I was in Washington again, and, strange to say, we were camped for the first night right in sight of the Old Capitol Prison.
Mr. Stanton, the autocrat Secretary of War, failed entirely to suppress me. With all his arbitrary exercise of authority he could not keep me away from the front. Locking me up in Old Capitol Prison only detained me temporarily. If I had not been released I certainly should have escaped the same day.
The first visit I made in Washington after my return there as a soldier was to the Capitol.
Armed with a pass, duly approved by the Provost-Guard officers, and dressed up in my Sunday uniform, I called the member of Congress from my home District from his seat out into the corridor (Mr. Covode being absent), where I bluntly and briefly explained that I had been given a parole not to come South until released, but being satisfied in my own heart that it was a wrong to me, and injustice had been done through the envy and malice of some War Department officials, I had, upon the advice of such men as Covode, decided to enlist in the army, and they had formally notified the Secretary of my intention of so doing.
I had not officially been advised that "I was forgiven," and desired Mr. Blair to see the Secretary and arrange the matter for me. He looked at me with astonishment at first, and then, realizing the absurdity of the thing, laughed heartily, saying "Why, of course, that's all right; they would not dare to annoy you any further."
I was, further, most kindly assured that my friends in Congress would all see me through, in case I had any difficulties on that score.
I left the Capitol, going straight to the War Department, where I endeavored to get an interview with the Secretary, but, dear me, a soldier—a common soldier—only a little Corporal in the Dragoon's uniform—presuming to address the Secretary of War, was something so unheard of among the old regular attendants about the door that they were disposed to fire me out of the up-stairs window for my effrontery. I had found it difficult as a civilian to reach the Secretary of War on several former occasions, but I learned, to my disgust, that as a soldier it was entirely impossible.
The lesson in the Regular Army etiquette which I took that day, burned itself so bitterly and deeply into my heart that I never attempted afterward to address anything higher than a First Sergeant in the Regular Army, except through the regular channels.
On account of an accident that happened me at Carlisle, I was permitted by Captain Rodenbaugh to sleep in a boarding-house during the first days after our arrival at Washington City, or until horses were issued to us. At Carlisle there was an old horse widely known among all the Regular cavalrymen who have been there as "Squeezer." At stable-call, I had noticed the men in the squad to which I had been advanced, all showed a singular alacrity in rushing to the task of cleaning their horses as soon as we broke ranks for this purpose. I learned by an experience that came near being serious, that this was caused not so much by anxiety of the troopers to clean horses, as to avoid a certain stall which Squeezer occupied.
