A general officer said to me, “Of course you will never remain, when once all the press are down upon you. I would not take a million dollars and be in your place.” “But is what I’ve written untrue?” “God bless you! do you know in this country if you can get enough of people to start a lie about any man, he would be ruined, if the Evangelists came forward to swear the story was false. There are thousands of people who this moment believe that M‘Dowell, who never tasted anything stronger than a water melon in all his life, was helplessly drunk at Bull’s Run. Mind what I say; they’ll run you into a mud hole as sure as you live.” I was not much impressed with the danger of my position further than that I knew there would be a certain amount of risk from the rowdyism and vanity of what even the Americans admit to be the lower orders, for which I had been prepared from the moment I had despatched my letter; but I confess I was not by any means disposed to think that the leaders of public opinion would seek the small gratification of revenge, and the petty popularity of pandering to the passions of the mob, by creating a popular cry against me. I am not aware that any foreigner ever visited the United States who was injudicious enough to write one single word derogatory to their claims to be the first of created beings, who was not assailed with the most viperous malignity and rancour. The man who says he has detected a single spot on the face of their sun should prepare his winding sheet.
The New York Times, I find, states “that the terrible epistle has been read with quite as much avidity as an average President’s message. We scarcely exaggerate the fact when we say, the first and foremost thought on the minds of a very large portion of our people after the repulse at Bull’s Run was, what will Russell say?” and then they repeat some of the absurd sayings attributed to me, who declared openly from the very first that I had not seen the battle at all, to the effect “that I had never seen such fighting in all my life, and that nothing at Alma or Inkerman was equal to it.” An analysis of the letter follows, in which it is admitted that “with perfect candour I purported to give an account of what I saw, and not of the action which I did not see,” and the writer, who is, if I mistake not, the Hon. Mr. Raymond, of the New York Times, like myself a witness of the facts I describe, quotes a passage in which I say, “There was no flight of troops, no retreat of an army, no reason for all this precipitation,” and then declares “that my letter gives a very spirited and perfectly just description of the panic which impelled and accompanied the troops from Centreville to Washington. He does not, for he cannot, in the least exaggerate its horrible disorder, or the disgraceful behaviour of the incompetent officers by whom it was aided, instead of being checked. He saw nothing whatever of the fighting, and therefore says nothing whatever of its quality. He gives a clear, fair, perfectly just and accurate, as it is a spirited and graphic account of the extraordinary scenes which passed under his observation. Discreditable as those scenes were to our army, we have nothing in connection with them whereof to accuse the reporter; he has done justice alike to himself, his subject, and the country.”
Ne nobis blandiar, I may add, that at least I desired to do so, and I can prove from Northern papers that if their accounts were true, I certainly much “extenuated and nought set down in malice”—nevertheless, Philip drunk is very different from Philip sober, frightened, and running away, and the man who attempts to justify his version to the inebriated polycephalous monarch is sure to meet such treatment as inebriated despots generally award to their censors.
August 23rd.—The torrent is swollen to-day by anonymous letters threatening me with bowie knife and revolver, or simply abusive, frantic with hate, and full of obscure warnings. Some bear the Washington post-mark, others came from New York, the greater number—for I have had nine—are from Philadelphia. Perhaps they may come from the members of that “gallant” 4th Pennsylvania Regiment.
August 24th.—My servant came in this morning, to announce a trifling accident—he was exercising my horse, and at the corner of one of those charming street crossings, the animal fell and broke its leg. A “vet” was sent for. I was sure that such a portent had never been born in those Daunian woods. A man about twenty-seven or twenty-eight stone weight, middle-aged and active, with a fine professional feeling for distressed horseflesh; and I was right in my conjectures that he was a Briton, though the vet had become Americanised, and was full of enthusiasm about “our war for the Union,” which was yielding him a fine harvest. He complained there were a good many bad characters about Washington. The matter is proved beyond doubt by what we see, hear, and read. To-day there is an account in the papers of a brute shooting a negro boy dead, because he asked him for a chew of tobacco. Will he be hanged? Not the smallest chance of it. The idea of hanging a white man for killing a nigger! It is more preposterous here than it is in India, where our authorities have actually executed whites for the murder of natives.
Before dinner I walked down to the Washington navy yard. Captain Dahlgren was sorely perplexed with an intoxicated Senator, whose name it is not necessary to mention, and who seemed to think he paid me a great compliment by expressing his repeated desire “to have a good look at” me. “I guess you’re quite notorious now. You’ll excuse me because I’ve dined, now—and so you are the Mr. &c., &c., &c.” The Senator informed me that he was “none of your d——d blackfaced republicans. He didn’t care a d—— about niggers—his business was to do good to his fellow white men, to hold our glorious Union together, and let the niggers take care of themselves.”
I was glad when a diversion was effected by the arrival of Mr. Fox, Assistant-Secretary of the Navy, and Mr. Blair, Postmaster-General, to consult with the Captain, who is greatly looked up to by all the members of the Cabinet—in fact he is rather inconvenienced by the perpetual visits of the President, who is animated by a most extraordinary curiosity about naval matters and machinery, and is attracted by the novelty of the whole department, so that he is continually running down “to have a talk with Dahlgren” when he is not engaged in “a chat with George.” The Senator opened such a smart fire on the Minister that the latter retired, and I mounted and rode back to town. In the evening Major Clarence Brown, Lieutenant Wise, a lively, pleasant, and amusing little sailor, well-known in the States as the author of “Los Gringos,” who is now employed in the Navy Department, and a few of the gentlemen connected with the Foreign Legations came in, and we had a great international reunion and discussion till a late hour. There is a good deal of agreeable banter reserved for myself, as to the exact form of death which I am most likely to meet. I was seriously advised by a friend not to stir out unarmed. The great use of a revolver is that it will prevent the indignity of tarring and feathering, now pretty rife, by provoking greater violence. I also received a letter from London, advising me to apply to Lord Lyons for protection, but that could only be extended to me within the walls of the Legation.
August 25th.—I visited the Navy Department, which is a small red-brick building two storeys high, very plain and even humble. The subordinate departments are conducted in rooms below stairs. The executive are lodged in the rooms which line both sides of the corridor above. The walls of the passage are lined with paintings in oil and water colours, engravings and paintings in the worst style of art. To the latter considerable interest attaches, as they are authentic likenesses of naval officers who gained celebrity in the wars with Great Britain—men like Perry, M‘Donough, Decatur, and Hull, who, as the Americans boast, was “the first man who compelled a British frigate of greater force than his own to strike her colours in fair fight.” Paul Jones was not to be seen, but a drawing is proudly pointed to of the attack of the American fleet on Algiers as a proof of hatred to piracy, and of the prominent part taken by the young States in putting an end to it in Europe. In one room are several swords, surrendered by English officers in the single frigate engagements, and the duplicates of medals, in gold and silver, voted by Congress to the victors. In Lieutenant Wise’s room, there are models of the projectiles, and a series of shot and shell used in the navy, or deposited by inventors. Among other relics was the flag of Captain Ward’s boat just brought in which was completely riddled by the bullet marks received in the ambuscade in which that officer was killed, with nearly all of his boat’s crew, as they incautiously approached the shore of the Potomac, to take off a small craft placed there to decoy them by the Confederates. My business was to pave the way for a passage on board a steamer, in case of any naval expedition starting before the army was ready to move, but all difficulties were at once removed by the promptitude and courtesy of Mr. Fox, the Assistant-Secretary, who promised to give me an order for a passage whenever I required it. The extreme civility and readiness to oblige of all American officials, high and low, from the gate-keepers and door porters up to the heads of departments, cannot be too highly praised, and it is ungenerous to accept the explanation offered by an English officer to whom I remarked the circumstance, that it is due to the fact that each man is liable to be turned out at the end of four years, and therefore makes all the friends he can.
In the afternoon I rode out with Captain Johnson, through some charming woodland scenery on the outskirts of Washington, by a brawling stream, in a shady little ravine, that put me in mind of the Dargle. Our ride led us into the camps, formed on the west of Georgetown, to cover the city from the attacks of an enemy advancing along the left bank of the Potomac, and in support of several strong forts and earthworks placed on the heights. One regiment consists altogether of Frenchmen—another is of Germans—in a third I saw an officer with a Crimean and Indian medal on his breast, and several privates with similar decorations. Some of the regiments were on parade, and crowds of civilians from Washington were enjoying the novel scene, and partaking of the hospitality of their friends. One old lady, whom I have always seen about the camps, and who is a sort of ancient heroine of Saragossa, had an opportunity of being useful. The 15th Massachusetts, a fine-looking body of men, had broken up camp, and were marching off to the sound of their own voices chanting “Old John Brown,” when one of the enormous trains of baggage waggons attached to them was carried off by the frightened mules, which probably had belonged to Virginian farmers, and one of the soldiers, in trying to stop it, was dashed to the ground and severely injured. The old lady was by his side in a moment, and out came her flask of strong waters, bandages, and medical comforts and apparatus. “It’s well I’m here for this poor Union soldier; I’m sure I always have something to do in these camps.” On my return late, there was a letter on my table requesting me to visit General M‘Clellan, but it was then too far advanced to avail myself of the invitation, which was only delivered after I left my lodgings.