Before me were Libby Prison and Belle Isle. What wretchedness and suffering there! Starvation for soldiers of the Union, within sight of the fertile fields of Manchester, waving with grain and alive with flocks and herds! Nearer the Capitol was the mansion of Jeff Davis, the slave-trader's jail and the slave-market. What agony and cries of distress within the hearing of the Chief Magistrate of the Confederacy, as mothers pressed their infants to their breasts for the last time.
In front of the Capitol was the stone building erected by the United States, where for four years Jeff Davis had played the sovereign, where Benjamin, Memminger, Toombs, Mallory, Sedden, Trenholm, and Breckenridge had exercised authority, dispensing places of profit to their friends, who came in crowds to find exemption from conscription. Beyond, and on either side, was the forest of blackened chimneys, tottering walls, and smoking ruins of the fire which had swept away the accumulated wealth of years in a day. How terrible the retribution! Before the war there was quiet in the city, but there came a reign of terror, when ruffians ruled, when peaceful citizens dared not be abroad after dark. There was sorrow in every household for friends fallen in battle, and Poverty sat by many a hearthstone.
Hardest of all to bear was the charity of their enemies. Under the shadow of the Capitol the Christian and Sanitary Commissions were giving bread to the needy. Standing there upon the roof I could look down upon a throng of men, women, and children receiving food from the kind-hearted delegates, upon whose lips were no words of bitterness, but only the song of the angels,—"Peace on earth, good-will to men!"
U. S. Christian Commission.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE CONFEDERATE LOAN.
April, 1865.
The attitude of Great Britain towards the United States during the Rebellion will make a strange chapter in history. The first steamship returning from that country after the firing upon Fort Sumter brought the intelligence that the British government had recognized the Rebels as belligerents. Mr. Adams, the newly appointed Minister to the Court of St. James, was on his way to London, but without waiting to hear what representations he might have to make, the ministry with unseemly haste gave encouragement to the Rebels.
Palmerston, Russell, the chief dignitaries of state, and of the Church also, with the London Times and Morning Post, espoused the cause of the slaveholders, while the weavers of Lancashire, though thrown out of employment by the blockade, gave their sympathies to the North. They were ignorant of the causes which led to hostilities. The English press informed them that it was the tariff; that the people of the South had a right to secede; that the United States had no right to restrain them; that the South was fighting for liberty: but notwithstanding this, the operatives, from the beginning, ranged themselves on the side of the Union. They stood in opposition to Palmerston and the peers of the realm,—the press, the aristocracy, and the mill-owners. In this they were guided, perhaps, more by instinct than by reason.