Walks about Washington

by Francis E. Leupp

Lincoln appeared very calm, in spite of the general atmosphere of excitement. Buchanan’s face was graver than usual, and he spoke little during the drive. When the party came upon the platform, Senator Baker of Oregon stepped forward and said simply, “Fellow citizens, I introduce to you Abraham Lincoln, President-elect of the United States”; and the tall, ungainly hero of the day advanced to the rail. He laid his manuscript, to which he had put the finishing touches at daybreak that morning, upon the little desk with his cane for a paper-weight, and looked about for somewhere to lay his high silk hat; Stephen A. Douglas, who was sitting near, reached for the hat and held it throughout the proceedings. Lincoln, after a brief pause, drew from his pocket a pair of steel-bowed spectacles, which he adjusted very deliberately, and began to read with a seriousness of manner that soon quenched all disposition to frivolity in his audience. The address was a plea for the preservation of that friendship between the North and the South which had been hallowed by their united warfare in the past against the enemies of their country, and ended thus:

“Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every loving heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

When the last syllable had passed his lips, he stood still a moment, slowly sweeping the multitude with his eyes. Then he bowed to Chief Justice Taney, who, in a voice tremulous with emotion, administered the oath of office.

Within six weeks thereafter Fort Sumter had been fired upon, and the new President had issued his call for seventy-five thousand volunteers to maintain the laws of the United States, and summoned Congress to meet in extra session on the fourth of July. Almost the first thing the Senate did when it came together was to expel six of its members who had cast their fortunes with the seceding States. Meanwhile, Washington had been transformed from an outwardly peaceful town into a military camp. A home defense corps was hurriedly enlisted by Cassius M. Clay of Kentucky and James H. Lane of Kansas, and a guard was posted around the White House every night. The minutemen were called out repeatedly for special service. Once they seized a vessel which was about to sail from a Potomac wharf for a southern port, laden with munitions of war alleged to have been stolen from the Government. Again, they marched to Georgetown and took forcible possession of the flour stored in a mill there and reported to them as destined for the Confederate army; this, by commandeering all the wagons in the neighborhood, they removed to the Capitol and stowed away in the basement rooms. In the streets, all strangers were eyed with suspicion. Signals to the police, the home defense corps, and the minutemen were conveyed by certain tollings of big bells; and, as every signal meant trouble either present or imminent, the townspeople lived continually as if on the brink of a volcano.

Among the earliest State volunteers to reach the city were regiments from Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. The Massachusetts Sixth, which had been fired on by a mob while passing through Baltimore, was quartered in the Hall of the Senate, and the New York Seventh in the Hall of Representatives; while bivouacked in other parts of the same building were about five hundred Pennsylvanians and a company of United States artillery, for there was general expectation of a Confederate attack upon the Capitol. The New York Seventy-first was assigned to the Washington Navy Yard, so as to be convenient for repelling approaches from Alexandria by way of the river.

The first incident of the war in which Alexandria figured, however, was not a foray on Washington but a tragedy at home. Colonel Ephraim E. Ellsworth, who had recruited a regiment of zouaves from New York City, came to Washington at its head. He was young, handsome, soldierly in bearing, and full of enthusiasm; but Mr. Lincoln, though greatly attracted to him, felt some misgivings as to his ability to control his zouaves, for the New York firemen of that period had a reputation for turbulence. Hence, when arrangements were made for moving troops into Virginia to occupy a region which must be held for the defense of the capital, the President consented to let Ellsworth’s regiment go only on condition that it should be instantly disbanded if its members committed any breach of discipline.

At two o’clock on the morning of May 24, 1861, the zouaves boarded two Potomac steamboats, which before sunrise had dropped down to Alexandria. Leaving most of his men on the wharf, Ellsworth started with a small squad toward a telegraph office whence he could report to Washington by wire. He observed a Confederate flag flying from the roof of a hotel known as the Marshall House, and, realizing what might happen if his men caught sight of it, entered with the purpose of directing its removal. Jackson, the landlord, was abed, and the man in charge of the office seemed irresponsible, so Ellsworth and his squad hauled down the flag themselves. As they were descending with it, Jackson suddenly emerged from his chamber in the second story and leveled a double-barreled shotgun at Corporal Brownell, the soldier nearest him. Brownell, with his rifle, struck Jackson’s gun just as its trigger was pulled, and the shot went wild; but in an instant Jackson had aimed again and discharged the contents of the second barrel into Ellsworth’s breast. The Colonel fell dead, and Brownell, firing and using his bayonet almost simultaneously, killed Jackson where he stood.

Except one who had lost his life by an accident, Ellsworth was the first Union soldier to fall in the Civil War. He was buried from the White House by the President’s order; and the news of his death so aroused the North that volunteers poured into Washington for a time faster than the Government could arm and provision them. Mostly they were militia regiments which had come on under their own officers. In Washington they were united in brigades, with generals of some experience in command, and sent into Virginia by way of the “Long Bridge,” which had its terminus on the fringe of the Arlington estate; it was a wooden structure, and the troops had to break step in crossing it. The first battle between the two armies was at a point near Manassas, and took its name, Bull Run, from a small stream which, about twenty-five miles southwest of Washington, joins the Occoquan River.

So little conception had the people at large of the actualities of war that many Washingtonians and tourists, of all ages and sexes, drove down in carriages to watch the battle from a safe position on the hillside. Fighting began on the morning of Sunday, July 21, and the first reports that reached the city described everything as going favorably to the Union cause. The despatches sent to Northern newspapers all reflected this view, and some went pretty elaborately into detail concerning incidents on various parts of the field. But suddenly the tide turned, and with a panicky force which started the whole body of Federal troops on a pell-mell rush for Washington. The light-hearted spectators ran, too, often impeding the retreat of the soldiers by getting their carriages wedged together on a bridge or a narrow road, while the air shook with mingled profanity and prayers, punctuated with hysterics. Not a few of the carriage folk, as night drew near, became so terrified that they cut their harness and rode their horses bareback, two sometimes clinging to one animal. The Confederates, discovering the rout, were as much surprised as the Federals. They set out to follow their foes, but, not fully grasping the real conditions, stopped about fifteen miles short of Washington and waited for morning, thus giving the fugitive army a chance to recover from its first demoralization. Had they pressed on, they might have taken possession of the capital that night, captured the stored munitions, and looted the Treasury; and the record of the next four years must have been written in a different vein.

Meanwhile, the true story had been brought in by the fleeing non-combatants, and the Associated Press attempted to send out a correction of first reports, but discovered too late that the Government had seized all the telegraph lines and established a temporary censorship, postponing any further dissemination of news. As far as known, only one prominent paper in the North was able to describe the disaster in its Monday morning’s issue. That was a Philadelphia journal, whose correspondent had taken to his heels as soon as the panic began. By the time he reached Washington, he was so convinced that the Confederates were going to capture the city at once, that he boarded a train which was just pulling out for Philadelphia, and at his desk in his home office dictated his observations of the battle and the stampede.