975.3 District of Columbia Civil War 
 D63s Centennial Commission 
 Cop. 2 
 
 The Symbol and The Sword 
 Washington, D.C.*l860-l865 
 
 ba) 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 presented by 
 Wayne C. Temple 
 
' 
 
 The Symbol and The Sword 
 
 
 Washington, D. C. - 1860-1865 
 
'mmmk 
 
 "FREEDOM" STATUE— atop the dome 
 of the United States Capitol, 
 placed there during the Civil War. 
 Her right hand rests upon the hilt 
 of a sheathed sword — her left hand 
 holds a wreath and a shield. 
 
The Symbol and The Sword 
 
 n, D. C. * 1860-1865 
 
 A Publication of 
 
 THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 
 
 CIVIL WAR CENTENNIAL COMMISSION 
 
 © — District of Columbia, a municipal corporation — 1962 
 
This conclusion is reached: When the chips were down, an over- 
 whelming majority of the citizens were loyal to the Union. The 
 noise at the start had come from a vociferous minority, mostly from 
 Southerners in patronage jobs. The people of Washington contributed 
 mightily to the War effort. They kept steady. They sacrificed. They 
 were never really beseiged as were the people of Vicksburg and 
 Petersburg, nor were they ever in very great want. But the point 
 is that their spirit did not flag — even in the gloomy early part of 
 the War. The War probably was the start of their spiritual growth, 
 as it certainly was the beginning of the physical growth of the City. 
 
 Paul J. Sedgwick, 
 Chairman. 
 
The Capital Is In The Front Lines 
 
 WASHINGTON IS UNIQUE among all the capitals of the west- 
 ern world. Europe's foremost capitals are vast growths which 
 have their own independent character and exist quite apart from 
 the fact that they are the centers of government. Washington, however, 
 was created for this sole purpose and has been developed, with 
 modifications, according to a definite plan. 
 
 The Site is Chosen: After consideration of other possible loca- 
 tions the Congress, in 1 790, authorized President George Washington 
 to select a site not exceeding 10 miles square somewhere in the 
 Potomac region. At that time the area seemed to be a good choice 
 between the North and the South; Maryland and Virginia agreed to 
 cede to the Nation their jurisdiction over the area chosen. 
 
 After inspecting several locations George Washington selected the 
 District of Columbia which was primarily within Maryland territory, 
 but also included a small section of Virginia, including the town of 
 Alexandria. He then entrusted the making of the plan for the city 
 to Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant, a French architect and military 
 engineer, who had served in the Continental Army. He was assisted 
 by Andrew Elliott who previously had received instructions to survey 
 the bounds of the District. In 1793 the cornerstone of the north wing 
 of the Capitol was laid by Washington. In 1 800 Philadelphia ceased 
 
 Panoramic View of Washington when the "magnificent dis- 
 tances" of later years were in the creation. 
 
 "iir 
 

 View from Smithsonian. Old Agriculture Building, the un- 
 finished Washington Monument and Potomac Park section 
 of the city. 
 
 to be the seat of the Federal Government which moved to its newly 
 established headquarters on the Potomac. 
 
 Then came two wars to prove that the choice was unfortunate. 
 First it was too near the sea and inadequately defended. In the latter 
 part of the War of 1812, on August 24, 1814, was fought the Battle 
 of Bladensburg, just outside the District line. It resulted in the cap- 
 ture of the city and the burning that night and the next morning of 
 the Capitol, the President's House and all other public buildings 
 except the combined Post Office and Patent Office. Fortunately very 
 little private property was destroyed and the British withdrew that 
 evening. Reconstruction began shortly after the end of the war. 
 
 The Capital Must Be Saved: When the storm clouds of the 
 Civil War began to gather, Washington found itself right in the front 
 lines. In fact it was surrounded by southern states. In 1846 Congress 
 had agreed to return to Virginia all of the District of Columbia south 
 of the Potomac, so the city was entirely within the State of Maryland 
 which was predominantly sympathetic to the southern cause. 
 
 Worse still, the population of Washington itself favored secession. 
 Unfortunately also the general in command of the army of the United 
 States was too aged and infirm to act vigorously, although he could 
 see clearly the dangers ahead. In the War of 1812 Winfield Scott 
 had served his country intelligently and bravely, one of the very few 
 generals to emerge from that conflict with an excellent reputation. 
 In the Mexican War he had led the brilliant campaign into the heart 
 of that country, which resulted in the capture of its capital. Now, 
 nearly 75 years old, excessively overweight, unable to move except 
 with great difficulty, yet withal a lover of the delicacies of the table, 
 terrapin in wine and smoke-cured hams from his native Virginia — 
 he was still the trusted hero and military leader of the Northern 
 people. The South began describing him as a traitor to his State. 
 
Although General Scott could not actively take the field, he saw 
 with a clear eye the immediate and overriding necessity of first saving 
 the Capital, also of keeping the forts in the South in Union hands. 
 But he had almost no troops; the tiny Regular Army amounted to 
 only 16,000 men scattered throughout the country, most of them 
 stationed on the Indian frontier, from which they could not be with- 
 drawn with safety. Furthermore he doubted the loyalty of the citizen 
 soldiery in the city itself, and with good reason because the Union 
 sympathizers were outnumbered. One Senator suggested that Wash- 
 ington remain the capital — but of the Southern Confederacy. Gradu- 
 ally the militia of the capital was reorganized. Trouble had been 
 feared on February 13, 1861, the day of the electoral count, but that 
 day passed quietly and Abraham Lincoln was declared President-elect. 
 
 On April 12 the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter; at noon on 
 Sunday, two days later, the Stars and Stripes were hauled down and 
 the fort was evacuated. The next day President Lincoln called for 
 75,000 volunteers; Slave states immediately took up the question 
 of secession with the result that four more, including Virginia, joined 
 the Confederacy. 
 
 Northern troops were rushed to Washington. The- first to arrive 
 were a few companies from Pennsylvania. En route the 6th Massa- 
 chusetts Infantry was attacked by a mob in Baltimore. To prevent 
 other troops from passing through the city, the mayor of Baltimore 
 ordered the railroad bridges destroyed. The telegraph wires were cut, 
 
 Thousands of troops poured into Washington through the 
 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Station at New Jersey Ave. and 
 C Street, N.W. 
 
 Through its doors tramped some of the Union's first 
 volunteers. 
 
the Capital completely isolated. Then the 7th New York and the 8th 
 Massachusetts reached Washington. They had been forced to go by 
 water to Annapolis, then rebuild the railroad as they came. The 
 Capital was temporarily saved. Baltimore was occupied in force and 
 Maryland coerced to remain in the Union. 
 
 Other troops poured into the city; the safety of Washington was 
 the first consideration of the Federal Government. To prepare for 
 defense against direct attack, on May 24, the day after the people of 
 Virginia ratified the ordinance of secession, Union troops crossed the 
 Potomac and seized Alexandria and Arlington Heights. They began 
 the construction of earthworks to protect the southern approaches to 
 the city and as defenses of the bridgeheads over the river and in the 
 vicinity of Alexandria. Washington was still in a very vulnerable 
 position, but this was not evident to the people of the country. They 
 saw the Capital only as a sword pointed at Virginia. The people 
 of the seceding states had organized a provisional government at 
 Montgomery, Alabama, then when Virginia seceded, moved their 
 capital to Richmond. Thus the South voluntarily placed itself in 
 the same position as was forced upon the North — that of having its 
 Capital too close to its enemy. The straight line distance is less than 
 100 miles. 
 
 Virginia automatically became a battleground. The cry "On to 
 Richmond" thundered daily in the press. The Union disaster at the 
 First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) in July 1861 awakened the 
 people to the fact that this would be a long war and their Capital 
 might be captured. 
 
 The Defenses of Washington: This was the first war in which 
 railroads played a major part. Washington was at the point of the 
 railroad rather than at the center of a rail complex as are Paris, 
 Berlin, Rome and the other great capitals of Europe. In World Wars 
 I and II the capitals of France and Germany were in excellent strategic 
 positions, over 500 miles apart, with many strong fortifications be- 
 tween. Their road and railroad systems were designed for quick 
 mobilization of their armies and rapid movements to the frontiers. 
 There, in case of defeat, the armies could trade distance for time, 
 falling back until they could make a stand. Russia is particularly 
 blessed with great distances as Napoleon and Hitler both discovered. 
 Rome in the days of the Empire always strove to keep her frontiers 
 well away from the capital city. 
 
 So now, recognizing the danger of their advanced position, several 
 additional forts were built on the south side of the Potomac. In 
 August, work was pushed on the sector between Rock Creek Park 
 
 8 
 
Across Aqueduct Bridge, 
 abutting Georgetown, 
 trooped thousands of Union 
 soldiers into Virginia. 
 Present-day Key Bridge 
 stands a few yards east 
 of the old bridge site. 
 
 
 Eyes at the Upper Battery 
 at Chain Bridge never 
 ceased roaming the nearby 
 Virginia hills. Heavy guns 
 at a moment's notice 
 could blast the bridge 
 approaches. 
 
 and the Potomac. In 1862 a commission of military officers rendered 
 a report in which recommendations were made for the completion of 
 the system of fortifications. The defenses never suffered a real attack, 
 but their completeness and strength undoubtedly forestalled any 
 thought of serious assault by the enemy. By war's end they consisted 
 of 68 separate forts and battery positions, having a perimeter of 13 
 miles. There were emplacements for 1,120 guns, on which over 
 900 cannon and mortars were actually mounted. In addition there 
 were 93 unarmed batteries for field guns with over 400 additional 
 emplacements and 20 miles of connecting rifle trenches. More than 
 32 miles of military roads were constructed to connect the systems 
 properly. 
 
The individual work was a bastion type fort planned for an average 
 garrison of about 500 men and 16 guns. As the terrain was split by 
 numerous tributary streams running into the Potomac, the system 
 was divided into sectors, each capable of an independent defense. 
 The entire circuit was 34 miles. As thus completed, the Nation's 
 Capital was the first example of a modern system of defenses. 
 
 Washington's Contribution: During the Civil War 16,534 
 men were mobilized in the District of Columbia for service in the 
 Union forces. Of this number 3,269 were colored. While 1,353 
 served as sailors and marines, most of them were in the army and 
 were organized into 41 infantry and cavalry units: 3 regiments, 4 
 separate battalions and 34 separate companies. Washington also 
 claims four of the general officers of the army: Robert C. Buch- 
 anan; Samuel S. Carroll; George W. Getty; and Richard H. Jackson. 
 
 The classic Capitol in unfinished form, the Navy Yard, Long 
 Bridge, the stub of the Washington Monument, the River 
 and Canal and how this part of the City looked in 1860. 
 
 kit* : * 
 
 &i 
 
 f AS 
 
Gentlemen May Cr; Peace 
 
 • •**•••••**•*••••• 
 
 WITHIN THE WASHINGTON OF 1860, the founders' dream 
 still far outstripped the plodding motions of material progress. 
 Actual sightseers were as few as the sights themselves. And 
 these, so far as reflecting the majesty of government went, were six: 
 
 The classic Capitol in unfinished form; the massive Treasury; the 
 unfinished General Post Office and the Patent Office; the red-turreted 
 Smithsonian Institution, and the Executive Mansion. Otherwise, the 
 intended 555-foot Washington Monument poked a 150-foot square 
 stub from a churned-up hillock a quarter-of-a-mile south of the 
 Executive Mansion where tormented President Buchanan counted 
 the days ere he could be gone. The intent sightseer might also count 
 the small red-brick State Department, and the War and Navy De- 
 partment buildings huddled within shouting distance of the Execu- 
 tive Mansion. 
 
 The dream of a Capital of surpassing loveliness and grandeur was 
 indeed unrealized after sixty years. Upon the outlines of the stately 
 plan arranged by the Frenchman had been tossed as though in hurry 
 or spite a tawdry architectural hodge-podge, shrouded in summer 
 dust and smeared with winter mud. But there was a clear geographi- 
 cal definition. The Capital was bounded by the Potomac and Ana- 
 costia Rivers, westerly to Rock Creek, and thence northward to 
 Boundary Street, the present Florida Avenue. 
 
 The population might as easily be defined. At the top, the social 
 graces were meticulously cultivated by a comparatively tiny social 
 set. In the center was a steady core of hard-working church-going 
 people without whom the community would have collapsed. And 
 at the churning bottom was a teeming swarm of local and imported 
 scamps wallowing in the disreputable establishments of Swampoodle 
 and Negro Hill, ready for anything and generally well occupied, with 
 small opposition from a police force of about a hundred and fifty. 
 
 There can be no Capital with character without a reigning social 
 set, and Washington's had the first essential — exclusiveness. It 
 touched imported glasses in toasts inside the thick-walled Georgian 
 and Federal houses of Georgetown, where the trees recalled its 
 founding in 1751. Outer ramparts extended along H Street, and 
 
 11 
 
*4 M i* ^ "* HI ***** * 
 
 This seeming tumbled heap of dwellings and business places 
 is Georgetown, crowned by its college. Five ships by the 
 docks have brought in provisions, and will depart well 
 loaded— perhaps with men in Union blue. 
 
 into Alexandria. Gatherings were brightened by the pure social 
 magic of names, Corcoran, Blair, Riggs, and then the names of South 
 Carolinians, Kentuckians, Virginians, all the pedigreed statesmen 
 from the South, and the status-sure Philadelphians, New Yorkers, 
 and New Englanders. Add to these the Embassy set, beribboned 
 and bejeweled, such diplomats as Johann Georg Chevalier von 
 Hulsemann, of Austria; Richard Bickerton Pemell, Lord Lyons, of 
 Great Britain;. Henri Mercier, of France; and Friedrich Carl Joseph 
 Baron von Gerolt, of Prussia. 
 
 The women were voluble on two favored topics, society and poli- 
 tics, and they loved the South because it somehow seemed more 
 social. They dreamed with Tennyson (and stole his thoughts); they 
 favored Byron (because he, too, favored love); and they plunged 
 at real life with the intensity frequently put into the make-believe 
 of charades. They visited with a vengeance, and left calling cards, 
 outdoing each other in ornateness. They planned parties with cun- 
 ning competition, offering delicacies from Gautier, and opened the 
 social season on New Year's Day in a revolving glitter synchronized 
 with the plans of Miss Harriet Lane, the charming and traveled niece 
 of the bachelor President. Always they watched the set of her hair, 
 and her clothes. 'To dress like Harriet" did something for one, 
 besides indirectly complimenting Miss Lane who, actually, had lived 
 in London society and knew the social advantage of proper distance. 
 She knew when ice was indicated; but withal she was warily senti- 
 mental because she had allowed someone to dedicate the trilling 
 "Listen to the Mocking Bird" in her honor. 
 
 But something was happening to them all. The year before, the 
 Capital shook with the news that a craggy old man called John Brown 
 had exploded political dynamite fifty miles away at Harpers Ferry. 
 Tempers flared not only in the hotels and homes and taverns, but 
 in the social circles which were influential as sounding boards in the 
 Capital. It was more than disturbing to a people already in rupturing 
 strain. Such happenings would threaten social relationships, many 
 hostesses knew. In the better circles the talk of politics was banned, 
 or at least discouraged. 
 
 12 
 
These were the proud inheritors of social position, a tiny group 
 among the city's approximately 75,080 residents. Near but distant 
 beneath the war shadow were 1,500 government employees, whose 
 ranks unbelievably would swell to 7,000 by 1865. Contrasting with 
 the fine Georgetown and H Street homes, the abodes of the poor 
 clerks were generally boarding house rooms. There in winter they 
 crouched beside individual fireplaces, drawing upon scores of com- 
 mercial woodyards, which disfigured the shaggy city. Elsewhere, there 
 were 3,185 slaves, 11,131 free colored, and one Indian. 
 
 And besides these, Washington endured throngs of political op- 
 portunists, medicine men, itinerant preachers, minstrels, and assorted 
 scamps. There were 500 loose women, whose brazen ranks swelled 
 to 5,000 (exclusive of competition in Alexandria) when the soldiers 
 arrived in numbers. 
 
 Time seemingly hangs motionless upon a capital in the making, 
 and a mere sixty years did little for Washington. Though its classic 
 promise was easily seen, the Capitol itself was marred by ugly upright 
 cranes where the great new dome was to stand, glorifying the rampart- 
 like base of tall Corinthian columns. A scattered gray eye-sore of 
 stones littered the East Front grounds. Hammers and saws raised 
 their noise at the unfinished Patent Office and General Post Office 
 beside 7th and F Streets. The wide Avenue honoring Pennsylvania, 
 
 Warmly suggesting a portion of Georgetown today, this 
 sweep of F Street, looking east, photographed from atop the 
 Treasury Building, displays an architectural loveliness which 
 disappeared through a century of modernizations. 
 

 Here Pennsylvania Avenue, the Nation's best known thor- 
 oughfare is seen in its Majestic sweep. 
 
 the main line to Georgetown (a separate municipality), with one 
 arching turn at the Treasury, was a quagmire in rain, and dusty in 
 summer. Hogs, geese, chickens, flies and children tormented the 
 thoroughfare along its length. Parts of the Avenue boasted cobbled 
 carriageways along the curbs. But no street was entirely paved, 
 though some were ungenerously graveled. 
 
 Wells and springs provided water. Some buildings afforded gas 
 lights. Industry consisted of the Navy Yard, the Arsenal, on the 
 present site of Fort Leslie J. McNair, and the Georgetown flour 
 establishments. Presiding over this scene from City Hall, on Judiciary 
 Square south of E Street between 4th and 5th, was a Mayor and 
 Common Council, busying themselves around the seven wards. The 
 Seventh, called "the Island", was separated from the city proper by 
 a canal resulting from earlier hopes for Washington as a major 
 seaport. This wriggly thing had degenerated into a sewer beyond 
 which lay the Mall, occupied solely by the Smithsonian Institution. 
 There, as a cultural focus, Washingtonians looked upon Indian paint- 
 
 14 
 
ings, wildlife and mineral exhibits, and listened frequently to scien- 
 tific lectures in a city already renowned for words. 
 
 The north side of the Avenue, the "proper side", was distinguished 
 by four popular hotels — Willard's, National, Kirkwood, and Brown's. 
 Their public rooms and halls drowsed like all of Washington in sum- 
 mer. But when Congress sat in winter, commotion reigned, amidst 
 an overflowing of meaningful and idle words, and vaporous political 
 promises. 
 
 Politics, embedded in the relationship of North and South, growled 
 on the surface. Men and women in public places defiantly declared 
 their positions. Uninhibited in an era of convinced opinion, they 
 talked of peace, some of peace at whatever price; and other men 
 talked of war, with no thought of the price. In Georgetown, students 
 at the great college grew restless, too; and before the war ended 216 
 of them had fought for the Union, and 925 had fought for the South. 
 
 But, somehow, few of the Washingtonians ever entirely broke the 
 mystique of the symbol of the city. Long ahead, in February, 1865, 
 when a Federal and Confederate delegation met at Hampton Roads 
 
 Red turreted Smithson- 
 ian Institution hovers as 
 the Capital's scientific 
 and cultural center upon 
 an expanse dominated 
 by the completed 
 Capitol. Drowsing by- 
 standers seem far 
 from war. 
 
 Willard's and the war 
 
 were inseparable. Here 
 
 Lincoln stayed before his 
 
 first inaugural. Against 
 
 its walls splashed the 
 
 retreat from Bull Run. 
 
 In the dawn quiet of a 
 
 room Julia Ward Howe 
 
 gave the Union its Battle 
 
 Hymn of the Republic. 
 
hopeful of ending the war, a Virginian who had lived in Washington 
 turned to a Northerner, asking: "How is the Capitol? Is it finished?" 
 
 Clutching at the last straws — hope and optimism which die hard 
 even in desperation — many Washingtonians made gestures at normal 
 living. They boasted of somehow-afforded dinners at Willard's, won- 
 dered what could be done about the smelly marsh near the White 
 House, and criticized the acting of Joe Jefferson in Rip Van Winkle, 
 or the histrionics of Edwin Booth and Charlotte Cushman. They 
 feared the outbreak of fires in a tinderbox city, and declared no con- 
 fidence in the rowdy volunteer firemen who often fought fires and 
 each other, simultaneously. They wondered why Congress did so 
 little for the city — since it was the Capital and the Nation's showplace. 
 
 And now it all was compounded by something else; swarms of 
 dangerous men, obviously recruited elsewhere, swaggered about the 
 streets, and even intruded upon the hotel lobbies and the respectable 
 areas north of the Avenue. Some men in Congress carried pistols, it 
 was rumored. The newspapers echoed their shouts for Union or 
 State sovereignty. The tensions became frightful, subsided momen- 
 tarily, then heightened again, giving the sense of intermissions within 
 the strokes of doom bells. Some relief came in hours of rock bass 
 fishing at Little Falls, or in picnics at outlying groves. 
 
 Sooner or later — and sooner, no doubt — Washington must close 
 ranks and be itself, the symbol of the Union, indeed. And something 
 more than that, a symbol and a sword, if one were needed. Mean- 
 while, General Scott looked about on horseback, and from his coupe. 
 One sight was toweringly apparent, the white-columned mansion 
 called Arlington on a hill across the river. Scott idolized its owner, 
 Colonel Robert E. Lee. He had shown his capability in Mexico. And 
 he possessed something else, the old man knew, a discernible quality 
 that might develop into a symbol itself. What would he do if war 
 came? 
 
 Beside the sun-splashed 
 columns of Robert E. 
 Lee's classic Arlington 
 mansion stand soldiers, 
 armed symbols of a 
 war thundering deeply 
 through the South. 
 
Upon the already quarrelling Capital burst the Presidential cam- 
 paign. Two of the candidates, Breckinridge, favored by southern 
 sympathizers, and Douglas, the Northern Democrat, had Washington 
 residences and were privileged to see, if they dared venture forth, 
 the screaming torchlight paradings of the National Volunteers, fero- 
 ciously pro-Southern, and the Wide-Awakes, of Republican faith. 
 
 The Southern elements could not forbear a riot when Lincoln was 
 elected. In the hotels' teeming bars, in the grog shops and in the 
 Georgetown houses everyone knew the fat was in the fire. And never 
 before nor since was tension and acrimony worse in the Congress. 
 Shortly before Christmas, while Gautier took fidgeting orders and 
 people danced with minds elsewhere, South Carolina thundered out 
 of the Union. The approving shouts of Washington disunionists 
 reached the ears of the bewildered President, and sent him hurrying 
 from a wedding party. 
 
 A firm administration would have flung itself upon what amounted 
 to treason at the seat of government. But strangely it watched with 
 nervous toleration, scores of its own employees stand in brazen alliance 
 with disunion. They were mostly Southerners enjoying patronage 
 jobs provided by powerful Southern politicians vociferous in what 
 was called "a Southern town". 
 
 Rumors, spawnings of crisis, made the city tremble. The Capital 
 would be seized, it was said, by Marylanders and Virginians, aided 
 by the plug-uglies already causing trouble. The very Capitol, whose 
 cornerstone George Washington had laid while wearing a Masonic 
 apron hand-embroidered by Mme. Lafayette, would be blown up. 
 Night after night its deep labyrinths were searched for explosives. 
 
 And worse news arrived: Mississippi had left the Union, then 
 Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. In January came 
 word that Charleston had fired upon the unarmed ship, Star of the 
 West, sent to provision Fort Sumter. Washington looked about. 
 
 Employees of the 
 
 Office of the Provost 
 
 Marshal and Head of 
 
 Enrollment for the 
 
 District of Columbia, 
 
 April, 1865. 
 
Neighbors had suddenly left. Senators and Representatives had gone 
 south with bag, baggage, cats, dogs and entourages. When might 
 Washington be attacked? As a sop to defense, a company of Marines 
 was sent to Fort Washington, a dilapidated rampart across the river 
 from Mt. Vernon. 
 
 Soon another rumor spewed from the overworked factory. There 
 would be a big uprising on March 4, Lincoln's inauguration day — 
 with a February overture when the electoral votes were counted. 
 Rumor held that men were drilling for the revolt. Comic opera 
 detectives were summoned; citizen soldiers of Washington and 
 Georgetown drew arms. But who knew how much sedition rotted the 
 ranks of the protectors? Under General Scott's direction, Colonel 
 Charles P. Stone began reorganizing the militia, disarming and ousting 
 the disloyal personnel. Early in February, in a final effort to resolve 
 their differences, delegates to a Peace Conference, headed by ex- 
 President Tyler, met in Washington. 
 
 Uncertain of citizen soldiers, General Scott brought in eight com- 
 panies of regulars. Their camps whitened Capitol Hill, and spread 
 to E Street and Judiciary Square. Their weathered faces grew familiar 
 on all streets. Their horses raised clouds of dust. They gave to the 
 city a dash and comfort and sense of things to come. Because of 
 them the electoral votes were counted, amidst only a riot of words. 
 
 18 
 
Mr. Lincoln Arrives 
 
 ************* ••*•••• 
 
 MANY WASHINGTONIANS would long regret not taking a 
 second look at the tall stranger who passed them on the streets 
 in the cold of late February, 1861. But they had seen him, the 
 tall gangly man with long arms and legs, and a face too wind-bitten for 
 Washington weather. He was an oddity of a man even in a place 
 crowded with nondescript people, but scarcely worth a second look. 
 
 Then the papers said the President-elect had come. He had arrived 
 unannounced at 6 a.m. on the 23rd with two companions as an escort, 
 followed late in the afternoon by his wife and three sons and a 
 fluttering company of in-laws, reporters and politicians. He was 
 ensconced in Parlor No. 6 on the second floor of Willard's Hotel 
 where the Messrs. Willard, in person, were performing managerial 
 handsprings for his comfort. Equally obliging was Thurlow Weed, 
 Republican political manager of New York, who had favored Seward 
 for President. And on hand, ever smiling, was Senator Seward, 
 radiant over Mr. Lincoln's safe arrival after a ridiculously secret 
 entrance into the Capital's environs. Scores of others hounded the 
 hotel on the scent of favors. Hundreds of well-meaning people 
 thronged the rainswept 14th Street entrance. 
 
 From his windows, Mr. Lincoln could see the White House lawns, 
 the graceful turn of the Avenue beside the Treasury pile. Soon he 
 roused himself and paid ritual respects to President Buchanan. He 
 called on General Scott, and withstood with amiable Western ease 
 the old soldier's courtly bows. Powerful Francis P. Blair, and his 
 aspiring son Montgomery, paid their respects. On Sunday, Mr. Lin- 
 coln strode in black clothes between the six white columns of St. 
 John's Church, where every President since Madison had worshipped, 
 and bowed his head in prayer. Next day he went to the Capitol, and 
 the Supreme Court, and later turned to the trying conferences with 
 sincere and insincere well-wishers, office-seekers, would-be policy 
 makers. And, of course, he was greeted by Mayor James Berret and 
 the Common Council, and the delegates to the Peace Conference 
 which was ending its efforts, with resolutions satisfying no one. 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln already had plunged into the restricted social pool 
 with human enjoyment and with complete self-assurance. 
 
 19 
 
The War-time President shortly before his assassination, 
 April 10, 1865. 
 
 20 
 
General Scott found no fascination in all the folderol. He must 
 brood upon the coming inauguration, and its perils. Indeed, his own 
 life had been threatened, because he was a Virginian on the wrong 
 side. He considered his working tools: the faithful Marines at the 
 Navy Yard, and 653 disciplined regulars. Meanwhile, he could hear 
 from the open spaces of the city's magnificent distances the drilling 
 of the militia which, by this time, was loyal in sentiment and could 
 be trusted and used on Inauguration Day. 
 
 The day came, sunny, but with spiteful winds. All night before, 
 workmen had clawed at the ruts of the Avenue where Mr. Lincoln 
 and President Buchanan would pass along to the Capitol from the 
 hotel. A reporter for The New York Herald began writing: 
 
 "The capital city is today the scene of a life and excitement 
 unequaled in the history of the inaugurations that have taken place 
 within, its precincts since the formation of the government. The fears 
 expressed of disorder, the anticipations aroused by a thousand flying 
 rumors, the peculiar circumstances attending and resulting from the 
 election, the condition of the country and the surrounding train of 
 circumstances, all conspired to invest the occasion with no ordinary 
 interest." Then, taking a breath, he said the day (March 4) "was 
 ushered in by a most exciting session of the Senate, that body, sitting 
 for 12 hours, from 7 o'clock yesterday evening to 7 o'clock this 
 morning." 
 
 On hand were governors or ex-governors of over 25 States, in- 
 numerable delegations, politicians uncountable, school children, pa- 
 triotic groups from the North, and men with the dress of the outer 
 frontiers. Baltimore contributed additional rowdies, but most of them 
 with their local compatriots took to the dives where they remained. 
 
 When noon came soldiers walled the Avenue. Restless cavalry 
 kicked dust along the 14th Street side of the hotel. A band stiffened, 
 raised its instruments and blared "Hail Columbia" as the old Chief 
 and his tall successor emerged on each other's arm. The buildings 
 were sparsely decorated, but the sidewalks were densely crowded in 
 spots. On the roofs riflemen crouched, eyeing the crowds and the 
 facing windows. The two men entered a barouche, and cavalry 
 formed around. Behind came local Republicans in a thick marching 
 bloc. More than a score of lovely girls rode along. The Marine Band 
 did its best, but the cheering was jerky, between the gusts of wind 
 and the rhythmic feet of the horses. 
 
 Inside the Senate Wing Vice-President Hamlin was sworn in, while 
 Marines guarded the door where the new President would enter. 
 Across the East Front the crowd shuffled its feet. At every window 
 of the Capitol soldiers fingered rifles. Then the crowd stiffened. The 
 
 21 
 
official party had appeared upon a platform, beneath which other 
 soldiers crouched. 
 
 Senator Edward D. Baker, of Oregon, who would die in battle 
 later at a place he'd never heard of, Ball's Bluff in Virginia, intro- 
 duced his old friend, Mr. Lincoln. The crowd watched the tall man 
 lay aside a black, gold-headed cane, and begin. On and on he talked, 
 raising cheers at each mention of the Union. And then the final lines: 
 
 In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in 
 mine, is the momentous issue of Civil War. The government will 
 not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves 
 the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy 
 the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "pre- 
 serve, protect and defend" it. I am loathe to close. We are not 
 enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion 
 may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The 
 mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and 
 patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this 
 broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again 
 touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. 
 
 The crowd cheered, and The Herald reporter noticed that Chief 
 Justice Taney, native Marylander and author of the Dred Scott 
 opinion, "seemed very much agitated, and his hands shook very 
 perceptibly with emotion." 
 
 The President drove to the White House. Down at Willard's the 
 bar and corridors hummed with contention over what the new Presi- 
 dent had meant. 
 
 Lincoln's Cabinet: (Seated L to R) Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War; The 
 President; Giddeon Welles, Secretary of Navy; William H. Seward, Secretary 
 of State; Edward Bates, Attorney General. (Standing L to R) Salmon P. Chase, 
 Secretary of Treasury; Caleb B. Smith, Secretary of Interior; Montgomery 
 Blair, Postmaster General. 
 
Cry Havoc 
 
 NOT EVEN the scurrying newsmen of The Star could keep abreast 
 of it all. But they knew that Mr. Lincoln was unmercifully 
 beset by patronage seekers who invaded the White House itself, 
 and sometimes grabbed at him physically. Affluent patrons of Harvey's 
 devoured oysters insatiably between elegant sips of spirits. Joseph 
 Jefferson was at his drowsy best in Rip Van Winkle. Miss Kate 
 Chase, the elder and preeminently social daughter of the Secretary 
 of the Treasury, dominated society from her father's mansion at 6th 
 and F Streets. And there were rumors skipping in on winds of un- 
 certain origin that a Texas Ranger named Ben McCulloch would raid 
 Washington with 500 men and carry off the President and Cabinet. 
 
 Meanwhile, ordinary citizens tried to live normal lives. But their 
 streets crawled with menacing men, and bookstores ominously dis- 
 played drill manuals and other martial literature. The thump of 
 drilling militia sounded from parks. This was no time to take notice 
 of the little things so eternally important. Obscure people were 
 merely a part of the mass face. There was, for instance, Miss Clara 
 Barton, who came in daily from her home at Glen Echo to a minor 
 desk at the Patent Office. And there was "the wild rose," Mrs. Rose 
 O'Neal Greenhow, who already was spying for the Confederacy from 
 her socialite home at 16th and H Streets. And prowling the streets 
 was a rambunctious actor named John Wilkes Booth, slightly amusing 
 but unimportant. More important was the Canal, down by the river. 
 If raiders hit there, the coal supply from the west would vanish, and 
 the gas works in Swampoodle must close. 
 
 March blew itself out on a greening world, and forsythia tinted 
 Georgetown with yellow. 
 
 Soon, The Star exploded the alarming news. General Pierre Gustave 
 Toutant Beauregard had, on April 12, fired on the flag at Fort Sumter. 
 People plunged around the newspaper building on the Avenue at 11th 
 Street, hopefully doubting the news, but grimly believing it. Now 
 Washingtonians must stand and be counted. At Georgetown College, 
 Father John Early, the President, studied the faces of a group which 
 handed him a document. "Our presence here any longer would be 
 attended but with little good to us," it said . . . "while all we have 
 most dear on earth, our country (the South), our parents and our 
 
 23 
 
brethren call loudly upon our presence at our respective homes." 
 In Washingon an eloquent preacher put his cat in a basement 
 with three weeks' supply of water, believing that in this first 
 "bomb shelter" of record in Washington the cat would survive 
 until Jefferson Davis captured the Capital. Optimistically he fled to 
 Richmond, along with hundreds of disunionist government employees. 
 Simultaneously, scores of loyal employees fled from suburban Mary- 
 land homes into Washington. 
 
 There was something solid now to talk about: Lincoln had called 
 for 75,000 volunteers. And would Virginia secede? Telegraph 
 sounders rattled messages of support from sixteen loyal States. But 
 when would help come? 
 
 Colonel Lee rode down from his big house, and trotted back home: 
 the harrowing decision ending in the refusal of an offer to command 
 the Union forces. In his wake flew rumors of attack. Under alarm, 
 cavalry galloped through the streets, the Capitol was buttressed with 
 stones and boards, sealing the doors and protecting the statuary and 
 paintings. The Treasury was fortified. Cannon were parked at the 
 bridges. Loyal boarders at Willard's and the other hotels were formed 
 into two battalions, or guards, headed by Cassius M. Clay and James 
 H. Lane, two picturesque, rugged men from Kentucky and Kansas, 
 who armed their vigilantes with muskets, pistols and bowie knives, 
 to protect the White House and the downtown streets. Government 
 clerks received rifles. 
 
 Such uproar played havoc in the city's sixty-three schools, quaintly 
 called Grammar, Intermediate, Secondary, and Primary. At every 
 commotion, children rushed out increasing the general confusion. 
 These rented schools, mostly one-roomed, with 4,000 pupils aged 
 six to eighteen, were presided over by male teachers paid $1,375 a 
 year as compared to $675 for female teachers of equal competence. 
 
 Children and their parents idling in the streets around 7 p.m. of 
 April 18th saw the first results of the President's call. A shuffling 
 train disgorged a company of regulars from Minnesota, and 460 
 Pennsylvania volunteers. The latter's "mascot," Nick Biddle, aged 
 Negro, had been hit on the head by a stone hurled from a Baltimore 
 secessionist mob, and he wore into Washington a bloody bandage — 
 the red badge of the first man wounded in the war. The 6th and 8th 
 Massachusetts, and the precision New York 7th Regiment came and 
 were housed in the Capitol. 
 
 There they cooked, ate, slept, sang, swore, and hungered for a 
 clash across the river. Soon, Rhode Islanders came. And then 
 others by the thousands who pitched tents in every open space until 
 Washington looked white and blue and thinly reddened by the trim- 
 
 24 
 
mings of the Zouave uniforms. Washington was especially enchanted 
 by the Garibaldi Guards, a regiment of foreigners recruited in New 
 York, picturesquely attired in Italian bersaglieri, cock-feather hats. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had had a dream just before Sumter, a dream which 
 would return before Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, 
 Wilmington, and the ill-fated visit to Ford's Theatre. He said: 
 "/ seemed to be in a singular and indescribable vessel, but always 
 the same, and to be moving with great rapidity toward a dark and 
 indefinite shore." 
 
 He brushed it away. On May 24th, with Virginia gone out of the 
 Union, he sent his young friend Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth with 
 his New York Fire Zouaves to seize Alexandria. Ellsworth died in 
 a shotgun blast after snatching a Confederate flag from the Marshall 
 House. His body was brought to Washington, saddening the city 
 and grieving Lincoln even more. "My boy, my boy," he cried. But 
 Alexandria was in Northern hands, and Union troops changed the 
 green of Lee's Arlington slopes into a wall of blue. 
 
 THE L ATES T NEWS. 
 
 TEL RSB A PHIO. 
 
 Notice.— The Star is the only afternoon paper 
 published in Washington city that receives the 
 dipnntches of the Associated Press. 
 
 THE WA^ COMMENCED, 
 
 CONFLICT AT CHARLESTON. 
 
 IMMENSE EXCITEMENT. 
 
 Bombardment of Fort Sumter. 
 The Fire Returned by Maj. Anderson. 
 
 < ©rrcepondence between Gen Beauregard 
 and Major Anderson. 
 
 TWO GUNS AT FORT SUMTER SILENCED. 
 
 BREACH IN THE FORT REPORTED. 
 
 Arrival of U. S. Ships of War off the Bar 
 
 THE EVENING STAR. ' ^d 
 
 — — ■ — — luon ail 
 
 WASHINGTON CITY: **u*ui\ 
 
 FRIDAY Jl'L* :t, 1SC3. JaU.iiJ 
 
 The Fourth— In order that all the em- "" ir l 
 
 I id oyee* of thl. office may have an opportunit) dM Wl 
 
 V participate* in the celebration of our ~""" 1 ' 
 
 ■j JtaUoual da\, uopaper willbe is.ued Iromtlus in - "f 
 
 Jfnce to-morrow. Should Important new. be wa * *' 
 
 oi the 
 diwelo 
 
 CI weived. an extra will be ifiued 
 
 EXTRA. 
 
 THE GREAT BATTLE NEAR GET- 
 TYSBURG. 
 
 DESPIR\TE ATTEMPTS OK Till! 
 ENEMY TO RETRIEVE THE FOR.- 
 
 1 I M > lit 1 lib iia\ . 
 
 DASH OF REBEL i AV.1LRY INTO 
 
 t.i.i n Kiii'iiR. 
 
 A FIRIOl'S STONE-KENI E HR1IT. 
 
 I HF. RKIJtl.S DRIVEN FROM IT WITH 
 HKA\ Y LOSS. 
 
 t ATTIRE OF AN KM IKK REBKI. 
 
 aryof Wir "" 
 
 A. m., lew— 
 of War . ThU 
 iM Petersburg 
 .lonmond also 
 toff. If poasi* 
 
 GLORY!!! 
 HAIL COLUMBIA!!! 
 
 HA LLELUJA H!!! 
 RICHMOND OURS!!! 
 
 m 
 
 LEE'S RETREAT CUT OFF ! 
 
 OFFICIAL WAR BILLET IN. 
 
 Mnjo* General On, tteto fck 
 LATER. 
 
Aid From The Sea 
 
 DURING THE WINTER preceding the outbreak of war, while 
 the Army was taking steps to protect the capital from internal 
 revolt by reorganizing the militia and bringing a few regulars 
 into the city, the Navy was doing its share to defend and prepare 
 the area against potential attack. In addition to providing Marines 
 to garrison Fort Washington on the Maryland side of the Potomac, 
 other Marines were sent to hold Fort McHenry in Baltimore until 
 U.S. Army troops could relieve them. By the end of January, 1861, 
 Commander John A. Dahlgren had gathered all cannon and ammuni- 
 tion at the Navy Yard, as a precaution in the event of a possible 
 assault on either Washington or the Yard itself. 
 
 One of President Lincoln's first actions, after the fall of Fort 
 Sumter, was to declare a Naval blockade of the Southern ports. At 
 first this was not effective since the U.S. Navy was so small. Even- 
 tually mobile forces afloat would deny the Confederacy the use of 
 its vast coastline, thereby cutting off the flow of supplies from Europe, 
 necessary for the prosecution of the war. 
 
 But this was all in the future. In mid-April, 1861, when the 
 capital found itself isolated after the 6th Massachusetts Infantry had 
 arrived, and the railroad bridges in Baltimore had been destroyed, 
 preventing reinforcements from reaching Washington by land, control 
 of the sea helped save the situation. The 7th New York and the 
 8th Massachusetts Infantry were embarked on steamers Boston and 
 Maryland at Perryville, near the head of Chesapeake Bay. After 
 ensuring the safety of historic U.S.S. Constitution — a symbol of the 
 Union — by towing her out into the bay, the troops were landed at 
 Annapolis. In the days immediately following, the soldiers repaired 
 the old railroad from Annapolis, reopened Washington's ruptured 
 communications with the North, and exercised a stabilizing influence 
 on the explosive political situation in Maryland. Thus, in the first 
 days of conflict, the true meaning of the part the Navy would play 
 throughout the war was demonstrated clearly. The ability to move 
 freely wherever water reached would prove to be a decisive factor 
 in saving the Union, as it already played a major part in the saving 
 of Washington. 
 
 26 
 
From this building just west of the White House the Navy 
 Department directed the blockade, and all actions of the 
 far-flung fleet on rivers and oceans. 
 
 The Navy promptly began to build its strength in the Washington 
 area. With the Confederates' capture of the Norfolk Navy Yard 
 on April 20, U.S.S. Pawnee returned to Washington to bolster the 
 forces there. Her arrival on the 23rd brought an important measure 
 of relief at a critical time. On April 21, four steamers were obtained 
 near Washington and fitted out at the Navy Yard for the defense 
 of the Capital. Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, approved 
 the organization of a "flying flotilla" for service in the Washington 
 and Chesapeake Bay area. Commander James H. Ward arrived at 
 the Navy Yard in U.S.S. Thomas Freeborn with two small craft in 
 tow — the Potomac Flotilla was formed. 
 
 Late in May the Flotilla engaged Confederate batteries at Aquia 
 Creek, less than thirty-five miles south of the Capital, and again 
 on June 27, an action in which Commander Ward lost his life. 
 Though constantly patrolling the waters near Washington and har- 
 assing Confederate positions which threatened to deny the Union 
 the use of the Potomac, the Flotilla's activity went almost unnoticed. 
 As Admiral David Dixon Porter later wrote: ". . . the ordinary events 
 that were taking place on the Potomac . . . formed the small links 
 in the chain, which in the end, shackled the arms of the great re- 
 bellion." The Flotilla restricted, to a great extent, communication 
 between the opposite shores, thus closing the river, for all practical 
 purposes, to the Confederacy. Throughout the war the Flotilla 
 
 27 
 
rendered essential service and kept the river open for commercial 
 as well as military purposes, not only by preventing its use by the 
 Confederates, but also by removing torpedoes (mines) that were 
 planted by the Southerners. 
 
 The activities of the Potomac Flotilla were not the only contribu- 
 tions made by the Navy in the Washington area. From the Navy 
 Yard came much of the guns and equipment which, by war's end, 
 helped make the U.S. fleet the most powerful force afloat in the 
 world. The genius of Captain (later Rear Admiral) Dahlgren guided 
 these efforts through the first half of the war, and influenced the 
 concepts of naval ordnance to the present day. He accurately ap- 
 praised the Washington Navy Yard as ^ place "of great importance. 
 ... as a position in tjie general defenses of the city," and it was 
 under his direction that the expedition, which obtained the surrender 
 of Alexandria in May, 1861, embarked. 
 
 Balloon ascension on 
 the Potomas River 
 during the Civil War. 
 
Lincoln Finds An Air Force 
 
 PROFESSOR THADDEUS SOBIESKI CONSTANTINE LOWE, 
 professional magician, amateur scientist and daredevil balloonist, 
 came to Washington with an idea: a man can see more from 
 the air than from the ground. As a loyal son of New Hampshire, 
 he was thinking specifically of the Union Army, just then probing 
 across the Potomac and wondering what the rebels were doing behind 
 the horizon. 
 
 Lowe's down-to-earth air theory was welcomed by Secretaries 
 Chase and Cameron, by President Lincoln and Professor Joseph 
 Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian. To General Scott it was folderol 
 to grunt away. But Presidential approval was enough. With skilled 
 salesmanship, Lowe convinced Lincoln that telegraph messages could 
 be flashed from the air, and that balloons with portable gas generators 
 could move with the armies, beating the best efforts of scouts 
 and spies. 
 
 Ample reels of wire were already handy. Telegraph lines con- 
 nected the Navy Yard and War Department, the Arsenal, Potomac 
 bridges and outlying encampments. Rumors that a demonstration 
 
 To the War Department Building came President Lincoln 
 almost daily seeking fragments of news from the fronts. 
 Clicking telegraph keys and scurrying clerks lent a sense of 
 urgency to this headquarters of the U. S. Army war effort. 
 
 » * 
 
 
 *~* ^ 
 
 £ 1, 
 
 | 
 
 h*% ': J i> 
 
 I * 
 
 i miff 
 
 £ ^ 
 
 ^ - ?TS!^«*^S^wt*«at4-«u^^ 
 
would be made on the Mall June 18 electrified a population now 
 grown indifferent to military sights. And Lowe, twenty-nine , was a 
 sight himself — a handsome six-footer with raven black hair, an auburn 
 mustache, and exuding the appeal of a man who had been places, 
 of all places high in the air. 
 
 The great day came. The balloon, Enterprise, sucked in 20,000 
 cubic feet of gas from the main at 3rd and Massachusetts, tugged 
 at four ground cables, and was gingerly walked to the Mall. Lowe 
 scrambled in, followed by crack telegrapher Herbert Robinson, on 
 loan from the Telegraph Company. Lowe's stage-trained voice 
 boomed commands, the lines slid out, and up climbed the bag and 
 basket into the thin sunlight before the vastest audience the Professor 
 had ever known. The wire connected to the White House sang a 
 message to the excited President: 
 
 Balloon Enterprise 
 Washington, D. C. 
 June 18, 1861 
 
 To the President of the United States: 
 Sir: 
 
 This point of observation commands an area 50 square 
 miles in diameter. The city with its girdle of encampments 
 presents a superb scene. I have pleasure in sending you this 
 first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station and in 
 acknowledging indebtedness for your encouragement for the 
 opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the aero- 
 nautics in the service of the country. 
 
 T.S.C. Lowe 
 
 He would become the most shot-at individual of the war. Those 
 who watched him ascend at Washington saw America's air force 
 born in the deep blue bed of the sky. 
 
 30 
 
"On To Richmond" 
 
 A TALL, PORTLY, SERIOUS-MINDED OFFICER in the regu- 
 lar army named Irvin McDowell, who had recently been pro- 
 moted from major to brigadier general, was appointed to com- 
 mand the forces on the south bank of the Potomac. He established his 
 headquarters in Arlington, supervised the construction of earthworks 
 to defend Washington from direct attack, then set about the business 
 of training his troops for combat, and ran headlong into trouble. 
 
 The 75,000 volunteers had been called into service for only three 
 months. Here it was the end of May, one month had passed already. 
 The people of the North saw how easily Alexandria and Arlington had 
 been occupied and began to clamor for further action. They wanted 
 to prove what these soldiers could do before they were all sent back 
 home; hardly any of them had yet seen a Confederate in uniform. 
 What was the sense in having these thousands of men scattered from 
 Virginia to Missouri if they were not used? Richmond was less than 
 100 miles away. The main Confederate camp was being established 
 near Manassas only about twenty miles from Washington. Advance, 
 defeat this force and end the war! 
 
 With a good, regular army of reasonable size the mission of 
 subduing the South could have been accomplished easily in a matter 
 of a few months. But these militia regiments could barely do company 
 drill. They were completely unable to perform comparatively simple 
 movements together as a regiment, much less act as integral parts of 
 a brigade or division. Time would be required to train them; three 
 months was entirely insufficient; but the people and the newspapers 
 would not wait. So this slightly organized mob, in uniforms of various 
 colors and descriptions, blue and gray together, some in copies of 
 the French Zouaves, others in Highland kilts, was sent southward to 
 meet the Confederates. With them, to watch the battle went Wash- 
 ington society, ladies in hoop skirts, Congressmen, lunch baskets and 
 all, to see a free show. 
 
 The Army that would preserve the Union moved out slowly along 
 the principal roads leading through Falls Church and Fairfax to 
 Centerville and a little stream beyond called Bull Run. The time 
 of their departure and the routes being taken were items of military 
 information past from spies to the Confederate Commander. 
 
 31 
 
First Manassas - Bull Run 
 
 Qn JULY 16, 1861, the Union Army of 35,000 men began its 
 ^^^ march. For two and a half days these men wandered vaguely 
 down the road, stopping, starting, going off into the fields to 
 pick berries. Eventually they reached Centreville then waited for 
 two more days while McDowell reconnoitered the enemy position, at- 
 tempted to organize his troops and brought up supplies. The slow- 
 ness of the march and the days lost upon arrival gave the Con- 
 federates time to assemble their forces. When battle was joined on 
 July 21 the Southern strength was not much less than that of the 
 Union, and other Confederate reinforcements arrived during the 
 course of the battle. 
 
 No one could have predicted the outcome of such an engagement 
 between two untrained armies. Either side could have won, but the 
 prompt action of a Confederate colonel, Nathan G. Evans, nick- 
 named "Shanks," the firmness in battle of a brigade commanded by 
 "Stonewall" Jackson, and the opportune arrival of another Con- 
 federate brigade from Winchester, resulted in a Southern victory. 
 The tired Union army quit and walked off the battlefield, their retreat 
 covered by the regulars and some units which had not been engaged. 
 
 Then came the rout. The Confederates pursued for a short distance 
 and fired a few rounds of artillery at the road, upsetting a wagon, 
 and temporarily blocking the way. This was what caused the panic. 
 Fearful of the unknown, visualizing the approach of a horde of 
 pursuing Confederates, with the road blocked, the visiting Washington 
 society panicked. Frantic carriage drivers whipped their horses 
 along, each trying to pass the others. There was a frenzied traffic jam, 
 with army wagons, guns, caissons, ambulances all joining in the 
 desperate melee. A chaotic mob scene ensued which lasted for 
 miles, all the way back to Washington. 
 
 The city received the news at first with incredulity but, as night 
 fell and the mob poured across the bridges into the Capital, doubt 
 was dispelled. All night long, in a pouring rain, groups of soldiers, 
 beaten, foot-sore, muddy and wet, walked through the streets back 
 toward their camps. Occasionally a regiment marched in order, 
 the men still bearing their arms and looking like soldiers, but most 
 of them were dispirited, tired, defeated. Their bright militia uniforms 
 
 32 
 
The Long Bridge, now 14th Street Bridge, was the Union's 
 military life line. Its flooring was removable in case of an 
 attack. 
 
 were smoke-stained, muddy and sopping wet. Guns, coats, hats 
 and haversacks had been lost or thrown away. Soldiers staggered 
 through the streets like sleepwalkers, dropped on the curbstones, 
 stretched full-length asleep in the gutters. 
 
 The avowed secessionists in the city made the most of the situation. 
 They proclaimed loudly that the Confederates would seize Washing- 
 ton in twenty-four hours. Feeling helpless, the loyal citizens awaited 
 capture; but no invasion came. The Confederate army, which was 
 also composed of volunteers, was almost as disorganized and tired 
 after its victory as the defeated forces. It was simply impossible for 
 them to make an assault upon Washington. Furthermore there were 
 several Union regiments, which the people of the Capital did not 
 see because they stayed to hold the Virginia shore and were com- 
 pletely unaffected by the retreat. 
 
 Then, as the troops on the south bank of the Potomac, supplied 
 by the Long Bridge and the Chain Bridge, prepared for the defense 
 of the city, Congress acted to improve their transportation and com- 
 munication facilities. A bill was passed to strengthen the Long Bridge, 
 which could not continue to support a steady stream of heavy guns 
 and wagons. The railroad from Baltimore, which reached to the foot 
 of Capitol Hill, was to be extended across the Potomac by way of 
 Maryland Avenue. Eventually a new railroad bridge was built 
 parallel to the Long Bridge. Then a supplementary route was made 
 by shutting off the water from the Aqueduct of the Chesapeake and 
 Ohio Canal, and the trough was converted into a road. 
 
 33 
 
The Battle Of Ball's Bluff 
 
 THE DAY AFTER the First Battle of Bull Run President Lincoln 
 called General George B. McClellan to Washington, using the 
 words, "Circumstances make your presence here necessary." Thus 
 McClellan, who had been successful in the operations in West Virginia, 
 came to Washington with the idea that he was a savior. This very mis- 
 chievous thought was to prove extremely harmful in a man who was 
 naturally disposed toward vanity and arrogance. However, because 
 of McClellan's victories, Lincoln's choice was extremely popular 
 with the people and with the army. Troops poured into Washington 
 and McClellan immediately undertook the task of organizing and 
 training the new forces. He proved to be very good at this, and soon 
 the men under his command began to learn how to be soldiers; also 
 most of them were now volunteers, enlisted for three years. 
 
 McClellan liked to ride through the streets of the city to visit the 
 various camps, and those across the river in Virginia. Everyone 
 came to know his short, stocky figure and paid far more attention 
 to him than they did to the unattractive sight presented by Mr. 
 Lincoln. Someone dubbed their flamboyant, new general "The 
 Young Napoleon" and he loved it, just as he loved the grand reviews 
 which he staged week after week — whole divisions at a time — on the 
 commons east of the Capitol. Hundreds of people came to see the 
 parades; ladies marveled, little boys and girls thrilled to the spectacles, 
 the marching men, the bayonets, the guns. McClellan was the man 
 of the hour and the adulation went to his head. Soon he began to 
 intrigue against his superior, General Scott, and even ignore the 
 wishes of the President on many occasions. 
 
 However, McClellan was organizing the army into brigades and 
 divisions, training it systematically and inculcating discipline so that 
 the uniformed vagabonds were disappearing from the city's streets. 
 The only trouble was that, as the months passed, McClellan did not 
 seem to want to use that army to fight. The Confederates were 
 permitted to established positions within sight of the Capitol; there 
 were skirmishes as close as Bailey's Cross Roads, only five miles 
 south of the city. The enemy erected batteries on the lower Potomac, 
 threatening to close navigation on the river, and McClellan did 
 nothing. Some people began to wonder about their new general. 
 
 34 
 
Then, on October 21, 1861, exactly three months after the First 
 Battle of Bull Run, just thirty miles up the Potomac from Washington, 
 there occurred a horrible fiasco known as the Battle of Ball's Bluff. 
 In both these battles Nathan G. Evans played a prominent part. As a 
 Confederate colonel at Manassas he had been the first to discern and 
 move rapidly against the Union turning movement. Afterwards pro- 
 moted to brigadier general, he commanded the Confederate forces at 
 Ball's Bluff and won another victory for the South. He was a trained 
 soldier, a West Point graduate. 
 
 The Union commander at Ball's Bluff was Colonel Edward D. 
 Baker. He was a very patriotic man, a U.S. Senator, who had refused 
 higher promotion in order to retain his Senate seat. He was a great 
 friend of President Lincoln, was greatly admired in the North — 
 but was a "political" appointee, not trained to hold a position of high 
 command in the army. The results, when his brigade crossed to the 
 south bank of the Potomac, might well have been predicted. 
 
 Of the nearly 2,000 Union troops engaged in the battle, over 900 
 were killed, wounded or missing. The Confederates, with about 
 1,700 men, suffered only about 150 casualties. The Union forces 
 were forced back over the river's bank. Overloaded boats, filled 
 with wounded, swamped and sank. Men falling or leaping off the 
 bank, mad with fear, had landed on others, frequently killing both. 
 Many, forgetting their heavy equipment, had tried to swim and 
 sank, or grabbing others had dragged them under, too. The river 
 was filled with bodies floating downstream. 
 
 At first, military censorship had tried to conceal the disaster, but 
 the evidence of bodies in blue uniforms swirling down the Great Falls, 
 drifting down the Potomac past the city, washed ashore, or lodged 
 against the piers of the bridges could not be denied. The newspapers 
 
 Pontoon Bridge to Analostin Island (Roosevelt Island today) on a Sunday 
 afternoon, June 18, 1865. 
 
soon had the story and a storm broke upon Capitol Hill. The many 
 friends of Senator Baker, who had been killed in the battle, im- 
 mediately instituted a Congressional investigation. The object was 
 to find a "scapegoat" and thus exonerate and make a hero of Baker. 
 After much uproar and excitement in the city, they found one, 
 General Charles P. Stone, Baker's division commander, who was in 
 no way responsible for the disaster. He was imprisoned, reinstated 
 without explanation, then resigned in 1864; he died embittered and 
 in disgrace in the eyes of the public. General McClellan, who was 
 partially responsible for the disaster, escaped censure because he 
 was at that time too popular with the people. 
 
 Throughout the war a number of persons were imprisoned for 
 their political sympathies. The man responsible for most of these 
 arrests was Colonel La Fayette C. Baker, Secretary Stanton's chief 
 of detectives. Early in the war he had been sent as a spy to Richmond 
 where he performed excellent service, but in his new position he 
 soon became feared and hated, because he used his authority in 
 an extremely highhanded and arbitrary manner. Typical of such 
 political arrests, although effected prior to Baker's rise to power, 
 was that of Mayor James Berret, who was suddenly sent away to 
 prison in New York in August, 1861. He was succeeded in office 
 by Richard Wallach, brother of the proprietor of The Star. 
 
 In Washington the Old Capitol Prison on 1st Street, and its 
 annex Carroll Prison, were the largest and best known. The Old 
 Capitol had been occupied by Congress after the British burned 
 Washington, while the larger Capitol was being rebuilt. It had 
 been turned into a military prison, primarily used for Confederate 
 prisoners of war. However it also housed political prisoners and 
 spies; the most famous spies imprisoned there were Mrs. Rose 
 Greenhow and Miss Belle Boyd. The chief jailer was Colonel 
 William P. Wood whose sinister reputation was comparable only 
 to that of Colonel La Fayette Baker. 
 
 36 
 
Mrs. Howe's Autumn Vision 
 
 THE WAITS FIRST YEAR was dying. The cloud which at first 
 loomed no larger than a man's hand had reached a thunderhead 
 in April, and torn by lightning had strewn the ground with dead 
 in Virginia and Florida, in West Virginia, and Missouri. Under 
 autumn skies the Nation's Capital crouched in a posture of defense 
 within a ring of unfinished forts. Across the river stretched vast 
 expanses of tents; and in fields near the tents rose the sounds of 
 drilling men, shouldering and unshouldering rifles with long bayonets 
 shining in the sun. At night their camps were framed with fires. 
 
 One day in November word spread among the men that a grand 
 review would be held near Bailey's Cross Roads. The word reached 
 Washington, and scores of people received permission to witness 
 the spectacle. Among them was Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, a Massa- 
 chusetts woman of forty-two, slight of build and with dark and mystic 
 eyes that some noticed and didn't forget. She had come to Washington 
 with fashionable friends to see a city at war, to feel the symbol of 
 a Capital anguished under an ideal close to her heart. 
 
 The spires of Trinity 
 Methodist Church 
 reach upward with 
 the rising dome of 
 the Capitol for dom- 
 inance of skyline. 
 The ground is caked 
 with icing of snow. 
 The war is far from 
 over in this winter 
 of discontent. 
 
 37 
 
She and her friends took a carriage and drove into Virginia. What 
 her friends saw is unrecorded. What Mrs. Howe felt remains known 
 to millions. She saw soldiers, and felt their meaning. She saw autumn 
 leaves trampled by winds as in wrath across insurgent Virginia. She 
 realized the meaning of war in a word — freedom. And she sensed 
 an intervention clothed in glory. 
 
 Heading back to Washington, she heard soldiers sing a song called 
 John Brown's Body, with words originating in abolitionist Boston and 
 a tune composed much earlier in volatile South Carolina. It was 
 a shame, Mrs. Howe was told, that such a tune lacked appropriate 
 words. 
 
 At dawn the next morning in her room at Willard's Hotel she 
 heard again the sound of troops marching in the street below. As she 
 lay in bed and words of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" started 
 forming in her mind, Mrs. Howe went to the desk and picked up a 
 piece of stationery with her husband's letterhead of the Sanitary 
 Commission, and wrote the verses of the Hymn. Having finished, 
 she returned to bed. Some hours later she awoke and found what 
 she had written and it seemed like a dream. 
 
 %JU^J^ At^7 A>vz^ o~<^^ tk^~ oUm^ H ftC^- <v>~^a <r7T£>, c^r^/C^ * 
 
 
 Julia Ward Howe 
 
 1st verse of Battle Hymn in Mrs. 
 
 Howe's own hand. 
 
 '. f 
 
Departure For The Peninsula 
 
 AT THE END OF OCTOBER, 1861, General Winfield Scott, 
 - tired and embittered, tendered his resignation; McClellan was 
 placed in command of all the armies of the United States. 
 A couple of days later at four o'clock on a dismal November morning, 
 amid a pouring rain, McClellan escorted General Winfield Scott to 
 the depot. A great soldier, with fifty-three years of splendid and 
 devoted service to his country, quietly and without ceremony, left 
 his Nation's Capital that day. Over two years would pass before 
 another great American soldier of real military stature would arrive 
 in Washington, with as little show and ceremony. 
 
 Winter came, the year 1861 dragged to a close, but the very first 
 day of the new year, 1862, found the Confederate Major General 
 "Stonewall" Jackson on the march. He seized and temporarily oc- 
 cupied a part of West Virginia. A Union brigadier general, Ulysses 
 S. Grant, began the major campaign in the West in February by 
 capturing Forts Henry and Donelson in northern Tennessee. This 
 expedition demonstrated the invaluable part that gunboats would play 
 on Western waters. 
 
 Winter weather meant nothing to these men, but to McClellan it 
 was an excellent excuse to avoid taking any positive action. He was 
 engaged in training his troops and involved in a series of computations 
 which constantly gave the Confederates greater strength than they 
 actually possessed, and underrated the strength of his own army. 
 In actual fact the Union forces far outnumbered the Confederates 
 in Virginia. 
 
 General McClellan never did develop a workable over-all strategy 
 for the prosecution of the war. First he talked about moving on the 
 enemy at Centreville. Next he proposed a move by water to the 
 Rappahannock and thence on Richmond. This idea was warmly 
 debated for three months, the President fearing for the safety of 
 Washington if the army moved away from the capital. 
 
 Then on Sunday morning, March 9, 1862, the Secretary of the 
 Navy, Gideon Welles, rushed over to the White House. There he 
 found the President and the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. 
 They had known that the Confederates had been raising a ship, 
 
 39 
 
called the Merrimack, in Norfolk harbor, and fitting her with an iron 
 ram, covering the whole deck and topside with iron plates. Now there 
 was a telegram saying that on the day before, March 8, the ironclad 
 (renamed the Virginia) had sallied forth and destroyed the ships 
 Congress and Cumberland: the Minnesota was aground. Wooden 
 ships had proved helpless against the monster. But there was a ray 
 of hope. The new experimental ironclad Monitor had just been 
 completed and was now present at Hampton Roads. No one knew 
 what could be expected of it. 
 
 That was a long, anxious Sunday and Mr. Stanton was the most 
 frightened of all. He kept pacing back and forth in his office, looking 
 out the window for signs of the Merrimack steaming up the Potomac. 
 He sent frantic telegrams to governors and to the mayors of port 
 cities, urging them to obstruct their harbors. Gloomily he predicted 
 the complete destruction of the U.S. Navy, the loss of Fort Monroe, 
 then the reduction of Washington and shelling of New York and 
 even Boston. 
 
 That night the news of the momentous battle between the Monitor 
 and the Merrimack reached Washington, changing everyone's outlook. 
 The battle had been a draw; neither ship had been able to inflict 
 serious damage on the other, but the Merrimack had retired to 
 Norfolk. Steam-powered, ironclad men-of-war had met in combat 
 for the first time. That battle started every nation of the world 
 building completely different types of naval vessels. The day of the 
 wooden warship was practically finished. 
 
 On that same Sunday, March 9, 1862, the Confederates moved 
 southward, evacuating Manassas, and thereby ruined McClellan's 
 plan of moving by water to the Rappahannock, and from there to 
 Richmond. McClellan now proposed to move to Fort Monroe, to 
 which Lincoln reluctantly agreed, but relieved him of supreme com- 
 mand of all the armies, so that he could devote his full attention to 
 the Army of the Potomac. 
 
 So, finally, in mid-March, Washington saw the army, which it had 
 come to regard as its own, depart for the Peninsula in hundreds 
 of steamers, schooners and barges. This did not mean that the 
 city was left unguarded — President Lincoln saw to that. In fact 
 there was a long, involved and sometimes acrimonious series of dis- 
 cussions and arguments on the subject, further involved by "Stone- 
 wall" Jackson's lightning campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, which 
 threw a scare into the good people of the capital. 
 
 40 
 
The War Drags On To Second Bull Run 
 
 p ARLY APRIL BROUGHT NEWS of the fiercely contested 
 -*— ' Battle of Shiloh in lower Tennessee, a Union victory but an 
 appalling shock to the people of both North and South. The 
 casualty lists were so large that, by comparison, the casualties at 
 First Bull Run faded into insignificance. The people on both sides 
 awoke to the unpleasant fact that this was going to be a long and 
 bloody war. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Navy had been tightening its blockade; several 
 points had been seized in every Southern state on the Atlantic coast. 
 Then, in late April, Admiral David G. Farragut's brilliant capture 
 of New Orleans came as glad tidings. 
 
 But still McClellan seemed to be doing practically nothing to 
 capture Richmond. Finally on May 31 occurred the Battle of Fair 
 Oaks or Seven Pines, but the Confederates had done the attacking. 
 Then in late June and early July the Confederate Army of Northern 
 Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee, defeated McClellan 
 in the Seven Days Battles. Shortly afterwards on Friday and Saturday, 
 August 29 and 30, the Second Battle of Bull Run was fought, on the 
 same old battlefield. All day on Saturday crowds waited anxiously 
 for news. In response to a call from the War Department for 
 surgeons and assistants to care for the wounded, a throng gathered 
 at the railroad depot to try to reach the battlefield. No one knew 
 yet who had won, but the reports had generally been favorable. 
 
 Then early Sunday morning came the shocking news that the Union 
 forces had been thoroughly defeated. A hush fell upon the city. 
 There was a tense silence in the air as people tried to evaluate the 
 many rumors that spread thick and fast. Only a few citizens even 
 attempted to follow their normal routine. It is recorded, for example, 
 that on that Sunday only a handful of teachers and scholars appeared 
 at the Dumbarton Avenue Methodist Church in Georgetown, and 
 that a hush of sorrow and anxiety lay on the few who came. At 
 9:30 a.m. the session was dismissed. The teachers went home and, 
 on horseback or in carriages, left for the battlefield to help attend 
 the wounded. Then, after the Battle of Chantilly, fought on Septem- 
 ber 1 , twenty miles west of Washington, the Union army withdrew into 
 its defenses, to find itself right back where it had started in March. 
 
 41 
 
Wounded boys with the battle stare still in their eyes endure 
 their wounds in Carver Army Hospital, on Washington's 
 Meridian Hill. 
 
 With the return of the army came the largest group of casualties 
 that the city had ever seen. While some people left Washington in 
 a panic, hundreds of doctors and nurses poured into Washington in 
 response to an appeal from the government to the people of the North. 
 The hospitals were packed; barracks, City Hall, schools, private 
 homes, churches, every conceivable building, even the Capitol, were 
 converted into emergency hospitals. Many people were sure that the 
 city was going to be invaded; McClellan sent his wife's silver away. 
 But the President acted perfectly calm, not at all like a man about 
 to flee in terror. He directed that the government clerks be organized 
 into emergency companies, armed and supplied; then he calmly 
 continued with his regular duties. 
 
 Although this was a trying, discouraging period of the war, Major 
 General Henry W. Halleck, who had been in command of all the 
 Union armies for about a month, knew the strength of the defenses 
 of Washington and did not expect an invasion. Lincoln again placed 
 McClellan in command of the troops around Washington. 
 
 42 
 
Nursing Comes Into Its Own 
 
 FROM THE VERY FIRST, the citizens of Washington had 
 shown themselves sympathetic to the suffering soldiers in their 
 city. Relief associations had sprung up to work for the men, 
 and to raise money for supplies to comfort them. Often, hospital 
 patients would awaken to discover lady nurses helping tend them, 
 a previously unheard-of practice in this country. As early as June, 
 1861, Miss Dorothea L. Dix, of Massachusetts, had been appointed 
 Superintendent of Women Nurses. She was nearly sixty years old and 
 had established a national reputation as a humanitarian. Many 
 women flocked to join her but, in spite of the reputation established 
 by Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, hers was still an uphill 
 fight. Most surgeons did not approve of the idea of having female 
 nurses in men's hospitals. 
 
 As the hospitals multiplied in number, especially when the great 
 tide of wounded came from the battlefields of the Seven Days and 
 Second Bull Run, so did the number of visitors who came to tend 
 the soldiers. But the shortcomings of old hotels, churches and school- 
 houses were glaringly apparent to everyone. Moreover their adminis- 
 tration left much to be desired. The food was poor and the patients 
 were not supplied with proper clothing. Disease ran rampant yet, 
 to the wounded soldiers brought in from the battlefields, these places 
 seemed wonderful by comparison. Throughout the entire war, women 
 nurses helped in the hospitals. Miss Louisa May Alcott, who later 
 wrote Little Women, was one of these. Miss Dix stayed at her post 
 until the very end. 
 
 Another determined lady who was of enormous assistance was 
 Miss Clara Barton, also of Massachusetts, a clerk in the Patent 
 Office at the beginning of the war. She also began her service in 
 the very early days in Washington but, as she heard the heartbreaking 
 stories of the neglect of the wounded before they arrived in the city, 
 her prime interest swung to help on the battlefields themselves. This 
 timid, prim woman of forty overrode the red tape of the army and 
 the conventions of society, and actually went to the battlefields. 
 Under the worst possible conditions, in pouring rains within reach 
 of the enemy's guns, she distributed supplies and nourishment to the 
 men, bringing aid and comfort to them before they had to suffer the 
 
 43 
 
Clara Barton 
 
 long, jolting rides in rough, field ambulances and railroad cars back 
 to the hospitals. Later she was appointed Superintendent of Nurses 
 of the Army of the James, and at the close of the war organized at 
 Washington a bureau of records to aid in the search for missing men. 
 In connection with this work she identified and marked the graves 
 of more than 12,000 soldiers at the prison at Andersonville, Georgia. 
 Then, after years of effort, she established the American Red Cross 
 and became its first president. 
 
 44 
 
The Sanitary and Christian Commissions 
 
 MEDICAL TROOPS had not as yet appeared in our service, 
 other than surgeon's helpers and individuals variously desig- 
 nated as surgeon's assistants. Surgery had made great strides; 
 but at that time there was little known of proper antiseptics and 
 sterilization. The loss of life from gangrenous infection of gunshot 
 wounds was appalling. Amputation was generally resorted to when- 
 ever practicable. Because of lack of knowledge of antiseptics the 
 infection often spread to the new wound and many lives were lost 
 in this way. However, the medical service accomplished great feats 
 in the control and stamping out of pestilential diseases and great 
 strides were made in the work of sanitation. 
 
 The U. S. Sanitary Commission, formed by Dr. Henry Bellows of 
 New York City and a number of other prominent citizens, was of 
 tremendous assistance in this work. It began as an advisory board 
 to aid in the inspection of sanitation in the various camps and 
 hospitals, but its activities soon expanded enormously. They included 
 distribution of relief supplies, equipping and staffing hospital ships 
 and cars, the provision of food and shelter, and The establishment of 
 rest houses or lodges in Washington and in Alexandria. The Com- 
 mission aided in the work of vaccination against smallpox, provided 
 
 Central Office of the 
 Military Commission 
 of Washington 
 
lint and bandages, blankets and commissary stores, eventually extend- 
 ing their work of relief and aid to almost every battlefield of the war. 
 
 Another organization known as the Christian Commission 
 worked with the army and navy chaplains in ministering to the 
 needs of the wounded and dying. It was an outgrowth of the 
 Y.M.C.A. and had been formed in the fall of 1861 at the suggestion 
 of Mr. Vincent Colyer of New York City. At first its activities were 
 primarily limited to the distribution of Bibles and hymnbooks to 
 the soldiers, but it soon expanded in many other directions, working 
 closely with the Sanitary Commission in distributing food, clothing 
 and hospital stores. These two commissions, together with the im- 
 proved Medical Service, saved the lives of thousands who otherwise 
 would have died. 
 
 Although the mortality among the wounded rose to great per- 
 centages the loss by disease in the Civil War was still a vast improve- 
 ment over that in previous wars. In the Crimean War, more than 
 four-fifths of the losses were from disease. In our war with Mexico, 
 of each 1,000 enrolled, 1 10 died of disease; in the Civil War, the rate 
 was 65 out of 1,000. The Army and Navy Medical Services had 
 indeed improved! 
 
 *-3 ■<«M\ 
 
 This Commission became the YMCA 
 
 46 
 
Wandering Warfare Skirts The City 
 
 • • 
 
 AFTER THE BATTLE OF SECOND BULL RUN, General Lee 
 l never had any intention of trying to capture Washington by 
 siege or by assault. He wasted no time but embarked on his 
 first invasion of the North. His main purpose was political. The 
 peace party in the North was claiming that the war was a failure 
 and at the moment it certainly appeared to be. In the West also the 
 Confederates were on the march northward into Kentucky. The late 
 summer of 1862 is the only period in the war when the Confederates 
 were advancing victoriously in both the East and the West. A 
 successful invasion would help in obtaining foreign recognition of 
 the Confederacy, which was a constant worry to President Lincoln 
 and his people, for it would probably mean loss of the war. The 
 British government was openly sympathetic to the South, and France 
 would undoubtedly follow its lead. 
 
 Thus- far, official policy was that the war was being fought for 
 the sole purpose of restoring the Union. Yet Lincoln well knew that, 
 if he could bring the suppression of slavery into the picture as one 
 of the issues, the English people would never agree to recognition 
 of the South. He had on his desk a draft of the Emancipation Procla- 
 mation, but he could not use it — he needed a victory, otherwise 
 it would look like a cry of despair. 
 
 On September 17, 1862, fifty-five miles northwest of Washington, 
 was fought the Battle of Antietam. It was the bloodiest single day's 
 battle of the war, but it stopped Lee's invasion. Five days later, 
 Lincoln issued his preliminary announcement of the Emancipation 
 Proclamation to become effective on the first of January, 1863. It 
 decreed the end of slavery only in those states that were in rebellion; 
 it left slavery untouched in the loyal slave states. Yet it was a 
 powerful document that practically prohibited any foreign nation 
 from intervening. 
 
 The concurrent Confederate invasion of Kentucky also ended in 
 failure, so the pendulum had swung back in favor of the North. Yet 
 McClellan did practically nothing to follow up Antietam, so Lincoln 
 replaced him with General Ambrose E. Burnside. 
 
 During the years of conflict, the city of Washington became virtually 
 base headquarters for the armies in the East. The capital was the 
 
 47 
 

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 While Georgetown College boys conjugate Latin verbs in 
 class rooms on the hill, Union soldiers revive battle memories 
 in huddled group on Mason's Island, now Roosevelt, by the 
 Potomac. 
 
 nerve center from which flowed increasing demands upon the in- 
 dustry of the North. Throughout the war the Army and Navy 
 supply agencies performed admirably; in fact one of the major 
 reasons why the North won the war was its ability to swing into 
 production, and the tremendous work of the technical and admin- 
 istrative services of the armed forces in supervising and coordinating 
 the flow of supplies. 
 
 Washington itself became a great production and supply center. 
 The Navy Yard, the U. S. Arsenal and the District Armory were 
 converted to industry. A great cavalry depot, which returned thou- 
 sands of horses to service during the war, was established at Gies- 
 boro Point on the Anacostia River, opposite the Arsenal (Fort Mc- 
 Nair). 
 
 Yet the city was never allowed to forget the horrors of battle. 
 The wounded and dying kept pouring back from the fighting front. 
 For, as the year drew to a close, the Union forces were again severely 
 defeated by Lee at Fredericksburg. But, it began to look as if victory 
 might be won in the West, as the Confederates were defeated at 
 Murfreesboro or Stones River, Tennessee. 
 
 So began the eventful year of 1863 with the morale of the Union 
 Army of the Potomac severely shaken by the disaster at Fredericks- 
 burg. President Lincoln found it essential to choose yet another 
 general to command this army; he selected Major General Hooker, 
 
 48 
 
nicknamed "Fighting Joe". As first priority the new commander 
 devoted his immediate attention to raising the morale of the army, 
 adopting a system of furloughs to stop alarming desertions from the 
 ranks. Gradually he rebuilt the spirit of the troops until they were 
 again ready to take the field. 
 
 But who would sustain the morale, courage and conviction of that 
 lonely figure in the White House, upon whose shoulders rested the 
 weight of the whole conflict? The Star reported that on March 9, 
 1863 the Reverend Bishop Simpson delivered an excellent sermon 
 at the Dumbarton Street Methodist Church from the text, "For what- 
 soever is born of God overcometh the world; and this is the victory 
 that overcometh the world, even our faith." The newspaper further 
 reported that, "President Lincoln, accompanied by the Secretary of 
 War, was present, and was much affected by the sermon, being 
 moved to tears". 
 
 Then late in April the Army of the Potomac marched forth again. 
 The result was the Battle of Chancellorsville, fought on May 1-3, 
 another defeat at the hands of General Lee and the Army of Northern 
 Virginia. For this victory, however, the South paid dearly with the 
 loss of their beloved leader, General "Stonewall" Jackson. 
 
 In the West, in April, Admiral David D. Porter, in one of the 
 most dramatic events of the entire war, ran his fleet down the 
 Mississippi past the guns of the Vicksburg batteries. General Grant, 
 in May, followed with a lightning campaign which bottled up the 
 defenders of Vicksburg in their fortress city. 
 
 Thus was the stage set for Lee's second invasion of the North 
 (to relieve, if possible, the pressure on Vicksburg), and for the great 
 battle on Pennsylvania soil. 
 
 Dumbarton Methodist Church, Georgetown, opened its doors 
 to the wounded of Second Manassas. President Lincoln was 
 profoundly moved by a sermon he heard there. 
 
War Was A Way Of Life 
 
 * • 
 
 GRADUALLY FOR A WHILE and then with a hammering 
 rush Washington had changed from a vast blue camping 
 ground of soldiers into a vaster white spread of hospitals for 
 the wounded — men with ghastly injuries inflicted at Bull Run, Ball's 
 Bluff, on the Virginia Peninsula, at Second Manassas, and now 
 Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Suffering grew so terrible that 
 the city's church bells were often considerately silenced. 
 
 The wounded lay on cots in Stanton Hospital at New Jersey and 
 I Streets, in other structures in Judiciary Square, and in Douglas 
 Hospital on Minnesota Row. East of the Capitol stood Emory and 
 Lincoln Hospitals, while Armory Square Hospital sprawled near 
 the stinking canal as a neighbor of the Smithsonian. Other wounded 
 lay in transformed barracks on 7th and 14th Street Roads. Meridian 
 Hill shouldered the big Columbian Hospital. Even these were in- 
 sufficient. Churches threw out their pews and pulpits and installed 
 cots. Guests were evicted from hotels to make room for the 
 wounded, and the overflow spread into private homes of Georgetown 
 and Alexandria. The Patent Office received hundreds. So did 
 Georgetown College, and the Capitol accommodated 2,000 cots in the 
 Rotunda and halls of House and Senate. By July, 1864 there were 
 25 hospitals in and around Washington, with a bed capacity of over 
 21,000, staffed by Protestants, and by Catholic Nursing Sisters who 
 served in many of them. 
 
 Upon the city and hospitals swarmed grieving relatives of the 
 wounded, and their numbers were swelled by well-meaning local 
 people, anxious to help the sufferers. They became a problem, taxing 
 the already overburdened surgeons and nurses, but their outcries for 
 improvements proved beneficial. Many were horrified to know that 
 soldiers were being buried, under contract with an undertaker, for 
 $4.99 per funeral. 
 
 Walt Whitman, a man much engrossed with the soul of man and 
 the meaning of stars and flowers and the universe, mused often among 
 the cots. Abraham Lincoln, a man totally engrossed with saving the 
 American Union, often visited the hospitals, and the suffering he saw 
 on the faces etched more deeply his own lines of suffering. 
 
 50 
 
Through the agonized labyrinths of Douglas and Stanton 
 Hospital, President Lincoln and Poet Walt Whitman often 
 walked to encourage and comfort the wounded soldiers. 
 
 The atmosphere of war deepened with each appalling month. 
 
 In hundreds of homes thousands of nimble fingers made socks 
 and underwear for the soldiers. Beds for the insatiable contact- 
 seekers and other fatteners on the war grew scarcer. Loiterers 
 bedeviled the streets at all hours. But a universal voice arose in a 
 questioning: How long? And somehow above the anguish and the 
 iron growl of guns to the south gleamed the seemingly unextinguish- 
 able rounds of parties and balls — competitive social exercises where 
 it was no longer fashionable nor safe to espouse the South. 
 
 Incessantly through saloons where soldiers foregathered moved 
 the agents of the South, splicing together every loosely-dropped word. 
 Among these was a silent and mysterious man named Harrison, 
 slender and dark, reputedly a Mississippian and an actor, who would 
 warn Longstreet of the Union movements just ahead of Gettysburg. 
 
 And just before Gettysburg (though its name was scarcely known) 
 Washington lay in dreadful suspense. The Sabbath of June 21 
 brought low sounds of cannon from the direction of Winchester and 
 the Bull Run Mountains, as Lee's army marched northward. Soon 
 rebel prisoners slouched in, and soon the papers said that the 
 Confederate army was marching toward Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 
 Rumors flew; gray cavalry had been seen near the city. People 
 
 51 
 
rushed in from Silver Spring, fearful for their homes. Civilians took 
 arms, among them the laborers and mechanics at the Capitol. Every 
 man able to walk and tote a rifle came from the hospitals. Summer 
 dust raised clouds from the cavalry furiously moving through down- 
 town streets, and turning up 14th Street in pounding gallop northward. 
 
 General Hooker was out, the people learned. General Meade 
 had succeeded him. People tried to remember if they'd seen him 
 in their midst. But there had been so many Generals in and out 
 of the White House and the hotels. 
 
 Anxiety, compounded by conflicting news and fantastic rumor, 
 gripped Washington through July 1, 2, and 3. But hard-dying emo- 
 tions survived, and all night of the 3rd firecrackers and spiraling 
 rockets proclaimed Independence Day. 
 
 At 10 a.m. of the 4th, The Star broke the news. Meade had won. 
 Lee's bloodied army was returning back toward Virginia. Emotions 
 exploded in a crash of bands, singing and shouting. Crowds rushed 
 upon the White House lawns, conspicuous among them the Mayor 
 and Councilmen. Somebody read the Declaration of Independence, 
 and the Marine Band crashed out The Star Spangled Banner. 
 
 The next day it was learned that crumbling Vicksburg had col- 
 lapsed, and once more the capital went wild. The names of Grant 
 and Sherman were shouted from doorway and corner. The band 
 of the 34th Massachusetts blared up the Avenue and into the White 
 House grounds, dragging behind it a kite-tail of thousands of citizens 
 who were unsatisfied until they had cheered to hoarseness at Seward's 
 house across the park, and at the Stanton residence in K Street. 
 
 But out of the exultation crept a sobering thought: a victory — 
 at last — but how long? 
 
 52 
 
Brand Wedding, Great Speech, 
 Towering Symbol 
 
 FOR WASHINGTON WOMEN there was a wearying war to 
 endure — but always there was Kate Chase as an antidote. At 
 twenty-three, she was everything women wanted to be, socially 
 powerful, radiant with ivory skin and glowing auburn hair, tastefully 
 bejeweled, and to crown it all the bride-to-be of young Senator 
 William Sprague, former combat soldier and ex-Governor of Rhode 
 Island. As the final pat of perfection, the groom-to-be had money. 
 
 When the November wedding day came, Mr. Lincoln rubbed his 
 top hat and made off alone by carriage to the Chase mansion (at 
 6th and F Streets). He was wretched with anxieties and bothered 
 about a little speech he had promised to make the next week at 
 Gettysburg. When he reached the mansion the street was jammed 
 with people, and carnages were arriving. Out stepped the Honorable 
 Simon Cameron, Generals Halleck, McDowell and Stoneman, many 
 grand ladies, and beribboned diplomats. Soon a silence fell on the 
 great house; the crowds outside whispered that the vows must be in 
 process. And then came a burst of music, and outside from the 
 crowd arose a long sigh of enchantment. 
 
 No one in Washington knew that Mr. Lincoln was conceiving a 
 masterpiece. And least of all was it known to Mr. Lincoln himself. 
 He had been requested by a prominent New Englander to state 
 emphatically and clearly the meaning of the war. He had, moreover, 
 been asked by the sponsors of the cemetery dedicatory exercises to 
 make his talk brief because a great orator, Edward Everett of 
 Massachusetts, would purple the air with meaningful rhetoric. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln went to Gettsyburg and spoke the few words which 
 he believed the world would little note nor long remember. When he 
 arrived back in Washington people looked at him the same way, 
 not knowing how tremendously he had grown. 
 
 Washingtonians knew that a statue would adorn the great Dome 
 of the Capitol, and some who had seen the model thought it repre- 
 sented an Indian because of the feathered headdress. But most 
 recognized it as a goddess. She wore flowing draperies. Her right 
 
 53 
 
Expressing Freedom with the eloquence of eternal stillness, 
 the goddess rides the Capitol dome with her face to the 
 rising sun. Scattered marble blocks await their place in 
 the unfinished structure. 
 
 hand rested on the hilt of a sheathed sword. The left hand held a 
 wreath, and grasped a shield. A brooch at the waist carried the 
 letters "U.S.". The brooch held the draperies in place. The head, 
 in determined pose, was covered by a helmet encircled with stars 
 surmounted by a crest composed of an eagle's head, and a flaring 
 arrangement of feathers. 
 
 The sculptor Thomas Crawford had created the statue in his Rome 
 studio. She was started to America as a plaster model in 1858 aboard 
 the bark Emily Taylor. Soon the vessel battled for life in a raging 
 storm, sprang a leak, and fled to Bermuda. The seamen threw nearly 
 everything overboard but clung to the goddess. When she reached 
 America it was into the growing tempest of the Civil War. But the 
 people, like the seamen, held fast to her as something strong and 
 symbolic. 
 
 On December 2, 1863, men raised all 14,985 pounds of her to the 
 crest of the Dome. A flag fluttered up, and a stand of cannon to 
 the east of the Capitol roared. The salute was answered by every 
 big gun in the forts surrounding the city. Thousands of people 
 clapped, and yelled at the sight. That night she stood the tallest thing 
 between all the horizons, like a beautiful dim woman come down 
 from the stars. 
 
 54 
 
General Grant Arrives 
 
 IN SEPTEMBER, in the West, the Union army had lost the 
 Battle of Chickamauga and retreated hastily to Chattanooga, 
 Tennessee, where it remained inactive, while the Confederates 
 laid siege to the city. Two corps from the Union Army of the 
 Potomac were dispatched from Virginia by rail. General Sherman 
 started from the Mississippi with a large force, and General Grant 
 was placed in command of all the Union forces in the West. Late in 
 November, 1863, he attacked and, winning the Battles of Lookout 
 Mountain and Missionary Ridge, drove the Confederates southward 
 into Georgia. 
 
 Late in February, 1 864, the Congress passed a bill reviving the rank 
 of lieutenant general. Early in March, Major General U. S. Grant 
 was ordered from the West to Washington. The East knew him 
 only by reputation as the victor at Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, 
 Vicksburg, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge near Chatta- 
 nooga. Grant knew Washington only from a visit he made after 
 graduating from West Point. He utterly feared the place. His warm 
 friend, General Sherman, would warn him against Washington and 
 intrigues and politicians. "For God's sake, and for your country's 
 sake, come out of Washington," Sherman said. 
 
 So the self-effacing General fell uneasily into the arms of the 
 admiring populace immediately after lodging at Willard's with his 
 son, Fred, age fourteen, who had lived with him at Vicksburg. At 
 the hotel a band serenaded him. Theaters vainly desiring his prestige 
 patronage strung up laudatory banners. Crowds tailed him as he 
 walked silently from the hotel, the pale blue eyes staring down 
 strange distances of thought. The people noticed the cigar and how 
 likable Grant seemed because he looked like everybody else, a good 
 plain man. 
 
 The General didn't like parties. But on the night of March 8 he 
 went dutifully to the White House for a reception by the President 
 and Mrs. Lincoln in the Blue Room. The reception was not for him, 
 but he thought he ought to go. Cabinet members pressed against 
 the President while he shook scores of hands, smiling when an old 
 friend came by. 
 
 55 
 

 Fence idlers, ladies and children on the White House lawn 
 could little know the depths of anquish felt by the President 
 behind the White House windows. Two soldiers shatter the 
 illusion of a peaceful winter day. 
 
 At 9:30 a commotion arose around the door. Someone had 
 noticed that General Grant had arrived, had melted into the crowd 
 and was moving slowly toward the President for a hand shake. The 
 two men had never met. Lincoln knew Grant's likeness only from 
 pictures he had seen in newspapers. But he knew acutely the 
 portentous shape of his victories. Now a strange light crossed 
 Lincoln's eyes, and he advanced toward the Westerner, calling out: 
 
 "Why, here is General Grant. Well, this is a great pleasure, I 
 assure you." One onlooker remembered that Lincoln held Grant's 
 hand for several minutes. Seward became effusive in his welcome, 
 and Mrs. Lincoln expressed her pleasure. Then the guests became 
 unmanageable, lunging joyfully at the hero of Vicksburg, pulling 
 at his hands and showering compliments until the Secretary of State 
 plunged into the swarm and drew Grant into the larger East Room 
 to relieve the suffocating attentions. 
 
 The vast room rocked with the cries of "Grant! Grant! Grant!". 
 Seward induced him to stand upon a sofa to escape the crush. But 
 the better view generated louder cheering, and it was an hour before 
 the General escaped. 
 
 The authorities tendered him two offices in the Winder Building 
 on 17th Street but he didn't use them. He took of! for the Army 
 of the Potomac, then down about the Wilderness. When he was gone, 
 someone who remembered all the adulation thought to look at the 
 register in Willard's Hotel. In Grant's handwriting lay the simple 
 registration: 
 
 "U. S. Grant and Son, Galena, 111." 
 
 56 
 
Mr. President Goes To War 
 
 WITH THE ARRIVAL OF GENERAL GRANT a concerted 
 plan of action was evolved, for the first time, for all the Union 
 forces. Simultaneous movements were planned for an advance 
 by General William T. Sherman against Atlanta, an advance up the 
 Shenandoah Valley, a move up the James River toward Richmond 
 and finally, most important of all, an advance by the Army of the 
 Potomac against Lee's army in Virginia. Grant went with Meade 
 against Lee, leaving Halleck in Washington as his chief of staff. 
 
 In May, 1864, the various movements began. As Sherman ap- 
 proached Atlanta, Grant battered his way south toward Richmond, 
 losing terrific casualties at the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania where 
 General John Sedgwick, the famous leader of the Sixth Corps fell, 
 then on to the North Anna and Cold Harbor. Finally, uniting with 
 the Army of the James, Grant reached the outskirts of Richmond 
 and Petersburg. 
 
 After an unsuccessful effort ending in defeat, the advance up the 
 Shenandoah Valley reached Lynchburg, west of Richmond. In this 
 emergency, and to relieve the pressure on Richmond, General Lee 
 detached Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early to the Valley. After 
 saving Lynchburg, Early's next move was startling; he marched 
 upon Washington. 
 
 Completely unaware of approaching danger the city celebrated 
 the 4th of July and, on the next day, the Navy Department hung out 
 its big flag in honor of a victory at sea. The Confederate commerce 
 raider Alabama, which had made a series of successful and daring 
 cruises lasting for nearly two years, destroying and capturing many 
 valuable prizes, had finally been sunk by the Kearsarge on June 11, 
 off the coast of Cherbourg, France. 
 
 Then Washington was thunderstruck to learn that Early had led 
 his columns down the Valley — across the Potomac, reached the old 
 battlefield at Antietam, in Maryland, by July 6, then on to the 
 Monocacy by July 9, where his veteran troops rolled over but were 
 delayed by a small Union force under General Lew Wallace. 
 
 Up to this moment Early had thought he might do some damage 
 to Washington which, although rimmed by 68 forts and batteries, 
 
 57 
 
had been deprived of much of its manpower to nourish Grant's 
 campaign. But the Battle of the Monocacy gave him pause, for 
 troops from a division of the Union Sixth Corps, which was sup- 
 posed to be near Richmond had been identified on the battlefield. 
 However he pushed on, reached Rockville, ten miles north of 
 Washington, on July 10, then poured on into Silver Spring, just outside 
 of the District of Columbia. The Confederates seized papers in 
 the house of Postmaster General Blair and set fire to it. 
 
 As Early drew near, frantic defenders made their preparations. 
 Union bugles called up the militia, the home guard and government 
 clerks — anyone who could hold a rifle. That evening, President 
 Lincoln, a tower of calm, summoned his carriage' and went to his 
 summer cottage at the Soldiers' Home, not far from Early's camp- 
 fires. Aides wrung protesting hands. "Early is near," they cried. Mr. 
 Lincoln showed a slight irritation. 
 
 On July 1 1 , General Early left the Southern lines and trotted up 
 to scout Fort Stevens. Though it bristled with nineteen guns and 
 
 Bristling and shapely ramparts of Fort Stevens helped guard 
 Washington from northerly assult. Confederate General 
 Jubal Early struck at Stevens in July, 1864, in a feint to 
 relieve pressure on Lee at Petersburg. Here Lincoln exposed 
 himself to enemy fire. 
 
 I i I 
 
two mortars, it seemed feebly manned. Just then a line of bluecoated 
 troops deployed about the fort. As it happened, these were just some 
 of the militia and a few more units from the Washington camps but 
 Early hesitated, wondering if they were Grant's battle-seasoned 
 soldiers. He knew he could not capture the capital, even with its 
 weakened garrison, but he might penetrate a little way and give 
 the world something to think about. 
 
 The Union's "varsity team" was, in fact, debarking from transports 
 at the Potomac wharves at that moment. Two leather-tough divisions 
 of Sedgwick's old Sixth Corps, their uniforms faded almost to Con- 
 federate gray and smeared with the mud of Virginia trenches, swung 
 through the capital's streets to the shouts of a grateful population. 
 They arrived just as Early was about to attack. The President fol- 
 lowed them to the fort and stood, a six-foot-four target, on the 
 parapet, listening to the crash of rifles, the strangely intimate buzz of 
 bullets — like summer bees back home in Illinois. 
 
 Men long remembered Lincoln under fire. He stood impassively, 
 in full view of Rebel sharpshooters hiding about where Walter Reed 
 Hospital stands today. He watched a blue brigade spring from 
 cover and drive in the southern position, spilling 280 dead and 
 wounded behind. But snipers had the range. Five feet from the tall- 
 hatted figure an army surgeon crumpled with a bullet in his ankle. 
 Three feet away an officer slumped, dead. Lincoln, seeing at first- 
 hand the war that he had asked so many young men to fight, seemed 
 utterly unconsicous of physical danger. Alarmed, General Horatio 
 G. Wright, Sixth Corps commander, implored the President to get 
 down, finally threatened to remove him under guard. With a quizzical 
 look at General Wright, Lincoln finally complied. He remains the 
 only President of the United States who, while in office, faced the 
 savagery of battle, the hum and slap of bullets. 
 
 Early slipped away next morning and Lincoln went back to work. 
 Nine months of war remained for him to bear — nine months of life. 
 
 59 
 
The Rich And The Poor 
 
 • • 
 
 AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR the citizens of Washington 
 /V had expected a quick and easy victory. It had turned out to 
 be long, costly and bloody: but people's daily lives must con- 
 tinue to be lived. Gradually they become accustomed or inured to 
 these events which must somehow be accepted, just as they finally 
 came to recognize that there was little that could be done about 
 the horde of undesirables which descended upon the city and could 
 not be controlled. 
 
 The citizens of the capital city still managed to exist and with 
 these people the way they lived varied enormously. The problems 
 of daily life that any war brings to a big city arose, but magnified, 
 because Washington was not only the capital city but also the big 
 central depot of the Army of the Potomac. And the Navy Yard 
 had developed into a huge establishment, filled with vessels under 
 repair, manufacturing guns, howitzers, bullets, all the materials of 
 war. Ships were built and launched; hundreds of new workers were 
 required to perform these manifold tasks. During the war D. C. 
 residents were also introduced for the first time into the mysteries 
 of horse-drawn street railways. Originally the line ran only from 
 the Capitol to the State Department, but it was eventually extended 
 to Georgetown, with branch lines to the depot and the Navy Yard. 
 
 As additional workers poured into the city with their families, 
 Washington grew enormously, as it has in every war. But construc- 
 tion could not keep up with the need for housing. Rents grew higher 
 and higher, but salaries did not rise with the cost of living. This was 
 especially true of government salaries; the government workers were 
 grossly underpaid in comparison with private industry. The average 
 person's daily problems were made worse by the government con- 
 tractors who had become rich from the war. They came to town with 
 plenty of money to spend, as did thousands of tourists. Of all those 
 affected, the ones in the most difficult position were the single women 
 who worked for the government. Several strikes occurred against 
 both private industry and against government agencies helping raise 
 wages slightly, sometimes, for the men but rarely for the women. 
 In those days people just did not believe in giving women a reason- 
 able wage. 
 
 60 
 
The horse, always handy, found heavier work in war pulling 
 the forerunner of street cars between the Capitol and Wil- 
 lard's Hotel. At first filled with pleasure seekers, down to 
 the routine business of transportation. 
 
 This was how one-half of the people fought and struggled to exist, 
 with long hours of work and practically no money to spend for 
 housing or food. There was another side to the picture — the gay, 
 social life, which, after the first shock of war had worn off, began 
 to flourish. Huge, extravagant balls, levees and dinners came with 
 increasing frequency. Social life became a round of brilliant affairs. 
 Dancing was the rage, with beautiful ladies dressed in gorgeous 
 costumes, and men in the elegant style of the day. The theatres 
 in the city became extremely popular and their managers made 
 tremendous sums of money. The well-known actors became the talk 
 of high society. One of the most popular of these was a man named 
 John Wilkes Booth, who was soon to become known, throughout 
 the world, for another reason. 
 
 In 1865 the Center Market was a hub of trade for Wash- 
 ingtonians. This view is from the Smithsonian Institution, 
 looking north. 
 
Lincoln Is Reelected 
 
 *•••••••••••• ••••••• 
 
 IN JUNE, 1864, the Republican Convention met and renominated 
 Abraham Lincoln for President, with a war Democrat, Andrew 
 Johnson of Tennessee, as his running mate. Today it seems almost 
 incomprehensible that there would have been any question as to 
 whether or not Lincoln would be reelected, but in the gloomy summer 
 days of that year there was grave doubt as to the outcome. As yet the 
 Northern armies had accomplished very little except to incur heavy 
 losses. Richmond was still in enemy hands; losses at Atlanta, where 
 General McPherson had been killed, had been severe; and the 
 Confederates still had the Shenandoah Valley. It began to look to 
 many people in the North as if the South could never be beaten; 
 it was too great a task; perhaps it was time to give up the attempt. 
 In fact this was now what the South was fighting for, to make the 
 war appear too costly for the North. So long as there was any hope 
 at all the Southern armies refused to admit defeat. 
 
 President Lincoln himself was so dejected that he wrote a despair- 
 ing yet defiant little note, which he never used: 
 
 This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly 
 probable that this administration will not be re-elected. 
 Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President- 
 elect, as to save the Union between election and inaugura- 
 tion; as he will have secured his election on such ground 
 that he cannot possibly save it afterwards. 
 
 Then early in August came the inspiring attack on the Con- 
 federate fleet at Mobile Bay, the most important naval event of the 
 year. After a hard-fought battle Admiral Farragut destroyed the 
 opposing fleet and opened the way for the capture of Mobile. His 
 famous "Damn the torpedoes. Go ahead." became an integral 
 part of our naval tradition. 
 
 Yet, in spite of this good news, the opposing party nominated 
 General George B. McClellan for President and George H. Pendleton, 
 an anti-war man, as Vice-President, on a platform calling for im- 
 mediate cessation of hostilities and the restoration of peace. Later 
 McClellan repudiated the peace plank but sought to capitalize on 
 Northern defeatism. The campaign was conducted vigorously by both 
 
sides; although unable to vote, the citizens of the Nation's Capital 
 took part in the campaign enthusiastically. 
 
 Then Atlanta fell on September 2, which practically assured the 
 reelection of President Lincoln. First Mobile Bay, then Atlanta, then 
 a smashing victory on October 19, by General Philip H. Sheridan over 
 Jubal Early's troops in the Shenandoah Valley, finally on the night 
 of October 27 the daring exploit of Lieutenant William B. Cushing 
 of the United States Navy which resulted in the destruction of the 
 formidable ironclad Albemarle — definitely the war was being won, 
 after all. On November 8, Lincoln was reelected with a comparatively 
 small plurality, but a landslide in electoral votes. 
 
 As the people of the North, and Washington in particular, passed 
 the winter, waiting expectantly for the forthcoming Second Inaugura- 
 tion, the war went on with increasingly satisfactory results. In mid- 
 December, 1864, General George H. Thomas utterly destroyed 
 Hood's Confederate army at Nashville, Tennessee. General Sherman's 
 troops completed their famous, destructive "March to the Sea" and 
 occupied Savannah, Georgia. Sherman then turned north and, in one 
 of the most amazing feats of the entire war, plunged into, and 
 straight through, the impassable swamps of South Carolina, to occupy 
 Columbia, and cause the evacuation of Charleston. Then he moved 
 on into North Carolina. In the meantime Union soldiers and sailors 
 captured Fort Fisher and occupied Wilmington, the last major sea- 
 port of the South. 
 
 63 
 
The Second Inaugural 
 
 • • 
 
 THE WINTER OF 1864-65 had been extremely cold with ice so 
 thick on the Potomac that it could easily support crowds of 
 people skating on the river. But Inauguration Day, March 4, 
 broke in a torrent of rain. The city was so packed with visitors come 
 to witness the event that many, who had been unable to find ac- 
 commodations, had actually invaded the Capitol and slept there 
 while Congress itself stayed awake all night to finish its final business. 
 In mid-morning the rain slackened slightly and crowds began to 
 gather on the grounds of the Capitol to attend this, the first inaugura- 
 tion to be held in front of the new iron dome and its recently 
 erected statue of Freedom. About eleven o'clock the grand pro- 
 cession formed around the White House and Lafayette Square to 
 march along Pennsylvania Avenue, unaware of the fact that Lincoln 
 had already preceded them and was busily signing last minute 
 bills. The rain had stopped but the mud it had created flooded the 
 streets so thickly that it was difficult to wade through, yet the proces- 
 sion somehow reached the Capitol and, by the scheduled time of 
 shortly after noon, the mudbespattered throng had swelled to an 
 estimated total of 30,000. 
 
 Shortly before twelve, Andrew Johnson entered the Senate Cham- 
 ber to take the oath of office but, before doing so, delivered a long 
 speech which proved nothing except that he was under the in- 
 fluence of liquor, and it delayed the whole proceedings. Then the 
 dignitaries moved to the east front of the Capitol. An incident 
 occurred which went unnoticed at the time, but a man tried to break 
 through, toward the President; he was later identified from a photo- 
 graph as the actor John Wilkes Booth. 
 
 At about one o'clock the President rose, amid applause, and 
 gave his address including the memorable words: 
 
 With malice toward none; with charity for all; with 
 firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us 
 strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the 
 nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the 
 battle and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which 
 may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among 
 ourselves, and with all nations. 
 
 64 
 
While sun gleamed suddenly through clouds and rain, Presi- 
 dent Lincoln in his second inaugural address bespoke to a 
 crowd of 30,000 his will to "bind the Nation's wounds." 
 But his death would interpose. 
 
 65 
 
Victory And Tragedy 
 
 * • 
 
 ON MARCH 25, 1865, General Lee made a last assault against 
 the Union lines, but failed. Four days later General Grant 
 began his final turning movement which ended in a victory 
 by Sheridan on April 1, at the Battle of Five Forks. Grant im- 
 mediately ordered a general assault at dawn of April 2. That night 
 the Army of Northern Virginia evacuated Petersburg and Richmond 
 on the road to Appomattox. 
 
 When the news of the fall of Richmond hit Washington the citizens 
 reacted like a crowd of lunatics, shouting, singing, shrieking and 
 embracing each other. Official gun salutes were fired, unofficial 
 bands blared popular marches in the streets, parades formed spon- 
 taneously. The fire departments galloped through town, greeted by 
 cheers, as they scattered people right and left. All afternoon and 
 far into the evening, the people celebrated the glorious victory. 
 
 On Palm Sunday, April 9, Lee and Grant met at Appomattox 
 to discuss the terms of surrender. The President had visited Rich- 
 mond but had returned to the capital and was present when the 
 news arrived. This time the celebration was quite different from 
 the one that followed the fall of the enemy Capital. People came 
 trooping to the White House like joyful children, cheering Mr. 
 Lincoln as he made a few brief appearances. At Willard's Bar an 
 old man began singing the Doxology, and the crowd joined in. 
 Life had once more become more important than death. 
 
 On the following evening Secretary Stanton hung over his portico 
 a decoration of gas jets that spelled "PEACE". Arlington, Lee's 
 home across the river, was extravagantly decorated. Mr. Lincoln 
 made a brief speech to an immense multitude gathered at the White 
 House, dwelling not on the victory, but on how best to effect re- 
 construction — a speech which surprised many of his listeners, who 
 received it with varying reactions. 
 
 The 14th of April, 1865 broke upon the Washington scene as an 
 ideal spring day, warm, bright and peaceful. On this Good Friday, 
 nature beamed upon a National Capital crowded with blithe spirits, 
 overjoyed at the turn of events which had brought to a sudden and 
 dramatic end four years of bloody, desperate civil war. It was a 
 
 66 
 
day of national as well as religious thanksgiving. Exactly four 
 years before, Major Robert Anderson had been obliged to haul down 
 the American flag at Fort Sumter. Today it was being raised again 
 above the fort. 
 
 Only President Abraham Lincoln awakened with a feeling of 
 foreboding. The strange dream that had come to him before Sumter, 
 Antietam and Gettysburg had returned. Mrs. Lincoln remarked 
 apprehensively on his preoccuppied appearance, which he tried to 
 belittle for her sake. 
 
 That evening they were due to see Miss Laura Keene in a per- 
 formance of Our American Cousin at Ford's red-brick Theatre on 
 10th Street. General and Mrs. Grant had been invited, but had been 
 unable to attend. About 10:30 p.m., John Wilkes Booth stealthily 
 entered the President's box (the officer assigned to guard it was 
 mysteriously absent from his post), pressed his small, single-shot 
 Deringer pistol close to the President's head and fired the shot which 
 
 Within Ford's Theatre on April 1 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln 
 was mortally wounded by the assassin John Wilkes Booth. 
 In 10th Street thousands soon milled about in horror through 
 the worst night in the city's history. 
 
brought an end to the life of Abraham Lincoln. The President 
 was carried across the street to the Petersen residence at 516 10th 
 Street where he died the next morning. 
 
 All that night and on the day that Lincoln died, confusion, chaos 
 and despair gripped the city. Washington was stunned; the com- 
 munity seemed to feel itself responsible for the crime because it 
 happened here. Decorations disappeared as lengths of black replaced 
 them at the White House, and on government buildings, private 
 homes and business establishments, whose doors were closed. Prudent 
 secessionists, knowing they might be blamed for the disaster, hung 
 mourning on their houses. Soldiers came searching for bits of crepe 
 and ribbon to wrap around their sleeves. It was the worst period 
 that Washington had ever faced in its existence, far more serious 
 than when the city had burned in 1814, because one could run 
 from that — this despair and anguish could not be escaped. Guards 
 blocked all the exits from the city. Couriers dashed through the 
 streets carrying orders from the excited Mr. Stanton to alert the 
 forts and man the guns. 
 
 Booth had escaped by leaping onto the stage, and running out 
 the back door, but was caught twelve days after the crime in a barn 
 near Bowling Green, Virginia. On his refusal to surrender, the barn 
 was fired and he was shot. Simultaneous attacks had been planned 
 upon Secretary of State Seward and the Vice-President. Seward was 
 assaulted and severely wounded, at his home, a three-story house, 
 where the old Belasco Theatre now stands at Lafayette Square. The 
 man who was assigned to kill Vice-President Johnson lacked the 
 courage even to try. Of the nine persons, other than Booth, impli- 
 cated in the assassination, four were hanged, four were imprisoned, 
 the ninth escaped punishment. He was John H. Sturratt who fled to 
 Europe, then was returned some time later; the case was nolle- 
 prossed and he went free. The trial and sentence to hang his mother, 
 Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, provoked unending controversy, but the verdict 
 remained unchanged. 
 
 The Capital and the entire North went into mourning, but under- 
 neath surged a spirit of revenge. The people of the South, entirely 
 innocent of the crime committed by a few fanatics, were filled with 
 fear of the consequences. It may truthfully be said that the assassi- 
 nation of President Lincoln, more than any other single factor, caused 
 the terrible, harsh years of Reconstruction, which divided the Country 
 more than had all the fury and desolation of four years of war. 
 If Mr. Lincoln's own wise policies had been followed, the spirit of 
 national unity which now prevails could have been hastened by 
 many years. 
 
 68 
 
Bring The Cool Old Bugle, Boys 
 
 FOR FIVE DAYS before May 23, 1865, Washington was decked 
 out in flags, bunting, transparencies, triumphal arches and 
 breeze-whipped mottoes for the Grand Review of armies which 
 had saved the Nation's life. For this would be more than a gigantic 
 two-day spectacle in blue: it would dramatize an experience come 
 full circle. Thousands of men who had drawn first breath as soldiers 
 in Washington would end their days as soldiers here in a march 
 down Pennsylvania Avenue to an unfixed destination in Time. 
 
 Nearly 150,000 men — Army of the Potomac, 80,000; Army of the 
 Tennessee, 36,000; and the Army of Georgia, 33,000 — had poured 
 into the Capital in May, splashing the white of tents on parks and 
 surrounding hills until the sight resembled the borning months of 
 war. Doors of great houses flew open to prominent officers; merchants 
 stocked heavily for heydays of business; ladies tortured themselves 
 
 Blaring bands and pounding drums quickened the stride 
 of soldiers home from the War, as the Grand Review swung 
 past 9th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in May, 1865. 
 
over what gowns to wear to what, and the saloons rolled in barrel 
 on barrel of liquor. Trains groaned in, packed to the doors with 
 celebrants. Finding a bed was impossible — but who wanted to sleep? 
 
 Underneath the jubiliations lingered the grief over Mr. Lincoln; 
 and all about, as somehow in his memory, stood the flaming flowers 
 of spring. 
 
 At 9 a.m. a bugle pealed, a cannon fired and the march of the 
 Army of the Potomac began with Meade at its head, on a champing 
 horse. The blue cloumns, dense and rhythmic, swung down Capitol 
 Hill interspersed with bands playing When Johnny Comes Marching 
 Home, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, and other songs of a singing war. 
 Crowds jammed the streets and men and women in windows and 
 children in trees shouted back the tunes to the marching soldiers. 
 Some rushed the columns, and kissed the tattered flags. 
 
 The reviewing stand before the White House was occupied by 
 President Johnson, his Cabinet, Congressmen, diplomats, and gov- 
 ernors of Northern states. Grant had come early on foot from the 
 Army's Headquarters at 1 7th and F Streets. Sherman was there, too, 
 and next day % would remember old controversies and decline the 
 prof erred hand of Secretary Stanton. 
 
 Soon the column rounded the curve at the Treasury, and pounded 
 ahead. Meade swerved his horse, dismounted and entered the stand. 
 The cavalry trotted past, led by Merritt in the absence of Sheridan. 
 Custer rode up in buckskin trousers, his yellow hair flowing behind 
 a crimson necktie — and the crowd applauded. Suddenly frightened, 
 his horse reared and plunged in a wild gallop before the reviewers. 
 But Custer reined in, and returned for a quieter passing under a 
 shower of thrown flowers. 
 
 The famed corps marched by, followed by bouncing cannon heaped 
 with flowers. The President almost continuously waved his hat in a 
 curious motion from left to right. Occasionally he threw his right 
 arm across his breast, and rested the hat on his left shoulder. 
 
 The next day the armies of the West had their turn. The bands 
 played Marching Through Georgia as the tall, lean victors of Vicks- 
 burg and Atlanta marched along for seven hours. They had a 
 shaggier, different look about them; a New York World reporter 
 thought the Army of the Potomac was an army of citizens, and 
 the Westerners an army of pioneers. 
 
 Within a few weeks they were gone, and the drowse of summer 
 lay between the river and the Maryland upland; and their looks 
 were forgotten until when years had passed some of their faces 
 came back in bronze to the parks of the beautiful Capital. 
 
 70 
 
"3rt 
 
 a£M'; 
 
 
 The Grand Review, 1865. President Johnson, the Cabinet, 
 General Grant and other notables, in the Presidential Re- 
 viewing Stand in front of the White House. 
 
 ^^r'.'^#3 ' 
 
 
 The massive grandeur of Washington takes shape in this 
 photograph made soon after the Civil War. 
 
 71 
 
************ 
 
 "It is wrong to say that the Civil War divided this 
 country. The war came because the country was 
 already divided; and actually, in a strange way, the 
 Civil war unites us — unites us by the sharing of a great 
 and unique experience. It has given to all of us, North 
 and South together, a moving and an incomprehensible 
 memory. It remains always upon our conscience, just 
 below the surface. It touches everything we do, it helps 
 condition every emotional attitude we take. And it has 
 led us as a people a great distance along the road to 
 that maturity of wisdom which is above all other things 
 necessary for a democracy. And so we keep on with 
 our search. We may get no final answers fit to be writ- 
 ten down in books, but we do see, always before us, 
 the great ranks of the nameless men and women who 
 marched out of mystery and into mystery, out of life 
 and into death, so many years ago. They are worth 
 looking at; and, as we look, I suggest that we listen 
 closely. For these heroes of ours, who lived so long 
 ago, and who struggled so greatly against something 
 greater than themselves, were part of an undying pro- 
 cession, men and women who marched bravely on the 
 undiscovered road to tomorrow; and as they marched, 
 they marched to the sound of trumpets." 
 
 — Bruce Catton 
 
 ************ 
 
The President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy 
 The Vice President and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson 
 The Speaker and Mrs. John McCormack 
 
 General and Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower 
 
 COMMISSIONERS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 
 
 Honorable Walter N. Tobriner, President 
 Honorable Frederick J. Clarke 
 Honorable John B. Duncan 
 
 CIVIL WAR CENTENNIAL COMMISSION 
 OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 
 
 Honorable Paul J. Sedgwick, Chairman 
 
 MEMBERS 
 
 Sigurd Anderson J. B. Heffernan 
 
 Marshall Andrews Alexander Holtzoff 
 
 Elden Billings C. M. Keller 
 
 Henry Brylawski Mrs. B. Y. Martin 
 
 Leon Chatelain William H. Press 
 
 Henry A. Dudley William H. Price 
 
 E. M. Eller B. M. McKelway 
 
 Robert E. Freer Roger Robb 
 
 West A. Hamilton J. Gay Seabourne 
 
 Samuel D. Sturgis 
 
 Lois Jacobs, Secretary 
 Staff Assistants: B. Frank Cooling, N.P.S. 
 Carl H. Frey 
 
 Scott Hart 
 Authors: _ _ _, 
 
 Joseph B. Mitchell 
 

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 975.3D63S C002 
 
 THE SYMBOL AND THE SWORD WASH DC 
 
 3 01 
 
 2 031841999