The great employment of four-fifths of the people at Willard’s at present seems to be to hunt senators and congressmen through the lobbies. Every man is heavy with documents—those which he cannot carry in his pockets and hat, occupy his hands, or are thrust under his arms. In the hall are advertisements announcing that certificates, and letters of testimonial, and such documents, are printed with expedition and neatness. From paper collars, and cards of address to carriages, and new suites of clothes, and long hotel bills, nothing is left untried or uninvigorated. The whole city is placarded with announcements of facilities for assaulting the powers that be, among which must not be forgotten the claims of the “excelsior card-writer,” at Willard’s, who prepares names, addresses, styles, and titles in superior penmanship. The men who have got places, having been elected by the people, must submit to the people, who think they have established a claim on them by their favours. The majority confer power, but they seem to forget that it is only the minority who can enjoy the first fruits of success. It is as if the whole constituency of Marylebone insisted on getting some office under the Crown the moment a member was returned to Parliament. There are men at Willard’s who have come literally thousands of miles to seek for places which can only be theirs for four years, and who with true American facility have abandoned the calling and pursuits of a lifetime for this doubtful canvas; and I was told of one gentleman, who having been informed that he could not get a judgeship, condescended to seek a place in the Post Office, and finally applied to Mr. Chase to be appointed keeper of a “lighthouse,” he was not particular where. In the forenoon I drove to the Washington Navy Yard, in company with Lieutenant Nelson and two friends. It is about two miles outside the city, situated on a fork of land projecting between a creek and the Potomac river, which is here three-quarters of a mile broad. If the French had a Navy Yard at Paris it could scarcely be contended that English, Russians, or Austrians would not have been justified in destroying it in case they got possession of the city by force of arms, after a pitched battle fought outside its gates. I confess I would not give much for Deptford and Woolwich if an American fleet succeeded in forcing its way up the Thames; but our American cousins,—a little more than kin and less than kind, who speak with pride of Paul Jones and of their exploits on the Lakes,—affect to regard the burning of the Washington Navy Yard by us, in the last war, as an unpardonable outrage on the law of nations, and an atrocious exercise of power. For all the good it did, for my own part, I think it were as well had it never happened, but no jurisconsult will for a moment deny that it was a legitimate, even if extreme, exercise of a belligerent right in the case of an enemy who did not seek terms from the conqueror; and who, after battle lost, fled and abandoned the property of their state, which might be useful to them in war, to the power of the victor. Notwithstanding all the unreasonableness of the American people in reference to their relations with foreign powers, it is deplorable such scenes should ever have been enacted between members of the human family so closely allied by all that shall make them of the same household.
The Navy Yard is surrounded by high brick walls; in the gateway stood two sentries in dark blue tunics, yellow facings, with eagle buttons, brightly polished arms, and white Berlin gloves, wearing a cap something like a French kepi, all very clean and creditable. Inside are some few trophies of guns taken from us at York Town, and from the Mexicans in the land of Cortez. The interior inclosure is surrounded by red brick houses, and stores and magazines, picked out with white stone; and two or three green grass-plots, fenced in by pillars and chains and bordered by trees, give an air of agreeable freshness to the place. Close to the river are the workshops: of course there is smoke and noise of steam and machinery. In a modest office, surrounded by books, papers, drawings, and models, as well as by shell and shot and racks of arms of different descriptions, we found Capt. Dahlgren, the acting superintendent of the yard, and the inventor of the famous gun which bears his name, and is the favourite armament of the American navy. By our own sailors they are irreverently termed “soda-water bottles,” owing to their shape. Capt. Dahlgren contends that guns capable of throwing the heaviest shot may be constructed of cast-iron, carefully prepared and moulded so that the greatest thickness of metal may be placed at the points of resistance, at the base of the gun, the muzzle and forward portions being of very moderate thickness.
All inventors, or even adapters of systems, must be earnest self-reliant persons, full of confidence, and, above all, impressive, or they will make little way in the conservative, status-quo-loving world. Captain Dahlgren has certainly most of these characteristics, but he has to fight with his navy department, with the army, with boards and with commissioners,—in fact, with all sorts of obstructors. When I was going over the yard, he deplored the parsimony of the department, which refused to yield to his urgent entreaties for additional furnaces to cast guns.
No large guns are cast at Washington. The foundries are only capable of turning out brass field-pieces and boat-guns. Capt. Dahlgren obligingly got one of the latter out to practice for us—a 12-pounder howitzer, which can be carried in a boat, run on land on its carriage, which is provided with wheels, and is so light that the gun can be drawn readily about by the crew. He made some good practice with shrapnel at a target 1200 yards distant, firing so rapidly as to keep three shells in the air at the same time. Compared with our establishments, this dockyard is a mere toy, and but few hands are employed in it. One steam sloop, the “Pawnee,” was under the shears, nearly ready for sea: the frame of another was under the building-shed. There are no facilities for making iron ships, or putting on plate-armour here. Everything was shown to us with the utmost frankness. The fuse of the Dahlgren shell is constructed on the vis inertiæ principle, and is not unlike that of the Armstrong.
On returning to the hotel, I found a magnificent bouquet of flowers, with a card attached to them, with Mrs. Lincoln’s compliments, and another card announcing that she had a “reception” at 3 o’clock. It was rather late before I could get to the White House, and there were only two or three ladies in the drawing-room when I arrived. I was informed afterwards that the attendance was very scanty. The Washington ladies have not yet made up their minds that Mrs. Lincoln is the fashion. They miss their Southern friends, and constantly draw comparisons between them and the vulgar Yankee women and men who are now in power. I do not know enough to say whether the affectation of superiority be justified; but assuredly if New York be Yankee, there is nothing in which it does not far surpass this preposterous capital. The impression of homeliness produced by Mrs. Lincoln on first sight, is not diminished by closer acquaintance. Few women not to the manner born there are, whose heads would not be disordered, and circulation disturbed, by a rapid transition, almost instantaneous, from a condition of obscurity in a country town to be mistress of the White House. Her smiles and her frowns become a matter of consequence to the whole American world. As the wife of the country lawyer, or even of the congress man, her movements were of no consequence. The journals of Springfield would not have wasted a line upon them. Now, if she but drive down Pennsylvania Avenue, the electric wire thrills the news to every hamlet in the Union which has a newspaper; and fortunate is the correspondent who, in a special despatch, can give authentic particulars of her destination and of her dress. The lady is surrounded by flatterers and intriguers, seeking for influence or such places as she can give. As Selden says, “Those who wish to set a house on fire begin with the thatch.”
March 31st, Easter Sunday.—I dined with Lord Lyons and the members of the Legation; the only stranger present being Senator Sumner. Politics were of course eschewed, for Mr. Sumner is Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, and Lord Lyons is a very discreet Minister; but still there crept in a word of Pickens and Sumter, and that was all. Mr. Fox, formerly of the United States’ Navy, and since that a master of a steamer in the commercial marine, who is related to Mr. Blair, has been sent on some mission to Fort Sumter, and has been allowed to visit Major Anderson by the authorities at Charleston; but it is not known what was the object of his mission. Everywhere there is Secession resignation, in a military sense of the word. The Southern Commissioners declare they will soon retire to Montgomery, and that any attempt to reinforce or supply the forts will be a casus belli. There is the utmost anxiety to know what Virginia will do. General Scott belongs to the State, and it is feared he may be shaken if the State goes out. Already the authorities of Richmond have intimated they will not allow the foundry to furnish guns to the seaboard forts, such as Munroe and Norfolk in Virginia. This concession of an autonomy is really a recognition of States’ Rights. For if a State can vote itself in or out of the Union, why can it not make war or peace, and accept or refuse the Federal Government? In fact, the Federal system is radically defective against internal convulsion, however excellent it is or may be for purposes of external polity. I walked home with Mr. Sumner to his rooms, and heard some of his views, which were not so sanguine as those of Mr. Seward, and I thought I detected a desire to let the Southern States go out with their slavery if they so desired it. Mr. Chase, by the way, expressed sentiments of the same kind more decidedly the other day.
April 1st.—On Easter Monday, after breakfast with Mr. Olmsted, I drove over to visit Senator Douglas. Originally engaged in some mechanical avocation, by his ability and eloquence he has raised himself to the highest position in the State short of the Presidency, which might have been his but for the extraordinary success of his opponent in a fortuitous suffrage scramble. He is called the Little Giant, being modo bipedali staturâ, but his head entitles him to some recognition of intellectual height. His sketch of the causes which have led to the present disruption of parties, and the hazard of civil war, was most vivid and able; and for more than an hour he spoke with a vigour of thought and terseness of phrase which, even on such dreary and uninviting themes as squatter sovereignty and the Kansas-Nebraska question, interested a foreigner in the man and the subject. Although his sympathies seemed to go with the South on the question of slavery and territorial extension, he condemned altogether the attempt to destroy the Union.
April 2nd.—The following day I started early, and performed my pilgrimage to “the shrine of St. Washington,” at Mount Vernon, as a foreigner on board called the place. Mr. Bancroft has in his possession a letter of the General’s mother, in which she expresses her gratification at his leaving the British army in a manner which implies that he had been either extravagant, in his expenses or wild in his manner of living. But if he had any human frailties in after life, they neither offended the morality of his age, or shocked the susceptibility of his countrymen; and from the time that the much maligned and unfortunate Braddock gave scope to his ability, down to his retirement into private life, after a career of singular trials and extraordinary successes, his character acquired each day greater altitude, strength, and lustre. Had his work failed, had the Republic broken up into small anarchical states, we should hear now little of Washington. But the principles of liberty founded in the original Constitution of the colonies themselves, and in no degree derived from or dependent on the revolution, combined with the sufferings of the Old and the bounty of nature in the New World to carry to an unprecedented degree the material prosperity, which Americans have mistaken for good government, and the physical comforts which have made some States in the Union the nearest approach to Utopia. The Federal Government hitherto “let the people alone,” and they went on their way singing and praising their Washington as the author of so much greatness and happiness. To doubt his superiority to any man of woman born, is to insult the American people. They are not content with his being great—or even greater than the great: he must be greatest of all;—“first in peace, and first in war.” The rest of the world cannot find fault with the assertion, that he is “first in the hearts of his countrymen.” But he was not possessed of the highest military qualities, if we are to judge from most of the regular actions, in which the British had the best of it; and the final blow, when Cornwallis surrendered at York Town, was struck by the arm of France, by Rochambeau and the French fleet, rather than by Washington and his Americans. He had all the qualities for the work for which he was designed, and is fairly entitled to the position his countrymen have given him as the immortal czar of the United States. His pictures are visible everywhere—in the humblest inn, in the Minister’s bureau, in the millionaire’s gallery. There are far more engravings of Washington in America than there are of Napoleon in France, and that is saying a good deal.
What have we here? The steamer, which has been paddling down the gentle current of the Potomac, here a mile and more in breadth, banked in by forest, through which can be seen homesteads and white farm-houses, in the midst of large clearings and corn-fields—has moved in towards a high bluff, covered with trees, on the summit of which is visible the trace of some sort of building—a ruined summer-house, rustic temple—whatever it may be; and the bell on deck begins to toll solemnly, and some of the pilgrims uncover their heads for a moment. The boat stops at a rotten, tumble-down little pier, which leads to a waste of mud, and a path rudely cut through the wilderness of briars on the hill-side. The pilgrims, of whom there are some thirty or forty, of both sexes, mostly belonging to the lower classes of citizens, and comprising a few foreigners like myself, proceed to climb this steep, which seemed in a state of nature covered with primæval forest, and tangled weeds and briars, till the plateau, on which stands the house of Washington and the domestic offices around it, is reached. It is an oblong wooden house, of two stories in height, with a colonnade towards the river face, and a small balcony on the top and on the level of the roof, over which rises a little paltry gazebo. There are two windows, a glass door at one end of the oblong, and a wooden alcove extending towards the slave quarters, which are very small sentry-box huts, that have been recently painted, and stand at right angles to the end of the house, with dog-houses and poultry-hutches attached to them. There is no attempt at neatness or order about the place; though the exterior of the house is undergoing repair, the grass is unkempt, the shrubs untrimmed,—neglect, squalor, and chicken feathers have marked the lawn for their own. The house is in keeping, and threatens to fall to ruin. I entered the door, and found myself in a small hall, stained with tobacco juice. An iron railing ran across the entrance to the stairs. Here stood a man at a gate, who presented a book to the visitors, and pointed out the notice therein, that “no person is permitted to inscribe his name in this book who does not contribute to the Washington Fund, and that any name put down without money would be erased.” Notwithstanding the warning, some patriots succeeded in recording their names without any pecuniary mulct, and others did so at a most reasonable rate. When I had contributed in a manner which must have represented an immense amount of Washingtoniolatry, estimated by the standard of the day, I was informed I could not go up-stairs as the rooms above were closed to the public, and thus the most interesting portion of the house was shut from the strangers. The lower rooms presented nothing worthy of notice—some lumbering, dusty, decayed furniture; a broken harpsichord, dust, cobwebs—no remnant of the man himself. But over the door of one room hung the key of the Bastille.[1] The gardens, too, were tabooed; but through the gate I could see a wilderness of neglected trees and shrubs, not unmingled with a suspicion of a present kitchen-ground. Let us pass to the Tomb, which is some distance from the house, beneath the shade of some fine trees. It is a plain brick mausoleum, with a pointed arch, barred by an iron grating, through which the light penetrates a chamber or small room containing two sarcophagi of stone. Over the arch, on a slab let into the brick, are the words: “Within this enclosure rest the remains of Gen. George Washington.” The fallen leaves which had drifted into the chamber rested thickly on the floor, and were piled up on the sarcophagi, and it was difficult to determine which was the hero’s grave without the aid of an expert, but there was neither guide nor guardian on the spot. Some four or five gravestones, of various members of the family, stand in the ground outside the little mausoleum. The place was most depressing. One felt angry with a people whose lip service was accompanied by so little of actual respect. The owner of this property, inherited from the “Pater Patriæ,” has been abused in good set terms because he asked its value from the country which has been so very mindful of the services of his ancestor, and which is now erecting by slow stages the overgrown Cleopatra’s needle that is to be a Washington monument when it is finished. Mr. Everett has been lecturing, the Ladies’ Mount Vernon Association has been working, and every one has been adjuring everybody else to give liberally; but the result so lately achieved is by no means worthy of the object. Perhaps the Americans think it is enough to say—“Si monumentum quæris, circumspice.” But, at all events, there is a St. Paul’s round those words.
On the return of the steamer I visited Fort Washington, which is situated on the left bank of the Potomac. I found everything in a state of neglect—gun carriages rotten, shot piles rusty, furnaces tumbling to pieces. The place might be made strong enough on the river front, but the rear is weak, though there is low marshy land at the back. A company of regulars were on duty. The sentries took no precautions against surprise. Twenty determined men, armed with revolvers, could have taken the whole work; and, for all the authorities knew, we might have had that number of Virginians and the famous Ben McCullough himself on board. Afterwards, when I ventured to make a remark to General Scott as to the carelessness of the garrison, he said: “A few weeks ago it might have been taken by a bottle of whisky. The whole garrison consisted of an old Irish pensioner.” Now at this very moment Washington is full of rumours of desperate descents on the capital, and an attack on the President and his Cabinet. The long bridge across the Potomac into Virginia is guarded, and the militia and volunteers of the District of Columbia are to be called out to resist McCullough and his Richmond desperadoes.