The flying flags, playing bands, galloping officers, long lines of our boys in blue, and sharp metallic reports, impress you with something of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war.
But Captain Jenny, a young engineer officer, quietly remarks, that he once witnessed a review of seventy thousand French troops in the Champ de Mars, and in 1859 saw the army of seventy-five thousand men enter Paris, returning from the Italian wars. Colonel Wagner, an old Hungarian officer, who has participated in twenty-three engagements, assures you that he has looked upon a parade of one hundred and forty thousand men, whereupon our little force of five thousand appears insignificant. Nevertheless, it exceeds Jackson's recruits at New Orleans, and is larger than the effective force of Scott during the Mexican war.
A "Runnin' Nigger!"
Our first contraband arrived here in a skiff last night, bearing unmistakable evidences of long travel. He says he came from Mississippi, and the cotton-seed in his woolly head corroborates the statement. I first saw him beside the guard-house, surrounded by a party of soldiers. He answered my salutation with "Good evenin', Mass'r," removing his old wool hat from his grizzly head. He smiled all over his face, and bowed all through his body, as he depressed his head, slightly lifting his left foot, with the gesture which only the unmistakable darkey can give.
"Well, uncle, have you joined the army?"
"Yes, mass'r" (with another African salaam).
"Are you going to fight?"
"No, mass'r, I'se not a fightin' nigger, I'se a runnin' nigger!"
"Are you not afraid of starving, up here among the Abolitionists?"