THE SEAT OF WAR.
Washington, March 2.
IT is upon the banks of the Susquehanna river that the traveller Pjourneying southwards first comes upon the track of war. Between ennsylvania and Maryland, between the free North and the slave South, the great deep river, wider that the Rhine at Dusseldorf, rolls as a frontier line. But the fragile-looking steam ferry-boat which, in defiance of all one's preconceived ideas of the laws of equilibrium, carries train-cars, rails, and all, transports one not only from one state, but from one country to another. The whole aspect of the scene changes; the thriving cheerful expanse of carefully-tilled fields, dotted over with the villa-like wooden farm-houses, gives place to long, straggling, red-brick towns, half villages, half cities, to broken- down fences, to half-ploughed, hopeless-looking fields, to dreary tracks of mud which stand where roads ought to be, and to wide stony spaces of meagre bushwood. The restless activity you witness everywhere north of the Susquehanna is exchanged for a sort of fussy idleness. By the house-doors and in the streets through which the train passes slowly you see men hanging about idly, loitering languidly with their hands buried in their pockets, watching tumble- down carts struggle spasmodically across the deep-rutted roads, and loafing visibly.
Everywhere, too, about you, are the signs of war. At Havre de Grace, the river station on the Southern side, the first camp catches your eye, and the soldiers come running round the train to ask for stray papers from New York. Then, at each station, as you go on further south, the train becomes fuller and fuller with soldiers, and the small roadside camps become more and more frequent. In Bal- timore the streets swarm with troops, and south of this again on to Washington, you seem to pass through a conquered country. In the grey glimmer of the evening you see the white tents of the camps pitched on the hill-sides round Baltimore. Every station appears occupied by troops ; at every bridge and crossing there are small outposts stationed, and along the line at short distances there are sentinels at watch to protect the rails. The nearest forces of the enemy lie some score of miles away across the Potomac, and with the vast army of Washington drawn up between them and the Balti- more line, it cannot be against them that these precautions are taken, but against the men of Maryland. It is true, indeed, that the main- tenance of this single track of rails, the one means of communication between New York and Washington, is of vital importance, and therefore no precaution is too great to take; but, on the other hand, the maintenance of the same line north of the Susquehanna is of equal importance, and yet there it is left unguarded. The inference is obvious.
Amongst many strange sights that I have seen I shall number as not the least strange that of Washington in this war time. To a stranger it must be a quaint city in ordinary days. Had it progressed at the rate of Northern cities it world have been by this time one of the finest capitals in the world ; as it is, it was built for a city of the future, and the future has not yet been realized. On two low hills, a couple of miles apart, stand the white marble palaces of the Houses of Congress, and the Government-offices. At their feet stretches the grand Potomac; and across the low broken valley between them runs the long broad irregular avenue of Pennsylvania. On either side hosts of smaller streets branch out for short distances, ending abruptly in brick-fields, or in the open country, and that is all. The whole place looks run up in a night, like, the card-board cities, which Potemkin erected to gratify the eyes of his imperial mistress on her tour through Russia, and it is impossible to remove the impression, that when Congress is over the whole place is taken down and packed up till again wanted. Everything has such an un- finished " here for a day only' look. The roads appear to have been marked out and then left uncompleted, and the pigs you see grubbing in the midst of the main thoroughfares seem in keeping. The broken-down creaking carriages, with their negro and Irish drivers, are obviously brought out for the day, to last for the day alone; the shops are of the Margate watering-place stamp, where nothing is kept in stock, and what little there is, is all displayed in the shop windows. The private houses, handsome enough often in themselves, are apparently stuck up anywhere as a travelling van is perched on the first convenient spot for a night's sojourn. Of course, all this watering-place air habitual to Washington at all times is rendered more striking by the presence of a great army. Wooden sheds have been erected on every side for the use of the army. There is the atmosphere of a camp around you. Every third or fourth man you meet is in uniform. At every street-corner there are mounted sentinels. Orderlies dash past one at every step. Regiments are constantly passing through the town. The tents of the different camps can be seen on the outskirts of the town. Bag- gage waggons, vans for the sick, ambulances, parks of artillery, block up Pennsylvania Avenue throughout the day. At the very foot of the White House are long wooden sheds, where the unbroken cavalry horses ate trained daily; and at the end of every street leading south- wards there are posts of soldiers, whom you cannot pass without a i formal order. The New York papers, I see, are very indignant with a senator here, who, when he was asked to dance the other day at a Washington party, replied that " he made it a role not to dance in a 'besieged' city," but as far as outward looks go the senator uttered an obvious, it an unwelcome truth.
Wonderful, too, is the look of the hotels. From early morning till far into the night the lobbies and passages of Willard s, the great meeting-place of Washington, are filled with a motley throng of all classes and all nations. Soldiers in every uniform, privates and officers mixed up in strange confusion, Congress men and senators, army contractors and Jews, artists, newspaper men, and tourists, are mixed up with a nondescript crowd of men, who seem to have no business except to hang about, and to belong to no particular nation, or class, or business. In the parlours there is the same strange con- frast. Half a dozen rough-looking common soldiers, with their boots encased in deep layers of Virginia mud, will be dozing with their feet upon the fender before the fire. At the tables, gentlemen dressed in the black evening suits Americans are so partial to in the daytime will be writing letters. Knots of three or four, belonging apparently to every grade of society, will be standing about the room, shaking hands constantly with new comers, and introducing everybody to everybody after the American fashion. Up-stairs, on the floor above, splendidly dressed ladies are strolling at all hours about the passages, chatting with friends, working, playing, and flirting with smartly dressed officers and young diplomatists.
In fact, barring the presence of the ladies—an ingredient we had not there—I am constantly reminded of Naples in the Gari- baldian days. There is the same collection of all sorts of men from every country, the same Babel of languages, the same fusion of all classes, the same ceaseless conversation about the war, the same pre- ponderance of the military element, and the same series of baseless rumours, the same feverish restless excitement. Moreover, constantly I am coming across faces that I know well, and am saluted by ac- quaintances whose names I have forgotten, but whom I remember at the camp before Capua, and more frequently still about the cafés of Naples. What they are doing here ? why they are employed here ? what their rank may be here ? are all mysteries. I am content to answer by the Italian formula of " CM lo sa ?" It is good, I suppose, fishing in troubled waters. Everybody here is too anxious now for there to be much of private society, or indeed of amusement of any kind. What with going to the sittings of Congress, visiting the camps, and waiting all day and every day for the news of the long expected battle, people, Itake it, are pretty well tired out at night. The President's receptions have been suspended on account of his son's death, and the feeling of society appears to be against much social festivity. Then, too, I hear from old residents, that the absence of the Southern families has made a great change. A new set of people has come in with Mr. Lincoln's presidency, strangers to Washington, and to whom Washington is strange also, and socially as well as politically things have not yet found their level. The old tone of Washington society was Southern and pro-slavery. It is true that the actual number of slaves held here is small, not more than 10 per cent. of the white population; but I think in Eng- land we hardly appreciate enough how completely a very small ele- ment of slavery leavens the whole mass of society. In Washington the influence was less than might be expected, because .from the fleeting temporary character of the whole place, and the constant im- migration of fresh corners from the North, it had not sufficient time to operate. But even here von can observe a very different tone about the secession question fromthat in vogue at the North. It is not that people are less confident of military victory ; indeed, from the inevitable impression produced by the presence of so vast an army, they are more sanguine of a very speedy suppression of the whole insurrection, but they are less hopeful about the future. To them the military crushing of the rebellion is only the commence- ment of their difficulties—the first step in a great revolution to which they can perceive no end. It appears to me that even those who are in theory the strongest Abolitionists here cannot realize the South without slavery. It is for this reason that the leaders of the Abolition Northern party attach, as I know, such an extreme import- ance to the abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia. Not only is it the first and sole practical step the Republican party have yet taken towards the abolition of slavery, but if successful it will re- model the tone of Washington society, and remove the social in- fluences which have so long acted at Washington in favour of slavery.
Already, the Northern element in Washington is fast gaining the supremacy. At the " Smithsonian " Inititute, of which Mr. Lincoln is ex-officso president, lectures are nightly delivered on the one all- absorbing subject of the war and secession. They are all Northern in tone, while those delivered by well-known Abolitionists like Wen- dell Phillips, Floyd Garrison, and John Jay, advocate the most rapid and unsparing emancipation; and these utterances of opinions, for which two years ago a man would have been mobbed almost in the streets of Washington, are now greeted with unanimous applause. Every day that the war lasts, or that progress is not made, the extreme Republican party gains in strength. Unless a decisive vic- tory is gained shortly before Washington, it is clear that General McClellan will, whether justly or not, be 'displaced in favour of a Commander-in-Chief more acceptable to the party in power. There has been, of course, an inevitable reaction from the exaggerated esti- mate formed popularly of the General's distinction. A "young Na- poleon," who has not yet fought a battle, is in obvious danger of losing a title associated with the idea of rapid and startling victo- ries. Still, his real danger is not the fickleness of popular favour, but the opposition of the Abolitionist party in the Cabinet and in Congress. Truly or not, General McClellan has come to be con- sidered as the champion of the Democratic party in the North, who wish to restore the status quo in the South, and to leave slavery an open question. On this ground he has been steadily, perhaps un- scrupulously, attacked for the last few weeks by the organs of the Republican party, and nothing but the eclat of sudden success will enable him to hold his command much longer. As in all revolutions, the party that alone has a clear, definite policy, is daily gaining more and more power; and the cry of "finish secession, once and for all, by suppressing slavery," is becoming daily more general. With an uninterrupted tide of success the party of conciliation may hold their round; but, given one great Northern reverse, and, if I ani
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