WASHINGTON IN THE SIXTIES.
Washington in the sixties was not the beautiful city that it is today. The nation’s capital was one vast camp of armed men and the city was circled with a cordon of forts and earthworks. Early in the war the Confederate flag could be seen from the dome of the capitol, flying on Munson’s hill, while the exchange of shots by the pickets was heard at the White House more than once.
“‘All quiet along the Potomac,’ they say,
Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.”
Pennsylvania avenue, that grand thoroughfare with its wide, long stretch of asphalt, was then supposed to be paved with cobblestones, but they had nearly been crushed out of sight by the heavy government wagons, cannon and artillery caissons, which had cut such deep ruts that the street was almost impassable in muddy weather.
Guards patrolled the sidewalks; troops were constantly passing through the city on their way to Virginia; officers and their orderlies were riding to and fro, and it was said that a boy could not throw a stone at a dog without hitting a brigadier general.
Probably few of the present generation are aware how much of the great civil war was fought within an easy day’s journey of the city. Two of the most celebrated battles of the war, in which 25,000 men were killed and wounded, were fought but twenty-five miles away, and at Arlington there is a monument that marks the resting place of the remains of over 2,100 unknown dead gathered along the route of the army from the Potomac to the Rappahannock.
There is no greater blessing vouchsafed to man than memory, which enables one to live over again the past, and so I recall with pleasure the many happy days in my early army life, when we were doing duty in the forts around Washington, and before the gold plating of a soldier’s life had been worn off by the stern realities of active service.
The city was then encircled by a chain of forts. But time and the elements have nearly obliterated the defenses of Washington, and pretty little villas with sweet and romantic names such as: Rosslyn, Ivanwold, Buena Vista, Carberry Meadows, etc., have replaced them. The prattle and innocent laughter of happy children is heard on the heights or Arlington, instead of bugle calls, the music of bands and the booming of cannon.
Looking backward from a distance of forty years one must admit that it was much more comfortable soldiering around Washington than at the front with such fighters as Grant, Sheridan, Hancock, Warren, Wright, Gibbons and others “pushing things.” It was monotonous, however, and the men grew tired of drills, fancy guard mountings, dress parades, brightening of guns and polishing of brass buttons, and were troubled with the thought that the war might be brought suddenly to a close before they would have an opportunity to win any laurels. But everybody had their ambitions gratified before Lee surrendered, for there was fighting enough to go all around in that affair.
SOME OF THE OLD FORTS.