In the afternoon an officer was good enough to bring me the following:
Executive Mansion, Washington, May 1, 1865.
Permission is granted Whitelaw Reid, Esq., to proceed by sea to New Orleans, Louisiana, and return by sea or inland to Washington, District of Columbia, and to visit any port or place en route in the lines of national military occupation.
[Signed,] ANDREW JOHNSON,
President of the United States.
I had not supposed a pass necessary; but as the rest of the party went on official business, it had been thought best to cover my case with a document, about the scope and authority of which no question could be raised. At that time passes to visit many of the Southern points were still eagerly sought and procured with difficulty. The War Department was the place to which, in general, application was to be made, and the speculative gentry who mostly wanted such favors, stood in wholesome awe of the downright Secretary. A pass so nearly unlimited as mine was an unheard of rarity, and before the afternoon was over, two or three who had in some way found out that I had it, were anxious to know if “five hundred or even a thousand dollars would be any inducement” to me to part with it!
By nine in the evening the last of the little party had entered the cozy cabin of the “Northerner.” There were the usual good-byes to the friends who had driven down to the Navy Yard wharf to see us off; playful injunctions from young officers about laying in supplies of cigars at Havana, and from fair ladies about bringing back for them parrots and monkeys, pine apples and bananas; some consultations among the officials of the party; some final messages and instructions sent down at the last moment by the Government: then fresh good-byes; the plank was pulled in, and we steamed out into the darkness.
Everybody compared supplies with everybody else; it was found that there were books enough in the party to set up a circulating library, and paper enough for writing a three-volume novel; the latest dates of newspapers had been laid in; the last issues of the magazines, and even a fresh number of the old North American were forthcoming; while Napoleon’s Cæsar, in all the glory of tinted paper and superb letter-press, formed the pièce de résistance that bade fair to master us all—as Horace Greeley used maliciously to say the old National Intelligencer mastered him, when he couldn’t get asleep in any other way!
CHAPTER II.
A School of Unadulterated Negroes—An Ancient Virginia Town under the Dispensation of Sutlers.
Our steamer for the voyage was to be the revenue cutter “Wayanda,” a trim, beautifully-modeled, ocean-going propeller, carrying six guns, and manned with a capital crew. While Captain Merryman was making his final preparation for a cruise, much longer than he had expected when the telegraph hurried his vessel around from New York, we retained the little “Northerner” for a trip up to Norfolk—only delaying long enough at the Fortress to drive out and see a great negro school, established by General Butler.