There was probably not a day from August to November, 1861, that General McClellan could not have easily entered Richmond, with a very small force, from the Peninsula or via the South.
It was also fully established by the official papers of the Rebel authorities themselves that twenty-five per cent. of their army was incapacitated on account of the prevailing epidemic in August and September, and that twenty-five per cent. more were absent, while the rest of the Rebel army was as badly demoralized by their victory as we were by our rout.
I do not attempt to criticise General McClellan in mentioning these facts. I refer simply to my own personal observations on this point, as testified to before the Committee of Congress, after I had gotten home again. I beg to refer the reader to volume 3, page 380 of the printed Government Record for a part of my sworn testimony referring to these dates.
After a long day's hunt for news, visiting about every place in the city, like a reporter, where I thought I could learn anything—among the rest, Libby Prison guard—I returned to the hotel in the evening.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A NARROW ESCAPE—RECOGNIZED BY TEXAS FRIENDS AT A RICHMOND THEATRE—PERSONNEL OF THE MARYLAND BATTERY—REFUGEES FROM IRELAND—CAMP LEE, NEAR RICHMOND—OUR CAPTAIN—LIEUTENANT CLAIBORNE, OF MISSISSIPPI—OUR SECTION-DRILLS—HORSES FOR OUR USE IN TOWN AND ADJOINING COUNTY—VISITS OF LADIES—CAPITOLA—POPULARITY OF REFUGEES—THE ENTERTAINMENT FOR MARYLANDERS—TABLEAU—JEFF DAVIS STRIKES THE CHAINS FROM THE ENSLAVED MARYLAND BEAUTY.
Richmond hotels during the war were very like those in Washington City during the same period. Every evening the offices, billiard rooms, and even the bar-rooms, would be filled with that class of a city's population that usually congregate in these places. As the crowded hotel lobbies in Washington City nowadays are just the places the newspaper men seek to obtain news for their papers, so it was in Richmond as well as Washington during the war.
Everybody agreed on one point—that something was up, but just what it was nobody seemed able to tell, and I was unable to find out. But I had a night's adventure, which served to dispel any scruples I had entertained about the propriety of entering the Rebel Army.
I met at the hotel office my companion, the Colonel, who, upon seeing me, rushed over the office floor to say: