us and for our triumph, with genuine prayer. Is it not indeed strange? America, made up of all, cheerfully from the beginning opening Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA YS. fi- ber arms to all, the result and justifier of all, of Britain, Ger- many, France and Spain— all here— the accepter, the friend, hope, last resource and general house of all— she who has harm'd none, but been bounteous to so many, to millions, the mother of strangers and exiles, all nations — should now I say be paid this dread compliment of general governmental fear and hatred. Are we indignant? alarm'd? ,Do we feel jeopardized? No; help'd, braced, concentrated, rather. We are all too prone to wander from ourselves, to affect Europe, and watch her frowns and smiles. We need this hot lesson of general hatred, and henceforth must never forget it. Never again will we trust the moral sense nor abstract friendliness of a single government of the old world. THE WEATHER.— DOES IT SYMPATHIZE WITH THESE TIMES? Whether the rains, the heat and cold, and what underlies them all, are affected with what affects man in masses, and follow his play of passionate action, strain'd stronger than usual, and on a larger scale than usual — whether this, or no, it is certain that there is now, and has been for twenty months or more, on this American continent north, many a remarkable, many an unpre- cedented expression of the subtile world of air above us and around us. There, since this war, and the wide and deep na- tional agitation, strange analogies, different combinations, a dif- ferent sunlight, or absence of it ; different products even out of the ground. After every great battle, a great storm. Even civic events the same. On Saturday last, a forenoon like whirling demons, dark, with slanting rain, full of rage ; and then the after- noon, so calm, so bathed with flooding splendor from heaven's most excellent sun, with atmosphere of sweetness; so clear, it show'd the stars, long, long before they were due. As the Presi- dent came out on the capitol portico, a curious little white cloud, the only one in that part of the sky, appear'd like a hovering bird, right over him. Indeed, the heavens, the elements, all the meteorological in- fluences, have run riot for weeks past. Such caprices, abruptest alternation of frowns and beauty, I never knew. It is a common remark that (as last summer was different in its spells of intense heat from any preceding it,) the winter just completed has been ^without parallel. It has remain'd so down to the hour I am writing. Much of the daytime of the past month was sulky, with leaden heaviness, fog, interstices of bitter cold, and some insane storms. But there have been samples of another description. Nor earth nor sky ever knew spectacles of superber beauty than some of the nights lately here. The western star, Venus, in the earlier hours of eveningjghfaedttfVBfcribeeas) so large, so clear ; it 66 SPECIMEN DA YS. seems as if it told something, as if it held rapport indulgent with humanity, with us Americans. Five or six nights since, it hung close by the moon, then a little past its first quarter. The star was wonderful, the moon like a young mother. The sky, dark blue, the transparent night, the planets, the moderate west wind, the elastic temperature, the miracle of that great star, and the young and swelling moon swimming in the west, suffused the soul. Then I heard, slow and clear, the deliberate notes of a bugle come up out of the silence, sounding so good through the night's mystery, no hurry, but firm and faithful, floating along, rising, falling leisurely, with here and there a long-drawn note ; the bugle, well play'd, sounding tattoo, in one of the army hos- pitals near here, where the wounded (some of them personally so dear to me,) are lying in their cots, and many a sick boy come down to the war from Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the rest. INAUGURATION BALL. March 6. — I have been up to look at the dance and supper- rooms, for the inauguration ball at the Patent office; and I could not help thinking, what a different scene they presented to my view a while since, fill'd with a crowded mass of the worst wounded of the war, brought in from second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburgh. To-night, beautiful women, perfumes, the violins' sweetness, the polka and the waltz; then the amputation, the blue face, the groan, the glassy eye of the dying, the clotted rag, the odor of wounds and blood, and many a mother's son amid strangers, passing away untended there, (for the crowd of the badly hurt was great, and much for nurse to do, and much for surgeon.) SCENE AT THE CAPITOL. I must mention a strange scene at the capital, the hall of Rep- resentatives, the morning of Saturday last, (March 4th.) The day just dawn'd, but in half-darkness, everything dim, leaden, and soaking. In that dim light, the members nervous from long drawn duty, exhausted, some asleep, and many half asleep. The gas-light, mix'd with the dingy day-break, produced an un- earthly effect. . The poor little sleepy, stumbling pages, the smell of the hall, the members with heads leaning on their desks, the sounds of the voices speaking, with unusual intonations — the general moral atmosphere also of the close of this important ses- sion — the strong hope that the war is approaching its close — the tantalizing dread lest the hope may be a false one — the grandeur of the hall itself, with its effect of vast shadows up toward the panels and spaces over the galleries — all made a mark'd combi- nation. Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA YS. 67 In the midst of this, with the suddenness of a thunderbolt, burst one of the most angry and crashing storms of rain and hail ever heard. It beat like a deluge on the heavy glass roof of the hall, and the wind literally howl'd and roar'd. For a moment, (and no wonder,) the nervous and sleeping Representatives were thrown into confusion. The slumberers awaked with fear, some started for the doors, some look'd up with blanch'd cheeks and lips to the roof, and the little pages began to cry ; it was a scene. ■But it was over almost as soon as the drowsied men were actually awake. They recover'd themselves ; the storm raged on, beat- ing,- dashing, and with loud noises at times. But the House went ahead with its business then, I think, as calmly and with as much deliberation as at any time in its career. Perhaps the shock did it good. (One is not without impression, after all, amid these members of Congress, of both the Houses, that if the flat routine of their duties should ever be broken in upon by some great emergency involving real danger, and calling for first-class per- sonal qualities, those qualities would be found generally forth- coming, and from men not now credited with them.) , A YANKEE ANTIQUE. March 27, 1865. — Sergeant Calvin F. Harlowe, company C, 29th- Massachusetts, 3d brigade, 1st division, Ninth corps — a mark'd sample of heroism and death, (some may say bravado, but I say heroism, of grandest, oldest order) — in the late attack by the rebel troops, and temporary capture by them, of fort Steadman, at night. The fort was surprised at dead of night. Suddenly awaken 'd from their sleep, and rushing from their tents* Harlowe, with others, found himself in the hands of the secesh — they demanded his surrender — he answer'd, Never while I live. (Of course it was useless. The others surrender'd; the odds were too great.) Again he was ask'd to yield, this time by a rebel captain. Though surrounded, and quite calm, he again refused, call'd sternly to his comrades to fight, on, and himself attempted to do so. The rebel captain then shot him — but at the same instant he shot the captain. Both fell together mor- tally wounded. Harlowe died almost instantly. The rebels were driven out in a very short time. The body was buried next day, but soon taken up and sent home, (Plymouth county, Mass.) Harlowe was only 22 years of age — was a tall, slim, dark-hair'd, bluereyed young man — had come out originally with the 29th ; and that is the way he met his death, after four years' campaign. He was in the Seven Days fight before Richmond, in second Bull Run, Antietam, first Fredericksburgh, Vicksburgh, Jackson, Wil- derness, and the campg^n&foj^iftgo^as as good a soldier as 68 SPECIMEN DA YS. ever wore the blue, and every old officer in the regiment will bear that testimony. Though so young, and in a common rank, he had a spirit as resolute and brave asany hero in the books, an- cient or modern — It was too great to say the words "I surren- der " — and so he died. (When I think of such things, knowing them well, all the vast and complicated events of the war, on which history dwells and makes its volumes, fall aside, and for the moment at any rate I see nothing but young Calvin Har- lowe's figure in the night, disdaining to surrender.) WOUNDS AND DISEASES. . The war is over, but the hospitals are fuller than ever, from former and current cases. A large majority of the wounds are ' in the arms and legs. But there is every kind of wound, in every part of the body. I should say of the sick, from my observa- tion, that the prevailing maladies are typhoid fever and the camp fevers generally, diarrhoea, catarrhal affections and bronchitis, rheumatism and pneumonia. These forms of sickness lead; all the rest follow. There are twice as many sick as there are wounded. The deaths range from seven to ten per cent, of those under trG3.troGnt DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. April 16, \6j. — I find in my notes of the time, this passage on the death of Abraham Lincoln : He leaves for America's history and biography, so far, riot only its most dramatic reminiscence — he leaves, in my opinion, the greatest, best, most characteristic, artistic, moral personality. Not but that he had faults, and show'd them in the Presidency; but honesty, goodness, shrewd- ness, conscience, and (a new virtue, unknown to other lands, and hardly yet really known here, but the foundation and tie of all, as the future will grandly develop,) Unionism, in its truest and amplest sense, form'd the hard-pan of his character. These he seal'd with his life. The tragic splendor of his death, purging, illuminating all, throws round his form, his head, an aureole that will remain and will grow brighter through time, while history lives, and love of country lasts. By many has this Union been help'd ; but if one name, one man, must be pick'd out, he, most of all, is the conservator of it, to the future. He was assassi- nated — but the Union is not assassinated — ga ira ! One falls, and another falls. The soldier drops, sinks like a wave — but the ranks of the ocean eternally press on. Death does its work, ob- * In the U. S. Surgeon-General's office since, there is a formal record and treatment of 253,142 cases of wounds by government surgeons. What must have been the number unofficial, indirect—to say nothing of the Southern Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA VS. g literates a hundred, a thousand— President, general, captain, pri- vate — but the Nation is immortal. w SHERMAN'S ARMY'S JUBILATION— ITS SUDDEN STOPPAGE. When Sherman's armies, (long after they left Atlanta,) were marching through South and North Carolina — after leaving Sa- vannah, the news of Lee's capitulation having been receiv'd — the men never mov'd a mile without from some part of the line sending up" continued, inspiriting shouts. At intervals all day- long sounded out the wild music of those peculiar army cries. They would be commenc'd by one regiment or brigade, imme- diately taken up by others, and at length whole corps and armies would join in these wild triumphant choruses. It was one of the characteristic expressions of the western troops, and became a habit, serving as a relief and outlet to the men — a vent for their feelings of victory, returning peace, &c. Morning, noon, and afternoon, spontaneous, for occasion or without occasion, these huge, strange cries, differing from any other, echoing through, the open air for many a mile, expressing youth, joy, wildness, ' irrepressible strength, and the ideas of advance and conquest, sounded along the swamps and uplands of the South, floating to the skies. (' There never were men that kept in better spirits in danger or defeat — what then could they do in victory ?' — said one of the 15th corps to me, afterwards.) This exuberance con- tinued till the armies arrived at Raleigh. There the news of the President's murder was receiv'd. Then no more shouts or yells, for a week. . All the marching was comparatively muffled. It was very significant — hardly a loud word or laugh in many of the regiments. A hush and silence pervaded all. ~ NO GOOD PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN. Probably the reader has seen physiognomies (often old farmers, sea-captains, and such) that, behind their homeliness, or even ugliness, held superior points so subtle, yet so palpable, making the real life of their faces almost as impossible to depict as a wild perfume or fruit-taste, or a passionate tone of the living voice — and such was Lincoln's face, the peculiar color, the lines of it, the eyes, mouth, expression. Of technical beauty it had noth- , ing — but to the eye of a great artist it furnished a rare study, a feast and fascination. The current portraits are all failures^ most of them caricatures. RELEAS'D UNION PRISONERS FROM SOUTH. The releas'd prisoners of war are now coming up from the southern prisons. I have seen a number of them. The sight is worse than any sight pf b^^eggej^^^g^^collection of wounded, 70 SPECIMEN DA VS. even the bloodiest. There was, (as a sample,) one large boat load; of several hundreds, brought about the 25 th, to Annapo- lis ; and out of the whole number only three individuals were able to walk from the boat. The rest were carried ashore and laid down in one place or another. Can those be men — those little livid brown, ash-streak'd, monkey-looting dwarfs? — are they really not mummied, dwindled corpses ? They lay there, most of them, quite still, but with a horrible look in their eyes and skinny lips (often with not enough flesh on the lips, to cover their teeth.) Probably no more appalling sight was ever seen on this earth. (There are deeds^ crimes, that may be forgiven ; but this is not among them. It steeps its perpetrators in blackest, escapeless, endless damnation. Over 50,000 have been compell'd to die the death of starvation — reader, did you ever try to realize what starvation actually is ? — in those prisons — and in a land of plenty.) An indescribable meanness, tyranny, aggravating" course of insults, almost incredible — was evidently the rule of , treatment through all the southern military prisons. The dead there are not to be pitied as much as some of the living that come from there — if they can be call'd living — many of them are men- tally imbecile, and will never recuperate.* * From a review of " Andersonville, A Story of Southern Military Prisons," published, serially in the " Toledo Blade," in 1&7Q, and afterwards in book form. " There is a deep fascination in the subject of Andersonville — for that Gol- gotha, in which lie the whitening bones of 13,000 gallant young men, repre- sents the dearest and costliest sacrifice of the war for the preservation of our national unity. It is a type, too, of its class. Its more than hundred heca- tombs of dead represent several times that number of their brethren, for whom the prison gates of Belle Isle, Danville, Salisbury, Florence, Columbia, and Cahaba open'd only in eternity. There are few families in the North who have not at least one dear relative or friend among these 60,000 whose sad fortune it was to end their service for the Union by lying down and dying for it in a southern prison pen. The manner of their death, the horrors that cluster'd thickly around every moment of their existence, the loyaljjjniajtei- ing steadfastness with which they endured all that fate had brought them, has never beeh"a3equately told. It was not with them as with their comrades in the field, whose every act was perform'd in the presence of those whose duty it was to observe such matters and report them to the world. Hidden from the view of their friends in the north by the impenetrable veil which the mili- tary operations of the rebels drew around the so-called confederacy, the people knew next to nothing of their career or their sufferings. Thousands died there less heeded even than the hundreds who perish'd on the battle-field. Grant did not lose as many men kill'd outright, in the terrible campaign from the Wil- derness to the James river — 43 days of desperate fighting — as died in July aqd August at Andersonville. Nearly twice as many died in that prison as fell from the day that Grant cross'd the Rapidan, till he settled down in the trenches before Petersburg. More than four times as many Union dead lie under the solemn soughing pines about that forlorri little village in southern Georgia, than mark the course, of Sherman from Chattanooga to Atlanta. The Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA YS. 7 x DEATH OF A PENNSYLVANIA SOLDIER. Frank H. Irwin, company E, pjd Pennsylvania — died May i, '6j — My letter to his mother. — Dear madam : No doubt you and Frank's friends have heard the sad fact of his death in hospital- here, through his uncle, or the lady from Baltimore, who took his things. (I have not seem them, only heard of them visiting Frank.) I will write you a few lines— as a casual friend that sat by his death-bed. Your son, corporal Frank H. Irwin, was wounded near fort Fisher, Virginia, March 25th, 1865 — the wound was in the left knee, pretty bad. He was sent up to Washing- ton, was receiv'd in ward C, Armory-square hospital, March 28th — the wound became worse, and on the 4th of April the leg was amputated a little above the knee — the operation was perform'd by Dr. Bliss, one of the best surgeons in the army — he did the whole operation himself — there was a good deal of bad matter gather'd — the bullet was found in the knee. For a couple of weeks afterwards he was doing pretty well. I visited and sat by him frequently, as he was fond of having me. The last ten or illation stands aghast at the expenditure of life which attended the two bloody campaigns of 1864, which virtually crush'd the confederacy, but no one re- members that more Union soldiers died in the rear of the rebel lines than were kill'd in the front of them. The great military events which stamp'd,; out the rebellion drew attention away from the s ad drama which starvation ' and disease play 'd in those gloomy pens in the far recesses of sombre southern forests." ^ From a letter of " jfohnny Bouquet" in N. V. Tribune, March 27, '8r. , ■ t' I visited at Salisbury, N. C, the prison pen or the site of it, from which nearly 12,000 victims of southern politicians were buried, being confined in a pen without shelter, exposed to all the elements could do, to all the disease herding animals together could create, and to all the starvation and cruelty an ' incompetent, and intense caitiff government could accomplish. From the con- versation and almost from the recollection of the northern people this place has dropp'd, but not so in the gossip of the Salisbury people, nearly- all of whom say that the half was never told ; that such was the nature of habitual outrage here that when Federal prisoners escaped the townspeople harbor'd them in their barns, afraid the vengeance of God would fall on them, to de- liver even their enemies back to such cruelty. Said one old man at the Boy- den House, who join'd in the conversation one evening : ' There were often "men buried out of that prison pen still alive. I have the testimony of a sur- geon that he has seen them pull'd out of the dead cart with their eyes open and taking notice, but too weak to lift a finger. There was not the least ex- cuse for such treatment, as the confederate government had seized every saw- mill in the region, and could just as well have put up shelter for these pris- oners as not, wood being plentiful here. It will be hard to make any honest man in Salisbury say that there was the slightest necessity for those prisoners having to live in old tents, caves and holes half-full of water. Representa- tions were made to the Davis government against the officers in charge of it, but no attention was paid to them. Promotion was the punishment for cruelty there. The inmates were skeletons. Hell could have no terrors for any man who died there, except 1 72 SPECIMEN DA YS. twelve days of April I saw that his case was critical. He pre- viously had some fever, with cold spells. The last week in April he was much of the time nighty — but always mild and gentle. He died first of May. The actual cause of death was pyaemia, (the absorption of the matter in the system instead of its dis- charge. ) Frank, as far as I saw, had everything requisite in sur- gical treatment, nursing, &c. He had watches much of the time. He was so good and well-behaved and affectionate, I myself liked him very much. I was in the habit of coming in afternoons and sitting by him, and soothing him, and he liked to have me — liked to put his arm out and lay his hand on my knee — would keep it so a long while. Toward the last he was more restless and flighty at night — often fancied himself with his regiment — by his talk sometimes seem'd as if his feelings were hurt by being blamed by his officers for Something he was entirely innocent of — said, "I never in my life was thought capable of such a thing, and never was." At other times he would fancy himself talking as it seem'd to children or such like, his relatives I suppose, and giving them good advice ; would talk to them a long while. All the time he was out of his head not one single bad word or idea escaped him. It was remark'd that many a man's conversation in his senses was not half as good as Frank's delirium. He seem'd quite willing to die — he had become very weak and had suffer'd a good deal, and was perfectly resign'd, poor boy. I do not know his past life, but I feel as if it must have been good. At any rate what I saw of him here, under the most trying circumstances, with a painful wound, and among strangers, I can say that he be- haved so brave, so composed, and so sweet and affectionate, it could not be surpass'd. And now like many other noble and good men, after serving his country as a soldier, he has yielded up his young life at the very outset in her service. Such.things are gloomy — yet there is a text, " God doeth all things well " — the meaning of which, after due time, appears to the soul. I thought perhaps a few words, though from a stranger, about your son, from one who was with him at the last, might be worth while — for I loved the young man, though I but saw him imme- diately to lose him. I am merely a friend visiting the hospitals occasionally to cheer the wounded and sick. W. W. THE ARMJES RETURNING, May 7. — Sunday. — To-day as I was walking a mile or two south of Alexandria, I fell in with several large squads of the returning Western army, {Sherman! s men as they call'd themselves) about a thousand in a}l, the largest portion of them half sick, some convalescents, on their^w^^a ta^camp. These fragmer,- SPECIMEN DA YS. y 3 tary excerpts, with the unmistakable Western physiognomy and idioms, crawling along slowly — after a great campaign, blown this way, as it were, out of their latitude — I mark'd with curi- osity, and talk'd with off and on for over an hour. Here and there was one very sick ; but all were able to walk, except some of the last, who had given out, and were seated on the ground, faint and despondent. These I tried to cheer, told them the camp they were to reach was only a little way further over the hill, and so got them up and started, accompanying some of the worst a little way, and helping them, or putting them under the support of, stronger comrades. May 21. — Saw General Sheridan and his cavalry to-day ; a strong, attractive sight ; the men were mostly young, (a few mid- dle-aged,) superb-looking fellows, brown, spare, keen, with well- worn clothing, many with pieces of water-proof cloth around their shoulders, hanging down. They dash'd along pretty fast, in wide close ranks, all spatter'd with mud ; no holiday soldiers ; brigade after brigade. I could have watch'd for a week. Sheri- dan stood on a balcony, under a big tree, coolly smoking a cigar. His looks and manner impress'd me favorably. May 22. — Have been taking a walk along Pennsylvania avenue and Seventh street north. The city is full of soldiers, running around loose. Officers everywhere, of all grades. All have the weather-beaten look of practical service. It is a sight I never tire of. All the armies are now here (or portions of them,) for to-morrow's review. You see them swarming like bees every- where. THE GRAND REVIEW. For two days now the broad spaces of Pennsylvania avenue along to Treasury hill, and so by detour around to the Presi- dent's house, and so up to Georgetown, and across the aque- duct bridge, have been alive with a magnificent sight, the return- ing armies. In their wide ranks stretching- clear across the Avenue, I watch them march or ride along, at a brisk pace, through two whole days — infantry, cavalry, artillery — some 200,- 000 men. Some days afterwards one or two other corps ; and^ then, still afterwards, a good part of Sherman's immense army," brought up from Charleston, Savannah, &c. WESTERN SOLDIERS. May 26-7. — The streets, the public buildings and grounds of Washington, still swarm with soldiers from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, and all the Western States. I am contin- ually meeting and talking with them. They often speak to me first, and always show gjz^fr/g^iatrii&ife<#®d g lac * t0 nave 3 g°°d- 7 74 SPECIMEN DA YS. interchange of chat. These Western soldiers are more slow in their movements, and in their intellectual quality also ; have no extreme alertness. They are larger in size, have a more serious physiognomy, are continually looking at you as they pass in the Street. They are largely animal, and handsomely so. During the war I have been at times with the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Twentieth Corps. I always feel drawn toward the men, and like their personal contact when we are crowded close together, as frequently these days in the street-cars. They all'think the world of General Sherman ; call him " old Bill," or sometimes "uncle Billy." A SOLDIER ON LINCOLN. May 28. — As I sat by the bedside of a sick Michigan soldier in hospital to-day, a convalescent from the adjoining bed rose and came to me, and presently we began talking, He was a middle-aged man, belonged to the 2d Virginia regiment, but lived in Racine, Ohio, and had a family there. He spoke of President Lincoln, and said : "The war is over, and many are lost. And now we have lost the best, the fairest, the truest man in America. Take him altogether, he was the best man this country ever produced. It was quite a while I thought very dif- ferent ; but some time before the murder, that's the way I have seen it." There was deep earnestness in the soldier. (I found upon further talk he had known Mr. Lincoln personally, and quite closely, years before.) He was a veteran ; was now in the fifth year of his service ; was a cavalry man, and had been in a good deal of hard fighting. TWO BROTHERS, ONE SOUTH, ONE NORTH. May 28-g. — I staid to-night a long time by the bedside of a new patient, a young Baltimorean, aged about 19 years, W. S. P., (2d Maryland, southern,) very feeble, right leg amputated, can't sleep hardly at all — has taken a great deal of morphine, which, as usual, is costing more than it comes to. v Evidently very in- telligent and well bred — very affectionate — held on to my hand, and put it by his face, not willing to let me leave. As I was lingering, soothing him in his pain, he says to me suddenly, "I hardly think you know who I am — I don't wish to impose upon I you — I am a rebel soldier. ' ' I said I did not know that, but it made no difference. Visiting him daily for about two weeks after that, while he lived, (death had mark'd him, and he was quite alone,) I loved him much, always kiss'd him, and he did me. In an ad- joining ward I found his brother, an officer of rank, a Union sol- dier, a brave and reli^pgj^^ggj^lifton K. Prentiss, sixth SPECIMEN DA VS. 7 j Maryland infantry, Sixth corps, wounded in one of the engage- ments at Petersburgh, April 2 — linger'd, suffer'd much, died in Brooklyn, Aug. 20, '65.) It was in the same battle both were hit. One was a strong Unionist, the other Secesh ; both fought on their respective sides, both badly wounded, and both brought together here after a separation of four years. Each died for his cause. SOME SAD CASES YET. May 31. — James H. Williams, aged 21, 3d Virginia cavalry. — About as mark'd a case of a strong man brought low by a com- plication of diseases, (laryngitis, fever, debility and diarrhoea,) as I have ever seen — has superb physique, remains swarthy yet, and flushed and red with fever — is altogether flighty — flesh of his great breast and arms tremulous, and pulse pounding away with treble quickness — lies a good deal of the time in a partial sleep, 'but with low muttering and groans — a sleep in which there is no rest. Powerful as he is, and so young, he will not be able to stand many more days of the strain and sapping heat of yesterday and to-day. His throat is in a bad way, tongue and lips parch'd. When I ask him how he feels, he is able just to articulate, " I feel pretty bad yet, old man," and looks at me with his great bright eyes. Father, John Williams, Millensport, Ohio. June 9-10. — I have been sitting late to-night by the bedside of a wounded captain, a special friend of mine, lying with a painful fracture of left leg in one of the hospitals, in a large ward par- tially vacant. The lights were put out, all but a little candle, far from where I sat. The full moon shone in through the windows, making long, slanting silvery patches on the floor. All was still, my friend too was silent, but could not sleep ; so I sat there by him, slowly wafting the fan, and occupied with the /husings that arose out of the scene, the long shadowy ward, the beautiful ghostly moonlight en the floor, the white beds, here and there an occupant with huddled form, the bed-clothes thrown off. The hospitals have a number of cases of sun-stroke and exhaustion by heat, from the late reviews. There are many such from the Sixth corps, from the hot parade of day before yesterday. (Some of these shows cost the lives of scores of men.) Sunday, Sep. 10. — Visited Douglas and Stanton hospitals. They are quite full. Many of the cases are bad ones, lingering wounds, and old sickness. There is a more than usual look of despair on the countenances of many of the men ; hope has left them. I went through the wards, talking as usual. There are several here from the confederate army whom I had seen in other hos- pitals, and they recognized me. Two were in a dying con- dition. Digitized by Microsoft® 76 SPECIMEN DA YS. CALHOUN'S REAL MONUMENT. In one of the hospital tents for special cases, as I sat to-day tending a new amputation, I heard a couple of neighboring sol- diers talking to each other from their cots. One down with fever, but improving, had come up belated from Charleston not long before. The other was what we now call an " old veteran," (J. e., he was a Connecticut youth, probably of less than the age of twenty-five years, the four last of which he had spent in active service in the war in all parts of the country.) The two were chatting of one thing and another. The fever soldier spoke of John C. Calhoun's monument, which he had seen, and was describing it. The veteran said : " I have seen Calhoun's monu- ment. That you saw is not the real monument. But I have seen it. It is the desolated, ruined south ; nearly the whole genera- tion of young men between seventeen and thirty destroyed or maim'd; all the old families used up — the rich impoverish'd, the plantations cover'd with weeds, the slaves unloos'd and become the masters, and the name of southerner blacken'd with every shame — all that is Calhoun's real monument." HOSPITALS CLOSING. October j. — There are two army hospitals now remaining. I went to the largest of these (Douglas) and spent the afternoon and evening. There are many sad cases, old wounds, incurable sickness, and some of the wounded from the March and April battles before Richmond. Few realize how sharp and bloody those closing battles were. Our men exposed themselves more than usual ; press'd ahead without urging. Then the southern- ers fought with extra desperation. Both sides knew that with the successful chasing of the rebel cabal from Richmond, and the occupation of that city by the national troops, the game was up. The dead and wounded were unusually many. Of the wounded the last lingering driblets have been brought to hospital here. I find many rebel wounded here, and have been extra busy today 'tending to the worst cases of them with the rest. Oct., Nov. and Dec, '6s— Sundays. — Every Sunday of these months visited Harewood hospital out in the woods, pleasant and recluse, some two and a half or three miles north of the capitol. The situation is healthy, with broken ground, grassy slopes and patches of oak woods, the trees large and fine. It was one of the most extensive of the hospitals, now reduced to four or five partially occupied wards, the numerous others being vacant. In November, this became the last military hospital kept up by the government, all the others being closed. Cases of the- worst and most incurable wounds, obstinate illness, and of poor fellows who have no homes to go ft^tyjifljkteafc SPECIMEN DA YS. 77 Dec. 10 — Sunday. — Again spending a good part of the day at Harewood. I write this about an hour before sundown. I have walk'd out for a few minutes to the edge of the woods to soothe myself with the hour and scene. It is a glorious, warm, golden- sunny, still afternoon. The only noise is from a crowd of caw- ing crows, on some trees three hundred yards distant. Clusters of gnats swimming and dancing in the air in all directions. The oak leaves are thick under the bare trees, and give a strong and delicious perfume. Inside the wards everything is gloomy. Death is there. As I enter'd, I was confronted by it the first thing ; a corpse of a poor soldier, just dead, of typhoid fever. The attendants had just straighten'd the limbs, put coppers on the eyes, and were laying it out. The roads. — A great recreation, the past three years, has been in taking long walks out from Washington, five, seven, perhaps ten miles and back ; ^generally with my friend Peter Doyle, who is as fond of it as I am. Fine moonlight nights, over the .perfect military roads, hard and smooth — or Sundays — we had these de- lightful walks,' never to be forgotten. The roads connecting Washington and the numerous forts around the city, made one useful result, at any rate, out of the war. TYPICAL SOLDIERS. Even the typical soldiers I have been personally intimate with, — it seems to me if I were to make a list of them it would be like a city directory. Some few only have I mention'd in the fore- going pages — most are dead— a few yet living. There is Reuben Farwell, of Michigan, (little 'Mitch ;') Benton H. Wilson, color- bearer, 185th New York; Wm. Stansberry; Manvill Winterstein, Ohio; Bethuel Smith; Capt. Simms, of 51st New York, (kill'd at Petersburgh mine explosion,) Capt. Sam, Pooley and Lieut. Fred. McReady, same reg't. Also, same reg't., my brother, George W. Whitman — in active service all through, four years, re-enlisting twice — was promoted, step by step, " (several times immediately after battles,) lieutenant, captain, major and lieut. colonel — was in the actions at Roanoke, Newbern, 2d Bull Run, Chantilly, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburgh, Vicks- burgh, Jackson, the bloody conflicts of the Wilderness, and at Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, and afterwards around Petersburgh ; at one of these latter was taken prisoner, and pass'd four or five months in secesh military prisons, narrowly escaping with, life, from a severe fever, from starvation and half-nakedness in the winter. (What a history that 51st New York had! Went out early — march'd, fought everywhere — was in storms at sea, nearly wreck' d — storm 'd forfSgMteat&pMcfoi&im and yon in Virginia, 78 SPECIMEN DA YS. night and day, summer of '62 — afterwards Kentucky and Missis- sippi — re-enlisted — was in all the engagements and campaigns, as above.) I strengthen and comfort myself much, with the cer- tainty that the capacity for just such regiments, (hundreds, thou- sands of them) is inexhaustible in the United States, and that there isn't a county nor a township in the republic — nor a street in any city — but could turn out, and, on occasion, would turn out, lots of just such typical soldiers, whenever wanted. " CONVULSIVENESS." As I have look'd over the proof-sheets of the preceding pages, I have once or twice fear'd that my diary would prove, at best, but a batch of convulsively written reminiscences. Well, be it so. They are but parts of the actual distraction, heat, smoke and excitement of those^ times. The war itself, with the temper of society preceding it, can indeed be best described by that very word convulsiveness. THREE YEARS SUMM'D UP. During those three years in hospital, camp or field, I made over six hundred visits or tours, and went, as I estimate, counting all, among from eighty thousand to a hundred thousand of the wounded and sick, as sustainer of spirit and body in some de- gree, in time of need. These visits varied from an hour or two, to all day or night ; for with dear or critical cases I generally watch'd all night. Sometimes I took up my quarters in the hos- pital, and slept or watch'd there several nights in succession. Those three years I consider the greatest privilege and satisfac- tion, (with all their feverish excitements and physical depriva- tions and lamentable sights,) and, of course, the most profound lesson of my life. I can say that in my ministerings I compre- hended all, whoever came in my way, northern or southern, and slighted none. It arous'd and brought out and decided un- dream'd-of depths of emotion. It has given me my most fervent views of the true ensemble and extent of the States. " While I was with wounded and sick in thousands of cases from the New Eng- land States, and from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois; and all the Western States, I was with more or less from all the States, North and South, without.exception. I was with many from the border States, especially from Maryland and Virginia, and found, during those lurid years 1862-63, far more Union southerners, especially Tennesseans, than is supposed. I was with many rebel officers and men among our wounded, and gave them always what I had, and tried to cheer them the same as any. I was among the army teamsters cc^s^er^l fc and^ideed, always found my- SPECIMEN DA YS. .„ self drawn to them. Among the black soldiers, wounded or sick, and in the contraband camps, I also took my way whenever in their neighborhood, and did what I could for them. THE MILLION DEAD, TOO, SUMM'D UP. The dead in this war — there they lie, strewing the fields and woods and valleys and battle-fields of the south — Virginia, the Peninsula — Malvern hill and Fair Oaks — the banks of the Chick- ahominy — the terraces of Fredericksburgh— Antietam bridge — the grisly ravines of Manassas — the bloody promenade of the Wilderness— the varieties of the strayed dead, (the estimate of the War department is 25,000 national soldiers kill'd in battle and never buried at all, 5,000 drown'd — 15,000 inhumed by strangers, or on the march in haste, in hitherto unfound locali- ties — 2,000 graves cover'd by sand and mud by Mississippi freshets, 3,000 carried away by caving-in of banks, &c.,)^-Get- tysburgh, the West, Southwest — Vicksburgh— Chattanooga — the trenches of Petersburgh — the numberless battles, camps, hospitals everywhere — the crop reap'd by the mighty reapers, typhoid, dysentery, inflammations — and blackest and loathesomest of all, the dead and living burial-pits, the prison-pens of Andersonville, Salisbury, Belle- Isle,' &c, (not Dante's pictured hell and all its woes, its degradations, filthy torments, excell'd those prisons) — the dead, the dead, the dead — our dead — or South or North, ours _ all, (all, all, all, finally dear to me) — or East or West — Atlantic coast or Mississippi valley — somewhere they crawl'd to die, alone, in bushes, low gullies, or on the sides of hills — (there, in se- cluded spots, their skeletons, bleach'd bones, tufts, of hair, but- tons, fragments of clothing, are occasionally found yet) — our young men once so handsome and so joyous, taken from us — the \ son from the mother, the husband from the wife, the dear friend from the dear friend — the clusters of camp graves, in Georgia, the Carolinas, and in Tennessee — the single graves left in the woods or by the roadside, (hundreds, thousands, obliterated) — the corpses floated down the rivers, and caught and lodged, (dozens, scores, floated down the upper Potomac, after the cavalry engagements, the pursuit of Lee, following Gettysburgh) — some lie at the bottom of the sea — 'the general million, and the special cemeteries in almost all the States — the infinite dead — (the land entire saturated, perfumed with their impalpable ashes' exhalation in Nature's chemistry distill'd, and shall be so forever, in every future grain of wheat and ear of corn, and every flower that grows, and every breath we draw) — not only Northern dead leavening Southern soil — thousands, aye tens of thoiisarids, of Southerners, crumble to-day in Northern earth. [ Digitized by Microsoft® 80 SPECIMEN DA YS. And everywhere among these countless graves — everywhere in the many-soldier Cemeteries of the Nation, (there are now, I be- lieve, over seventy of them) — as at the time in the vast trenches, the depositories of slain, Northern and Southern, after the great battles — not only where the scathing trail passed those years, but radiating since in all the peaceful quarters of the land— we see, and ages yet may see, on monuments and gravestones, singly or in masses, to thousands or tens of thousands, the significant word Unknown. (In some of the cemeteries nearly all the dead are unknown. At Salisbury, N. C, for instance, the known are only 85, while the unknown are 12,027, an( i n>7°o of these are buried in trenches. A national monument has been put up here, by order of Congress, to mark the spot — but what visible, material monu- ment can ever fittingly commemorate that spot ?) THE REAL WAR WILL NEVER GET IN THE BOOKS. And so good-bye to the war. I know not how it may have been, or may be, to others — to me the main interest I found, (and still, on recollection, find,) in the rank and file of the armies, , both sides, and in those specimens amid the hospitals, and even the dead on the field. To me the points illustrating the latent personal character and eligibilities of these States, in the two or three millions of American young and middle-aged men, North and South, embodied in those armies — and especially the one- third or one-fourth of their number, stricken by wounds or dis- ease at some time in the course of the contest — were of more significance even than the political interests involved. (As so much of a race depends on how it faces death, and how it stands personal anguish and sickness. As, in the glints of emotions under emergencies, and the indirect traits and asides in Plutarch, we get far profounder clues to the antique world than all its more formal history.) Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background of countless minor scenes and interiors, (not the official surface-courteousness of the Generals, not the few great battles) of the Secession war ; and it is best they should not — the real war will never get in the books. In the mushy influences of current times, too, the fervid atmosphere and typical events of those years are in danger of being totally forgotten. I have at night watch'd by the side of a sick man in the hospital, one who could not live many hours. I have seen his eyes flash and burn as he raised himself and recurr'd to the cruelties on his surren- der'd brother, and mutilations of the corpse afterward. (See, in the preceding pages, the incident at Upperville — the seventeen Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA YS. 81 kill'd as in the description, were left there on the ground. After they dropt dead, no one touch'd them — all were, made sure of, however. The carcasses were left for the citzens to bury or not, as they chose.) Such was the war. It was not a quadrille in a ball-room. 1 Its interior history will not only never be written — its practicality, minutiae of deeds and passions, will never be even suggested. The actual soldier of i862-'65, North and South, with all his ways, his incredible dauntlessness, habits, practices, tastes, language, his fierce friendship, his appetite, rankness, his superb strength and animality, lawless gait, and a hundred unnamed lights and shades of camp, I say, will never be written — perhaps must not and should not be. ' < The preceding notes may furnish a few stray glimpses into that life, and into those lurid interiors, never to be fully convey'd to the future. The hospital part of the drama from '61 to '65, de- serves indeed to be recorded. Of that many-threaded drama, with its sudden and strange surprises, its confounding of prophe- cies, its moments of despair, the dread of foreign interference, the interminable campaigns, the bloody battles, the mighty and cumbrous and green armies, the drafts and bounties — the im- mense money expenditure, like a heavy-pouring constant rain — with, over the whole land, the last three years of the struggle, an unending, universal mourning-wail of women, parents, or- phans — the marrow of the tragedy concentrated in those Army Hospitals — (it seem'd sometimes as if the whole interest of the land, North and South, was one vast central hospital, and all the rest of the affair but flanges) — those forming the untold and un- written history of the war — infinitely greater (like life's) than the few scraps and distortions that are ever told or written. Think how much, and of importance, will be — how much, civic and military, has already been — buried in the grave, in eternal darkness. 'AN INTERREGNUM PARAGRAPH. Several years now elapse before I resume my diary. I con- tinued at Washington working in the Attorney-General's depart- ment through '66 and '67, and some time afterward. In Feb- ruary ' 73 I was stricken down by paralysis, gave up my desk, and migrated to Camden, New Jersey, where I lived during ' 74 and '75, quite unwell — but after that began to grow better ; com- menc'd going for weeks at a time, even for months, down in the country, to a charmingly recluse and rural spot along Timber creek, twelve or thirteen miles from where it enters the Delaware river. Domicil'd at the farm-house of my friends, the Staftords, near by, I lived half thfiJime, along, this creek and its adjacent 8 2 Specimen da vs. fields and lanes. And it is to my life here that I, perhaps, owe partial recovery (a sort of second wind, or semi-renewal of the lease of life) from the prostration of 1874-75. If the notes of that outdoor life could only prove as glowing to you, reader dear, as the experience itself was to me. Doubtless in the course of the following, the fact of invalidism will crop out, (I call my- self a half-Paralytic these days, and reverently bless the Lord it is no worse,) between some of the lines — but I get my share of fun and healthy hours, and shall try to indicate them. (The trick is, I find, to tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the NEW THEMES ENTERED UPON. 1876, '77. — I find the woods in mid-May and early June my best places for composition.* Seated on logs or stumps there, or resting on rails, nearly all the following memoranda have been jotted down. Wherever I go, indeed, winter or summer, city or country, alone at home or traveling, I must take notes — (the ruling passion strong in age and disablement, and even the ap- proach of — but I must not say it yet.) Then underneath the follow- ing excerpta — crossing the fs and dotting the is of certain mod- erate movements of late years — I am fain to fancy the founda- tions of quite a lesson learn'd. After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains ; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night. We will begin from these convictions. Literature flies so high and is so hotly spiced, that our notes may seem hardly more than breaths of common air, or draughts of water to drink. But that is part of our lesson. Dear, soothing, healthy, restoration-hours-r-after three confin- ing years of paralysis — after the long strain of the war, and its wounds and death. * Without apology for the abrupt change of field and atmosphere — after what I have put in the preceding fifty or sixty pages — temporary episodes, thank heaven ! — I restore my book to the bracing and buoyant equilibrium of concrete outdoor Nature, the only permanent reliance for sanity of book or human life. Who knows, (I have it in my fancy, my ambition,) but the pages now en- suing may carry ray of sun, or smell of grass or corn, or call of bird, or gleam of stars by night, or snow-flakes falling fresh and mystic, to denizen of heated city house, or tired workman or workwoman ? — or may-be in sick-room or prison — to serve as cooling breeze, or Nature's aroma, to some fevSr'd mouth or latent pulse. Digitized by Microsoft® SPECIMEN DA YS. 83 ENTERING A LONG FARM-LANE. - As every man has his hobby-liking, mine is for a real farm-lane fenced by old chestnut-rails gray-green with dabs of moss and lichen, copious weeds and briers growing in spots athwart the heaps of stray-pick'd stones at the fence bases — irregular paths worn between, and horse and cow tracks — all characteristic ac- companiments marking and scenting the neighborhood in their seasons — apple-tree blossoms in forward April — pigs, poultry, a field of August buckwheat, and in another the long flapping tas- sels of maize — and so to the pond, the expansion of the creek, the secluded-beautiful, with young and old trees, and such re- cesses and vistas. TO THE SPRING AND BROOK. So, still sauntering on, to the spring under the willows — musi- cal as soft clinking glasses — pouring a sizeable stream, thick as my neck, pure and clear, out from its vent where the bank arches over like a great brown shaggy eyebrow or mouth-roof — gurg- ling, gurgling ceaselessly — meaning, saying something, of course (if one could only translate it) — always gurgling the/e, the whole year through — never giving out — oceans of mint, blackberries in summer — choice of light and shade — just the place for my July sun-baths and water-baths too — but mainly the inimitable soft sound-gurgles of it, as I sit there hot afternoons. How they and all grow into me, day after day — everything in keeping — the wild, just-palpable perfume, and the dapple of leaf-shadows, and all the natural-medicinal, elemental -moral influences of the spot. Babble on, O brook, with that utterance of thine ! I too will express what I have gather'd in my days and progress, native, sub- terranean, past — and now thee. Spin and wind thy way — I with thee, a little while, at any rate. As I haunt thee so often, sea- son by season, thou knowest reckest not me, (yet why be so cer- tain? who can tell?) — but I will learn from thee, and dwell on thee — receive, copy, print from thee. AN EARLY SUMMER REVEILLE. Away then to loosen, to unstring the divine bow, so tense, so long. Away, from curtain, carpet, sofa, book— from "society" — from city house, street, and modern improvements and luxuries — away to the primitive winding, aforementioned wooded creek, with its untrimm'd bushes and turfy banks — away from ligatures, tight boots, buttons, and the whole cast-iron civilizee life — from entourage of artificial store, machine, studio, office, parlor — from tailordom and fashion's clothes — from any clothes, perhaps, for the nonce, the summer heats advancing, there in those watery, shaded solitudes. Away, thou soul, (let me pick thee out singly, Digitized by Microsoft® 84 SPECIMEN DA YS. reader dear, and talk in perfect freedom, negligently, confiden- tially,) for one day and night at least, returning to the naked source-life of us all — to the breast of the great silent savage all-acceptive Mother. Alas ! how many of us are so sodden — how many have wander'd so far away, that return is almost im- possible. But to my jottings, taking them as they come, from the heap, without particular selection. There is little consecutiveness in dates. They run any time within nearly five or six years, feach was carelessly pencilled in the open air, at the time and place. The printers will learn this to some vexation perhaps, as much of their copy is from those hastily-written first notes. BIRDS MIGRATING AT MIDNIGHT. Did you ever chance to hear the midnight flight of birds pass- ing through the air and darkness overhead, in countless armies, changing their early or late summer habitat ? It is something not to be forgotten. A friend called me up just after 1 2 last night to mark the peculiar noise of unusually immense flocks migrating north (rather late this year.) In the' silence, shadow and deli- cious odor of the hour, (the natural perfume belonging to the night alone,) I thought it rare music. You could hear the character- istic motion — once or twice "the rush of mighty wings," but oftener a velvety rustle, long drawn out — sometimes quite near — with continual calls and chirps, and some song-notes. It all lasted from 1 2 till after 3. Once in a while the species was plainly distinguishable; I could make out the bobolink, tanager, Wil- son's thrush, white-crown'd sparrow, and occasionally from high in the air came the notes of the plover. BUMBLE-BEES. May-month— month of swarming, singing, mating birds — the bumble-bee month— month of the flowering lilac— (and then my own birth-month.) As I jot this paragraph, I am out just after sunrise, and down towards the creek. The lights, perfumes, melodies— the blue birds, grass birds and robins, in every direc- tion—the noisy, vocal, natural concert. For undertones, a neigh- - boring wood-pecker tapping his tree, and the distant clarion of chanticleer. Then the fresh earth smells— the colors, the delicate drabs and thin blues of the perspective. The bright green of the grass has receiv'd an added tinge from the last two days' mildness and moisture. How the sun silently mounts in the broad clear jfry, on his day's journey! How the warm beams bathe all, and come streaming kissingly and almost hot on my face. •' A while since the croaking of the pond-froes and the first white Digitized by Micr