The kind and clever old Pennsylvania statesman, who had been induced to take such an interest in my work, and to whom I was directly responsible, was, at the time of my return, away off in St. Petersburg, Russia, as Minister for the United States.
Colonel Thomas A. Scott, who had been an Assistant Secretary of War to Mr. Cameron, and whose personal endorsement to Mr. Cameron had first set me going, had also been relieved by a Mr. P. H. Watson, who was at the time Acting Assistant Secretary to Mr. Stanton.
My brother, Spencer, who, for some months previously, had been in the employ of the War Department as a telegraph operator, and whose relations with the Government officials were necessarily somewhat of a confidential character, took me to his room in a boarding-house on F street, where were living a number of War Department clerks. Spencer thought the fact of my wearing the Rebel uniform one of the best kind of jokes, and he, consequently, took great delight in calling the attention of all his War Department associates to the fact.
My old and constant friend "Glory to God," as the Hon. John Covode was called, was the only man of prominence in Washington that I knew, or who had any knowledge of my previous undertakings. He was a Member of Congress from a Pennsylvania District adjoining my own home, near Pittsburgh. Congress was in session at this time, and it so happened that, for some months previously Mr. Covode had been stirring things up in the House at a lively rate, by his persistent investigation of our military men and movements in Virginia. There had been an investigation of Bull Run, of Ball's Bluff massacre, of old Patterson, in Pennsylvania, and, more recently, a great hubbub had been raised all over the country about General McClellan's failure, or slowness, in moving "on to Richmond" via Manassas.
There was, indeed, a great deal of this sort of thing going on, the details of which had been ground up and sifted through the one joint "Committee on the Conduct of the War," of which Mr. Covode was chairman. To make a long story short, all will see—to use a vulgar term—that my arrival was "just nuts to Old Glory," as some one told me. If an angel had dropped down from the sky to corroborate the honest old man's assertion, it would not have been more opportune.
I had been inside the Rebel lines for months. I had obtained the Rebel opinions, officially, of Manassas, after the battle, and knew the exact strength of the Rebel Army was not one-half as large as McClellan's scare had represented it to be. I had heard the comments of the Rebel Secretary of War on Ball's Bluff massacre. Mr. Covode could, and did, endorse me as a "reliable devil," as he put it, in the committee room, and, of course, I was willing enough to be of service to my old friend, and was glad that I was able to substantiate nearly all of his statements.
The morning of my arrival in Washington, I hunted up Mr. Covode, and found him in his rooms at the old Avenue Hotel, the large, plain, old affair, that once stood at the corner of Seventh and Market Space. I was an early caller, and, without a card, knocked at his door before he was out of bed. To his sleepy growl of "Who's there?" I simply gave my name. There was only one word of reply, "Helloa," in a loud emphatic tone; then in a more moderate voice, he continued, as if talking to himself: "Wait a minute. I got word you were coming, and have been expecting you every day."
HE SEEMED TO HAVE FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT DRESSING HIMSELF.
The door opened, and the great Pennsylvania statesman stood before me—in his robe de nuit—grinning all over, with his hair all mussed up and his bare legs sticking out under his shirt.