Among our casual visiters at Washington was a gentleman who little thought, as he sat by our fireside, what an adventure was awaiting him among the Virginia woods. If there could have been any anticipation of it, I should have taken more notice of him than I did; as it is, I have a very slight recollection of him. He came from Maine, and intended before his return to visit the springs of Virginia, which he did the next summer. It seems that he talked in the stages rashly, and somewhat in a bragging style—in a style, at least, which he was not prepared to support by a harder testimony—about abolitionism. He declared that abolitionism was not so dangerous as people thought; that he avowed it without any fear; that he had frequently attended abolition meetings in the North, and was none the worse for it in the slave states, &c. He finished his visit at the Springs prosperously enough; but, on his return, when he and a companion were in the stage in the midst of the forest, they met at a crossroad—Judge Lynch; that is, a mob with hints of cowhide and tar and feathers. The mob stopped the stage, and asked for the gentleman by name. It was useless to deny his name, but he denied everything else. He denied his being an abolitionist; he denied his having ever attended abolition meetings, and harangued against abolitionism from the door of the stage with so much effect, that the mob allowed the steps to be put up, and the vehicle to drive off, which it did at full speed. It was not long before the mob became again persuaded that this gentleman was a fit object of vengeance, and pursued him; but he was gone as fast as horses could carry him. He did not relax his speed even when out of danger, but fled all the way into Maine. It was not on the shrinking at the moment that one would animadvert so much as on the previous bragging. I have seen and felt enough of what peril from popular hatred is, in this martyr age of the United States, to find it easier to venerate those who can endure than to despise those who flinch from the ultimate trial of their principles; but every instance of the infliction of Lynch punishment should be a lesson to the sincerest and securest to profess no more than they are ready to perform.
One of our mornings was devoted to an examination of the library and curiosities of the State Department, which we found extremely interesting. Our imaginations were whirled over the globe at an extraordinary rate. There were many volumes of original letters of Washington's and other revolutionary leaders bound up, and ordered to be printed, for security, lest these materials of history should be destroyed by fire or other accident. There were British parliamentary documents. There was a series of the Moniteur complete, wherein we found the black list of executions during the reign of terror growing longer every day; also the first mention of Napoleon; the tidings of his escape from Elba; the misty days immediately succeeding, when no telegraphic communication could be made; his arrival at Lyons, and the subsequent silence till the announcement became necessary that the king and princes had departed during the night, and that his majesty the emperor had arrived at his palace of the Tuileries at eight o'clock the next evening. Next we turned to Algerine (French) gazettes, publishing that Mustaphas and such people were made colonels and adjutants. Then we lighted upon the journals of Arnold during the Revolutionary war, and read the postscript of his last letter previous to the accomplishment of his treason, in which he asks for hard cash, on pretence that the French had suffered so much by paper money that he was unwilling to offer them any more. Then we viewed the signatures of treaties, and decreed Metternich's to be the best; Don Pedro's the worst for flourish, and Napoleon's for illegibility. The extraordinary fact was then and there communicated to us that the Americans are fond of Miguel from their dislike of Pedro, but that they hope to "get along" very well with the Queen of Portugal. The treaties with oriental potentates are very magnificent, shining, and unintelligible to the eyes of novices. The presents from potentates to American ambassadors are laid up here; gold snuffboxes set in diamonds, and a glittering array of swords and cimeters. There was one fine Damascus blade, but it seemed too blunt to do any harm. Then we lost ourselves in a large collection of medals and coins—Roman gold coins, with fat old Vespasian and others—from which we were recalled to find ourselves in the extremely modern and democratic United States! It was a very interesting morning.
We took advantage of a mild day to ascend to the skylight of the dome of the Capitol, in order to obtain a view of the surrounding country. The ascent was rather fatiguing, but perfectly safe. The residents at Washington declare the environs to be beautiful in all seasons but early winter, the meadows being gay with a profusion of wild flowers; even as early as February with several kinds of heart's-ease. It was a particularly cold season when I was there; but on the day of my departure, in the middle of February, the streets were one sheet of ice, and I remember we made a long slide from the steps of our boarding-house to those of the stage. But I believe that that winter was no rule for others. From the summit of the Capitol we saw plainly marked out the basin in which Washington stands, surrounded by hills except where the Potomac spreads its waters. The city was intended to occupy the whole of this basin, and its seven theoretical avenues may be traced; but all except Pennsylvania Avenue are bare and forlorn. A few mean houses dotted about, the sheds of a navy-yard on one bank of the Potomac, and three or four villas on the other, are all the objects that relieve the eye in this space intended to be so busy and magnificent. The city is a grand mistake. Its only attraction is its being the seat of government, and it is thought that it will not long continue to be so. The far-western states begin to demand a more central seat for Congress, and the Cincinnati people are already speculating upon which of their hills or tablelands is to be the site of the new Capitol. Whenever this change takes place all will be over with Washington; "thorns shall come up in her palaces, and the owl and the raven shall dwell in it," while her sister cities of the east will be still spreading as fast as hands can be found to build them.
There was a funeral of a member of Congress on the 30th of January; the interment of the representative from South Carolina, whose death I mentioned in connexion with Mr. Calhoun. We were glad that we were at Washington at the time, as a congressional funeral is a remarkable spectacle. We went to the Capitol at about half an hour before noon, and found many ladies already seated in the gallery of the Hall of Representatives. I chanced to be placed at the precise point of the gallery where the sounds from every part of the house are concentred; so that I heard the whole service, while I was at such a distance as to command a view of the entire scene. In the chair were the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the Representatives. Below them sat the officiating clergyman; immediately opposite to whom were the president and the heads of departments on one side the coffin, and the judges of the Supreme Court and members of the Senate on the other. The representatives sat in rows behind, each with crape round the left arm; some in black; many in blue coats with bright buttons. Some of the fiercest political foes in the country; some who never meet on any other occasion—the president and the South Carolina senators, for instance—now sat knee to knee, necessarily looking into each others' faces. With a coffin beside them, and such an event awaiting their exit, how out of place was hatred here!
After prayers there was a sermon, in which warning of death was brought home to all, and particularly to the aged; and the vanity of all disturbances of human passion when in view of the grave was dwelt upon. There sat the gray-headed old president, at that time feeble, and looking scarcely able to go through this ceremonial. I saw him apparently listening to the discourse; I saw him rise when it was over, and follow the coffin in his turn, somewhat feebly; I saw him disappear in the doorway, and immediately descended with my party to the Rotundo, in order to behold the departure of the procession for the grave. At the bottom of the stairs a member of Congress met us, pale and trembling, with the news that the president had been twice fired at with a pistol by an assassin who had waylaid him in the portico, but that both pistols had missed fire. At this moment the assassin rushed into the Rotundo where we were standing, pursued and instantly surrounded by a crowd. I saw his hands and half-bare arms struggling above the heads of the crowd in resistance to being handcuffed. He was presently overpowered, conveyed to a carriage, and taken before a magistrate. The attack threw the old soldier into a tremendous passion. He fears nothing, but his temper is not equal to his courage. Instead of his putting the event calmly aside, and proceeding with the business of the hour, it was found necessary to put him into his carriage and take him home.
We feared what the consequences would be. We had little doubt that the assassin Lawrence was mad; and as little that, before the day was out, we should hear the crime imputed to more than one political party or individual. And so it was. Before two hours were over, the name of almost every eminent politician was mixed up with that of the poor maniac who caused the uproar. The president's misconduct on the occasion was the most virulent and protracted. A deadly enmity had long subsisted between General Jackson and Mr. Poindexter, a senator of the United States, which had been much aggravated since General Jackson's accession by some unwarrantable language which he had publicly used in relation to Mr. Poindexter's private affairs. There was a prevalent expectation of a duel as soon as the expiration of the president's term of office should enable his foe to send him a challenge. Under these circumstances the president thought proper to charge Mr. Poindexter with being the instigator of Lawrence's attempt. He did this in conversation so frequently and openly, that Mr. Poindexter wrote a letter, brief and manly, stating that he understood this charge was made against him, but that he would not believe it till it was confirmed by the president himself; his not replying to this letter being understood to be such a confirmation. The president showed this letter to visiters at the White House, and did not answer it. He went further; obtaining affidavits (tending to implicate Poindexter) from weak and vile persons whose evidence utterly failed; having personal interviews with these creatures, and openly showing a disposition to hunt his foe to destruction at all hazards. The issue was, that Lawrence was proved to have acted from sheer insanity; Poindexter made a sort of triumphal progress through the states, and an irretrievable stain was left upon President Jackson's name.
Every one was anxiously anticipating the fierce meeting of these foes on the president's retirement from office, when Mr. Poindexter last year, in a fit either of somnambulism or of delirium from illness, walked out of a chamber window in the middle of the night, and was so much injured that he soon died.
It so happened that we were engaged to a party at Mr. Poindexter's the very evening of this attack upon the president. There was so tremendous a thunder-storm that our host and hostess were disappointed of almost all their guests except ourselves, and we had difficulty in merely crossing the street, being obliged to have planks laid across the flood which gushed between the carriage and the steps of the door. The conversation naturally turned on the event of the morning. I knew little of the quarrel which was now to be so dreadfully aggravated; but the more I afterward heard, the more I admired the moderation with which Mr. Poindexter spoke of his foe that night, and as often as I subsequently met him.
I had intended to visit the president the day after the funeral; but I heard so much of his determination to consider the attack a political affair, and I had so little wish to hear it thus treated, against the better knowledge of all the world, that I stayed away as long as I could. Before I went I was positively assured of Lawrence's insanity by one of the physicians who were appointed to visit him. One of the poor creature's complaints was, that General Jackson deprived him of the British crown, to which he was heir. When I did go to the White House, I took the briefest possible notice to the president of the "insane attempt" of Lawrence; but the word roused his ire. He protested, in the presence of many strangers, that there was no insanity in the case. I was silent, of course. He protested that there was a plot, and that the man was a tool, and at length quoted the attorney-general as his authority. It was painful to hear a chief ruler publicly trying to persuade a foreigner that any of his constituents hated him to the death; and I took the liberty of changing the subject as soon as I could. The next evening I was at the attorney-general's, and I asked him how he could let himself be quoted as saying that Lawrence was not mad. He excused himself by saying that he meant general insanity. He believed Lawrence insane in one direction; that it was a sort of Ravaillac case. I besought him to impress the president with this view of the case as soon as might be.
It would be amusing, if it were possible to furnish a complete set of the rumours, injurious (if they had not been too absurd) to all parties in turn, upon this single and very common act of a madman. One would have thought that no maniac had ever before attacked a chief magistrate. The act might so easily have remained fruitless! but it was made to bear a full and poisonous crop of folly, wickedness, and wo. I feared on the instant how it would be, and felt that, though the president was safe, it was very bad news. When will it come to be thought possible for politicians to have faith in one another, though they may differ, and to be jealous for their rivals rather than for themselves?