'The 22d of February, 1863—the anniversary of Washington's birthday—will long be remembered,' writes one, 'by the Army of the Potomac. Encamped, as it is, on the very spot where he—'whom God made childless that a nation might call him father'—passed most of his youthful days, the thoughts of all naturally revert to the history of that great man, and particularly to that part of his early life, when, within the sacred precincts of home, a mother's care laid the foundation of that high moral character which in after life gave tone to both his civil and military career. Within one mile of the spot where I am now writing these lines, George Washington lived from the fourth to the sixteenth year of his age. The river, the hills, and dales, now so familiar to the soldiers composing this army, were the same then as to-day, and were the scene of his early gambols, his youthful joys and sorrows. Over these hills he wandered in the manly pursuits for which he was at that early period distinguished above his fellows, and which prepared him for enduring the hardships of the position he was destined to fill; here, too, is where tradition says he accomplished the feat of throwing a stone across the Rappahannock, and here, too, stood the traditional cherry tree, about the destruction of which with his little hatchet he would not utter a falsehood. Yonder, just across the Rappahannock, in a small, unostentatious burying ground, the immortal remains of 'Mary, mother of Washington,' were buried—sacred spot, now desecrated by the presence of the enemies of those principles which her honored son spent the energies of his life to establish for the benefit of all mankind. When we think for what Washington took up arms against the mother country, and what, by his example and teachings, he sought to perpetuate forever, and see the fratricidal hand raised to destroy the fair fabric he helped to rear, we feel something as though an omnipotent power would here intervene, and here on this sacred spot overthrow the enemies of this land without the further sacrifice of blood.'
Quite a different and more recent local association is thus recorded:
'The second time that I stood here was nigh three years ago, when I spoke to you in relation to John Brown, then in a Virginia jail. How great the result of that idea which he pressed upon the country! Do you know with what poetic justice Providence treats that very town where he lay in jail when I spoke to you before? The very man who went down from Philadelphia to bring his body back to his sad relatives—insulted every mile of the road, his life threatened, the bullets whistling around his head—that very man, for eight or ten months, is brigadier-general in command of the town of Charlestown and Harper's Ferry. By order of his superior officers, he had the satisfaction of finding it his duty, with his own right hand, to put the torch to that very hotel into which he had been followed with insult and contumely, as the friend of John Brown; and when his brigade was under orders to destroy all the buildings of that neighborhood, with reverential care he bade the soldiers stop to spare that engine house that once sheltered the old hero. I do not know any history more perfectly poetic than of that single local instance given us in three short years. Hector Tindale, the friend of John Brown, who went there almost with his life in his right hand, commands, and his will is law, his sword is the guarantee of peace, and by his order the town is destroyed, with the single exception of that hall which John Brown's presence has rendered immortal.'
The graphic details furnished by the army correspondents to the daily press of the North, reveal to us in vivid and authentic terms the change which war has wrought in Virginia. The condition of one 'fine old mansion' is that of hundreds. On the banks of the Rappahannock and in the vicinity of Fredericksburg is, for instance, an estate, now called the Lacy House, the royal grant whereof is dated 1690. The bricks and the mason work of the main edifice are English; the situation is beautiful; the furniture, conservatories, musical instruments, every trait and resource suggest luxury. After the battle of Fredericksburg, the Lacy House became a hospital: and a spectator of the scene thus describes it:
'The parlors, where so often had the fairest and brightest of Virginia's daughters, and her bravest and most chivalric sons, met to enjoy the hospitalities of the liberal host, and to join in the mazy dance 'from eve till rosy morn'—the dining room, where so many lordly feasts had been served—the drawing room, wherein the smiling host and hostess had received so many a welcome guest—the bed rooms, from the bridal chamber where the eldest scion of the house had first clasped in his arms the wife of his bosom, to the low attic where the black cook retired after her greasy labors of the day, all were closely crowded with the low iron hospital beds. These halls, which had so often reëchoed the sound of music, and of gayest voices, and also of those lower but more sacred tones that belong to lovers, now resounded with shrieks of pain, and with the lower, weaker groans of dying men.
'The splendid furniture was put to strange uses—the sideboard of solid rosewood, made in those honest days before cabinet makers had learned the rogue's trick of veneering, instead of being crowded with generous wines, or with good spirits that had mellowed for years in the cellars, was now crowded in every shelf with forbidding-looking bottles of black draughts, with packages of salt and senna, and with ill-omened piles of raking pills, perhaps not less destructive in their way than shot and shell of a more explosive sort. The butler's pantry and store rooms had their shelves and drawers and boxes filled, not with jellies and marmalades and preserves, and boxes of lemons and preserved ginger and drums of figs, and all sorts of original packages of all sorts of things toothsome and satisfying to the palate—but even her scammony and gamboge, and aloes and Epsom salts, and other dire weapons, only wielded by the medical profession, had obtained exclusive sway.
'On many a retired shelf, and in many an odd corner, too, I saw neglected cartridge boxes, cast-off belts, discarded caps, etc., which told, not of the careless and heedless soldier, who had lost his accoutrements, but of the dead soldier, who had gone to a land where it is to be hoped he will have no further use for Minié rifle balls or pipe-clayed crossbelts. I saw, too, with these other laid-aside trappings, dozens and hundreds of Minié and other cartridges, never now to be fired at an enemy by the hand that had placed them in the now discarded cartridge box.
'The walls of the various rooms of the Lacy House, like those of most of the old houses in Virginia, are ceiled up to the top with wood, which is painted white. There is a heavy cornice in each room; there are the huge old-fashioned fireplaces, the marble mantelpieces over the same, and in the main dining room, where it was the custom for the men to remain after dinner, and after the ladies had retired, was a curious feature to be observed, that I have never seen but once or twice. Over the marble mantel, but quite within reach, runs a mahogany framework intended for the reception of the toddy glasses, after the various guests shall have finished the generous liquor therein contained.
'There are still some vestiges of the family furniture remaining—some rosewood and mahogany sideboards, tables, bedsteads, etc., which the family have not been able to remove, and which the occupying soldiers have found no use for. The most notable of these articles is a musical instrument, which may be described as a compound harp-organ. It is, in fact, an upright harp, played by keys which strike the wires by a pianoforte action, which has an ordinary piano keyboard. This is, in fact, the earliest form of the modern pianoforte. Then, in the same instrument is an organ bellows and pipes, the music from which is evoked by means of a separate keyboard, the bellows is worked by a foot treadle, like that most detestable abomination known to moderns as a melodeon. Thus, in the same instrument, the performer is supposed to get the powers and effect both of an upright piano and a small organ. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this instrument (which, doubtless, originally cost at least $3,000) is now utterly useless, the wires, many of them, being broken, and the whole machine being every way out of order. The maker's name is set down as 'Longman & Broderup, 26 Cheapside, No. 13 Haymarket, London.' The poor old thing has doubtless been in the Lacy House for more than a hundred years. It has been rudely dragged from its former place of honor, and now stands in the middle of the floor. The spot it formerly occupied has been lately filled by a hospital bed, on which a capital operation was performed. The spouting blood from the bleeding arteries of some poor patient has covered the wall with crimson marks. In fact, everywhere all over the house, every wall and floor is saturated with blood, and the whole house, from an elegant gentleman's residence, seems to have been suddenly transformed into a butcher's shamble. The old clock has stopped; the child's rocking horse is rotting away in a disused balcony; the costly exotics in the garden are destroyed, or perhaps the hardiest are now used for horse posts. All that was elegant is wretched; all that was noble is shabby; all that once told of civilized elegance now speaks of ruthless barbarism.'
Take another illustration—that of the incongruous juxtaposition of old family sepulchres and fresh soldiers' graves—the associations of the past and the sad memorials of recent strife even among the dead: