We found accommodations at the best private residence in the place. The owner had a number of outlying farms, and was reported to be very wealthy. He was courteous, and professed to be a Union man. He was disposing of his hay and grain to the United States government, receiving the highest prices at his own door. Yet when conversing with him, he said, "your army," "your troops," as if he were a foreigner. A funeral procession passed the house,—a company of the Massachusetts Fifteenth, bearing to the village graveyard a comrade, who had laid down his life for his country at Ball's Bluff. Said the wife of my host to a friend as they passed: "Their government has got money enough, and ought to take the bodies away; we don't want them buried here; it will make the place unhealthy." These expressions revealed one thing: that between them and the Federal Union and the Constitution there was no bond of unity. There was no nationality binding us together. Once they would not have spoken of the army of the United States as "your army." What had caused this alienation? Slavery. An ebony-hued chattel kindled my fire in the morning and blacked my boots. A yellow chattel stood behind my chair at breakfast. A stout chattel, worth twelve hundred dollars, groomed my horse. There were a dozen young chattels at play upon the piazza. My host was an owner of human flesh and blood. That made him at heart a Secessionist. The army had not interfered with Slavery. Slaves found their way into the camp daily, and were promptly returned to their professedly loyal masters. Yet the presence of the troops was odious to the slaveholders.
In the quiet of affairs around Washington I visited Eastern Maryland, accompanied by two members of the press. The Rebels had closed the navigation of the Potomac by erecting batteries at Cockpit Point. General Hooker's division was at Budd's Ferry, Port Tobacco, and other places down the river. It was the last day of October,—one of the loveliest of the year,—when we started upon our excursion.
No description can convey an idea of the incomparable loveliness of the scenery,—the broad river, with the slow-moving sail-boats, the glassy, unruffled surface, reflecting canvas, masts, and cordage, the many-colored hills, rich with autumnal tints, the marble piles of the city, the broad streets, the more distant Georgetown, the thousands of white tents near and far away, with all the nice shading and blending of varied hue in the mellow light. On every hilltop we lingered to enjoy the richness of nature, and to fix in memory the picture which, under the relentless hand of war, would soon be robbed of its peculiar charms.
Ten miles out and all was changed. The neat, tasteful, comfortable residences were succeeded by the most dilapidated dwellings. The fields, green with verdure, gave place to sandy barrens. To say that everybody and everything were out at the elbows and down at the heels is not sufficient. One must see the old buildings,—the crazy roofs, the unglazed windows, the hingeless doors, the rotting stoops, the reeling barns and sheds, leaning in every direction, as if all were in drunken carousal,—the broken fences, the surrounding lumber,—of carts, wagons, and used-up carriages, to obtain a correct idea of this picture, so strongly and painfully in contrast to that from the hill-tops overlooking the capital of the country.
The first stopping-place for travellers is the "White Horse." We had heard much of the White Horse, and somehow had great expectations, or rather an undefined notion that Clark Mills or some other artist had sculptured from white marble a steed balanced on his hind legs and leaping toward the moon, like that in front of the Presidential mansion; but our great expectations dwindled like Pip's, when we descended a hill and came upon a whitewashed, one-story building,—a log-house, uninviting to man or beast. A poplar in front of the domicile supported a swinging sign, on which the country artist had displayed his marvellous skill in painting a white horse standing on two legs. It was time for dinner, and the landlady spread the table for her guests. There was no gold-tinted bill of fare, with unpronounceable French phrases, no long line of sable waiters in white aprons. My memory serves me as to the fare.
Pork, Pone, Potatoes.
The pork was cold, pone ditto, potatoes also. Pone is unraised corn-cake baked in the ashes, and said to be good for indigestion. It is a favorite cake in the South.
A saffron-hued young man, tall and lean, with a sharp nose and thin face, sat on the steps of the White Horse.
"The ager got hold of me yesterday and shook me right smart," he said. "It is a bad place for the ager. The people that used to live here have all moved away. The land is run out. They have terbakkered it to death. We can't raise nothing, and it ain't no use to try." He pointed to a deserted farm-house standing on a hill, and said, "There's a place the owner has left to grow up to weeds. He can't get nobody to carry it on."
A stately brick mansion, standing back from the highway once the residence of a man of wealth and taste, with blinds, portico, and carriage-house, elaborate in design and finish, was in the last stages of ruin. The portico had settled away from the house. The roof was hollowed like a weak-backed horse, the chimneys were tumbling, blinds swinging by a hinge, windows smashed, outhouses tottering with age and neglect, all presenting a most repulsive appearance. How changed from former years, when the courteous, hospitable proprietor of the estate received his guests at the magnificent portico, ushered them to his spacious halls, opened the sideboard and drank to their health, while attendant slaves took the horses to the stables! It is easy to fill up the picture,—the grand dinner, the walk over the estate, the stroll by the river, the duck-shooting on the marshes, the gang of slaves in the tobacco-patch, the army of black and yellow servants in the kitchens, chambers, and parlors. When this old house was in its glory, this section of Maryland was in its prime; but how great the change!