At length Pope's forces were being massed along the line of the Rappahannock, below the Occoquan river, and upon the "Piedmont" highlands. "Piedmont" is the name applied to the fine table-lands of Northern Virginia, and the ensuing campaign has received the designation of the "Piedmont Campaign." Pope's army proper was composed of three corps, commanded respectively by Generals Irvin McDowell, Franz Siegel, and Nathaniel P. Banks. But a portion of General McClellan's peninsular army had meantime returned to the Potomac, and the corps of General Burnside was stationed at Fredericksburg, thirty miles or more below Pope's head-quarters at Warrenton.
I presented myself to General Pope on the 12th of July, at noon. His Washington quarters consisted of a quiet brick house, convenient to the War office, and the only tokens of its importance were some guards at the threshold, and a number of officers' horses, saddled in the shade of some trees at the curb. The lower floor of the dwelling was appropriated to quartermasters' and inspectors' clerks, before whom a number of people were constantly presenting themselves, with applications for passes;—sutlers, in great quantities, idlers, relic-hunters, and adventurers in still greater ratio, and, last of all, citizens of Virginia, solicitous to return to their farms and families. The mass of these were rebuffed, as Pope had inaugurated his campaign with a show of severity, even threatening to drive all the non-combatants out of his lines, unless they took the Federal oath of allegiance. He gave me a pass willingly, and chatted pleasantly for a time. In person he was dark, martial, and handsome,—inclined to obesity, richly garbed in civil cloth, and possessing a fiery black eye, with luxuriant beard and hair. He smoked incessantly, and talked imprudently. Had he commenced his career more modestly, his final discomfiture would not have been so galling; but his vanity was apparent to the most shallow observer, and although he was brave, clever, and educated, he inspired distrust by his much promising and general love of gossip and story-telling. He had all of Mr. Lincoln's garrulity (which I suspect to be the cause of their affinity), and none of that good old man's unassuming common sense.
The next morning, at seven o'clock, I embarked for Alexandria, and passed the better half of the forenoon in negotiating for a pony. At eleven o'clock, I took my seat in a bare, filthy car, and was soon whirled due southward, over the line of the Orange and Alexandria railroad. The country between Alexandria and Warrenton Junction, or, indeed, between Washington and Richmond, was not unlike those masterly descriptions of Gibbon, detailing the regions overrun by Hyder Ali. The towns stood like ruins in a vast desert, and one might write musing epitaphs at every wind-beaten dwelling, whence the wretched denizens had fled in cold and poverty to a doubtful hospitality in the far South. Fences there were none, nor any living animals save the braying hybrids which limped across the naked plains to eke out existence upon some secluded patches of grass. These had been discharged from the army, and they added rather than detracted from the lonesomeness of the wild. Their great mournful eyes and shaggy heads glared from copses, and in places where they had lain down beside the track to expire. If we sometimes pity these dumb beasts as they drag loaded wains, or heavy omnibuses, or sub-soil ploughs, we may also bestow a tender sentiment upon the army mules. Flogged by teamsters, cursed by quartermasters, ridiculed by roaring regiments of soldiers, strained and spavined by fearful draughts, stalled in bogs and fainting upon hillsides,—their bones will evidence the sites of armies, when the skeletons of men have crumbled and become reabsorbed. I have seen them die like martyrs, when the inquisitor, with his bloody lash, stood over them in the closing pangs, and their last tremulous howl has almost moved to tears. Some of the dwellings seemed to be occupied, but the tidiness of old times was gone. The women seemed sunburnt and hardened by toil. They looked from their thresholds upon the flying train, with their hair unbraided and their garters ungyved,—not a negro left to till the fields, nor a son or brother who had not travelled to the wars. They must be now hewers of wood, and drawers of water, and the fingers whereon diamonds used to sparkle, must clench the axe and the hoe.
At last we came to Bull Run, the dark and bloody ground where the first grand armies fought and fled, and again to be consecrated by a baptism of fire. The railway crossed the gorge upon a tall trestle bridge, and for some distance the track followed the windings of the stream. A black, deep, turgid current, flowing between gaunt hills, lined with cedar and beech, crossed here and there by a ford, and vanishing, above and below, in the windings of wood and rock; while directly beyond, lie the wide plains of Manassas Junction, stretching in the far horizon, to the undulating boundary of the Blue Ridge. As the Junction remains to-day, the reader must imagine this splendid prospect, unbroken by fences, dwellings, or fields, as if intended primevally to be a place for the shock of columns, with redoubts to the left and right, and fragments of stockades, dry rifle pits, unfinished or fallen breastworks, and, close in the foreground, a medley of log huts for the winter quartering of troops. The woods to the north mark the course of Bull Run; a line of telegraph poles going westward points to Manassas Gap; while the Junction proper is simply a point where two single track railways unite, and a few frame "shanties" or sheds stand contiguous. These are, for example, the "New York Head-quarters," kept by a person with a hooked nose, who trades in cakes, lemonade, and (probably) whiskey, of the brand called "rotgut;" or the "Union Stores," where a person in semi-military dress deals in India-rubber overcoats, underclothing, and boots. As the train halts, lads and negroes propose to sell sandwiches to passengers, and soldiers ride up to take mail-bags and bundles for imperceptible camps. In the distance some teams are seen, and a solitary horseman, visiting vestiges of the battle; sidelings beside the track are packed with freight cars, and a small mountain of pork barrels towers near by; there are blackened remains of locomotives a little way off, but these have perhaps hauled regiments of Confederates to the Junction; and over all—men, idlers, ruins, railway, huts, entrenchments—floats the star-spangled banner from the roof of a plank depot.
The people in the train were rollicking and well-disposed, and black bottles circulated freely. I was invited to drink by many persons, but the beverage proffered was intolerably bad, and several convivials became stupidly drunk. A woman in search of her husband was one of the passengers, and those contiguous to her were as gentlemanly as they knew how to be. "A pretty woman, in war-time," said a Captain, aside, to me, "is not to be sneezed at." At "Catlett's," a station near Warrenton Junction, we narrowly escaped a collision with a train behind, and the occupants of our train, women included, leaped down an embankment with marvellous agility. Here we switched off to the right, and at four o'clock dismounted at the pleasant village of Warrenton.
CHAPTER XXI.
CAMPAIGNING WITH GENERAL POPE.
The court-house village of Fauquier County contained a population of twelve or fifteen hundred at the commencement of the war. Its people embraced the revolutionary cause at the outstart, and furnished some companies of foot to the Confederate service, as well as a mounted company known as the "Black Horse Cavalry." The guns of Bull Run were heard here on the day of battle, and hundreds of the wounded came into town at nightfall. Thenceforward Warrenton became prominently identified with the struggle, and the churches and public buildings were transmuted to hospitals. After the Confederates retired from Manassas Junction, the vicinity of Warrenton was a sort of neutral ground. At one time the Southern cavalry would ride through the main street, and next day a body of mounted Federals would pounce upon the town, the inhabitants, meanwhile, being apprehensive of a sabre combat in the heart of the place. Some people were ruined by the war; some made fortunes. The Mayor of the village was named Bragg, and he was a trader in horses, as well as a wagon-builder. There were two taverns, denominated respectively, the "Warrenton Inn," and the "Warren Green Hotel." I obtained a room at the former. A young man named Dashiell kept it. He was a fair-complexioned, clever, high-strung Virginian, and managed to obtain a great deal of paper money from both republics. It is an encomium in America, to say that a man "Can keep a hotel," but what shall be said of the man who can keep a hotel in war-time? I observed young Dashiell's movements from day to day, and I am satisfied that his popularity arose from his fairness and frankness. He charged nine dollars a week for room, and "board," of three meals, but could, with difficulty, obtain meat and vegetables for the table. His mother and his brother-in-law lived in the house. The latter was a son of Mayor Bragg, and had been twice in the Confederate service. He was engaged both at Bull Run and at Fairfax Court House, and made no secret of his activity at either place. But he was treated considerately, though he vaunted intolerably. The "Inn" was a frame dwelling, with a first floor of stone, surrounded by a double portico. The first room (entering from the street) was the office, consisting of a bare floor, some creaking benches, some chairs with whittled and broken arms, a high desk, where accounts were kept, a row of bells, numbered, communicating with the rooms. Hand-bills were pinned to the walls, announcing that William Higgins was paying good prices for "likely" field hands, that Timothy Ingersoll's stock of dry goods was the finest in Piedmont, that James Mason's mulatto woman, named Rachel, had decamped on the night of Whitsuntide, and that one hundred dollars would be paid by the subscriber for her return. Most of these bills were out of date, but some recent ones were exhibited to me calling for volunteers, labelled, "Ho! for winter-quarters in Washington;" "Sons of the South arise!"—"Liberty, glory, and no Yankeedom!" A bellcord hung against the "office" door, communicating with the stables, where a deaf hostler might not be rung up. In the back yard, suspended from a beam, and upright, hung a large bell, which called the boarders to meals. It commonly rung thrice, and I was told on inquiry, by the cook—
"De fust bell, sah, is to prepah to prepah for de table; dat bell, when de fust cook don't miss it, is rung one hour befo' mealtime. De second bell, sah, is to prepah for de table; de last bell, to come to de table."